Footnotes2Plato Podcast

Our conversation felt like an improvised rhythm of tangents. But as I joked to Pedro, a perfect circle is made of infinitely many tangents. What might appear like digression is often an expression of the deeper topology of thought, where every seeming sidetrack curves back toward the center. Plotinus’ νοῦς (nous) floats above space and the bodily senses, while Bergson roots intellect in spatialization. His intellect isn’t a contemplative light but a tool for navigating matter. Jack noted the divergence: where Plotinus exalts vision, Bergson privileges rhythm and duration. Sound, not sight, becomes a truer guide to being.Pedro linked Bergson’s open morality (see Two Sources of Morality and Religion) to the evolution of consciousness: saints, sages, and mystics open humanity to wider and wider horizons. This resonated with my reading of Whitehead and Rudolf Steiner: that consciousness evolves through embodiment, not in spite of it. Plotinus sees the body as a fall, whereas process panentheists relate to incarnation as the necessary medium for moral and spiritual evolution.We explored matter as more than privation. For Bergson, it resists the élan vital, canalizing creativity. Matter is a mirror for spirit to reflect upon itself. From there we flowed into physics—light not just traveling through space, but generating it. I shared Ruth Kastner’s transactional interpretation of quantum events giving rise to spacetime. Pedro affirmed an ontological reading of probability, noting how his students, exposed to Bergson and Whitehead, also began to see time as creative advance.Jack shifted us to thought without image—chess masters feeling potential moves as virtual forces. Bergson insists on non-representational thinking. I connected this to Jung: archetypes exceed the images they inspire. Representation is a narrow band within a much broader spectrum of cognition.Pedro mentioned Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche as the one who collapses δύναμις (dýnamis) and ἐνέργεια (enérgeia). I resisted, since process-relational ontologies need a polarity between potential and actual to account for novelty. But of course Nietzsche doesn’t simply abandon aim, he just embeds it in the flux. Whitehead’s tragic divine poet reintroduces telos—not as triumph but as the lure of Beauty through suffering.We closed by invoking Plotinus’s final words, that he aimed to find the divine in oneself and unite it with the divine in the cosmos.Timestamps: 00:00 Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion reading idea00:01:15 Intelligence, instinct & free-will00:02:40 Plotinus vs Bergson on intellect & space00:03:53 Vision, rhythm & musical duration00:05:30 Closed vs open morality & evolution00:09:38 Embodiment, matter & spiritual growth00:13:52 Dionysian mysticism, Nietzsche & the body00:16:48 Matter, potentiality & Aristotle’s legacy00:23:28 Light, infinity & “image all the way down”00:27:28 Matter as non-being / Buddhist emptiness00:33:08 Virtuality, memory & pure duration00:38:53 Probability, quantum ontology & process thought00:44:18 Space-time as field of tendencies (relativity)00:49:38 Light, spatiation & quantum transactions00:57:28 Non-representational thinking & imageless cognition01:06:43 Will-to-power, teleology & eternal return01:11:53 “Finding the divine within” – Plotinus’ aim01:17:58 Chess masters, intuition & virtual perception01:24:48 Translation project – goals & workflow01:30:48 Closing remarks & next-meeting plans Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Dialogues we are responding to include: * Michael Levin ⇄ Terrence Deacon on goal-directedness in biology:* Bernardo Kastrup ⇄ Jay Garfield on Madhyamaka Buddhism vs. analytic idealism:* Rupert Sheldrake ⇄ Mark Vernon on law-like habits and spiritual science:* Sean Kelly ⇄ Luke Johnson on Hegel, Jung and the psyche (which was mentioned early on but unfortunately we didn’t get to yet!):Some reflections amplifying key points in my dialogue with Tim: Philosophizing should keep its eye on the prize: attending to human existence and the suffering that comes from being embodied and crowded together in space (“crowded space” being the literal meaning of Duḥkha). Metaphysics must stay soteriological; it ought to help us suffer less rather than spiral into abstraction olympics. Whenever dialogue turns into an oppositional contest of right view versus wrong view, I worry we lose sight of this healing aim.The path away from weaponized debate is translational thinking. Instead of locking language in private dictionaries, I try to meet difference in a productive way, translating another’s phrasing into my own idiom and offering it back so our frameworks might mutually evolve. Language is an artistic medium and a commons; even the crispest logic still relies on metaphor. If we forget this, we slide into misplaced concreteness, mistaking abstractions for reality and reifying whatever vocabulary flatters our position.Variation already implies something invariant, a background that lets differences register as different. Whitehead speaks to that polarity when he pairs Creativity with the Primordial Nature of God, who envisages the order of what otherwise remains an infinite multiplicity of potentiality. Without something stable, the very idea of change becomes nonsensical; similarly, without the continual ingress of novelty this stability would be devoid of meaning. I see the same rhythm in biological life. Genes compress the hard-won lessons of past organisms, but development decompresses them in real time. Every thought becomes a microcosmic embryogenesis, to paraphrase Deacon, improvising from undifferentiated hunch toward determinate articulation. What we inherit is real potentiality, food that must be digested afresh in the present, not a deterministic script that seals our fate.Ideas may have eternal beginnings but they also become historical creatures. Study of their histories of ingression inoculates us against reification—against crystalizing concepts into dogmas or worshiping scientific models as idols. Philosophers serve as critics of abstractions, guarding both common sense and imagination from reductionist temptations. We remind science that its power lies in mapping experience, not replacing it, and we remind religion that ultimate reality cannot be captured in any