I’ve pasted the transcript below with timestamps (this is autogenerated from YouTube and so has some errors, but it is readable!).
0:34 welcome back to the author series on guess what The Integral Stage. I’m Layman Pascal on behalf of myself, Bruce
0:41 Alderman, and the Unspeakable future of life on Earth. And today we’re taking a deep dive into a new work called
0:46 Crossing the Threshold. This is a philosophical text that highlights the role of imagination along with a new
0:53 appreciation of Nature and the ontology of feeling in an attempt to grow beyond the Kantian gap between subject and
0:59 object with the help of our pals Schelling and Whitehead, if that’s what sounds like fun to you–
1:04 and I will attempt to blend the ultra abstract and the quite silly in a deliberate attempt to make this fun–then
1:09 you’re in luck and I love you because today’s guest is someone I consider a legit philosopher and it’s also the guy
1:15 I’d most like to see fist fight Jeremy Johnson in the parking lot outside a Rowdy Cowboy Bar: it’s Matt Segall, hi Matt
1:22 Great to be with you Layman, I really appreciate that uh intro to the book it’s perfect and uh Jeremy and I have I
1:30 guess not had enough drinks yet to uh actually get in a fist fight but we’ll see what happens yeah I think I think
1:37 maybe you could take him. we’re similarly sized we’re in I think
1:42 we’re in the same weight class um but uh I haven’t seen him throw down yet so I can’t really prejudge the
1:48 situation. The first thing I want to do having read this book is to thank you and and
1:55 not for the nuanced way that you handle Nietzsche which is good and I think reflects some of the conversations you
2:01 and I have explored about the affinity between Nietzsche and Whiteheadian thought the thing I actually want to thank you
2:06 for is a bit more elusive than that uh it seemed to me reading this that it’s partly a a complex confession and
2:13 apologetic for Matt Seagall as shaman that the text takes a careful analysis and cross-reading of European
2:19 philosophers and uses that to justify the fact that you’re focused on etheric imagination inversions the subtle
2:27 perceptual possibilities of the senses embodiment within and as vegetal ecology
2:32 descending currents of spiritual energy and the ways in which god-like entities holds sway at a cosmic level over
2:39 Reality permeated by quasi-animistic communicative subjectivities and Powers
2:44 but for me that’s actually not just a Matt Seagall confession it’s also
2:49 something that’s needed by the broader emerging community of shamans both ancient and new the intellectual labor
2:56 that you’ve undertaken I think works to secure and encourage the validity of those modes of being from out of a
3:02 well-reasoned analysis of the of the dead white European philosophers and I think that’s that’s part of what we need
3:09 in order to legitimize this kind of Enterprise and these kinds of people in the Contemporary world so for that I
3:16 thank you. You’re very welcome and I thank you for for seeing me or and hearing me because
3:23 that’s exactly that’s exactly right I think um I wanted to look at my own lineage
3:30 and inheritance and uh obviously I’ve been influenced by um other thinkers and
3:38 practitioners who aren’t just dead white guys there’s a few living white guys and gals that I cite as well in this book
3:45 but it’s mostly dead white guys that I’m engaged in an exegesis and application
3:50 of but you know for me to make sense of my own
3:56 perspective on reality I think I really did need to go deep into that particular
4:01 lineage and show that there are resources here uh to do the sort of spiritual and embodied
4:09 transformative work that many people who are you know white guys like myself
4:15 might feel like they have to look elsewhere for and again there’s uh riches to be to be found in so many
4:23 different lineages and traditions but you know I’ve I’ve found it uh right at
4:29 home so thanks for for noticing that and and I hope it’s a fresh reading of these
4:34 thinkers there’s no doubt lots of ink has been spilled on Kant and Nietzsche and Schelling though most of it in German so
4:42 this is you know bringing him more into the English language uh and Whitehead is we’re still waiting I think we’re in the
4:48 midst of a Whitehead Renaissance and maybe much more ink or whatever we use to write in the rest of the 21st century
4:54 uh will be devoted to Whitehead we’ll see okay so there are these people who have
5:00 proposed a transcendental approach to reality and these people are pointing at a highly valuable
5:06 mode of transcendental freedom and transcendental knowledge anchored in a sense of a fundamental split between
5:11 mind and body between humanity and nature and you’re proposing in contrast
5:16 a descendental approach that situates philosophy within an organismic ecological and imaginal context so I
5:23 guess the obvious question is why do you hate trans people
5:29 well in a way um we all have to become trans
5:35 in the sense that we’re throwing off an artificial uh not just understanding
5:43 an artificial habitus like an artificial way of experiencing ourselves
5:51 that you could say is culturally constructed but the whole point of you know the methodology of this book is
5:57 that culture and nature are so thoroughly entangled with each other that you have to be crazy to think you
6:04 could Purify one side or the other of that dichotomy and so yeah the descendental is an
6:10 attempt to recover all that had been obscured repressed
6:17 and um and buried in the rationalistic but
6:22 even also the the modern empiricist approach um which though you know empiricists
6:28 would say oh we’re just really trying to pay attention to what the senses uh reveal to us the information the data
6:34 provided to the senses and so you could think that that’s embodied but it turns out that this construal of sense
6:41 experience as solely about uh sort of
6:47 um qualia delivered by the external world as a sort of just like uh
6:54 assemblage of disconnected parts uh it was kind of the way that Hume would talk
6:59 about sense impressions right um that this is a really um abstract way of construing our
7:08 perceptual uh embeddedness in in the surrounding world and so um empiricists
7:14 just as much as rationalists in the modern Western philosophical tradition and I mean we could go back to the
7:20 Ancients as well though um I don’t think they’re quite as disembodied as the modern Western
7:27 philosophers from Descartes through Hume and Kant and so on and so by by
7:33 inverting this transcendental uh maneuver uh where you know things sort
7:38 of culminate in Kant with his his transcendental approach to to philosophy that
7:45 there are there are certain cracks in the Kantian edifice that I try to sneak through here particularly his treatment
7:51 of um his thesis or or perception in his transcendental aesthetic but the
7:58 descendental approach is to say hey wait a minute perception this might sound obvious is
8:03 an embodied process and the body is not limited by the skin boundary
8:09 um if we’re to take a strictly scientific and even fully materialistic if you want
