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Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

daughter objects (& processes)

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on June 14, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Levi has a nice post on pedagogy, objects, and his daughter. His conclusions, I think, can be rephrased in terms more amenable to an objects-relations dialogue. [. . .] Since Graham has set out a challenge (“Take that, relationists!”), I’ll take a very quick stab at a process-relational reply:

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warning: objects may be faster than they appear

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , on June 9, 2010 | 3 Comments »

The Vibrant Matter reading group has moved over to Ben Woodard’s Naught Thought this week. Like Ben, I have felt a little apologetic for not participating in discussions (though I’ve summarized my thoughts so far here and here). But to be frank, the discussions have not been nearly as active as I had anticipated, and […]

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Peirce-Whitehead-Hartshorne & process-relational ontology

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , on June 9, 2010 | 6 Comments »

The following are some working notes following up on my previous post on the relationship between Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, specifically on Peirce’s logical/relational/phenomenological categories (firstness, secondness, thirdness) and Whitehead’s notion of prehension and the “actual occasion.” It’s become clear to me since writing that post that any rapprochement between the two requires going through Charles Hartshorne (which is something I had been resisting due to the theological cast of many of Hartshorne’s writings, but I’ve come to see that it’s unavoidable). [. . .]

This asymmetry is what gives process-relational ontology, at least the kind exemplified by these three thinkers, its evolutionary character and forward momentum. It is also what makes it different from relational philosophies for which all things are symmetrically related to all other things, resulting in the kind of formless, changeless “ontological stew” that Graham Harman (and sometimes Levi Bryant) has critiqued (to which I’ve responded in posts like these).

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vibrant food & energy matters

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on May 31, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Just a few quick notes on chapters 2 and 3 of Vibrant Matter. See Critical Animal for the continuing cross-blog discussion of the book (to be resumed after the Memorial Day holiday, no doubt), and Philosophy in a Time of Error for what’s been said so far. These two previously published chapters seem to me […]

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networkologies

Posted in Philosophy on May 28, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Chris at Networkologies has an excellent reply to my post on time- and crystal-images and the campaign ads he had described here. Chris writes: When we first see a campaign ad, our first thought might not be that there is virtuality lurking within the images before us, but of course, for Deleuze, there is virtuality […]

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Bennett’s thing-power

Posted in Philosophy on May 26, 2010 | 1 Comment »

The Vibrant Matter Reading Group has launched: see Peter Gratton’s generous flow of postings at Philosophy in a Time of Error, all linked here. What follows is my first series of thoughts on the book, with a focus on chapter 1. I’ll try to add bits of these as appropriate to the comments in Peter’s […]

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Vibrant Matter reading group

Posted in Blog stuff, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on May 15, 2010 | 5 Comments »

The previously announced ‘Vibrant Matter’ reading group will take place across five blogs over five weeks, beginning May 23 and ending June 26. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things is the latest book by Johns Hopkins University political theorist Jane Bennett. Philosophy in a Time of Error has posted a very useful overview of […]

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between Whitehead & Peirce

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on May 12, 2010 | 9 Comments »

The case has often been made — by John Cobb, David Ray Griffin, and others — that Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics provides an account of the universe that is, or could be, foundational to an ecological worldview. This is because it is an account that is naturalist (or realist), relational, evolutionary, and non-dualistic in […]

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the relational seduction of (and between) objects

Posted in Blog stuff, Philosophy, tagged , , , on May 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »

I’m on the road, and haven’t been able to keep up with the continuing exchange that’s now drawn in Steven Shaviro and Chris Vitale in addition to Levi and Graham, with side comments from Peter Gratton and others. That despite Graham’s call for a “cease fire,” which elicited some spirited responses from Levi, Steven, and […]

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a symmetrical peace?

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , on May 4, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I should probably resist from critiquing blog posts, since these rarely capture one’s considered thoughts the way print articles and books do. So rather than replying in detail to Graham’s rejoinder to my previous post, I’ll agree to the cease-fire he proposes (though I hope we weren’t really sniping at each other!). At least after […]

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ontologizing

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , on May 4, 2010 | 7 Comments »

I’m looking forward to Graham Harman’s forthcoming review of Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, and I’m glad to see that this discussion between object-oriented philosophy and Bennett’s vibrant materialism (and, by extension, the other theoretical impulses she draws on, which this blog, for the most part, enthusiastically shares) is getting underway. That discussion will no doubt […]

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Isis takes Hadot

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , on April 25, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Pierre Hadot died yesterday. An important influence on the later Foucault, a classicist whose readings of ancient Greco-Roman philosophers made them seem relevant once again, and an astute defender of the Orphic (as opposed to the Promethean) approach to Nature, Hadot’s influence was felt by many for whom philosophy is more than just a conceptual […]

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