book.The past is always present but as potential. The past is not, pace Laplace, an unbroken chain determining what is actualized in the present. There are gaps everywhere into which new possibilities can flow. I try to wield concepts lightly, translate generously, and judge metaphysics pragmatically by the creative release it affords and by the subtle easing of suffering it makes possible.Timestamps (links take you to the YouTube version):02:00 Today’s Agenda: Four Big Dialogues 04:15 Metaphysics & Alleviating Suffering 08:10 Debate vs Dialogue (Garfield · Kastrup) 12:45 Translational vs Oppositional Thinking 16:40 Variation, Invariance & Creativity22:30 Ocean–Wave Metaphor & Animism 28:20 Light, Vision & Least-Action Musings 35:40 Process Cosmology & Creativity 42:55 Consciousness & the “Hard Problem” 50:30 History of Ideas & False Problems 57:40 Mechanical Philosophy Critiqued 01:05:30 Language, Models & Misplaced Concreteness 01:13:25 Socrates, Buddhism & Soteriology 01:21:55 Whitehead vs Laplace Determinism 01:30:40 Information, Entropy & Meaning 01:39:45 Prelude to Deacon–Levin: Goals & Teleology 01:47:30 Deacon – Levin on Goal-Directedness 01:54:30 Information vs Entropy (Shannon · Wiener) 02:01:00 Simondon: Information as Constraint & Selection 02:09:00 Variation, Stochasticity & Abduction 02:17:00 Laplacian Determinism & Indeterminacy 02:25:30 Whitehead, Past Immortality & Evolution 02:34:00 Cosmogenesis: Simplicity vs Infinity 02:42:00 Constructive Course-Graining & Identity 02:51:00 Genes, Epigenetics & Developmental Constraint 03:00:00 Lineages, Individuals & Open-Ended Evolution 03:09:00 Closing Reflections Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Visit Ashton K. Arnoldy’s website to learn more about his astrological consultation practice: https://www.micr0k0sm.com An abridged LLM summary (edited for accuracy): Matt opens by noting that Ashton has been studying astrology far longer than he has, having encountered it as a teenager, whereas Matt only stumbled into it later during graduate school while studying under Rick Tarnas, the author of Cosmos and Psyche. Matt reflects that he hadn’t initially planned to study astrology at all—his goal was to learn the history of philosophy—but through Rick’s teachings, particularly on planetary archetypes, he absorbed a significant astrological perspective. Matt’s primary interest has always been less in practicing astrology per se and more in understanding it historically, as a lens into the evolution of consciousness and forms of participation. He points out that in ancient times, the spheres we now separate into science, art, religion, and politics were all woven together in the study of the heavens—a compactness evident in prehistoric mythology and temple architecture.In the modern world, astrology has become popular again, often filtered through a psychological lens, thanks in part to the Theosophical revival in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Matt invites Ashton to share how he first encountered astrology and why it spoke to him as a teenager.Ashton recounts that his initial exposure came even earlier, growing up amid 1990s and early 2000s media saturated with zodiac symbolism—the Sims video game (where synastry affected character interactions), Lisa Frank stickers, and a general atmosphere of magical thinking. A neighbor who was like a sibling to him first introduced him to the signs, and soon their group of friends all knew one another’s zodiac signs. Astrology already felt resonant then, not as a formal system but as a living experience of friendship and distinctiveness.Later, on Myspace in high school, Ashton rediscovered astrology through compatibility features that linked friends’ zodiac signs, sparking a deeper interest. Clicking around online, he found his natal chart—probably through Cafe Astrology, like many millennials—and had the now-familiar experience of feeling “observed” by something larger, as if his inner world was mirrored by the cosmos. From that point, astrology became a daily part of his life.Matt notes that Ashton’s initial connection to astrology emerged from interpersonal resonance—understanding friends, himself, and feeling seen by the universe. Ashton agrees, adding that at the time he was also rebelling against the rigid Christianity he grew up with in Arkansas. While he called himself an atheist, it was more a cultural rebellion than a genuine negation of the divine; he had always felt a hunger for meaning.Matt asks when Ashton first began speculating metaphysically about the cosmological context of astrology. Ashton recalls that during high school, as he lived and breathed natal charts and transits, a deeper sense of cosmic connection returned to him—something childlike and pre-materialist. Experiences with psychedelics and meditation reinforced this sense of mystery and wonder. Gradually, his experiential encounters seeded deeper philosophical questions.They discuss the inner skeptic they carry, and the prevalence of skeptics in academia. Matt reflects on how, even when astrology resonates deeply, there’s a part of him—culturally conditioned—that feels embarrassment at taking it seriously in a scientific age. He muses that astrology could be seen not just as “wishful thinking” (“Wouldn’t it be nice if the cosmos knew our soul?”) but also as something terrifying, an exposure of our inmost being to cosmic transparency.Matt shares Becca Tarnas’s helpful metaphor: a natal chart is like a musical score—capable of varied performances rather than dictating one fixed meaning. He asks Ashton how he relates to skepticism, both internally and when encountering doubters.Ashton responds that his relationship to skepticism evolved over time. In his intellectual punk undergrad scene, he realized the importance of understanding the history and philosophy of astrology to ground his practice. He sees astrology as fundamentally participatory: confidence in it comes from lived, receptive engagement, especially through observing transits. He also questions skeptics’ unexamined presuppositions about knowledge, subjectivity, and the cosmos—most operate within a default materialist worldview without realizing it.Matt connects this to Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner’s idea of our current “Consciousness Soul” epoch: we are alienated, desperate