Footnotes2Plato

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

Tag: evil

  • Remembering the Repressed with Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner

    Judi: Hello, everybody. It’s my great pleasure to introduce Matt Segall. Matt is a PhD, a transdisciplinary researcher, philosopher, and teacher applying process-relational thought across the natural and social sciences. He is an associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Department here at CIIS. His presentation is titled Remembering the Repressed with Jung and Steiner. Matt…

  • Descendental Philosophy and the Confrontation with Nihilism (dialogue with Roman Campolo)

    Roman has been reading my book Crossing the Threshold. In this dialogue, we explore Whitehead’s mathematical imagination, theory of perception, and attempt to overcome the nihilism that Nietzsche marked out as a pathological transition stage. Watch on YouTube for timestamps. ChatGPT summary: 📘 Perception and Reality: Perception is not merely passive reception through the senses but…

  • William Irwin Thompson’s Thoughts on Evil

    I don’t think the copyright gods would frown on me reposting the late Bill Thompson’s blog reply to me June 11, 2013. It is available here on the Way Back Machine. He was responding to a philosophical memoir about my encounter with evil in Israel that I’d titled “Thinking the Holocaust With Schelling.” THOUGHTS ON…

  • Hunger for Wholeness podcast with Dr. Ilia Delio

    I had a wonderful conversation with Ilia Delio and Gabbi Sloan a few weeks ago, Part 1 of which was just released here. We discuss a number of topics, including the problem of evil. Part 2 continues the conversation here. The podcast comes out of Dr. Delio’s work with the Center for Christogenesis. She has…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Whitehead’s Divine Function (response to Knowledge Ecology)

    Adam/Knowledge Ecology has responded to my comment about the role of the divine in Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme. Let me say at the get go that Whitehead himself acknowledged that he didn’t sufficiently work out the relationship between God and the World in Process and Reality. I approach Whitehead’s scheme, then, as a hacker might go…

  • [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” – 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.…

  • Philosophy of the Human in Whitehead and Schelling (response to Knowledge-Ecology)

    Adam/Knowledge-Ecology just posted a fine reflection on the place of the human in nature. Below is my response. I think there is an elephant in the room here. Just before the line you quote in Modes of Thought, Whitehead says “In mankind, the dominant dependence on bodily functioning seems still there. And yet the life of…