David Kolb

My Work

I have been fascinated with changes in large systems: in methods of thought, in architecture and city planning, modes of writing, in values and religion. I see changes from centered hierarchical systems to looser networks for our lives our cities our writings and our selves. How do we analyze and judge these changes? With questions from Plato and Hegel, and clues from Dewey and I explore buildings and suburbs, abstract discussions about unity and individuality, changes in logic and religion. My writings range from high metaphysics to encounters with Japanese gardens, obscure medieval philosophers, web writing, and what’s happening to suburbia today.

Categories

Why Plato Thinks Democracy Leads to Tyranny

I delivered a talk on Plato's worries about democracy. I looked into Plato's reasons, discussed the differences between Athenian democracy and our own, and asked whether we should still be afraid. (Spoiler alert: Yes!)

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Where Do the Architects Live?

Asking whether a designer has a home base or floats freely above history? An argument against both modern a-historical and postmodern ironic conceptions of design.

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Universal and Particular Persons and Places

What kind of cosmopolitan identity is possible in a world of assertive particular identities? This paper explores universalism by means of a contrast with the failed aspirations of modernist architects to create a style that...

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Traversal of Socrates and The Labyrinth

The live Traversal of David Kolb's Socrates in the Labyrinth took place on Friday, October 27, 2017, at in the Electronic Literature Lab. It was performed by the author who journeyed from Eugene, Oregon to...

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The Revenge of the Page

A study of link patterns in web hypertexts, showing how traditional tree-structured single-jump links between long pages, typical of, say, Wikipedia, have eliminated the more complex multi-link path patterns found in early hypertext writing.

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The Paths of Essence

This talk has two parts, the first historical and the second philosophical. I will be suggesting that the philosophical explains the historical. Many readings of Hegel's project claim that wants to show the unique necessary...

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The Particular Logic of Modernity

A friend once said to me that he would be glad to discuss postmodemity if only he knew what modernity meant. There are so many descriptions. We're all modern: Modern society, modern art, modern philosophy,...

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The Particular Logic of Modernity

A discussion of the logical role of particular concepts in Robert Pippin's reading Hegel as a theorist of modernity, with special reference to the question of whether modernity can be surpassed or left behind.

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The Necessities of Hegel’s Logics

I question this idea of a pure presuppositions self-developing sequence of logical categories. This is part of a larger investigation of the inherence of Hegel's thought in historical language. Concerning the necessary self-development of thought,...

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The Logic of the Critical Process

Hegel said that his Philosophy of Right "Philosophy always comes on the scene too late to [give instruction as to what the world ought to be]." (PR Preface). On the other hand, from his early...

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