for reconnection to cosmic meaning, but must guard against surrendering our freedom to external systems like astrology. He warns against treating astrology as a deterministic map rather than as a flexible guide.They pivot to ancient understandings of astrology. Ashton, studying with Adam Elenbaas at Nightlight Astrology, shares that in ancient times, people didn’t identify with their charts the way moderns often do. The spirit was seen as eternal, transcending the chart, which was merely an image of one’s “lot” in a given incarnation. Astrology originally emerged as divinatory—context-specific readings of meaningful moments—not generalized personality typing.Jeffrey Cornelius, Ashton notes, emphasized astrology’s oracular roots in The Moment of Astrology. Ancient astrology was not deterministic; practices of divination and magic imply an openness to negotiating fate. Divinatory participation presupposes a cosmos alive with significance, not a closed mechanical system.Matt observes that in ancient times, astrology was more collective, with natal charts often reserved for kings. The focus on individual souls came later, with the rise of interiority, climaxing in the modern psychologization of astrology. This shift from collective to personal fate represents both a profound gain in individual dignity and a risk of narcissism and egoic inflation.Ashton adds that today’s clients often come to astrology seeking affirmation of personal success, but ideally, a reading fosters aesthetic appreciation for one’s participation in the cosmic whole—not just ego inflation.Matt then raises the question of astrology’s statistical validation. He acknowledges some efforts to correlate planetary transits (like Mars with wars) but ultimately feels that astrology is a semiotic, hermeneutical, divinatory art—not a science in the conventional sense. Ashton agrees, emphasizing that astrology speaks through symbolic participation, not mechanical causality.Matt brings in Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics: meaning arises through a triad of sign, object, and interpretant. Without the interpreter, astrological meaning cannot arise; thus, statistical approaches risk missing the essence of astrology.Ashton reflects further: mechanistic materialism abstracts from living experience. Mathematics is itself a frozen image of something originally alive. Astrology’s roots, whether in tropical or sidereal systems, reflect living traditions, not arbitrary constructions. Drawing on Barfield and Steiner, he suggests astrology can help reconnect us with the cosmic intelligence gradually internalized in human consciousness over millennia.Matt echoes this, emphasizing that from a participatory cosmological perspective, mind and matter were originally undivided. Consciousness didn’t “emerge” from dead matter but was always implicit in the unfolding cosmos. This perspective makes astrology coherent in a way materialism cannot.They return to the ritual, participatory dimension of astrology. Matt emphasizes that astrology isn’t a “belief system”—it’s a practice, a reverent ritual relationship with the cosmos that could help heal our cultural alienation.Ashton shares his excitement about launching his astrological consultation practice after years of study: Micr0k0sm. Recent work with Hellenistic astrology, Project Hindsight translations, and Platonic cosmology have given him confidence in the rationales behind house systems and zodiacal structures. He hopes to engage clients through a living, oracular encounter that attunes both astrologer and client to the cosmic whole.Matt celebrates this move, likening the astrologer to an archetypal thermometer—taking the collective temperature of a time through individual consultations. Ashton references Dorian Greenbaum’s work on the daimon in astrology, emphasizing that true astrological consultation channels a meeting between spiritual presences, not merely egoic selves.Finally, Matt ties back to Plotinus and Neoplatonism: the planets are not causes, but signs. Astrology, properly understood, reveals symbolic resonance rather than mechanical determinism.Ashton concurs: astrology is a technology for attuning to the Logos, a cosmic mandala of meaning. He stresses that interpretation must remain open and flexible—the same symbol can have multiple, even opposite meanings depending on context.They close by reflecting on the mystery that remains in astrology: it is both a ritual practice and an opportunity for cosmological research, illuminating but never exhausting the wonder of our participatory cosmos. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Pedro Brea, Jack Bagby, and I decided to continue digging into Plotinus—specifically the Sixth Ennead—focusing on the relationship between the One and the Intellect, and between the World-Soul and individual souls. Why and how does the One overflow into the Many? We also read a helpful chapter by Gina Zavota titled “Plotinus’ ‘Reverse’ Platonism: A Deleuzian Response to the Problem of Emanation Imagery.” I began by posing a question to both Pedro and Jack: what is Plotinus’s relevance today? Are we drawn to him purely for historical reasons, like curators of ideas perfecting and preserving a museum exhibit, or is there something alive in his thought—something that can still catalyze our contemplative life, instigate self-transformation, and contribute to contemporary metaphysics? I suspect there is indeed plenty that still pulses in Plotinus’s vision. The challenge is to square his multi-layered depiction of reality with our contemporary knowledge—physics, cosmology, evolutionary theory, etc.After hearing Pedro and Jack’s initial impressions, I respond to Pedro’s point about how Plotinus integrates metaphysics and ethics. I love that he emphasized the idea that to know the truth, we must become like it. For Plotinus, knowledge entails self-transformation, aligning with the Good. It is a form of theosis or divination, much like the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the liturgy not as a representation of truth but as its enactment. This also relates to later Neoplatonists, like Iamblichus and Proclus, who emphasize the philosophical import of ritual. Turning to Jack’s comment that The Enneads sometimes feel like it was written in a “fever dream,” I agree that it can be disorienting. Plotinus