Nostradamus’s Prophecies and Uncertainty of Future

by Aleksandr Yeremenko^1
1 National University “Odessa Law Academy” (Odessa, Ukraine)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/24/17
Received: March 12, 2019 / Accepted: April 20, 2019 / Published: January 25, 2020

The article interprets Michel Nostradamus’s quatrains in terms of the eventeme theory developed by the author. An eventeme is an abstract possibility of various single events. The main hypothesis of the article is that Nostradamus described eventemes as single events and filled them with details, thus making an illusion of a prophecy. It was not the only method of Nostradamus’s work, though. Believing in recurrence of historical events, Nostradamus extrapolated past events to the future. This paper analyses some quatrains representing single manifestations of a certain eventeme. The article contains a fragment of the quatrain table where the author reflected both event-driven and eventematic content of the Centuries. The research demonstrates the differences between a prophecy, a foresight and a prediction. The author justifies a thesis on impossibility of exact prediction of single events due to uncertainty of the future.Keywords: Nostradamus, event, eventeme, prophecy, prediction, uncertainty of future

Aristotel (1978) On the interpretation: v 4 t. T. 2. Moskva, My`sl.

---

Brind’Amour, Pierre (1993) Nostradamus astrophile. Ottawa, Presses de l’Universite.

---

Carlstedt, Anna (2005) La poesie oraculaire de Nostradamus: Langue, style et genre des Centuries. Stockholms universitet.

---

Deleuze, Gilles (1995) The Logic of Sense. Moskva, “Akademiya.”

---

Gruber, Elmar (2003) Nostradamus. Sein Lebe, sein Werk und die wahre Bedeutung seiner Prophezeiungen. Bern: Scherz.

---

Hogue, John (2002) Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies. Trans. from English I. Havrilov. Moskva: Grand FAIR-press.

---

Koselleck, Reinhart (2005) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Kyiv, Dukh i Litera.

---

Koselleck, Reinhart (2006) Time Strata. A Study on History Theory. Kyiv, Dukh i Litera.

---

Lemesurier, Peter (2003) The Unknown Nostradamus.

---

Nostradamus, Michel (2010) The Prophecies of Nostradamus. Internet Sacred Text Archive. Available online: http://www.sacred-texts.com/nos/index.htm

---

Penzensky, Aleksey. (2007) Nostradamus. Moskva, Molodaya Gvardiya.

---

Rokhmistrov, Vladimir (2006) All Life Moments Are Counted. Nostradamus M. The Centuries. Saint-Petersburg, Amfora, 369-411.

---

Rokhmistrov, Vladimir (2006a) Nostradamus — The Mirror of History. Nostradamus M. The Centuries. Saint-Petersburg, Amfora, 5-30.

---

Shepheard, David (1986) Pour une poetique du genre oraculaire: a propos de Nostradamus. Revue de Litterature Comparee, No 60. — January-March, 59-65.

---

Yeremenko, Aleksandr (2005) History as Eventivity. In 2 vol. V. 1. Lugansk, RIO LAVD.

Yeremenko, Aleksandr (2020) Nostradamus’s Prophecies and Uncertainty of Future. Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 24, 170-179. https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/24/17