8:15 approach to that question what is the body it’s the entirety of the universe in
8:20 space and time right and so I would think
8:25 once you’ve understood that and we you know we can go more into why I would make the claim
8:31 that our our actual body is the entirety of cosmogenesis um
8:37 then perception you know the the limits of perception
8:42 becomes that question becomes totally reconfigured and
8:48 what etheric imagination means is really an effort that I fully admit is nascent
8:54 and remains to be developed and just I haven’t fully explored the potential of etheric imagination in this book
9:01 whatsoever I’m more just saying hey this is possible for us to perceive as Cosmic
9:08 beings right that our capacity to experience is not limited to just the
9:14 nervous system that we think ends at the tip of our fingers right it
9:19 it penetrates far deeper into space and time so that’s basically what I’m going
9:25 for with this idea of descendental philosophy yeah yeah we like it it’s much tidier than my
9:32 terms ciscendental philosophy
9:37 um before we dive a little bit more into Theory there are some I want to call them linguistic housekeeping things that
9:43 came up for me during the book uh partly because I listened to it read by the balaboka software how do you
9:51 pronounce the word which means of or pertaining to the work of Schelling
9:56 uh I would say Schellingian yeah okay okay how did it how did it say
10:03 that in your software it did it’s shilingian is what it came I mean that’s a little more elegant actually yeah I
10:10 kind of like Celine I might start using that okay okay second linguistic housekeeping
10:16 question why on Earth would someone write the word categoreal instead of categorical
10:23 really good question Whitehead doesn’t tell us why he calls it in Process and Reality his categoreal scheme but
10:31 um I think I suggest in this book somewhere that um he the difference between uh categorical
10:38 and categoreal I think has something to do with the way that Whitehead’s trying to uh re-embed mind and its categories
10:47 in real nature right um
10:52 categories are ideal, Whitehead’s categories are real right what does that
10:58 mean well one thing that’s different about how uh Whitehead discusses
11:03 um the role of of categories is that uh well first of all new ones are being
11:09 created all the time for Kant no they’re just this this fixed
11:14 table of categories um I mean there’s four big ones and then 12 minor ones if you unfold them each
11:21 dialectically uh and that’s it there’s just that table of categories once and
11:27 for all to interpret and determine all of our experience nothing about experience is ever going to lead us to
11:33 need to change or update these content categories. it’s very different for Whitehead he does have his table of
11:39 categories uh things like actual entities and eternal objects and so on but one of his
11:45 categories is um what he calls them contrasts and every occasion of experience is
11:52 achieving realizing new contrasts and so he says about this category of contrasts
11:58 um there are indefinitely many new categories that would be brought forth
12:04 as a result of contrasts achieved aesthetically in any given moment of
12:09 experience right and so categories are proliferating spilling out of this text Process and Reality
12:16 um even after you finished reading it he would Whitehead would say keep going you know and so categoreal I think is his
12:22 way of suggesting that uh yeah categories are part of and produced by
12:27 encounters with the real. Nice distinction thank you
12:35 um how would you how do you summarize what Kant is best known for and and
12:40 relative to that where do you think his thought was starting to go at the end of his life
12:47 well he lived uh long enough to go through at least three phases I’m not a
12:53 Kant scholar necessarily but I think I can detect three phases I mean his
12:58 earlier phase his pre-critical phase we could say he was very interested in
13:05 uh cosmology and um he wrote this great text uh Universal
13:11 Natural History and Theory of the Heavens in 1755 which is
13:17 um pretty close to a kind of evolutionary cosmology and he’s he’s
13:24 really in that text he has to do a lot of work to say to the theologians like look look I’m not
13:30 saying God’s not real I’m just saying maybe God’s method of creation is a little different than you’ve been
13:36 suggesting so far uh maybe God’s so perfect and Powerful that God created
13:43 um mechanistic rules for dead matter and
13:48 set it in motion and all by itself it gave rise to all of these
13:53 um spinning orbs and stars and creatures like us and so he goes through you know
13:59 drawing a lot on on Newton uh Newton’s understanding of universal gravitation to say hey all I need is
14:05 this law and maybe one or two others and I can give you the entirety of of what we observe
14:12 um and he even was one of the earliest to suggest this might seem obvious to us nowadays but in
14:18 seeing the Milky Way right this band of stars that runs across the sky sort of
14:24 crisscrossing with the ecliptic of you know or the Sun and the Moon and the planets uh move through
14:31 um this guy he suggested that this might be a
14:37 Galaxy he didn’t use the term Galaxy yet but there were astronomers had known about
14:42 um what they called uh nebulae at the time which were these little fuzzy disc shaped things in the sky and they’re
14:49 like what is that um and Kant was like where inside of one of those and there’s lots more of these
14:57 milky ways so he used Milky Way in the plural like to refer to the fact that the universe is pretty vast in other words
15:03 there are these huge star systems everywhere um and so you know he’s he was quite a
15:10 talented um insightful imaginative natural scientist and cosmologist right but then
15:18 he reads David Hume who had been freshly translated into
15:23 um into English or sorry into German um not long before and he says famously
15:30 that he was awakened from his dogmatic slumber and what he means by that is con
15:37 um is that Kant had been assuming this sort of naive realism that’s
15:43 baked into the Newtonian perspective on nature that we can sort of look out there and see
15:49 causation and necessary connection between the bodies that whose motion
15:54 we’re measuring right and David Hume the empiricists did a uh just
16:00 you know really precise analysis of his his sensory experience and said look when when that billiard ball hits the
16:06 other billiard ball I don’t see causation I don’t see necessity in the connection uh which unfolds as forces
16:15 transferred from one ball to the other all that I see is uh what he he called
16:20 constant conjunction and So based on my past experience he said yeah it seems like this ball will do that when it hits
16:27 that ball but uh that’s not a law I have no basis for the formation of laws which
16:32 would be necessary and Universal and Kant took this in and said yeah you know
16:38 what you’re right and he set to work developing what became called critical or transcendental philosophy and in
