Tag: philosophy
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Graham Harman’s Ontology of Style
I liked Harman’s reflections on style in philosophy so much I thought I’d paste them here. They are originally from this interview by Brian Davis conducted last year. BD: Michel Serres has said “philosophy is an anticipation of future thoughts and practices… Not only must philosophy invent, but it also invents the common ground for…
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Vitalism in Philosophy: “The stars are the fountain veins of God.” -Böhme
Levi Bryant is pulling his hair out about vitalist philosophy (a title he gives to the work of Bergson, Whitehead, and Deleuze, among others). I read all three as materialists, though of course it is a rather strange sort of materialism replete with God-making machines, physical feelings, and alchemical metallurgy. Nonetheless, their philosophical work, especially Whitehead’s, couldn’t…
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Continuum
Some good friends of mine will be featured in this film: Planetary Collective Presents: Continuum
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[Final Draft] Worldly Religion in Deleuze and Whitehead: On the Possibility of a Secular Divinity
Below I’ve written a paper using the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead to construct a secular divinity. For Deleuze, this is an especially serious act of buggery on my part. Deleuze of course approved of that method in his own projects, but I wonder if he would approve of the baby jesus…
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The New School Panel asks if Philosophy still matters, and if so, what its good for.
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Lecture at CIIS by Eric Voegelin scholar Dr. Paul Caringella this Friday
For those who are in the San Francisco Bay Area, please join us at the PCC Forum this Friday at the California Institute of Integral Studies (1453 Mission St.) where Dr. Paul Caringella will speak about Voegelin‘s philosophy of history. Also on the menu will be Levinas, Hegel, Buber, and Plato. The lecture is free…
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Cosmic Self: a Uni-Verse
It is with my own self-consciousness that I must begin… but I will confess, I am not yet certain of my own beginning, or even of my own uncertainty. Already I seem to have said too much: “I am”–how do I know that? Do I really exist? Can I claim self-consciousness as “my own” if…
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[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…
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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…
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What is Philosophy? – A walk in the woods.
Contrapoints made this video to open up his history of philosophy series. Here is my response.
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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…
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reading list of recent Schelling scholarship
I’ll be working on a comprehensive examination this summer on the recent resurgence of Schelling in continental philosophy. Jason Wirth recently published a short article on this resurgence. Below is the beginnings of a reading list for the comp. exam. My goal is to focus on contemporary scholarship (last 10-15 years), but a slightly older…
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The Beginning and the End of Positive Philosophy
In the Theaeteus, Plato has Socrates say that “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.” In his Metaphysics, Aristotle echoes this by writing that “it was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them.” In the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates say that “those who really apply…
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Thinking with Hegel: Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit
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Andrew Pickering on Cybernetics
Philosopher Andrew Pickering on Cybernetics.
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American Academy of Religion in San Francisco: My schedule
The AAR is here in San Francisco this year. It has been difficult to weed out my schedule this weekend, since there are very few weeds! There are at least 5 events I’d like to attend in every time slot. But here is what I’ve been able to single out: Friday at 4pm Theme: Homo…
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What is Enlightenment? – a response to Levi Bryant
Bryant posted recently about how he would define the notion of “Enlightenment.” I agree with part of what he has to say, in that clearly Enlightenment does concern the bursting forth of critique. Where we seem to disagree is on the extent to which critique can ever lift itself entirely above the mythopoietic structure of the…
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Levi Bryant on the Role of Love in Philosophy
Bryant posted a great piece on textual transference and the role of love in learning. He has succeeded in making me wonder what it is exactly that gives ideas their alluring personalities. How is it that sympathy and charisma have such an effect in the world, while cold-hard facts and rationally deduced truth seem to…
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Theism/Atheism: Imagination and Ontological Openness
There is no need to oppose one possibility with the other. Speculative philosophy’s task is to overcome the dualistic limitations of sense-understanding (subject v. object, quality v. substance) by way of a schematic renewal of (or participatory intervention into) our habitual way of imaging the world. Speculative philosophy must hold the binary (God/no-God) together to…
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Science, Art, Religion: The Role of Speculative Philosophy in the Adventure of Rationality
I’ve just completed Isabelle Stengers‘ formidable but rewarding text, Thinking With Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts (2011). The final chapters concern the viability of Whitehead’s theology, specifically his articulation of the relationship between God and the World. Stengers’ asks the reader to go slowly while considering why a divine function became necessary…
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Ethopoiesis and Eternity
Following up on my post and Sam’s and Adam’s comments on Monday and Tuesday (6/13-15), Adam sent me a one word text message: ‘Ethopoiesis’ I have a few thoughts on this neologism I’d like to share. This word carries a complex philosophical cargo, part cultural/artistic and part natural/machinic. Ethopoiesis carries the semantic weight of both…
Footnotes2Plato 