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Vitalism in Philosophy: “The stars are the fountain veins of God.” -Böhme
Levi Bryant is pulling his hair out about vitalist philosophy (a title he gives to the work of Bergson, Whitehead, and Deleuze, among others). I read all three as materialists, though of course it is a rather strange sort of materialism replete with God-making machines, physical feelings, and alchemical metallurgy. Nonetheless, their philosophical work, especially Whitehead’s, couldn’t… Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, Ancient Philosophy, imagination, Jakob Böhme, Levi Bryant, Modern Philosophy, Richard Tarnas
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Bruno Latour’s Gifford Lectures are underway: “Facing Gaia”
Bruno Latour is about halfway through his lecture series on natural religion. Videos of the lectures should be posted by the University of Edinburgh any day now. Here is a good review of lecture 3, titled “The puzzling face of a secular Gaia.” I especially like Latour’s neologism “geostory,” meant to replace the bifurcated notion of… Read more
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Notes on Intro and Ch. 1 of “Difference and Repetition” by Gilles Deleuze
As Adam/Knowledge Ecology has mentioned, a few of us are doing a reading group on Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Here are my notes for our first session. Notes for Introduction and Chapter 1 of Difference and Repetition by Deleuze By Matt Segall Preface: Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition is an initiatory text that, rather than putting… Read more
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Jacob Sherman on Joshua Ramey’s “The Hermetic Deleuze” (2012)
Read it HERE. Jake writes: I suspect that Ramey seeks to divine a new shape for philosophy in the hermetic tradition rather than, say, in Hadot’s ancient philosophical schools, because of the degree of creativity that hermeticism not only thematizes but also unleashes. Goethe’s Faust is at his most hermetic when he translates the opening… Read more
“In one sense philosophy does nothing. It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use. In the same way the ocean tides do nothing. Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire. But have patience and look deeper; and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
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