16:45 order to respond to Hume’s criticism which it might not be immediately apparent but for Kant this like
16:53 um this this Insight of Humes that causality is is not necessary connection
16:59 for Kant was potentially going to topple the entirety of Natural Science
17:05 and so Kant’s maneuver into this transcendental form of philosophy is basically to say
17:12 well Hume um you’ve taken space and time for granted as just sort of out there and
17:20 that you know you come to know about space and time through your experience but actually space and time are these a priori
17:26 structures they precede our experience and provide for the possibility of our
17:32 experience of any objects and similarly causality is not something we learn about through experience it’s it’s this
17:40 necessary structure uh that’s pre-installed in our mind
17:47 which provides for the very possibility of any experience at all if we didn’t have this category of causality
17:54 um we could make sense of our perceptions and so transcendental maneuver is basically to say that
18:02 the subject doesn’t conform to objects in its environment the objects have to conform to the subject’s way of sensing
18:09 and knowing those objects right so we have space and time as what he called
18:15 forms of our intuition and we have um the categories I spoke of earlier as
18:20 the the concepts that we that we use to determine to organize uh to
18:28 um to logically relate uh what comes to us through our sensory perceptions that
18:33 are pre-formed by space and time and so in this way
18:38 um Kant’s able to re-establish The Logical foundations
18:44 and the the metaphysical possibility of science but the problem is after this Kantian move
18:50 scientific knowledge of nature is merely apparent merely phenomenal right we know
18:58 nature as it appears to us in this lawful way that Newton and other mathematical physicists were describing
19:05 what nature is in itself Kant said we can’t know
19:11 he said that this realm of things in themselves or noumena as opposed to the phenomenal
19:18 realm uh we could mark with a mere X like an algebraic symbol as a
19:24 placeholder just to say we know that it exists but we know absolutely nothing about what it is
19:31 and the problem though for Kant was that um he contradicts himself on this point because he says that this X this this
19:40 noumenal realm of things in themselves beyond the phenomenal or apparent uh
19:45 domain that science can know things about he says it causes our sensory experience now
19:52 it might not be immediately obvious why this is a contradiction but the category of causality is only supposed to apply
19:57 to the phenomenal realm in Kant’s scheme but here he is saying uh that the numeral realm is causing
20:04 our sense experience and that’s uh one of those cracks in the Kantian edifice and I’m not the first to
20:10 notice it Kantians might say oh well that’s not really what he means and they try to
20:17 um you know make amends for this apparent contradiction but
20:22 the German idealists who followed in Kant’s wake, Fichte foremost among them really made a big deal about this this
20:29 contradiction and it broke open Kant’s critical philosophy into a far more speculative form of idealism that
20:36 followed in his wake and Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel um were all the
20:43 explorers of the domain which opened through this crack right and um I I
20:49 chose Schelling in particular to build on uh for specific reasons I mean they’re
20:55 all called German idealists but I would say that uh Fichte over emphasizes the role of the
21:01 ego and Hegel over emphasizes the role of abstract
21:08 Concepts and Schelling was known for his natural philosophy which uh
21:16 he carries forward this this Kantian evolutionary perspective but he does so
21:22 in a way that doesn’t evacuate nature of mind right but that sees nature as
21:29 to varying degrees ensouled and intelligent and that whatever evolution
21:36 is is the in a way the potentization of Nature and that the human form is the
21:43 flowering of this this process of unfolding potencies through different stages of
21:50 self-organization right and so um Schelling is a precursor to Whitehead in
21:55 the sense that he’s he’s going through the Kantian threshold
22:00 like taking this new transcendental method very seriously but then seeing how in Kant’s own philosophy certain
22:08 cracks open up and that we need to go further than Kant right we can’t go back before Kant
22:14 but we need to go further than Kant something I find uh
22:20 almost Charming about the way in which the attempt to say we don’t know
22:26 anything about the objective World actually forces us to presume a few
22:31 things about the objective world so that we’re never in a position where we don’t think we know something about it that’s
22:39 kind of a it gives me joy to think of that fact but um can’t whatever it is seems to me
22:47 was extremely empowering for people because he sort of asks us to undertake a difficult skill building task which is
22:55 to pause at this threshold of knowing and not assume that our obvious types of cognition and perception are necessarily
23:02 evidence of the nature of the world beyond our minds there’s an extraordinary epistemic humility and a
23:08 beautiful discipline to that which has been very productive for modern science
23:13 but it also seems like it represents or contributed to a grave doubt maybe even
23:18 a depression about the human capacity to see and touch the world
23:24 um that that’s maybe one of the generators of the meaning crisis so to speak but what I think I’m hearing lately what
23:30 I’m hearing in your book what I’m hearing in my conversations with John Vervaeke is what I would describe as a
23:36 new kind of optimism uh complex intellectual renewal of the confidence that there really is a reality and we
23:44 really can’t engage with it because we’re part of it and that our inner knowings are reflective of the structure
23:50 in which we are embedded rather than being some weird solipsistic anthropocentric Twilight Zone isolated
23:56 from the rest of reality do you do you sense that there’s a new confidence about knowing among Leading Edge
24:02 thinkers today absolutely um
24:08 you know there was a lot of um
24:13 in a sense is doing in a German way what the French were doing in a in a in a
24:19 French way with the political revolution which had occurred uh 1789
24:24 um Kant is liberating Philosophy from certain
24:31 um dogmatic forms of knowing which were too quick to project
24:37 our own habits and our own um uh culturally inherited modes of
24:44 understanding onto the real and say well this is just how it is because that’s how my dad told me it is and that’s how
24:49 his dad told him it was and Kant didn’t actually see himself as
24:55 um building a wall between um the human mind and reality he wasn’t
25:01 trying to say you we just can’t do metaphysics he was trying to inaugurate a new method of metaphysics that would
25:08 be scientific um and so
25:13 he didn’t intend to lead to this cynical form of postmodern uh
