Spirit or spirits

I have come to some tentative conclusions concerning Spirit and an alternative concept of spirits:

1) There is no such thing as the one and only Spirit.
2) Thus, spirits prevail in nature but not a monolithic Spirit.
3) Nature 'contains' all spirits and cannot be contained by them, or by anything else.
4) These quixotic spirits are not conscious beings.
5)  The 'sum' of spirits does not have a single goal or purpose-in-view.
6) It is possible for spirits to collide, calling-forth creative human responses for resolving conflict.
7) The spirits that interact with human communities are spirit interpreters.
8) Spirits, while finite, work in our lives as if they were infinite, and that is appropriate.
9) Spirits are not bodies of signs to be decoded any more than they are blueprints for my or any other human life.
10)  Spirits make ethical life possible by opening us up to the precarious and needful nature of other lives, giving us a kind of New Being of compassion.

Nature Naturing and the Will

Spinoza uses the Medieval distinction between natura naturans (nature naturing) and natura naturata (nature natured) but does very little with it.  Ralph Waldo Emerson is much bolder in his speculative deployment of this primal distinction.  Schopenhauer briefly refers to the distinction hinting that his notion of the Will might stand for nature naturing.  Finally, Justus Buchler states: "Nature as ordinality is natura naturans; it is the providing, the engendering condition.  Nature as "orders" is natura naturata; it is the provided, the ordinal manifestation, the World's complexes." Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, Second Edition, p.276.
  I define nature naturing as: "Nature perennially creating itself out of itself alone," where the stress is, on sheer potency and generative fecundity.  For nature in its naturing there can be no teleology, first principle or ground, ultimate substrate, ultimate simples, substance (defined as that which cannot be a predicate of anything else), stasis, architectural form, or order.
  These negations leave us very close to Schopenhauer's Will.  The Will, read cosmically, is without order or direction.  It is the original chaos, pure striving without a striving for, without a to which or a from which--just a will to life.  NB It is more accurate to speak of a will to life than of a will to live as the former captures the push and shove of the Will as it objectifies itself under the conditions of space, time and causality.
  For me, Schopenhauer's concept of the Will is the least worst analogue to the concept of nature naturing that we have and it can be deployed in a variety of contexts.

Why I am not a Whiteheadian

To see some of the technical reasons why I am not a process philosopher, please go to my home page:  www.users.drew.edu/rcorring/  Go to the publications section and under articles download the following: An Appraisal and Critique of Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality and Justus Buchler's Metaphysics of Natural Complexes.  The file also contains pictures of me with Charles and Dorthy Hartshorne and with Justus Buchler.

The First International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism

On April 1st and 2nd of 2011 Drew University in Madison, New Jersey hosted the First International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism to explore Professor Corrington's works.  www.drew.edu.theological/faculty-and-research/ecstatic-naturalism .  In addition to the ten papers his play 1,2,3 had a staged reading.  The play brings Peirce's three categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness to life through the characters of Madam Egg, Buster, Weaver, and the Unknown Stranger.  The Second Congress will be held at Drew University on April 6th and 7th, 2012.  There will be a call for paper proposals shortly.