“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead
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Notes on the Occupation from the Mountaintop
I walked to the top of Grand View Park here in the Sunset district of San Francisco. I wanted to clear my head by ascending to the mountaintop, where place expands into space and time transforms into history. History, as we know it, has a beginning and an end. Civilizations, and the cosmopolitical habitats they Read more
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The Mysticism and Cosmology of the American Genius Howard Thurman, a lecture at CIIS
Last night I had the privilage of attending a lecture by Brian Swimme and Bonnie and Kashka Wills on the thought of Howard Thurman. Brian is a mathematical cosmologist who teaches at CIIS here in San Francisco. Bonnie is a Restorative Justice Facilitator in Oakland. Her brother Kashka is a former literature professor turned poet. Read more
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#OccupySF 10/26 – rumors of attempted SFPD raid… did the people prevent it?
I went down to the #Occupy camp here in San Francisco earlier tonight after reading rumors on Twitter about a possible police raid. I arrived at about 11:30pm, after walking several extra city blocks to Justin Herman Plaza due to the closure of the closest MUNI station at Embarcadero by police to prevent an influx of protestors to Read more
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Iris Murdoch on Love and Otherness
“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love…is the discovery of reality.” –Iris Murdoch (“The Sublime and the Good”, in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13, 1959, p. 51) Read more
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Raimon Panikkar on Cosmotheandrism
“I should like to present this cosmotheandric principle with the minimum of philosophical assumptions. And the minimum here is that reality shows this triple dimension of an empirical (or physical) element, a noetic (or psychical) factor and a metaphysical (or spiritual) ingredient. By the first I mean the matter-energy complex, the cosmos; by the second, Read more
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Towards a Cosmotheandric Re-orientation: Response to Knowledge-Ecology
Adam Robbert over at Knowledge-Ecology recently responded to After Nature’s (Leon Niemoczynski) post on anthrodecentrism in Object-Oriented Ontology. I’ve visited this topic several times lately, but I’d have to admit that I seem to have failed to fully develop my own position in regards to the place of the human in the universe. What I 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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