25:21 pessimism about what we can know and what’s real and the reduction of all knowledge claims to uh
25:28 the imposition of some power structure or what have you but that’s that’s that’s what the effect
25:34 has largely been and so I do think yeah of late that um
25:41 various thought movements are saying um no we can know the real but not in
25:48 the way that we thought one of the things that happens in the in
25:53 the the wake of Kant and Fichte who I who I brought up is
26:00 um that uh you know this dichotomy that’s in Kant between practical philosophy and theoretical philosophies
26:07 it’s important to understand theoretical knowledge would be more of this sort of
26:12 passive observation of what’s going on practical philosophy is more about what we do in the world
26:19 um our action and one of the ways to interpret what
26:24 Kant did and Fichte really makes this quite quite plain uh is the theoretical
26:30 philosophy becomes um somewhat derivative of practical philosophy and so in other words
26:38 um knowledge is a constructive act it’s a it’s something we do right it’s not
26:43 just something we have it’s something we bring about and so for Fichte for us to know nature
26:52 recognizing kant’s whole project to show how nature as it appears to us is a kind
26:57 of construction of our mind uh Fichte said well to get over this boundary between the realm of phenomena
27:04 how things appear to us and what’s real um we’re not going to do it just by contemplating appearances we’re going to
27:12 actually have to actively transform nature into mind
27:18 right and there’s some ways in which the techno-industrial
27:23 um remaking of the planet that has accelerated geologists refer to
27:30 it as the anthropocene and whatnot um this discourse is widespread today you could see it as the Fichtean approach
27:37 having kind of won out right the human being has gone about uh transforming the earth into
27:45 something artificial right and so it’s as if we’ve stamped our freedom onto the world and
27:51 and and and uh claimed ownership over it and and in so doing we’ve known it but
27:56 we’ve known it in a very instrumental way what what Schelling does and Schelling was
28:04 a student not only of Kant’s but of Fichte’s is he he points out the way and he says this
28:10 that all modern philosophy lacks a living ground because real nature is not
28:15 available to it right and it became modern philosophy became so obsessed
28:20 with the the freedom and the power of the Mind uh that it neglected the life of of
28:28 Nature and which is its own life ultimately and so mind became kind of ossified
28:36 um and what Schelling does is is inverts this
28:41 kantian uh picture not to deny our freedom not to deny the
28:47 power of the mind but to say instead of um what must the mind be such that
28:52 nature can appear to us in the way that it does which is the kantian and the Fichtean question
28:57 Schelling says well what must nature be such that mind could have emerged from
29:04 it such that our consciousness could have emerged from it in this evolutionary process
29:10 and this this reconfigures the whole uh philosophical Arena and lets us lets us
29:16 play a very different game whereby we recognize
29:22 um that you know nature is this uh living process and indeed for schelling a
29:28 Divine process and that rather than imagining um God as uh or the the ultimate being
29:37 as Kant did as a kind of idea of reason that we can’t know but
29:43 that we’re justified in believing in for different moral reasons um and theoretical reasons
29:49 um for schelling God rather than just an ideal becomes something real that’s actually present
29:57 in our experience all the time we just either um
30:02 well it’s so terrifying and and awesome in in the sense of terrifying that
30:08 our habit is to is to cover that perception of the Divine ground over
30:16 um but schelling says no no um we need to dive into that and recognize that um
30:23 you know God’s not an old man in the sky God is a living process that we are
30:31 um participants Within finite participants within though um were only finite because we’re caught
30:40 up in a process that from God’s perspective is eternal but for us is is not
30:45 um right for us um there appears to be time and space uh and and I don’t deny that time and
30:52 space are appearances in in my book um I rather suggest that
30:59 um time and space rather than being forms of intuition that human Minds come
31:04 pre-installed with, time and space are more like um the fabric of relationship that binds
31:11 All Creatures together right uh and so who am I in that process
31:19 I become a a Nexus of relations and while relatively speaking you know I
31:26 am me and you are you, we’re constantly passing into and out of one another through space and time
31:33 and so space and time become the tissue of our shared organismic
31:39 feeling as one one body and and in fact
31:45 ultimately that is God’s body and The evolutionary process Cosmic evolution is the Incarnation of of this of this deity
31:54 and um you know schelling allows us to think
31:59 thoughts like this but it’s it’s it’s more an invitation to feel
32:04 this as a reality right and so there’s a there’s a deep spiritual practice in here and I think
32:12 the optimistic uh the upside of all of this is that um human life has purpose
32:19 and meaning again uh we have a role to play in
32:24 furthering the Incarnation of God if you want and what that what that what that means I
32:33 think is um I would hope open to a plurality of of different
32:39 um approaches but for me you know it means continuing the philosophical quest to
32:47 to understand but to recognize that we will never have knowledge we will just continue to learn
32:54 um so you could say descendental philosophy rather than as Kant had it with
33:01transcendental philosophy where it was about the conditions of knowledge the the
33:07 categorical conditions that make knowledge possible, descendental philosophy is more about the conditions
33:13 of learning, what makes learning possible right and this is the the perceptual
33:18 dimension of descendental philosophy but it’s also the the aesthetic Dimension
33:23 and it’s the spiritual Dimension because in effect God is learning through us
33:30 and you know it it I think opens life up again to be an adventure that really
33:35 matters it has ultimate significance uh what we do what we think what we feel
33:41 because we’re contributing to the growth of this this organism that we ourselves within
33:48 and so yeah I hope it’s I hope people find it inspiring and A Renewed source of
33:54 purpose and meaning in a world in a culture that in so many ways tells us
33:59 that um all that matters are uh material sources of of pleasure
34:07 money sex power Etc um nothing wrong with those things but
34:13 uh there’s a there’s a larger event unfolding and and we’re participants in that
34:20 I’m hearing you say words like us and we a lot and when I was reading the first
34:26 half of the book especially which I mostly listen to while shoveling snow in the backyard
34:32 one of the thoughts that kept coming up for me is oh Matt’s trying to introduce
