Introduction: The Aims and Tasks of Noomakhia
The title of Noomakhia, which literally means “war of the mind” (Noomachy) [4] – and which can also be conceived of as “war within the mind”, “war of minds”, or even “war against the mind” – is intended to emphasize the conflictual nature of logoi structures as well as the multiplicity of noetic fields in each of which surprises, conflicts, aporias, struggles, contradictions, and opposition lie in wait for us. The field of thinking is the field of warfare [5]: thoughts wage ceaseless wars not only against phenomenality, matter, and their own reorganization into elements (whether existing or not is an open question), natural law, dispersion, non-structurality escaping the “control” of multiplicity, etc., but also against other types of thoughts, other thoughts, and the complex diversity of vertical and horizontal, noetic and noeric chains which permeate the reality of the world on different planes and different geometries. Wars between people, including even the most cruel and bloody, are but pale comparisons to the wars of the gods, titans, giants, elements, demons, and angels. And these, in turn, are but figures illustrating even more formidable and profound wars unfolding in the Mind, in the sphere of the Nous and its limits in which the Mind itself borders the zone of Madness. Thus, everything is Noomachy, even that which is bigger and came first of all – ϋπερπαντα. War, according to Heraclitus, is the father of all (πολεμος πατηρ παντων). Indeed, it is about this, the “father of all”, that Noomakhia is written.