The Logic of Tears

This chapter offers a logic of tears as an expression of know thyself (KT) underpinned by modern metaphysics and its logic of education. Tears bear the logic of educational necessity. Within the logic of mastery, the necessity is to overcome such oppositions. However, within the logic of education, and now in the logic of tears, this work has religious and political import; tears cry god, and they cry freedom. The chapter looks at the place of tears in the macrocosm and microcosm, but the distinction here is not a decisive one, for tears are of the individual in the universal (macrocosm) and of the universal in the individual (microcosm). Modern metaphysics takes up the challenge of finding the educational logic of this duality. There are also tears at the heart of the macrocosm in relation to creation and to the stages of the creature's development. The views of Socrates, Heraclitus, Democritus, Hegel and Vincent van Gogh are also discussed.