34:37 intersubjectivity where Kant’s just focused on subjectivity does that sound reasonable yes
34:43 mm-hmm yes now one other thing that came up for me is
34:50 so effective Schelling Hegel are standing before Kant and trying to figure out Pathways that move on from the event of
34:58 his thoughts where is Schopenhauer in all of this because he doesn’t seem to be mentioned
35:03 in the volume yeah he’s not you know I’ve I’ve read The World as
35:09 Will and Representation and when I read it I was myself I was
35:15 going around calling myself a Buddhist for all the wrong reasons
35:20 um and I think Schopenhauer is he was a troubled soul and that he
35:26 was um a pessimist and also he was brilliant and his challenge to
35:34 um all of these fancy idealist professors and he didn’t like any I mean he especially hated Hegel he was he was
35:41 more uh amenable to Kant and in fact you know he kind of takes Kant and reads uh
35:48 through Buddhism and gives a one of the earliest sort of
35:53 um Western inflections of Buddhism it’s not Buddhism it’s it’s a western inflection
36:00 just like Alan Watts is not really Buddhism not that there’s anything wrong I mean not really Buddhism Buddhism can
36:07 be whatever it wants to be wherever uh and whenever it wants to be it’s a living tradition right and
36:14 I can’t really answer why Schopenhauer is not in this text other than to say
36:19 um I went with Nietzsche instead uh and I think Nietzsche might be a
36:26 slightly more well way more optimistic thinker in the sense that you know for
36:31 Schopenhauer um all of reality is just this sort of
36:38 accumulation of of will or desire and there’s
36:45 nothing we can do except
36:50 you know release ourselves from the striving to know because there’s nothing to know and it it it’s it ends in a kind
36:57of nihilism and there I’m sure people who would defend Schopenhauer from from this but
37:03 uh I preferred to think with Nietzsche just because he is very clearly striving
37:09 for a post nihilist um relationship to the real
37:15 and that’s what I’m striving for too and so I didn’t mean to slight
37:20 Schopenhaur again I think he’s brilliant it just um he wasn’t uh a thinking partner that I
37:26 wanted to dance with in this particular round
37:34 Matt what is Imagination
37:41 well most people would say um just to start with the sort of common definition that it’s this
37:48 faculty or this power that that we have to um take sensory Impressions that we’ve
37:58 that we’ve gathered up from past experience and um rearrange them we can like take this
38:07 color of red that we really like and um you know sort of detach it from the
38:12 stop signs that usually display it to us and we can in our imagination paste it
38:19 onto a beautiful balloon uh and you know so imagination
38:25 can be can be thought of in this sort of really deflated way as as just uh
38:30 the capacity to um break down sense perceptions and
38:36 rearrange them into um Fantastical objects in our Mind’s Eye
38:42 that is a capacity that we have but I would I
38:48 would agree with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and and say that that’s not the full
38:53 extent of our imaginative capacity Coleridge would call what I’ve just described is fancy
39:01 and he would say that imagination as opposed to fancy is actually a creative
39:06 power it’s not just a merely reproductive power in other words it’s reproducing what we’ve
39:12 already experienced but more than that thinkers like Coleridge and here he’s cribbing
39:18 schelling actually literally um Coleridge would translate schelling from German
39:24 into English and uh pass it off as his own schelling later forgave Coleridge for
39:30 this just because he really appreciated the uh that he’d been understood by an English person
39:36 but Coleridge would say that at the in the depths of our imagination our
39:42 creative imagination we’re actually participating in a cosmic power and indeed a divine power so imagination in
39:49 this higher sense functions as a kind of portal through which we come into
39:55 contact with and participate in creation like uh Divine creation Cosmic creation
40:03 cosmogenesis uh if you want and so out of imagination
40:09 pours the future forms that that the world can and and and will take
40:16 and so it’s not merely reproductive right it’s productive it’s creative
40:23 um and it’s it’s the engine of evolution and so I I want to view imagination not
40:30 just as a faculty of the human mind uh but as the ground of existence in a
40:37 sense and we um partake of this ground of existence
40:43 this this Divine or Cosmic imagination to varying extents I think we can
40:48 cultivate uh our our connection uh to this to this ground of existence it’s
40:54 not like uh we all have um immediate access to its most profound
41:00 depths but there’s nothing to prevent us from going all the way to the creative
41:05 core by cultivating this imaginative capacity right and so
41:12 it is a uh it rather than thinking of it as fantasy that it disconnects us from
41:17 reality I think it’s only through imagination that we could contact the real
41:26 so later in this book you take a deep dive into these considerations of a like
41:33 the vegetal and organismic nature of reality and cognition and
41:39 what kept coming up for me personally was you know whether or not there’s a
41:45 like a normative Dimension to that and what do I mean like Heidegger famously
41:50 said we’re the beings who’s being is in question right we’re available to our own inquiry about our nature because we
41:55 have a certain freedom from what we see as the roles and constraints of other species
42:01 but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re at Liberty to do whatever we want like if our subjectivity has evolved within a
42:08 much older biospheric domain of subjectivity which in turn evolves within and mediates the potential
42:15 sensitive intelligence of the solar system then our inner life might have a function within those systems just as
42:22 our organs have a functions within our bodies the real agency might reside in
42:27 in the voluntary choice to fulfill a kind of ecological function rather than
42:32 to deviate from it and I’m curious how that lands with you do you suspect our species has a has like a unique role or
42:40 normative function within the ecosystem that we might or might not be successfully fulfilling
42:46 yeah yeah absolutely um I mean I I I’m not sure if this is part
42:53 of your question also but um you know that the human has a different role than animals and a
43:00 different role than plants and so why am I saying that that human imagination is
43:05 plant-like and what’s going on there
43:12 and then I’ll get back to the responsibility that I think human beings have to wake up to their ecological
43:17 function as it were so in the Timaeus which is Plato’s
43:24 cosmological dialogue uh he describes the human being as an upside down plant
43:30 um because just like plants most plants we we grow vertically whereas animals are horizontal right and so but we’re
43:37 inverted so um Our Roots uh our our heads are um in the sky
