The Evolution of Consciousness and the Cosmological Imagination @ Schumacher College, UK
877 views · Published 14 November 2018 · 2:50 · Indexed 15 October 2026
Channel: Footnotes2Plato · 2018 · Education
https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses/re-enchanting-the-cosmos “The Evolution of Consciousness and the Cosmological Imagination” This weeklong course will trace the evolution of consciousness in the West from ancient Greece through to the present. The goal is twofold: to understand the historical process whereby humanity severed itself from a meaningful universe and to re-ignite the cosmological imagination allowing us to reconnect to the soul of the world. The course begins by exploring Plato’s cosmology and theory of participation and moves on to consider the Scientific Revolution and the Romantic reaction to it. It concludes with a study of several contemporary efforts to re-enchant the cosmos by grounding human consciousness back in the more-than-human creative process responsible for generating it. In addition to Plato, the course draws upon the archetypal astronomy of Johannes Kepler, the Naturphilosophie of Goethe and Schelling, the nature poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the esoteric philosophy of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield, the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and the contemporary participatory theory of Jorge Ferrer.
