“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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2016 Presidential Election and Political Ontology
J. Thomas Howe describes Whitehead’s process ontology as follows: Whitehead’s theory of experience is extremely complex, and its elucidation is the major task of Process and Reality. What is important for our purposes is the essentially social nature of all actual entities. “There is no entity, not even God, which requires nothing but itself in Read more
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My first course, Spring 2017 at CIIS
I’ll be teaching my first graduate level course next Spring at CIIS. I have a lot of reading and research to do between now and then.Please do add to my list of books or articles if you have resources relevant to the topic. Speaking of which, poet-activist Drew Dellinger gave me a ton of leads in Read more
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Hillary v. Bernie and the Future of American Democracy
I’ve been meaning to write about the primaries for a while now, but administrative duties at CIIS, finishing my dissertation and other writing projects, and online teaching has taken up all my time and energy. Lack of time hasn’t stopped me from rushing off a ton of tweets and FaceBook posts in support of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, Read more
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dissertation progress…
Below is the table of contents of my substantially revised and extended draft. Also some excerpts that have been important for me. “The Cosmotheandric [sic] vision is the most obvious human experience, so obvious that it becomes an obstacle to see it once we begin to specialize in our knowledge and forget the whole…The vision of Read more
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1st draft of dissertation submitted
I submitted the first draft of my dissertation to my committee a couple of weeks ago. I’m aiming to defend in March. Here’s a sneak peak of the table of contents. I still need to fill out the introduction and conclusions. Originally, I had no intention of writing so much about Kant, but he proved 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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Footnotes2Plato 