43:46 right and our branches our limbs grow down to the Earth and I think what Plato was suggesting
43:54 here is that um we are nourished by Divine ideas right
44:00 and we are um growing into the Earth and that we do
44:05 have a mission on the earth and so Plato is often read as a kind of Two World dualist who thought we would we should
44:11 escape from our bodies into the purity of of the Soul I think that’s a
44:17 misreading of of Plato uh all due respect to Nietzsche and many others who have read Plato in this way
44:23 I think this apparent dualism in Plato’s thought is more of a it serves a pedagogical
44:29 purpose um he’s trying to guide us Across the Threshold because until we’ve crossed
44:35 the threshold as it were we might think that we might have the wrong idea about what bodies are
44:40 thinking Plato wants to disconnect us from our body he wants to say uh that bodies
44:45 are incarnate ideas right so in any event we’re inverted
44:51 plants right okay but what is this what does this mean practically speaking uh for us as human beings and what I how I
44:58 would read this is it’s it’s an invitation to think about knowledge uh
45:04 differently than we have been prone to in the modern period which is as I said earlier kind
45:10 of instrumentalist approach to knowledge where it’s more about technologically
45:15 manipulating some we say we know something when we can reverse engineer it
45:20 um and build one right well I know we know what life is when we can build an organism
45:27 um and as opposed to the sort of instrumentalists understanding of of
45:33 knowledge Plato is is suggesting that we think of ourselves as um as plants and plants unlike animals
45:41 aren’t as good at um manipulating their environment uh they’re more they communicate uh with
45:48 their environment in in deep and Rich ways but if we were to plant the human being and
45:54 recognize that um yeah of course we’re mobile it makes us different from Plants but uh that
46:00 Mobility might be distracting us from this more rooted sense of of knowing whereby
46:07 we’re always already connected with that which we are attempting to know we don’t need to go get it over there
46:12 um we don’t need to manipulate something in order to turn it into knowledge um that in some sense
46:19 um we’re always already at the center of things everywhere we go
46:24 and this you know Whitehead’s understanding of concrescence and what an actual occasion of experience very much
46:29 speaks to this sense of um always being at the still center of a
46:35 universe which is nonetheless in constant process but then you know in terms of there’s more I could say about the whole
46:42 vegetable ontology that is at work in the book but I want to speak to the other part of
46:49 your question which is like the ecological function of the human I think
46:55 there’s a lot of there’s a tendency in contemporary environmental philosophy and
47:01 environmental ethics to really um rail against anthropocentrism
47:06 uh and rightly so I think there’s a certain kind of anthropocentrism that puts
47:12 a diminished sense of what the human being is at the center of everything as
47:17 though we’re the apex predator and so um all of the Earth’s resources and all of the Earth’s organisms should be
47:24 harvested for our pleasure that form of anthropocentrism does need
47:32 to be um challenged but I think there’s a a higher sense in which if that the human
47:39 being is is the consciousness of the Earth and that unless we
47:47 become responsible for the power that we have
47:53 and unless we live up to our potential as participants in Cosmic imagination
48:00 what makes the human unique I would say is that we can participate with full consciousness
48:08 because we have freely decided to whereas there’s no
48:15 freedom in the behavior of other organisms I’m not saying they’re not all
48:21 creative and wonderful uh and capable of novelty I think freedom is something
48:26 different um it’s in human beings that freedom and the capacity to love
48:33 become possible and unless we recognize this unique difference about the human being and
48:39 live up to this higher calling then we’ll continue to think of ourselves as just another animal
48:45 and if we’re just another animal then yeah we’re the apex predator this Earth belongs to us and we’re going to do whatever we want with it
48:51 but if if we’re able to become conscious of our power
48:57 and freely choose to be beings of love then
49:03 I think the Earth Community would would welcome our presence
49:11 and um this this is a you know a nuanced point
49:16 right because we’re de-centering a less developed understanding of what the human being is
49:22 absolutely but we’re re-centering our spiritual uh potential and saying that you know we
49:29 really do need to wake up and take responsibility for who and what we are the Earth actually wants and needs us to
49:36 do that and and stop with this sort of cynical like oh well everything would be
49:41 better if human beings just weren’t here because I don’t think that’s true
49:47 so yeah in an oversimplified way
49:54 if you if you take Kant and you add in schelling and relativity Theory and quantum mechanics then maybe get
50:01 something like Whitehead what does Deleuze bring in that isn’t
50:06 already in Whitehead so you know Whitehead is in so many ways
50:14 kind of a Victorian in his uh his the mood that comes through in
50:22 his writing whereas uh Deleuze is a bit of a Chaos Agent um
50:28 and I if Kant is the guardian of the threshold of
50:36 sort of representing modern philosophy Deleuze is the guardian of the threshold representing post-modern philosophy and
50:42 I think I’m really trying to not only go through kantian the kantian critical phase of
50:50 philosophy but also to go through the the post-modern phase of the development of philosophy and so it’s the same
50:57 reason I think with Nietzsche’s um at play when I think with Deleuze and
51:03 the benefit of Deleuze is that he himself inherited and digested both
51:10 schelling and Whitehead’s philosophies and I I treat him
51:17 um as a someone to think with because of just how damn creative he is and you know in
51:23 this text as someone who’s not a mathematician who’s not a physicist I’m
51:28 nonetheless trying to engage with um some of the the concepts at play in
51:36 um relativity quantum theory and the development of non-euclidean geometries
51:41 which allow us to gain a foothold in our scientific study of space and time and
51:47 whatnot and Deleuze has this wonderful notion that you know philosophy in some senses is a kind of science fiction
51:53 writing um and that you know Deleuze would engage with the history of mathematics and uh
52:00 with different scientific Concepts and um he had deep understanding of these
52:06 scientific Concepts but he’s trying to not and he’s not just using them as metaphors but he’s trying to get at the
52:13 um the metaphysical underbelly of these Concepts from physical science and I’m
52:21 trying to do something similar and so I couldn’t help um but um appropriate his methodology here right I
52:28 say in the beginning of the book that I’m engaged in a kind of Science Fiction and he also says that philosophy is a is
52:34 like a kind of detective novel which similarly you know in my attempt
52:40 to to follow the way that imagination has been treated and mistreated
52:46 um by modern philosophers uh it’s a I refer to it as a an attempt to
52:53 to to understand this murder mystery of imagicide uh why why did modern
53:00 philosophers feel the need to so violently restrain this this creative
53:06 power right and so um de loses is hip to all these things and so I couldn’t help
53:11 but um um emulate his method on the other hand
53:16 Deleuze is also um more prone to a kind of atheism or
53:23 pantheism uh I mean he’s he’s like Spinoza in that sense that
53:29 um you know even though Spinoza was clearly a pantheist he would often get called an atheist because
53:35 uh God and nature are the same thing right and I I try to think with and and
53:42 through but beyond Deleuze also because rather than an atheism or pantheism
53:48 um I really do try to articulate uh panentheism which is just a you know
53:53 higher Octave of the um the dialectical process here um but I I want to be able to without
54:01 embarrassment you know use the G word uh and and think about liturgy and ritual
54:06 uh and prayer and all these things that get packaged in in the suitcase of religion
54:13 and say hey this is all still relevant and to Deleuze or maybe more so Deleuzeans
54:19 nowadays might scoff at that whole project um so as much as I do draw upon him I
54:27 also try to do something a little bit differently than he might well speaking of Science Fiction
54:33 I know Roger Penrose has this really intriguing notion that like times definition in the physical Universe
54:39 ceases to apply under certain special entropy conditions at which point the universe can’t tell the beginning from
54:46 the end of time and it starts again with maybe some slight residual effects
54:51 on The Descendant universe and a bit like that you have this para
54:57 whiteheadian notion of different world-souls that might hold sway over different Cosmic epochs in which the
55:04 community of onological beings invents their common intelligence and common
55:10 divinized potential differently is that right
55:15 yes and yes so this is um actually a an amendment or a creative extension of
55:25 Whitehead’s idea of um what he calls Cosmic epochs
55:30 but in Whitehead’s philosophy so far as I can tell the way it’s written
55:35 different Cosmic epochs uh or sort of evolutionary phases of creation and
55:41 destruction where a totally new form of order displaces the old form of order so
55:48 it’s as if you’re in a different Universe um Whitehead would still say that God
55:53 the primordial nature of God has remains unchanged throughout this process of
55:59 different Cosmic epochs arising and and perishing and because I’m
56:07 in dialogue with you know like Deleuze and Nietzsche I wanted I needed to make some concessions somewhere about
56:14 Whitehead’s Theology and so I I play with this idea that okay maybe God does die
56:22 uh as each Cosmic Epoch or phase of cosmic order reaches its Climax and and
56:28 then begins to wither away God dies with it but um God is also reborn as this you know
56:36 Penrose refers to it as the um cyclic cosmology that there is this there are cycles of
56:42 death and rebirth and in a Dionysian way God’s going through this and is it many
56:48 gods or is it a lineage of Gods kind of God family is there kinship
56:54 some inheritance preserved as we move from one Cosmic Epoch to the next and I think
57:00 you know embedded within one of these Cosmic epochs such as we are there’s so
57:06 much Beauty and Order there seems to be something happening here and for all of that to just have
57:12 emerged from scratch at the Big Bang uh seems rather unlikely to me and so
57:20 I’m speculating in in this book that something like what Penrose is describing is going on
57:26 um Lee Smolin has a similar idea about black holes giving birth to new
57:32 universes when there’s a kind of evolutionary process whereby organizational
57:37 tricks that work in one Universe are preserved and advanced upon in the next universe and you know so I’m just trying
57:43 to expand a kind of evolutionary thinking to the cosmos as a whole
57:48 while retaining aspects of Whitehead’s process theology but just
57:53 um not allowing this primordial nature of God which is a key category in
58:00 whiteheads scheme to remain fixed and
58:07 Eternal as if disconnected from all of this Cosmic process that’s going on I want God to
58:13 die with the world but you know also to be reborn
58:18 but God going through the threshold of death I think is perfectly in line with various religious and Mythic Traditions
58:25 or Christianity obviously and so you know there’s a way in which even Nietzsche and his sense that God is dead
58:30 is just Nietzsche trying to really give more potency to this incarnational idea
58:37 yeah God died but um in some sense that that just means that
58:45 we God died into us and like now we are responsible for continuing this work of divine creation
58:51 right and so um yeah I don’t know I don’t know what cosmologists will think of this idea I
58:57 don’t know what theologians will think of this idea but I’ll probably upset everybody equally
59:03 I want to see my my least well-formulated question I’m not even
59:08 sure exactly what I’m trying to ask with this but I’m going to try to ask it anyway and see if anything happens
59:14 um there’s an apocryphal tale about Wittgenstein and that he asked the
59:19 scientist why people used to believe the sun went around the earth and the scientists said that’s the obvious
59:24 conclusion to draw because that’s how it looks and Wittgenstein said well how would it look if the Earth went around
59:30 the Sun so of course it would be the same we can’t just tell ourselves a story about
59:35 getting over naivete we have to interrogate our assumptions about what constitutes conventional knowledge
59:42 itself and this popped into my head reading the book because I began to wonder if the
59:49 etheric imagination vegetal thinking whether these things constitute a
59:54 reversal of how we normally see the world or whether they’re an articulation of how we normally see the world right
1:00:01 when is it valid to say descendental thinking is a shift Beyond something and when is it valid to say well that’s how
1:00:07 it looked all along regardless of what we were saying does that make any sense yeah it does
1:00:13 and I I think that’s not actually an apocryphal story that um that this is a conversation that one
1:00:19 of Wittenstein’s students Elizabeth Anscombe records and you know it’s it’s
1:00:26 a thought-provoking um response from and question from Wittgenstein and I think
1:00:33 what I’m trying to do in in this book is actually um
1:00:38 do justice to Common Sense like I’m not trying to affront common sense I’m not trying because
1:00:45 there’s so many ways in which the Kantian point of view and the whole idealist point of view is like
1:00:50 um saying everything you thought was real is is an appearance all right
1:00:56 um and and is a mirage and you need to adopt this very technical
