Footnotes2Plato

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

Category: Owen Barfield

Metaphysics Today

Monday musings on the necessity of history and its overcoming. Mythos is an indispensable method in metaphysics. Metaphysics only comes to life in the midst of philosophical dialogues, and so sometimes it is helpful to perform a seance by invoking conceptual personae: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, Hegel, Whitehead. These and many other names tell a…

February 25, 2025
Whitehead’s Revolutionary Concept of Prehension (Thinking with Tim Jackson and Charles Hartshorne)

Tim Jackson and I discussed Hartshorne’s article, “Whitehead’s Revolutionary Concept of Prehension.” Charles Hartshorne offers a detailed and insightful examination of Alfred North Whitehead’s process-relational philosophy. Hartshorne, who served as Whitehead’s assistant at Harvard University during the 1920s, was also profoundly influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, whose papers he edited during that same period. This background…

February 21, 2025
Evolution: Theory or Theology? – Reflections on Whitehead, Wolfgang Smith, and the Rise of Participatory Science

Two years ago, I sat down with the late philosopher and physicist, Wolfgang Smith, to discuss his novel approach to quantum physics and the need for a return to Platonic conceptions of reality. You can watch that conversation here (there’s also a complete transcript): Earlier today, I met with Dr. Smith’s collaborator and archivist, Richard,…

January 9, 2025
Thinking With Owen Barfield (dialogue with Ashton Arnoldy and Daniel Garner)

Ashton Arnoldy and Daniel Garner joined me to discuss the work of Owen Barfield. Here’s a quick summary of what we discussed: … I’ve been thinking with Barfield for many years! Here’s an essay comparing his ideas to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Quentin Meillassoux: https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/05/05/towards-a-christological-realism-thinking-the-correlation-with-teilhard-and-barfield/

August 30, 2024
Toward a Goethean Astronomy: Reflections on Rudolf Steiner’s “Interdisciplinary Astronomy” (GA 323)

The following are quickly edited transcripts of my introductory remarks at six of our Urphänomen reading group sessions that began back in August of this year. I’ve included some screenshots of the slides I refer to below, but most of them are animated. You’ll have to watch the embedded videos to see the full context…

December 23, 2023
Process Theology and the Modern World: Science, Religion, and Christology After Teilhard and Whitehead

Below is a draft of my chapter to be published as part of an anthology coming out of the Teilhard and Whitehead conference hosted by the Center for Christogenesis at Villanova University a few weeks ago.

October 1, 2023
Owen Barfield in his own words

I was delighted to discover a recording of a lecture delivered by Owen Barfield in 1978 at the Vancouver Institute in British Columbia. You can listen to the entire lecture here.

March 20, 2023
“Physics Within the Bounds of Feeling Alone” [draft article]

I’m sharing the first draft of a paper that I’ll be delivering later this month at the Center for Process Studies’ 50th anniversary conference. My track is on February 16th, 2023 and is titled “Science and Philosophy: Nature and the Nature of Reality.” My panel within this track is titled “Physics and Metaphysics: Facts, Values,…

February 5, 2023
Urphänomen Reading Group – Rudolf Steiner’s “Riddles of Philosophy”

Below is a playlist featuring the recordings of our Urphänomen Reading Group, which is open to anyone interested (message us on Patreon or email archetypalphenomenon@gmail.com to join). New sessions will be added to this playlist as we go. We are reading the works of Rudolf Steiner, starting with Riddles of Philosophy. Next we’ll be reading…

October 2, 2022
Art and Philosophy on The Meaning Code podcast with Karen Wong

I enjoyed this conversation immensely. Check out Karen’s art here.

