Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Month: May 2010

  • European Preview

    The sky is growing bluer as my plane races eastward to greet the rising sun. Below me is the Gulf of Mexico, its sparkling surface now marred by slicks of oil that continue to gush from ruptured pipes along the seafloor. It won’t be long now before the orange glow rimming the horizon is pierced…

  • Materialism and Imagination

    Art is now the last safe harbor for the expression of spiritual longing in our increasingly materialistic civilization. The supposedly self-evident discoveries of scientific investigation into the nature of the physical universe have convinced most who know of them that everything which exists is a giant machine governed by measurable, generally deterministic laws. Even our…

  • Sonnets to Orpheus (I, 26) by Rainer Maria Rilke

  • Goal Statement for my PhD Studies at CIIS

    As a result of the past two years of study toward a MA degree in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, my mind has been so stretched—both inward into the depths of my own soul and outward into the endless expanse of the cosmos—that distilling a specific dissertation topic for my PhD research will be extremely difficult.…

  • Self-consciousness and Philosophy

    “You, all-powerful, are my all, at one with me before I can be at one with you.” –St. Augustine (Confessions). Self-consciousness is that with which I must begin… but I will confess, I cannot yet be certain even of my own beginning. It remains a mystery to me, sometimes even a horror. I meet the…

  • Consciousness of Science, post at PZ Myers’ blog Pharyngula

    Link to Pharyngula …To believe self-consciousness can be accounted for in purely neurochemical terms is simply a category mistake. Empirical science presupposes self-consciousness, otherwise scientific reasoning would not be possible. Science cannot explain self-consciousness mechanistically without calling into question its own privileged epistemic status. Natural science attempting to explain consciousness in terms of brain mechanisms…

  • Intimations of an Integral God: A lecture at CIIS

    Slide 1: Prior to coming to CIIS, while studying philosophy as an undergraduate, I always had the sense of being somewhat smothered. As my studies continued, and my understanding matured, I realized why. I was being trained to think in the shadow of Immanuel Kant. [Show Crit. of Pure Reason- You’ve all read this, right?]…

  • Jonael Schickler, Christology, and Rudolf Steiner

    So the book arrived today: Schickler’s dissertation, “Metaphysics as Christology: An Odyssey of the Self from Kant and Hegel to Steiner.” The author’s argument is as optimistic and uplifting as his own fate is tragic. Just days after finishing the manuscript, Schickler was killed in the Potters Bar rail accident in 2002 near Hertfordshire in…

  • Teilhard and Steiner: Cosmogenesis in Light of Anthroposophy

    Teilhard and Steiner: Cosmogenesis in light of Anthroposophy Introduction: As Above, So Below    The human is a spiritual being of universal significance. If my reader lacks the courage required for such an affirmation, they need read no further, because though one may have ears to hear and eyes to see, without an open heart…

  • The Role of Imagination in Speculative Philosophy

    The Role of Imagination in Speculative Philosophy “[Imagination] is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And Reason in her most exalted mood.” –William Wordsworth, ‘The Prelude’ Introduction It should go without saying that there is more to reality than what at first meets the eye. There is always a…

  • Our Planetary Moment: A Journey Through Cosmic Time

    Setting the Stage There were no eyes to see it happen, and even if there were, there was not yet any light for them to see, nor even any space in which to look. The universe was born out of an infinitely creative quantum womb poised somewhere (or is it nowhere?) between being and non-being.…