The Romance of Metaphysics with Emile Alexandrov

Emile Alexandrov is an assistant professor of philosophy, formerly at the University of Tyumen in Russia, and currently a visiting scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo. He is author of The Other Platonist Beginning and Metaphysics and Ineffable.

Emile explores the romance of metaphysics as the love of the idea, tracing its rigorous tradition from Aristotle’s unmoved mover and primacy of thinking through Plato’s forms and the allegory of the cave. He examines Neoplatonic developments with Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus, highlighting the ineffable, nondiscursive insight, ritual, and the tension between reason and mystery across history. Alexandrov connects this lineage to later thinkers including Aquinas, Kant, and Schopenhauer, and considers the role of parapsychology in renewing first-principles inquiry beyond purely discursive limits.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:07:30 Aristotle and the unmoved mover
00:15:00 Presocratics and poetic immediacy
00:22:40 Plato's allegory of the cave
00:30:20 Plotinus and the ineffable one
00:38:00 Proclus and theurgy
00:45:40 Logos will and Aquinas
00:53:20 Schopenhauer and first principles
01:01:00 Kant reason and parapsychology
01:05:00 Conclusion

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

(Recorded on Friday, August 7th, 2026)

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