writes in response to mystical experience, so he admits we can only grasp things fragmentarily with our finite minds. Yet he has an unshakable sense of everything overflowing from a single Source. And whether the Source is a cause, or a creator, or an overflow—we can talk about the metaphors Plotinus uses to describe how the still Source nonetheless becomes, how cause becomes effect. Or maybe even saying “cause” is already too much… We can have an intuitive, almost revelatory sense of oneness and the systematic nature of knowledge and ideas. But in practice, when we try to write about it, it’s inevitably fragmentary. I couldn’t help but feel that—even though Plotinus was writing in the third century—it resonates so deeply with the German Idealists and Romantics. Take Fichte, for example. The whole idea of the overflowing of intellect from the One, and intellect generating itself through its turning back to contemplate the One—it reminds me so much of Fichte’s dialectical account of the “I” and the “not-I.” That whole process of self-positing, where the self is generated through a kind of differentiation from itself. The fragmentary nature of Plotinus’s writing is also convergent with (and perhaps influential for) the style of the Romantic fragment, which the Schlegel brothers emphasized. Romantic philosophy is all about the fragment. That’s not to say there isn’t system—it’s just that fragments are the best we can do to capture a thought on the page, like a leaf exfoliating from a plant. Each fragment is an expression of the archetype of the plant, but also a unique facet of the oneness of that archetype.Pedro asked about the importance of participation, leading me to lay out how the concept of participation morphs historically from Plato through Aquinas to Schelling and the Romantics (Jacob Sherman has written a great genealogy of participation that tracks this development). Where Plato treats participation as a sort of “copying” of Forms, Aquinas reframes it more existentially, while the Romantics treat it as co-creation—where the boundaries between creature and creator soften and even dissolve. It is that more co-creative sense of participation that I favor, which somewhat meshes with Deleuze’s idea of the virtual and actual. I do, however, remain concerned that if we replace essence entirely with events, we end up with a nominalism that might undercut our sense of reality’s moral and metaphysical depth dimension. I want an account of real form and value that is robust enough to avoid mere relativism.I also suggest there may already be a “reversal of Platonism” in Plato’s own dialogues. This comes through especially in the role of the Receptacle in the Timaeus (Tim Jackson and I discuss this in our dialogue on Timaeus). Then, in Plotinus, I notice how contemplation is only possible because the One overflows; the One becomes “Good” in that act of self-outpouring. That suggests the One’s “superabundance” is enhanced by the many returning to it via their contemplation of it. The intellect, Soul, and all of Nature’s beings each, in some way, contemplate their return to the One, thereby enabling it to continually become richer. I label this a co-creative notion of participation—though I admit it is not always spelled out this way in Plotinus’s own texts. I bring in Whitehead as a way to reinterpret this idea: the contemplation of the One by the many can, paradoxically, enhance the value realized in the One.I turn to the role of Logos, linking it to the mediation between the One’s unity and the multiplicity of bodies, but I suggest we consider how the Incarnation might reconfigure that relationship in ways Plotinus might not have fully accounted for. I mention Plotinus’ stirring comment about erasing bodily boundaries through contemplation—“the lines which bound bodies come to be as if they fell from my contemplation.” It is as if he is stepping into the perspective of the Soul, as the power that shapes living bodies, and through contemplative activity he is in a sense “unfalling” or reversing the fall by remembering that the boundaries between bodies are ultimately illusory.I return to Pedro’s mention of Plotinus’ psychological method, stressing that we must invert our attention, first going inward, not to retreat from the world but to understand it aright—recognizing that if we view extended sensible bodies as the ultimate or even just as an independent reality, we fall into delusion. Instead, Plotinus calls us to grasp how Soul gives shape to bodies. So to interpret the physical world properly, we need to go inward and see that the intelligible nature of the Soul stands at the root of perception. At the same time, I suggest that if we read it freshly, there might be a “co-creative” dimension: physicality need not be a mere reflection of intelligibles but the expression of an ongoing metaxy were the sensible domain is not so much illusion as it is the play of light on the surface of astral waters, a reflection of the superabundant luminosity of the One. If we can calm the surface of the soul via contemplative practice, it becomes transparent to what lies beyond it. Pedro and I both mused on whether time-based metaphors are better than spatial ones for describing Plotinus’ hypostases. In Whitehead, we could say real potentiality is in the past; actualization is in the present; pure potentiality is in the future. Events do not unfold in a fixed container of space—space arises out of the wake left by events or actual occasions. From the World Soul’s perspective, time is a whole; from our bodily perspectives, we see it in parts, as if it were a line, just one damn day after the next, rather than as a moving image of eternity. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

In a thought-provoking dialogue, Philip Goff, a philosopher dedicated to panpsychism and consciousness, explores the intricate dance between science and faith. He shares his journey from physicalism to embracing the idea that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of nature. The conversation highlights how Goff reconciles panpsychism with his Christian beliefs, advocating for a dynamic view of God that evolves. They also delve into metamodern spirituality, emphasizing the blend of traditional wisdom with contemporary thought, pushing boundaries within religious contexts.

