Category: Kant
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Distilling my dissertation topic—>Etheric Imagination in an Ontology of Organism: Towards a Planetary Philosophy
First, a few orientating quotations from the thinkers I will be boiling together in the alchemical vessel of my dissertation. “…if we had the choice between empiricism and the all-oppressing necessity of thought of a rationalism which had been driven to the highest point, no free spirit would be able to object to deciding in favor of…
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Evan Thompson @ CIIS on Neuroscience, Meditation, and Self-Enaction
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Letters on Cosmology and Theodicy
Below, I’ve copied an email thread with Dan Dettloff, who blogs at Re(-)petitions. I thought some of our other readers might want to chime in. Actually, I’d really like to hear other people’s responses to Dan’s question. I’ve not arrived at a satisfying answer to it, but I do think getting past “the problem of evil” will require a far…
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10th International Whitehead Conference – “Seizing an Alternative: Towards an Ecological Civilization”
After speaking at the 9th International Whitehead Conference last fall in Krakow, Poland, I was invited to help organize a track for the 2015 IWC in Claremont, CA next summer (June 4-7). The 2015 conference is called “Seizing an Alternative: Towards an Ecological Civilization” and is largely the brain child of process theologian and environmental philosopher John Cobb, Jr.…
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Online course this Fall: “Mind and Nature in German Idealism”
Below is the introductory lecture of a 10-week undergraduate course called “Mind and Nature in German Idealism” that I’m hoping will run this coming Fall (2014) for the University of Philosophical Research. If you’re an undergrad looking for an independent study, let me know.
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“Nature is a priori” -Schelling
Thanks to milliern for his commentary on and reflections about an exchange Professor Corey Anton, myself, and others have been having on YouTube. I’m reposting my comment to him below: I wanted to offer a few clarifications of my own position. I don’t normally think of myself as a “Heideggerian,” though I suppose most people…
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Emerson and Whitehead: Towards a Transcendentalist Kosmopolitics
Recorded on Monday, Oct. 28, 2013 at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.
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The Difference Between Kant’s and Schelling’s Philosophies of Nature
A lecture I gave earlier this week in a class at CIIS on Spirit and Nature.
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Thinking with Emerson, Or how German Idealism Came to America
The Beacon of Mind: Reason and Intuition in the Ancient and Modern World (forthcoming).
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Audio from International Whitehead Conference in Krakow
Here is the audio of my presentation at the IWC last week in the philosophy of religion section: Here is a PDF of the paper I read, titled “Worldly Religion in Whitehead and Deleuze: Steps Toward an Incarnational Philosophy” Related articles 9th Annual International Whitehead Conference in Kracow, Poland (footnotes2plato.com) Also, thanks to Leon over…
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Consciousness Between Science and Philosophy (response to Steve Ramirez)
Almost three years ago, Steve Ramirez (neuroscience grad student at MIT) and I exchanged a few videos and blog posts about the scientific study of consciousness (see HERE for a run down). Ramirez began and ended our brief electronic debate convinced that I, like most other philosophers he’s encountered, have developed a profound misunderstanding of…
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Thinking on a Walk in the Woods: The Ideality of Matter and the Materiality of Ideas
Something of a response to Levi Bryant/LarvalSubjects on “hylephobia.” See also this post on the Astrality of Materiality.
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Imagining Nature with Schelling and Whitehead
Schelling and Whitehead were speculative philosophers. This appellative, like that of metaphysician or theologian, may carry with it certain baggage that those of a skeptical or positivist bent are wont to do without. But aside from those epochal moments when thinkers are suddenly inspired by speculative imagination, or by the break through of concept creation,…
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Is Physicalism Enough? Can Consciousness be Naturalized? – Owen Flanagan in dialogue with Evan Thompson
Check out the video from their exchange at Northwestern earlier this year. Below are some of my notes and reflections after watching… Owen Flanagan argues that physicalism is the only feasible view. Naturalism is the inference to the best explanation. Conscious states are brain states. At some point in evolutionary history, somehow dead matter came to…
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Life After Darwin (another response to Benjamin Cain)
I linked to Cain’s essay on Darwin in my last post on his theory of the psychedelic origins of religion. I wanted to comment on what he tries to do in the Darwin essay. His claim is that, post-Darwin, the old distinction between life and matter no longer holds; therefore, we are all more like…
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Thinking the Holocaust with Schelling…
A few days ago, I decided to re-read Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809). It’s a reasonably short text of about 75 pages, so I’ve read it 3 or 4 times in the past year. The text’s key conceptual innovations regarding the essence of freedom (which Schelling defines as the scission…
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Responding to Michael about Root Images in the Philosophy of Nature
Several months ago, Michael (who blogs at Archive Fire and contributes to synthetic_zero) posted a comment on a post of mine about philosophical vitalism. I’m just now getting around to responding to what for me were really helpful questions as I try to further flesh out my thoughts on etheric imagination. Michael writes: I like…
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Climate Change and Schelling’s inversion of Fichte’s “economic-teleological” principle
Two disappointing tidbits of news from the front lines of the climate war came my way this morning. First, I learned that the US Department of State decided to contract out its recent environmental review of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to a company called Environmental Resources Management. ERM happens to be “a dues-paying…
Footnotes2Plato 