Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“Libertarianism is perhaps the most toxic mixture of liberalism (ala Hobbes and Locke) and capitalism.” It should not be a huge surprise for anyone who reads this blog to learn that I am not a huge fan of the political philosophy known as libertarianism. One of the things I hate most about libertarianism is it’s…
“Difference is endless, and so we are endlessly—infinitely—tangled in it.” –Catherine Keller It struck me recently that All Lives Matter, the defiant, pious, racist push-back to the very important Black Lives Matter movement, should also be filed under the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is one of my favorite Whiteheadian theories;…
Meaning runs far deeper than designation. We will never be able to think our connection to reality if we think of reality as a collection of things, because meaningful experience is about more than things. Experience is constituted by events. The ontology of an event cannot be captured by the mental representation of material things…
“It is evident that the more complex organisms have not evolved simply by adapting themselves to the environment. Instead, according to Whitehead, “the upward trend has been accompanied by a growth of the converse relation. Animals have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves.”[9] The primary evolutionary function of Reason is thus…
“So long as I myself am identical with Nature, I understand what a living nature is as well as I understand my own life…As soon, however, as I separate myself, and with me everything ideal from nature, nothing remains to me but a dead object, and I cease to comprehend how a life outside me…
“Shalom, therefore is not detached from the reality of everyday life in the world, nor is it in any sense super spiritual, utopian, or otherworldly…It is well-being that exists in the very midst of threats — from sword and drought and wild animals…Active and practical, shalom never avoids the realities of an imperfect world.” Last…
“There is, in other words, a common sense that inspires the best definition of culture: culture embodies the grand narrative that allows the merging of the conditions of possibility of individuation and of socialization. When a philosophical school demands renunciation of common sense, it undermines solidarity. When it doubts sense-perception, it puts a damper on…
“Goethe described his color theory as a “sensory-moral” account of natural phenomena such that the “physical laws” those phenomena “obey” are seen to emerge from out of one’s conscious perceptions themselves, rather than being imposed upon them from outside as in Newton’s mechanistic theories. Goethe’s scientific method “makes phenomena transparent to their own lawfulness,” as…
“Henry Nelson Wieman’s greatest contribution, in my opinion, is his empirical demonstration that the process of creative transformation is one that can be empirically described and that this description shows that, although it can be facilitated and served, it cannot be managed or controlled by human beings. On the other hand, I concluded that Wieman’s…
“When the “One” becomes invisible again, this is really not about the loss of monism, but of dualism. The disappearance of dualism is really a condition for the liberation of multitude. Gilles Deleuze has the formula that as soon as dualism vanishes “monism is pluralism.” The same strategy, I think, appears in Loomer’s theopoetic language…