In this session, Tim Jackson and I discuss Hans Jonas’ book The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. We focus in particular on two chapters, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism” and “Is God a Mathematician?” Our aim was to explore how Jonas, emerging from an existential–phenomenological and religious–philosophical context, offered both criticisms and appreciations of Darwin’s ideas, and how his reading aligns or conflicts with more nuanced approaches in contemporary biology. Background and Context: Jonas’s Project and Our MotivationsI began by introducing Jonas’ unique intellectual background. Jonas studied under Martin Heidegger in the 1920s, having initially hoped to study with Edmund Husserl. Jonas was forced to flee Germany in the early 1930s in response to the rise of Nazism. He eventually joined the British forces in World War II, fighting against the Nazis, then later participated in the events surrounding the founding of Israel. This harrowing personal history shaped Jonas’ sense of moral urgency, infusing his philosophical work with a passionate interest in ethics, existential meaning, and the metaphysical underpinnings of scientific views—especially Darwinism. His earlier scholarship on Gnosticism influenced his claims that modern materialist science risked lapsing into a form of nihilism uncannily reminiscent of Gnostic cosmologies.By situating Jonas in this intellectual and historical matrix, I wanted to emphasize that The Phenomenon of Life is less a work of straightforward philosophy of science. Rather, it is an “existential interpretation of biological facts,” as Jonas puts it in his preface, using a Heideggerian lens to read evolutionary theory and modern mechanistic science in light of broader religious–philosophical concerns. Jonas’ major preoccupation is how Darwin’s proposals—and, more broadly, mechanistic materialism—were received by culture at large, becoming entangled with nihilist or purely reductionistic views of nature. Modern scientific materialism, Jonas claimed, diminishes or eliminates purpose, interiority, and freedom in the organic realm.Throughout our dialogue, Tim and I recognized that Jonas’ reading of Darwinism often differs significantly from Darwin’s own nuanced statements. Our motivation, then, was partly to clarify where Jonas’s approach caricatures Darwin, conflating Darwin’s original texts with the more rigid “neo-Darwinian” trends of the mid-twentieth century. Meanwhile, Tim, as a practicing biologist, expressed concern that Jonas’ depiction of Darwin as purely mechanical and anti-teleological overlooks Darwin’s more processual, open-ended, and in important ways teleological reflections.Jonas’s Reading of Darwin: Existential Phenomenology Meets BiologyJonas’s Phenomenon of Life contains two chapters central to our discussion. The first, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism,” critiques how Darwinism supposedly subjugates all life to mechanistic explanations. Jonas contends that Darwin (and, more precisely, Darwinism’s cultural reception) eliminates teleology altogether by attributing all organic form to the haphazard generation of variations and the “negative” selection that merely eliminates maladapted forms. As Jonas frames it:“[Natural Selection] is a negative substitute for teleology. It accounts for the disappearance only, and not for the emergence of forms. It suppresses and does not create. Thus it replaces teleology as a directing principle only on condition that it is offered the suitable material to select from.”Tim and I both remarked that Jonas’ language here—referring to new variations as “freaks” or “aberrations” and describing selection as a purely external winnower—echoes the mid-century “modern synthesis” or “neo-Darwinian” line rather than Darwin’s own more fertile and open-ended accounts. Jonas appears to criticize Darwin for diminishing the organism’s agency, describing evolution as a product of blind, implacable environmental demands shaping random mutations. I noted again that Jonas, as an existential–phenomenological thinker, is worried less about Darwin’s precise biology and more about the broader metaphysical chill he sees in modern culture: an environment in which humanity, stripped of inherent purpose, lapses into a nihilistic mode reminiscent of Gnostic alienation.Tim’s Critique: Salvaging Darwin from MisreadingsTim took care to point out that Jonas’ reliance on the “received view” of Darwinism omits crucial details of Darwin’s Origin of Species and later writings. Darwin himself, Tim stressed, was not a systematic philosopher, nor was he a “mechanist” in the strict sense. Rather, Darwin studied variation in nature in enormous empirical detail, highlighting individual differences, organismic behaviors, and the capacity of living beings to shape their own evolutionary trajectories. He recognized, for instance, that organisms do not merely submit passively to a stable, imposing environment. The environment, in Darwin’s eyes, is largely comprised of other organisms who bring their own purposes—hunting, mating, feeding preferences—into the interplay of natural selection.In effect, Darwin’s “environment” is hardly a blind external force. It is shot through with purposeful activity at the level of many species interacting, and with emergent forms of adaptation. As Tim put it: “What is the environment for Darwin? Mostly other organisms. They have their own desires, drives, and preferences. That is hardly a pure mechanism.”Tim further explained how Darwin allowed for something akin to “immanent teleology.” Though Darwin did not use the term “teleology” explicitly in a robust, Aristotelian sense, he spoke of the purposeful activities of animals—preferences in feeding, strategies in predation, mate choice—that fundamentally shape how selection operates. Additionally, Darwin, prior to Mendelian genetics, was relatively open-minded about variation’s sources, invoking the inheritance of acquired characteristics and use–disuse patterns. Tim agreed with me that some of these ideas display a more Lamarckian flavor, showing that Darwin was hardly the staunch mechanist that later neo-Darwinists or gene-centric theorists made him out to be. Jonas, perhaps understandably, conflates Darwin with that narrower, mid-twentieth-century version of evolutionary theory that indeed subordinates organismic creativity to random mutation plus external winnowing.Teleology, Variation, and Emergent FormOur conversation repeatedly circled back to teleology. Jonas’ core accusation is that Darwin, as typically interpreted, banishes any final cause or immanent teleology from organic life. Instead, all new forms are “accidents” due to undirected variation that are then tested and selected by external environmental filters. I described how Darwin inherited the “design paradigm” from his former teacher, the natural theologian William Paley. Rather than God being the designer, that role is given to Nature by Darwin (the source of form being the environment rather than God). Tim seemed to agree that Darwin does at least emphasize external