Footnotes2Plato

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

Footnotes2Plato Substack

  • Impersonal text for no one in particular

    Talking out loud is tiring, it is inevitably personalizing. If I want to stick to impersonality,it pays to write. Remaining faceless avoids the glare. Spontaneously talking into a camera to post your face on the Internet is pornographic. It is pop-thought, public nudity, mass consciousness. It is confronting the superego and shouting spells at him Read more

  • To TheModernMystic (YouTube)

    TheModernMystic @ YouTube.com Nick, the gap has been leaped. 1st person and 3rd person are equally illusory. No “I” and no “it”. There is no single observer just like there is no single observed. In fact, there is no observer or observed at all, they are not two. Thou art That. I am It. No, Read more

  • Ego trying to transcend Ego

    Oh, I am dizzy from the never ending torment of chasing my own tail around and around and around. I feel deflated, not for any particular reason, but more so because I need a reason not to be. Why spirituality? Why demand that existence be meaningful? Because it just feels so much better that way! Read more

  • Wittgenstein and Language

    What is language? Wittgenstein’s early project was to define language in the terms most familiar to the Western tradition, running through Augustine up until Russell. His aim was to show that all philosophy consisted in defining the logical form of sentences. A certain proposition was thought to be isomorphic to a certain event in the Read more

  • Wonder

    I wonder what it is that turns the world round, That hides the far side of the Moon from the Earth, That sees with my eyes but cannot be seen. Why is it that I have a perspective? How is it that I exist as an individual, As a piece of space wrapped up in Read more

  • The Spiritual Animal

    Some have suggested that the human being can (and therefore ought to) live without God. I reject this claim. I propose that the human being is the spiritual animal, the organism that knows that it is. God is the “thatness” of existence, that transcendent quality of all that is but whose name cannot be spoken. 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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