Aristotelian Cultural Universals and Contemporary Cultural Conflicts

This paper makes a recourse to the much quoted Aristotle's Metaphysics and Politics, as well as to the seldom or less popular works, such as Constitution of Athens, Rhetorics to Alexander or On Generation and Corruption, aiming at deconstruction of the post-modern secular and religious beliefs, mythologies, misinterpretations of the cultural cataclysms. Employing the basic semiotics as a heuristic device and relying on the Aristotelian theory of universals, it deals with the most controversial economy of Belief in the most possibly neutral manner. This essay makes an attempt to demystify and lay bare the current geopolitical and economic mythologies, placing them within the Aristotelian purview and under his sharp semiotic lenses. Consequently, the post-modern ZOON POLITICON, facing the ancient Aristotle (384-322 BC), stands vulnerable and judgement-challenged. The much neglected Aristotelian universals, in the narcissistic era of the Fetish of the Particular, have proven to be most instrumental and productive, adumbrating the over the two thousand years of human meandering through the Sacred and the Profane.