sources of form, even if he also acknowledges the organism’s own behavior as active in its own evolution.Tim pointed out that, for Darwin, variation itself is an expression of organismic agency and plasticity, not simply random. I mentioned the spherical shapes of micelles and the appearance of certain mathematical patterns—like the “phi ratio” in phyllotaxis—as cases of “order for free” that might be subsequently subject to selection. Tim then suggested that, if one generalizes Darwin’s principle in line with thinkers like Charles Sanders Peirce or Alfred North Whitehead, natural selection can be extended beyond biology to show how constraint and self-organization interact with selection-like processes even in physics and chemistry. Understood in this broader way, variation and selection become part of a generative schema of immanent form-production, not just a set of blind mechanics that weed out unfit mutations. Misconceptions of Mechanism and the Legacy of Cartesian DualismFor Jonas, Cartesian dualism and the mechanical philosophy underpin a conception of matter as mere extended substance—lifeless and purposeless—and a conception of mind as wholly removed from nature. Darwin’s demonstration that humanity evolved from animal forebears did, Jonas concedes, overthrow one bulwark of dualism. Yet Jonas contends that Darwinian biology remains mired in a mechanistic worldview, failing to account for genuine interiority and teleology.Tim and I emphasized the partial truth in Jonas’s analysis: historically, many biologists, craving the prestige of physics (“physics envy”), indeed tried to reduce living phenomena to clockwork processes or gene-based instructions. However, Darwin himself took a less reductionistic approach. Darwin was not imposing a precise blueprint upon nature but describing how purposive behaviors, preferences, and local constraints yield emergent patterns of speciation. Rediscovering an Immanent Teleology and Broader Philosophical ResonancesI touched on how Aristotle had conceived an immanent teleology, where living forms develop from within by virtue of an entelechy driving their internal processes. Jonas, for his part, yearned to reassert some version of this Aristotelian perspective without reverting to classical hylomorphism or dogmatic essentialism. My sense is that Jonas, caught up in the existential crisis of late modernity, saw an urgent need to restore purpose, value, and inwardness to a world threatened by nihilism. His own approach was an attempt to bridge Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger with contemporary biology, albeit sometimes at the cost of unfairly flattening Darwin into the foil of a “materialist threat.”Meanwhile, Tim reminded me that a close reading of Darwin reveals abundant room for the organism to direct its own evolution. Darwin wrote extensively on animal behaviors, local adaptations, and reciprocal relationships that speak to co-creation, not a fixed environment imposing design by negation. Modern complexity theorists have taken these insights further, highlighting how variation and selection act alongside emergent order, morphological constraints, and even convergent evolutionary trends.Concluding Reflections: A Synthesis in ProgressOur dialogue underscores how Jonas’s philosophical biology and Darwin’s evolutionary vision can be mutually enriching if read carefully. Jonas offers a salutary warning: read superficially, Darwin’s ideas can indeed tip into a vision of “mindless, purposeless algorithmic” selection—a view popularized by several late-twentieth-century biologists and philosophers (eg, Dennett, Dawkins). This reading justifies the cultural impression of Darwinism as an acid dissolving any notion of cosmic meaning. Yet Darwin’s own texts, especially when read in the context of thinkers like Whitehead or Peirce, open onto the possibility that teleology is not an external imposition but a creative principle intrinsic to living organisms, thus at least affirming many teloi if not a Grand Telos.If Jonas sometimes glossed over scientific nuances, it may reflect his deeper existential concerns. He sought a new cosmological narrative that locates intrinsic value and interiority in nature, and that calls human beings to become morally responsible for Life, thus pushing back against the neo-Gnostic sense of cosmic alienation and the Nietzschean celebration of an amoral will to power. Darwin, ironically, can aid this quest if we appreciate his rich references to the agency of organisms, their mutual influences, and his resolute rejection of fixed essences.From my vantage, modernity is not the “adulthood” of humanity so much as its “adolescence.” In earlier European history—during the ancient and medieval periods—humanity still drew upon a transcendent source of meaning and value. The break from that source in modern times, however necessary for our maturation, has unleashed a rebellious, adolescent phase: technology, for instance, has amplified our capacity for violence even as it distances us emotionally from its consequences.I believe our current task is to move past this tumultuous adolescent stage and into a genuine adulthood. That means recovering what was vital in ancient thought—its sense of higher purpose—while integrating it with the epochal breakthroughs of modern science. The goal, as I see it, is to recognize that our humanity is not fixed but “in the making,” perpetually unfolding. At the same time, we need a sense of moral or spiritual allurement, cosmic sources of significance that can guide us through our evolutionary adventure, so that we are not simply falling through empty space, as Nietzsche’s image of modern dislocation suggests. These lures must be real enough to anchor our values without descending into dogma or rigid “preformations.”Historically, liberals have sometimes treated moral progress as a given, reducing values to mere common sense preferences. That leaves us unprepared for surging political movements that shatter the veneer of consensus. We can reclaim the metaphysical foundations that once supported moral ideals, but only on the far side of the existential confrontation with nihilism. The renewal of cosmic meaning requires going through disenchantment, not regressing to the pre-scientific security of childhood innocence. The “adulthood” I envision involves finding a balance between openness to novelty and discovery, and a deeper transpersonal (that is, personal plus) anchor that overarches the fragmenting pressures of personal preference. It is a daunting project, but I hope that dialogues like these help us chart the path forward. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

