Jan Höglund's Blog

Category: Retrospectives

  • Retrospective 2024-45

    This is a retrospective of week 45, 2024 (2024-11-04–2024-11-10). I’ve started reading Sarah Kendzior’s books Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America and They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent this week. I will return to these books next week. I’ve also listened to the…

  • Retrospective 2024-44

    This is a retrospective of week 44, 2024 (2024-10-21–2024-11-03). This week I’ve finished reading Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America by Mary C. Richards and The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner. I wrote the following posts during the week: I think Rudolf Steiner focuses too much on the role of conceptual thinking in…

  • Retrospective 2024-43

    This is a retrospective of week 43, 2024 (2024-10-14–2024-10-20). I’ve continued reading Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America by Mary C. Richards, and started reading The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner this week. Reading Steiner raises a number questions: I’ve also listened to Brian Gray’s leading thoughts from Applied Anthroposophy during the week.…

  • Retrospective 2024-42

    This is a retrospective of week 42, 2024 (2024-10-14–2024-10-20). I’ve seen The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner (part 1 & part 2) this week. Rudolf Steinder said we shouldn’t “accumulate learning” as our own “treasure of knowledge”, but “place this learning in the service of the world”.1 He called Goethe the “Copernicus and the Kepler of…

  • Retrospective 2024-41

    This is a retrospective of week 41, 2024 (2024-10-07–2024-10-13). I’ve taken issue with McGilchrist lately (see the related posts). Some would argue that my interpretations are too literalistic in relation to what McGilchrist really is trying to say. My observation, though, is that McGilchrist often seems to fall back on literalistic interpretations himself—questioning the exact…

  • Retrospective 2024-40

    This is a retrospective of week 40, 2024 (2024-09-30–2024-10-06). This is the fourth week I’ve immersed myself in the work if Iain McGilchrist. Again, some of what McGilchrist says resonates wonderfully with me, some of it doesn’t. I’ve also listen to a conversation with Christopher Bache on the philosophical implications of non-ordinary states of consciousness.…

  • Retrospective 2024-39

    This is a retrospective of week 39, 2024 (2024-09-23–2024-09-29). I’ve continued immersing myself in Iain McGilchrist’s work this week. I was also reminded by Christopher Alexander’s work in two articles by Bonnitta Roy and Or Ettinger, respectively. I will come back to that. I’ve reviewed what McGilchrist writes about lateralization during the week, but came,…

  • Retrospective 2024-38

    This is a retrospective of week 38, 2024 (2024-09-16–2024-09-22). This week I’ve read Rupert Read’s review of The Matter with Things by Iain McGilchrist. Rupert Read writes (italics in the original): For me, the great value of McGilchrist’s work consists in (i) critiquing the existing picture; especially, by way simply of showing that it is…

  • Retrospective 2024-37

    This is a retrospective of week 37, 2024 (2024-09-09–2024-09-15). This week I’ve viewed recordings and read transcripts from the Metaphysics and the Matter with Things: Thinking with Iain McGilchrist conference put on by the Center for Process Studies (CPS) and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in March of 2024. I’ve read McGilchrist’s books…

  • Retrospective 2024-36

    This is a retrospective of week 36, 2024 (2024-09-02–2024-09-08). I’ve read Overcoming the Newtonian paradigm: The unfinished project of theoretical biology from a Schellingian perspective by Arran Gare this week. Arran Gare writes: “The concept of an atom did not emerge from any analysis offered by Newton; rather, he simply presupposed particles without structure and…