Current research and attendant publication plans
1) A book contemplated on the nature of education with special emphasis on the mental preparation required as prolegomena to speculative philosophy. This work is intended as a companion volume to Spirit of the Ages, which may be regarded as an historical prolegomena to the volume of systematic speculative philosophy, entitled, Mentaphysics. This third volume would then be a psychological prolegomena to Mentaphysics. The actual working out of this book will likely be in the form of a fictional journey focusing on the relation between eternity and time as experienced by an immortal being facing the reality of mortality.
2) Research with a book contemplated on the comprehension of Plato and Platonism by Aristotle. The importance will be to show that Aristotle’s philosophical innovation was to reject numbers, ideas, and τὸ ὄν καὶ τὸ ἕν [being and one] as other than imaginative and thus to remove from the Platonic dialogues and unwritten doctrines metaphor and μῦθος [story]. Thus his writings, centerpieced on the proposition that all existents are substances, and that all substances are both “one” and “being” are actually the completion of Platonism. Understanding this “innovative removal” leads to understanding why all philosophers after Aristotle were unsatisfied and either tried to improve Aristotle or to subordinate the Νοῦς [Mind] to τό ἕν [the One]. In particular Aristotle’s rejection of πρόνοια [providence] as unnecessary while relying on teleology is crucial in understanding why Christian Platonism is possible while Christian Aristotelianism is not. Seeing Aristotle qua Aristotle in this way will also have the merit of showing why and how philosophy cannot be subordinated to religion. The result would be that philosophically there can be no equality between Plato and Aristotle – in other words one cannot choose either Plato or Aristotle as if they, to use Aristotle’s nomenclature, were contraries. Another epiphenomenon to this research is that the Neoplatonic critique of Aristotle can be seen to be valid only if Aristotle’s rejection of numbers and forms as substances is simply ignored, but without merit if Aristotle’s critique is right. This has repercussions in the medieval debate over realism and nominalism as well; and in Kant’s emphasis on Einbildugskraft [imagination]. A further repercussion is that the historical circumstance of Aquinas melding together Dionysius the Areopagite and Aristotle to create what is later called Thomism is actually an intellectual necessity. Much of this research has already been folded into the work Spirit of the Ages. At some future point it may be expanded into a separate treatise.
3) Research on the actual nature of dialectic. The emphasis is on whether there must be a dialectic more existentially basic than that of Plato and Hegel. Such a dialectic finds that the equal personae of the Christian Trinity provide a more accurate paradigmatic than the logic either of ideas or historical concepts. Aristotelian “substance”, the “modes” of Aquinas, and the Kantian insistence on a “Ding an sich” [thing in itself] turn out to be such a triad both philosophically and historically. This research has been largely folded into the work Spirit of the Ages. At some future point it may be expanded into a separate treatise.
4) A philosophical commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and another one on Plato’s Parmenides. The idea will be to try and mirror the mind of each author without any other agenda – which for one thing means not forgetting that neither Christianity nor Science had yet been invented/discovered. Whether time will permit this effort to be realized is in doubt. Copious notes exist to complete this work.