I was joined again by Pedro Brea (we discussed Bergson and Whitehead a few weeks ago) and now also by Jack Bagby (a colleague of mine at CIIS). We discussed Jack’s translation of Bergson’s lectures on Plotinus (1898-99). We also discussed an essay by Wayne J. Hankey on Bergson and Plotinus. Although I had previously known Plotinus influenced Bergson, our discussion highlighted how profoundly Bergson resonated with Plotinus’ psychology. Bergson emphasizes that, for Plotinus, consciousness arises as a kind of diminution or limitation, contrasting sharply with modern conceptions of consciousness as an epiphenomenon added onto neural activity.Pedro raised several intriguing points, including Bergson’s notion of matter as an ever-renewing present, the active role of intelligence in shaping perception, and the place of mysticism in Bergson’s thought. We agreed that mysticism serves as a foundational philosophical insight for both Plotinus and Bergson.We discussed the challenge of determinism, with Jack noting Bergson’s criticism of Plotinus and Leibniz as implying that the future is fully predetermined within monads or intelligibles. I agreed, highlighting Leibniz’s monads as pre-established harmonies containing all their representations, which contrasts dramatically with Bergson’s and Whitehead’s metaphysics of creativity.Pedro drew connections between Nietzsche’s will to power and Plotinus’s metaphysics. We reflected on how Nietzsche might have misunderstood or caricatured Plotinus as overly life-denying. Jack and I both suggested a more nuanced reading: although Plotinus does see embodiment as a limitation, he still dignifies embodied experience as valuable, even if subordinate to contemplation.A significant part of our discussion involved examining Bergson’s metaphysics of matter and memory and its relationship to Plotinus’s concepts of soul and body. I argued there is a crucial parallel between Plotinus’s conception of matter as the unlimited lower principle and the One as the unlimited higher principle, suggesting a possible reconciliation of matter and spirit. Pedro connected this to Simone Weil’s Pythagorean idea of matter as simultaneously barrier and connection between the soul and the One.We expanded on Bergson’s notion of the élan vital, relating it to Plotinus’s Logos as a dynamic, generative principle of life and intuitive thought. We discussed the Stoic roots of this idea, agreeing that for both Plotinus and Bergson, reality is fundamentally dynamic and relational.I raised questions about terminology, particularly Bergson’s translation referencing Plotinus’s notion of the “audacity” of the soul, speculating that the Greek root might imply something closer to hubris or an act of individuation against divine unity.Jack clarified some misconceptions about Aristotle’s concept of matter (hyle), emphasizing that Aristotle’s matter is never simply passive, but dynamic, forceful, and full of potentialities, akin to Bergson’s vision of materiality. I compared this to Plato’s concept of the receptacle in the Timaeus, suggesting Plato may also grant matter a more active and vibratory role than is often recognized.Video of our dialogue: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

The title of the article Ben Snyder and I are discussing is "The Objectivity of Whitehead's Propositions: An Explication of the Truth-Relation" in Process Studies 53 (2):256-274 (2024).Overview of Ben’s Main ArgumentBen begins with a summary of his paper’s main argument, which I’ll try to capture below.Propositions, for Whitehead, are more than statements in language: they are metaphysical “lures” composed of actual entities (as logical subjects) and an eternal object (as the predicate). A proposition is true if those actual entities really exemplify the predicate in question.Ben criticizes views that treat a proposition’s truth-value as contingent upon how some subject feels or entertains it. He notes that some scholars (eg, Isabelle Stengers, Brian Massumi and Erin Manning, and others) have implied that Whitehead’s propositions are not truth-bearing until a subject prehends them. Ben argues this misreads Whitehead.Ultimately, Ben sees Whitehead as arguing for a common-sense style correspondence theory: a proposition is about real individuals and states of affairs in the world, and it is true or false depending on whether that structure of logical subjects + predicate is exemplified. Although Whitehead’s exact language is different from standard analytic philosophies of language, the underlying shape of the theory remains objectively anchored.I find Ben’s framing compelling. From my vantage point, he effectively demonstrates that Whitehead’s texts do contain a fairly robust realism about propositions, contrary to purely subjectivist or relational stances. However, I also voice additional concerns about the role God plays in his account of truth. Whitehead’s scheme includes the “primordial nature of God,” which grades eternal objects in terms of relevance via conceptual prehension, and the “consequent nature of God,” which physically prehends the many actual occasions of the world. My reading of Whitehead is that a proposition only gains its impartial truth-value in God’s consequent unification of the nexus of occasions composing the universe.Thus, while no finite particular subject is needed to determine a proposition’s truth, there must still be a universal subject (God) whose all-inclusive prehension grounds the objective unity of propositions across time. We also discuss how Whitehead’s theory of propositions deals with future facts. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “future facts,” since the universe is a creative advance and genuinely novel actual entities are arising all the time. So particular propositions about the future can’t be true or false “now,” in the usual sense, because you can’t have a proposition about an actual entity that doesn’t exist.Whitehead does allow for general propositions about how future entities will conform to or diverge from the past. We note that Whitehead integrates a sophisticated account of statistical induction and non-statistical abduction (to borrow Peirce’s term). Non-statistical abduction relies upon the ordering of relevance provided by God’s primordial nature, suggesting that we can have a meaningful (though fallible) basis for anticipating how novelty will ingress in the future, not just by repeated patterns (efficient causes) but by a final cause (the lure of higher intensities or novel contrasts). In other words, instead of a purely random guess, Whitehead affirms final causality via God’s primordial nature instilling a sense of which eternal objects might intensify harmony or beauty, so novelty is guided rather than arbitrary. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead suggests that this is how his metaphysics accounts for least action principles in physics. I asked Ben whether he thought a proposition that is false now can become true in a subsequent occasion if the world comes to exemplify that possibility. This leads us to puzzle over whether truth-values can change over time.Whitehead’s idea of a proposition as a lure accommodates novelty: an occasion can entertain a possibility that is not exemplified in the immediate past. If that possibility is taken up into the satisfaction of a concrescent occasion, subsequent occasions may indeed actualize something akin to that novelty—leading to related but technically new propositions that can be true of new entities.Overall, I appreciate how Ben’s article reaffirms the objectivity of propositions—that Whitehead really does mean for truth and falsity to be anchored in how actuality exemplifies (or fails to exemplify) certain determinate characteristics. Yet the conversation highlights how much Whitehead’s system remains broader than a simple “naive realism.” Indeed, God’s primordial and consequent natures complicate how truth is realized or felt.I would say Ben and I maintain a fruitful tension on these questions. While Whitehead maintains a classic-seeming correspondence theory of truth, I want to keep pressing on the theological side—particularly the question of whether Whitehead’s account of objective truth could ever be unmoored from the ultimate “universal subject” (God) who harmonizes all propositions. