John Robert Bagby PhD.
"the dream kept urging me on to do what I was doing - to make music - since philosophy, in my view, is the greatest music and that's just what I was doing." Socrates in Phaedo
Writer, Researcher, Educator, Digital Humanities Developer,
Musician, Composer
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Consciousness, and Cosmology at The California Institute of Integral Studies.
Conducting research on the history of philosophy, focusing on problems related to consciousness, nature, and music. I specialize in ancient Greek philosophy and Phenomenology, especially Henri Bergson. Strong research interests in Baruch Spinoza, 19th-20th Century European Philosophy, Process Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Aesthetics.
One of my favorite ways of thinking about complex concepts or solving problems is to construct diagrams and concept maps. Between 2016-2018 I combined my love of visualizing with my love of Spinoza and created a website that maps the "geometrical order" he used in his famous, even infamous, posthumous magnum opus, the Ethics.
Recent Interviews:
The Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul
Recent Publications:
Ancient Greek ideas of attunement can breathe new life into music Psyche
Aristotle on Intensity: physis, psyche, and energeia Epoché
Analogy and Metaphor in Aristotle’s “Pros Hen” Understanding of Psychical Activity in Timeliness of Analogy
The Nature of Music in Peripatetic Phenomenological Musicology Epoché
forthcoming:
Bergson and the Metaphysical Implications of Calculus Process Studies
Invention in Bergson's Integral Empiricism Process Studies
My recent article on metaphor and analogy in Aristotle's psychology and aesthetics. I provide a phenomenological and process reading of Aristotle's famous pet term ENERGEIA by showing its overlapping meaning with enarges, meaning vividness
My Dissertation on Aristotle's influence on Bergson and the larger impact of Aristotle on French spiritualism
Curriculum Vita:
Education
2021 PhD, Philosophy, Boston College.
2016 MA, Philosophy, Boston College.
2013 BA, Philosophy, Minor in Ancient Greek, Pennsylvania State University.
Publications
Journal Articles:
2024 Ancient Greek ideas of attunement can breathe new life into music Psyche
2024. Invention in Bergson's Integral Empiricism Process Studies (forthcoming)
2024. Aristotle on Intensity: physis, energeia, psyche Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
2024. Bergson and the Metaphysical Implications of Calculus Process Studies (forthcoming)
2023. The Nature of Music in Peripatetic Phenomenological Musicology Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
2022. Analogy and Metaphor in Aristotle’s “Pros Hen” Understanding of Psychical Activity
Timeliness of Analogy
2021. Aristotle and Aristoxenus on Effort Conatus Journal of Philosophy.
2021. Mapping Spinoza’s Ethics Italian Journal of Philosophical Investigation and New Practices of Knowledge.
2020. ‘Reconstructing Bergson’s Critique of Intensive Magnitude’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology.
Translation:
2024. The History of The Idea of Time: Lectures at the Collège de France 1902-3, Henri Bergson. Bloomsbury Press.
2023. Lectures on Psychology at Henri-IV 1892-3. Henri Bergson
2023. Lectures on Plotinus at ENS 1898-9. Henri Bergson
Reviews:
2021. ‘Interpreting Bergson: rubbing up against the grain of our intellectual habits’ Metascience.
Upcoming Courses:
Intro to Phenomenology (2024)
Henri Bergson (2024)
Resent Courses:
Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature (2022)
Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul (2023)
The Metaphysics of Integral Ecology (2023)
Philosophy of Infinity (2023)
History of Western World Views (2023-4)
Intuition in Bergson, Deleuze, and Sri Aurobindo (2024)
Aesthetics and the Study of Consciousness (2024)
Grants
ATIG Technology Grant [$8000] Completed 2018
A digital scholarship tool mapping Spinoza’s Ethics Ethica.bc.edu
Boston College’s Academic Technology Advisory Board
The Exploratory Technology Grant [$1500] Completed 2015
Mapping Spinoza’s Ethics metamaps.cc/maps/1516
Boston College’s Academic Technology Advisory Board