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: Romantic Philosophy

  • John Sallis’ Logic of Imagination as an Example of Etheric Imagination

    Below is another section of my dissertation proposal. More to come… ……………………………………. John Sallis begins his Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000) by regretting the Husserlian phenomenological tradition’s tendency to subordinate imagination to pure perception in an effort to “[protect] the bodily presence of the perceived from imaginal contamination.”208 Sallis argues that…

  • Michael Marder’s Vegetal Philosophy as an Example of Etheric Imagination

    The following is excerpted from my dissertation proposal, which is tentatively titled “Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy from Schelling to Whitehead.” I’ll be posting more selections in the coming days.  ………………………………………………….. To become rooted in the etheric forces of imagination, the process philosopher must learn to think like a plant. Michael Marder’s “vegetal metaphysics”80 provides a contemporary…

  • Images of Earth and Eros in Walt Whitman’s Poetry

    Images of Earth and Eros in Walt Whitman’s Poetry A Presentation by Matthew D. Segall at the 2013 Cosmology of Love Conference   Come, said the Muse,  Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,  Sing me the universal.    In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and…

  • Reflections on Thomas Nagel’s mentions of Schelling and Whitehead in “Mind and Cosmos”

    The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-body problem is not just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding ofthe entire cosmos and its history. The physical sciences and evolutionary biology cannot be kept insulated…

  • Teleology in Science? Purpose in Nature?

    I’ve just read Grant Maxwell’s critique of a HuffPo piece by Matthew Hutson. I enjoyed his rebuttal of Hutson’s blanket rejection realism regarding teleology. I am also enjoying the discussion Grant is having with Hutson down in the comments. I do not think Hutson has read the work of organic/creative finalists like Bergson or Whitehead.…

  • This Thursday’s PCC Forum- “Goethe’s Color Theory” – A lecture by Prof. Fred Amrine

    For those who live in the Bay Area, the next PCC Forum (hosted by my partner Becca and I) will feature Prof. Fred Amrine, a Goethe scholar from the University of Michigan’s German department. The lecture is open to the public and will take place at the California Institue of Integral Studies (1453 Mission St., San Francisco,…

  • Love, Death, and the Sub-Creative Imagination in J. R. R. Tolkien

    Yesterday I found myself reading The Silmarillion, an unfinished collection of Tolkien’s mythopoeic writings depicting the creation of Ëa and its passage through the first of the three ages of the world (The Lord of the Rings trilogy depicts events at the end of the third age). The stories, posthumously published by his son Christopher in 1977, are prefaced…

  • Fragment of a Dialogue: A Walk to Imagination’s Limits

    This is an incomplete project that I may not be able to pick up for a while. Thought I’d post the fragment. It was inspired by Schelling’s dialogue Bruno. —————————————————– A Walk to Imagination’s Limits Chroma: We have chosen a wonderful evening to set out on a walk along the riverside. Don’t you think so, my friends?…

  • 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…

  • Margulis and the Psychedelic Eucharist

    Here is Prof. Corey Anton lecturing on the recently deceased Lynn Margulis’ bio-philosophy. Towards the end of her book (co-authored with Dorian Sagan) What Is Life?, Margulis offers an  analysis of the role of psilocybin in the evolution of mammalian consciousness. She brings up the usage of psychedelic fungi in ancient mystery cults just after sharing Socrates’…

  • [Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – The nature of human freedom

    For a PDF of the entire essay, click The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. The Nature of Human Freedom The Naturphilosoph comes to understand “Nature as subject.”232 This does not imply that nature necessarily conforms to the transcendental structure of the human mind (a form of anthropomorphism), but rather that human consciousness…

  • [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…

  • [Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – The difference between Hegel’s and Schelling’s system of philosophy

    For a PDF of the entire essay, click The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. The difference between Hegel’s and Schelling’s system of philosophy  Early in his philosophical career while still a high school teacher in Nuremberg,116 Hegel suggested that, as a schoolmaster of philosophy, he is committed to the belief that philosophy…

  • [Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – Literature review

    Again, sorry for the lack of italics. I don’t know how to paste from Pages while keeping the formatting. For a PDF of the document (with italics in tact!), click: The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. Literature review This section assesses the reasons for the contemporary resurgence of scholarly interest in Schelling.…

  • “The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency” (2014)

    Preface The philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) cannot be adequately grasped in abstraction from the spirit that animated his individual personality. While he spent his philosophical career striving to realize the Absolute system, he did so in full recognition of the fact that the Absolute is not finally a logical system, but a…

  • Rough draft of research paper on Schelling’s Contemporary Re-Emergence

    I’ve just finished the rough draft of a comprehensive exam on the context of Schelling’s thought and the reasons for his contemporary resurgence (a list of recent scholarship). The most difficult section to write was definitely the one on the difference between he and Hegel’s approaches. I didn’t want to caricature Hegel, but nor did…

  • Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology

    I’m in the middle of writing a long essay on Schelling and the resurgence of interest in his work of late, at least in the Anglophone world. I’ll be posting the essay in installments as I finish each section. For now, here is Jerry Day, from his book on Schelling’s influence on Eric Voegelin, describing…

  • Schelling on Nature, Humanity, and God (re-reading Iain Hamilton Grant)

    Last year, some colleagues and I at CIIS participated in a panel discussion on Speculative Realism called “Here Comes Everything.” My lecture drew primarily upon Grant’s text Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (2006). This summer, I’ve been doing research for a comprehensive exam on the recent resurgence of Schellingian philosophy (HERE is my reading list). I…

  • “From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization” by Arran Gare

    I stumbled upon this great essay on Schelling and process metaphysics recently published in the journal Cosmos and History by Prof. Arran Gare. He really makes it clear how compatible Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is with Whitehead’s cosmological scheme. “From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization” Here is a sample: Schelling’s work…

  • What is Philosophy? – A walk in the woods.

    Contrapoints made this video to open up his history of philosophy series. Here is my response.

  • Thoughts on Tim Morton on the Ecological Emergency

    HERE is a recent interview of Tim Morton I found over on Knowledge-Ecology. I’ve made some notes while listening: I absolutely love what he is saying. Really, I dig it. His ontology has style, and I don’t just mean he is rhetorically skilled and so persuasive to us as subjectivities, I mean he has tapped…