Thesis Disputation: “The Redemption of Thinking: A Study in Truth, Knowledge, and the Evolution of Consciousness with Special Reference to Goethe, Barfield, & Steiner”

Brief tidings of this slated defense, by me, of a dissertation titled The Redemption of Thinking. It is a “sub-Corona” defense. That is to say that the disputation has been shunted to the internet, like all other public gatherings under the shadow of the Crown. “1:30 PM” means “1:30 PM Pacific Time,” which is seven…

Poem: “…for spring is here”

See how every bud is swelling Filled with secret power, welling From an unseen source The selfsame origin of the force That animates our wildest dreams And Nature bursting at the seams Exult, exult, for spring is here And perfect love casteth out all fear And yet, my love, behold the moon Our summer dream…

Poem: “Did you ever wonder?”

Did you ever wonder:What is the beginning of the rose?The sap that rises with the lightHow its ministering angel knowsWhich boughs to leave with buds bedight? Whence the swirl of the rose?The whirling arms of a Sufi’s danceA lilting music plainly showsIts argument in the petals’ trance. And what will be the rose’s end?Cast alone…

Article on Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness published in Cosmos & History Journal

“That there exists a history of thoughts represents less a question to be decided by research than an operative hypothesis or condition to undertake the majority of philosophical, theological, and scientific research in the first place. Put another way, the history of thoughts is a theory by which facts and findings of research in various…

On Rudolf Steiner’s The Philosophy of Freedom, Part II

In the last study, I noted that the second part of Steiner’s The Philosophy of Freedom forms a reciprocal image of the first. I likened the first to a consonant and therefore, the second part can be compared, by the same token, to a vowel. [1] The first part concerns the structure of the human…

On Rudolf Steiner’s The Philosophy of Freedom, Part I

In 1894, some one hundred years after the publication of Goethe’s On the Metamorphosis of Plants and Kant’s The Critique of Judgement, the 33-year-old Rudolf Steiner published The Philosophy of Freedom. The purpose of the book was to shed light on the fundamental relation of the human being to the world in which he lives….

A Short Exchange On the Parable of the Cave and the Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

A: The Parable of the Cave helps me put a concrete explanation to how judgement of the ignorant is harmful and something to check myself with if I find myself doing that.  B: I would like to hear more about what you have in mind with “harmful” judgements. I can see how presuming other people…

Video Lecture: Moral Reasoning and Concluding Thoughts

Dear friends, I offer a video of what is likely the concluding lecture for a course that I have had the privilege to teach this semester. I expect it will go down in history as “the Corona-term.” As one might imagine, the onset of isolation procedures just as Spring Break was drawing to a close…

Video Lecture: On AI and Human Freedom

Dear friends, I offer this two part video lecture on themes that are pertinent to Theoria-press, which can be somewhat aphoristically captured in the phrase: “How we can look is what we will see.” This was once the motto of the site, though I have recently changed it to a quote from Plotinus’ Enneads. This…

Is COVID-19 proof that God is wrothful or that he does not exist?

Also published in the current issue of Hermes Magazine. Any concrete experience of suffering tends to invite an argument over the abstract question of God’s character. This question often takes the form of what is called theodicy which is roughly: “why does a God, who is, by definition benevolent/good, omniscient/all-knowing and omnipotent/all-powerful, allow a world…