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Plato’s Timaeus rivals the Bible as one of the West’s most generative texts. It represents an ambitious synthesis, integrating earlier philosophical perspectives into a complex cosmological myth that attempts to build a bridge between the sensible and intelligible realms.Tim and I plan to devote an entire session to the Timaeus itself at some point, but in this dialogue we focused on Schelling’s 1794 Timaeus essay and a contemporary article by Tyler Tritten titled “On Matter: Schelling’s Anti-Platonic Reading of the Timaeus.” Schelling began reading Plato in the original Greek in his early teens. Written when he was 19, his Timaeus essay turns a Kantian lens on the ancient dialogue, offering a creative inversion of traditional interpretations of Platonism as a two-world dualism.In the Timaeus, Plato tries to synthesize the theory of forms (the realm of intelligible Ideas) with the so-called “necessity” or “unruly materiality” that resists purely rational ordering. This “necessity,” or ananke in Greek, is linked to chance, contingency, and the factor of reality that cannot be fully subdued by intellect. Timaeus’s cosmology therefore offers us a “likely story” rather than a definitive, perfectly self-consistent explanation.Tim and I stressed that Plato’s text is both generative and problematic: it invites centuries of interpretation. Philosophers from Schelling to Jung to Whitehead read it in ways that highlight the difficult “third” element—a mediating factor between perfect Ideas and raw matter.We noted how the chōra is depicted as feminine (“nurse,” “mother,” “wet nurse of becoming”) in contrast to the demiurgic paternal principle. In Timaeus’s mythic language, the “Father of all” (the divine craftsman) shapes the “Mother” (the chōra), yet that motherly power also stands on its own as a matrix of possibility. Tim emphasized that in a modern mechanistic reading, matter is often taken as purely passive, yet Plato’s “necessity” (and the generative chōra) has a strange autonomy—an “unruly” or “wandering cause” that cannot be perfectly harnessed by the divine intellect. Where Plotinus privileges the One or Intellect as highest, Schelling often suggests that Soul or Nature (the dynamic, living principle) is prior in certain respects—even a co-eternal ground with Intellect. He says one can have Soul without Intellect but not Intellect without Soul, thus elevating the animating, vital power that mediates between forms and matter.We compared Plato’s cosmology to the mechanistic turn in modern science, noting how figures like Newton preserved a Platonic sense of eternal laws in a “moving image of eternity.” However, Newton canceled the living dimension of matter and replaced the Timaean chōra with the fully deterministic geometry of homogeneous space. More recent scientific developments—statistical mechanics, evolutionary theory, theories of self-organization, and complexity science—are reversing the Newtonian-Laplacian program by reintroducing genuine contingency, creativity, and open-ended evolution back into our cosmology.We stressed the importance of recognizing a continuity between physics and biology, matter and life, but without trivializing the emergence of organisms and consciousness. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Pedro Asmar de Lucas Brea, who reached out to me about his research on Bergson and energy. Pedro is a lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Herbst Program for Engineering Ethics and Society, and also a lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver in Philosophy. He holds a PhD in philosophy, but originally majored in physics as an undergraduate. Near the end of his physics studies, he experienced severe depression, which he eventually realized was a side effect of the worldview of scientific materialism that came along with his physics training. His healing began when he started studying philosophy, especially the existentialists, beginning with Nietzsche. Eventually, he discovered Bergson and decided to mount a critique of scientific materialism by focusing on the reality of time and change in his dissertation.Pedro laid out how his dissertation addresses energy using a Nietzschean genealogical approach, tracing the concept from the ancient Greeks through early Christianity to modern thermodynamics. Nietzsche features in his second chapter, and Bergson in the third. The dissertation tries to overcome the mechanistic worldview by giving change its ontological due and showing how materialistic science has not taken the reality of time seriously. Part of his personal journey involved Nietzsche freeing him from the rigid will to truth that led him into nihilism, then Bergson giving him the metaphysical tools to engage with physics so as to deconstruct materialistic metaphysics from the inside out.I asked him whether reading Nietzsche helped relieve his depression. “Reading Nietzsche makes you want to run up a mountain,” he said, describing it as empowering but somewhat limited for deeper engagement with physics. Bergson, by contrast, provided a fuller philosophical framework for taking time seriously, especially in Matter and Memory. We also discussed his more recent turn toward ethical questions, mysticism, and the notion of the Good, as found in thinkers like Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and Plotinus.I shared my own reflections on Bergson and Whitehead, pointing out that Whitehead attempted to save Bergson’s mode of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism. I noted that Whitehead’s idea of “actual occasions” posits a discrete yet non-instantaneous pulse of becoming—a concept that might offer a more systematic account of how time and creativity work. It is not easy to tease out how this differs from Bergson’s sense of a continuous though heterogeneous flow of duration. We discussed how Whitehead tries to reconcile quantum discontinuity with spatiotemporal continuity, while Bergson is more emphatic about maintaining the continuity of duration as a qualitative multiplicity.We plan to continue the conversation by reading Bergson’s lectures on Plotinus—which have been recently translated by my colleague at CIIS, Jack Bagby.Watch the video of our dialogue: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe