Friday, May 12, 2023

Two conversations about nature and creativity

 Featuring two theistic naturalists (panentheists), Robert S. Corrington (Drew University) and Robert Cummings Neville (Boston University).  These are two towering figures in the history of American philosophy of religion, philosophical naturalism, and philosophical theology. The conversations in these two videos span discussion of the meaning of nature, theism versus pantheism versus panentheism, creation and creativity, psychoanalysis, panpsychism, Leibniz, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Peirce, Tillich, the social and political implications of panentheistic ontologies of nature, and much, much more.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Update to Reading Groups for Academic Year 2022-23

 


This semester's reading group is on Rescher's Axiogenesis and select readings by William James and John Dewey called "Philosophy of Organism III: Rescher's Axiogenesis and Readings in James and Dewey" running weekly on Fridays.  It's the third reading group in the topic of philosophy of organism which I've done over the years.

It's been decided that for Winter term (Dec 15-Jan 15) to read select chapters from John Dewey's How We Think and Knowing and the Known, focusing on the logic, concepts, and technics of organic consciousness (i.e. inferential reasoning by biological organisms, considering also briefly the philosophy of artificial life).

Spring 2023 will be a reading group called "Logic and Normativity" to coincide with the Logic class I'm teaching, followed by Exophilosophy in the summer (specific readings or philosopher tbd).

Link HERE.

Thursday, August 18, 2022

Podcast: William Desmond and The Excess of Being with Steve Knepper

William Desmond and The Excess of Being with Steve Knepper
Hermitix Podcast

Steven E. Knepper is Associate Professor in the Department of English,  Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at the Virginia Military Institute. In  this episode we discuss his book Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics  and Literature with William Desmond, alongside discussions on being,  God, grace, prayer, silence and more...   

 

The book: https://sunypress.edu/Books/W/Wonder-Strikes  ---  

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hermitix/id1437997652?i=1000576388853

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Thoreau on Solitude, Sympathy, and the Salve for Melancholy

Beautiful write-up replete with enchanting illustrations and some interesting historical photos. I used to yearly visit Maine summers and would often read the Transcendentalists as part of my healing nature-worship. My love for Thoreau, Emerson, first ignited in graduate school Ph.D. in a seminar simply titled "Transcendentalism" run by Doug Anderson. It was also in that seminar where I first encountered the Fruhromantik and Naturphilosophie influences amongst the Concord-Jena philosophers, Schelling being among them.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/08/09/walden-solitude/