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: metaphysics

  • 11th International Whitehead Conference (2017 in the Azores)

    The 11th International Whitehead Conference will be hosted by the University of the Azores on Sao Miguel Island. The conference website is now up. The title of the 2017 conference is Nature in Process: Novel Approaches to Science and Metaphysics. The section headings and descriptions should be available in a few months. I’m told there…

  • The Varieties of Materialism: Matter as the Play of Form

    Following up on my contribution to the Latour/AIME reading group, I wanted to say a bit more about the confused concept called “matter.” There are many varieties of materialism, but for the sake of time, let’s follow Robert Jackson by dividing them up into two basic categories: 1) that variety of materialism which understands matter…

  • John Caputo on Speculative Realism

    Thanks to Adam/Knowledge-Ecology for pointing me to this one. I really dig what he says about physics and science… These posts are relevant to some of what Caputo has to say about correlationism, the philosophy of religion, and physical reality: https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/03/02/owen-barfield-and-quentin-meillassoux/ https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/10/04/speculative-philosophy-and-incarnationalism-in-whitehead-and-meillassoux/ https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/01/18/tilting-at-windmill-materialism-towards-an-ontology-of-organism-ooo/ https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/05/05/towards-a-christological-realism-thinking-the-correlation-with-teilhard-and-barfield/

  • 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…

  • James Hillman on Metaphysics and Cosmology

    Back in 1983, Claremont Graduate School invited Whiteheadian philosophers and Jungian psychoanalysts to a dialogue concerning possible cross-fertilizations between process metaphysics and archetypal psychology (published as Archetypal Process: Self and Divine in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman in 1989). James Hillman gave the keynote, wherein he admitted that “something further [was] needed” than his typical psychologizing…

  • Esotericism and the Academy at the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco

    Phoenix Rising at the AAR Meeting Saturday Nov. 19th!. Some of these papers look great. The problem of how to traverse the disciplinary boundary between esoterica and academia is one I will face in my own dissertation. Is it possible to integrate imaginal and rational modes of consciousness, to harmonize sacral and critical attitudes of inquiry? Can one study…

  • In Defense of Wonder: A response to Naught Thought on Whitehead’s Philosophy of Dawn

    I cannot, without much hesitation, identify myself as either a “prickly” or a “gooey” philosopher. It depends on who my interlocutors are. If I am in a philosophical conversation with, say, a professional biochemist with a reductionistic orientation, my attempt to wipe away and retrace the horizons of their world will inevitably come off as vague, pretentious,…

  • Questions about Objects: “I” Myself and the Earth

    I’ve just finished Harman’s Guerilla Metaphysics, and I’m thoroughly confused by what he had to say about time and space in the final pages. The following is an initial attempt to sort through a small bit of the chaos he has made of the cosmos I am yearning to inhabit. ——————————– An object is anything…

  • Objective Caricatures

    The following is my response to a colleague and friend’s recent post on object-oriented ontology over at The New Knowledge Ecology. ————————————— It is probably possible to distinguish between a defense of OOO from an unfair caricature and a defense of OOO proper. I think what you’ve done here is a solid mixture of each. It is…

  • Constructive v. Critical Philosophy – Responding to Isabelle Stengers at CGU

    Once it has begun to swallow the overwhelmingly wondrous fact of existence–that there is anything at all!–philosophy can perhaps catch its breath and ask the most fundamental question: what is there? From this comes the only slightly more specific questions: What is a thing? What is an idea? Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway spoke on Thursday night…

  • Religion: Tony Blair v. Christopher Hitchens

    my rough transcription of some of what Blair and Hitchens had to say (not necessarily in order): Tony Blair: “Fanaticism is not confined to the sphere of religious life… My belief in Jesus Christ is not about oppression and servitude, but about finding the best way to express the human spirit… Faith is not about…

  • Rupert Sheldrake and Morphic Fields at Schumacher

    My time at Schumacher is drawing to a close, and the whole experience has been quite formative for me. Preparing meals, washing dishes, and weeding the garden provided unexpected opportunities to reflect upon the value of simple work with others. This morning I spent about an hour in the kitchen chopping the stems off about…