“My view is that the whole of Western Philosophy has assumed that the basic way in which we know the World, and anything outside of ourselves, is through vision. I know there were blind poets but I don’t think there were ever any blind philosophers, and I think that’s a great loss…the Bible is not oriented to vision as much as it is to hearing, and I think if you started supposing that the World is what you hear, rather than the World is what you see, you would never end up with anything like what has been called philosophy in the West. [when you hear a sound] what you hear is not something passive or static…a sound is over when it’s over…you don’t ask, ‘what is the substance underlying the sound?’”

The above quote is from one of my all-time favorite writers, John Cobb. It was transcribed from a recent interview he did on Homebrewed Christianity in which Cobb discusses his latest book.

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Image above: Waves installation by Daniel Palacios

Tags:john cobbmetaphysicsphilosophysoundwhitehead