A Ressurection/A Shift

19Mar11

A complete bolt from the blue some others may have missed (I almost did) is this post by Reid over at Planomenology announcing his return to the blogosphere. Furthermore, Reid mentions that his work is turning more and more towards analytic philosophy. Peter Wolfendale has a follow up post addressing similar issues here as well.

For what its worth I’ve been reading largely analytic work over the last few weeks (Brian Ellis, re-reading Molnar, Alexander Bird and others) in an attempt to better grasp powers ontologies. In terms of analytic vs continental in a nutshell the former are not critical of their own grounds whereas the latter are too critical. Despite weirdness and Lovecraft aesthetics I am always working on a realist metaphysics – I believe there is alot of affective weight to be addressed and handled as well and that this are issues that, quite frankly, require less research and patience. I doubt I will stop finding the weird as an undertheorized and interesting body of work especially for talking about altered notions of becoming and powers-metaphysics – the weird is a good aesthetic and affective shell for a metaphysics so alien.

Metaphysically the analytic treatment of powers is useful and interesting for the various ways it attempts to ground or unground powers via laws, properties, or objects. I remain convinced by Grant’s assertion that asserting any substantial substratum is problematic given the anteriority of powers and their function. The problem of the organization of powers (via Plantonic genes or real patterns or categories) remains as does the related concept of manifestation or individuation. Also, I believe German Idealism (and specifically Schelling) can connect a powers ontology to an ethics/aesthetic/affect capable of addressing nature in itself and cutting through much of ecological idealism.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see how these analytic seeds turn out.

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