August 31, 2022
Dialogue with Bernardo Kastrup: Translating between Analytic Idealism and Process-Relationalism

My long-overdue conversation with Bernardo Kastrup is above. I am pleased with how this turned out. We mostly attempted to translate between our respective orientations, finding many overlaps despite differences of emphasis. I think important differences remain, though we’ll have to iron those out together in the future. A few thoughts about what we discussed:…

March 7, 2022
Back to teach at Schumacher College in April 2019: “The Evolution of Consciousness and the Cosmological Imagination”

I’ll be teaching another short course at Schumacher College in the UK the week of April 22nd-26th, 2019. Here’s a link if you’re interested in registering: https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses/re-enchanting-the-cosmos Here’s what I’ll be teaching on: “The Evolution of Consciousness and the Cosmological Imagination” This week-long course will trace the evolution of consciousness in the West from ancient…

October 17, 2018
Experimental Philosophy and Pedagogy Panel recording

Here’s Jacob Sherman, Joshua Ramey, and myself at yesterday’s “1968 Revisited” conference at CIIS.edu.

September 30, 2018
Pre-Defense Dissertation Draft Completed

My dissertation defense is on Monday morning. I’ve just finished the “pre-defense” draft. I have until April 11th to finalize the published version. Below are the abstract, table of contents, and acknowledgements. COSMOTHEANTHROPIC IMAGINATION IN THE POST-KANTIAN PROCESS PHILOSOPHY OF SCHELLING AND WHITEHEAD Abstract In this dissertation, I lure the process philosophies…

March 6, 2016
Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy from Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead

I’ve just submitted my dissertation proposal for review. Click on the title below for the PDF. Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy From Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead I welcome suggestions, critiques, sources, and/or extensions. Basically, I’m doing a comparative study of the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, the esotericist Rudolf Steiner, and the mathematician and cosmologist Alfred North…

December 17, 2013
Historical Background and Overview for “Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy”

I realized I posted the same section twice last week, so here is the real historical and overview section of my dissertation proposal. ————————————————————————– This dissertation examines the metaphysics of imagination in the process philosophies of Schelling and Whitehead through the hermeneutical lens of a certain stream of Western esotericism. In describing the process-philosophical imagination…

May 8, 2013
The Poetry of Philosophy: Wordsworth’s Poetic Vision of Nature in Light of Whitehead’s Cosmological Scheme

The aim of this essay is to read the nature poetry of William Wordsworth in light of the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, such that the epistemological and cosmological implications of the former are brought more fully into philosophical view. According to Victor Lowe, it is probable that no other man, save Plato, shaped the…

September 28, 2012
[Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – Metaphysically (un)grounding the natural sciences

For a PDF of the entire essay, click The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. Metaphysically (un)grounding the natural sciences Schelling’s almost complete absence in Anglophone natural philosophy for more than 150 years (aside from his powerful effects on Coleridge,168 Peirce,169 and Emerson,170 and through the intermediary of Naturphilosoph Alexander von Humboldt, his…

August 7, 2012
Thinking with Steiner Beyond the Brain: Reflections on My Bildung and the Philosophy of Freedom

Part 1: Remembering Childhood Until about age seven, children seem to be naturally aware of the reality of a world beyond their physical senses. As they age, most of them seem to lose touch with this deeper dimension of the world. According to the common sense of our materialistic age, this is because their once…

March 15, 2012
Coleridge and Scientific Realism

I’m continuing to read Barfield’s book What Coleridge Thought (1971) with great excitement. Barfield includes two short chapters entitled “Ideas, Methods, Laws” and “Coleridge and the Cosmology of Science” wherein he attempts to say a bit about how Coleridge’s dynamic philosophy might be brought into conversation with contemporary natural science. It would be helpful, before…

March 14, 2012
Coleridge and Barfield on Life, Imagination, and Reality

Continuing with Barfield’s (I think masterful) attempt (What Coleridge Thought, 1971) to give the definitive philosophical statement of a thinker who never seems to have gotten around to doing the same for himself, here are a few more reflections… Barfield judges Coleridge a genius. Perhaps so, but the latter said of his own existant philosophical…

March 8, 2012