1:01:02 form of um a critical reflection upon your experience to recognize that it’s a sham
1:01:08 and to begin the long arduous process to its really scientific way of of
1:01:14 experiencing and then understanding the world and you know it’s not that um there isn’t some importance to being
1:01:22 um attuned to the ways we can deceive ourselves but at the end of the day we don’t want to negate common sense
1:01:30 um we need to I mean Whitehead says the Philosopher’s job is to weld imagination
1:01:36 and Common Sense right and so there’s a speculative imagination that wants to go beyond
1:01:42 first appearances but we also need to at the end of the day return to our
1:01:47 everyday encounter with the world and and find it meaningful rather than denying that it is in
1:01:54 contact with uh with the ground of being of existence
1:02:00 and so yeah I think we want the world as it immediately appears to
1:02:07 us uh to contain within that appearance of profound meaning
1:02:14 right rather than it just being a veil uh that in some sense
1:02:19 you know the the elemental structure of our everyday experience while we uh we
1:02:25 we tend not to notice that Elemental structure because it’s um in a way it’s too obvious it’s it’s too close to our
1:02:33 eyes that we just see past it uh but there’s a there’s a profound meaning
1:02:41 just in the fact that up is up and down is down that this like that that we live
1:02:46 on the earth Beneath The Sky and to really take in
1:02:51 um it’s it’s a kind of Elemental phenomenology I draw on John Sallis
1:02:57 um in a short chapter in this text who has written some beautiful texts on the
1:03:02 phenomenology of our encounter with these what he calls elements the sky
1:03:07 the Earth The Horizon the sea the sort of natural powers that that
1:03:14 are present in every like air the things that are present in our everyday experience that we just don’t notice you
1:03:20 know Whitehead similarly says that it takes a rather unordinary mind to do
1:03:26 metaphysics because metaphysics is an analysis of the obvious right all the
1:03:31things that we take for granted and so rather than philosophy being this
1:03:36 uh esoteric pursuit of some hidden secret truths uh in so many ways it’s
1:03:42 really just about paying attention to what everybody already knows
1:03:49 I like this idea that the philosopher is trying to weld imagination with common sense I think you mentioned the book The
1:03:56 Whitehead also called the philosopher a Critic of cosmologies uh I sometimes call philosophers
1:04:02 difference workers who are like sex workers who specialize in determining whether a common distinction is unreal
1:04:08 or whether a seemingly singular concept conceals the need for an additional distinction uh Nietzsche kind of described the
1:04:15 philosopher as a commander of World Views who discovers new values by making
1:04:21 new arrangements and new orderings of the virtues um what’s the matter what’s a
1:04:27 philosopher man I mean I can’t do better than uh than
1:04:33 Plato here and even having created the term lover of wisdom
1:04:38 um because you know as I was saying earlier about this shift from philosophy being about knowledge to being about
1:04:44 learning I think it’s it’s contained in this idea that despite hegel’s claim you
1:04:50 know to have finally become wise and no longer just be loving uh wisdom he is
1:04:55 wise think that’s you know he’s claiming to be a sage um I wouldn’t I wouldn’t claim that I
1:05:02 would claim to be in love with wisdom and to be in love with wisdom is
1:05:08 um to be
1:05:13 engrossed in a in a process of learning uh and every
1:05:19 every conversation with other lovers of wisdom uh is an opportunity to deepen
1:05:25 learning and so I think yeah for me to be a philosopher is to never be satisfied
1:05:33 um with the knowledge I might think I I’ve collected in my in my backpack like
1:05:39 um it’s it’s rather to be perpetually open to surprise and to
1:05:46 uh the the novelty that comes through
1:05:52 um relationship uh the novelty that that comes through
1:05:57 being always open uh to to deep dialogue across difference and to recognize I
1:06:03 mean it’s kind of a faith I guess that I have that um differences can always be reconciled but
1:06:10 never once and for all there will always be new differences which arise that need to be reconciled but that they can be
1:06:17 reconciled I think as long as we are in love with wisdom
1:06:23 that reconciliation can be achieved
1:06:29 uh and it’s a philosophical Faith right that would um that I that I hold that leads me to
1:06:35 believe that but I definitely see the the the philosopher is not a Lone Ranger
1:06:41 um not only do we do I need my fellow philosophers other
1:06:47 human beings but um there’s something to be learned from every creature uh something to be
1:06:54 learned from plants there’s something to be learned from a specific species of plant I don’t want to just use a sort of
1:07:00 generic category here um really there’s no such thing as plants and animals there’s like specific
1:07:07 individual beings that we categorize in these ways right it’s easier to come up
1:07:13 with a generic category for plants and animals and even the the idea
1:07:19 of a species is still an abstract categorization of individuals each one
1:07:24 unique but many thinkers from Teilhard de Chardin to Rudolf Steiner have said um
1:07:31 the human being isn’t just another species we’re like another kingdom of life right and so I think the philosophical
1:07:38 project is a uniquely human undertaking even if we human beings have much to learn from other
1:07:44 creatures there’s a sense in which um
1:07:49 there will always be a multitude of cosmologies and that I don’t expect to
1:07:55 have the final word on the right cosmology right because each of us is a walking cosmos A microcosm and it’s it’s
1:08:03 through dialogue that we come to come to overlap to some degree or another and
1:08:09 arrive at some common sense of or for what’s what’s going on here uh
1:08:15 but yeah it’s an endless process so that’s why I’m a process philosopher I guess
1:08:21 the possibility of deep differences amongst plants puts me in mind of plant
1:08:28 medicine and it leads me to a question that’s a bit like uh okay we’ve got this uh
1:08:37 dialogue network of philosophers we have these love driven or seduced followers
1:08:42 of wisdom trying to reconcile positions and elicit the forms
1:08:48 of knowing which have the force of being but it seems like most people are not capable of or interested in doing real
1:08:56 mind work in that sense what do you think the role of other other Technologies are
1:09:03 neurochemistry psychedelics participatory ritual in bringing many
1:09:08 people into the embodied relational contemplation of the real um
1:09:14 well I mean I think immediately if the um platonic Trinity the the true the good
1:09:19 and the Beautiful and those who do mind work who who fashion Concepts you know
1:09:26 we’re really oriented towards the truth you could say but the good and the Beautiful uh are
1:09:32 co-terminous with the absolute and so artists who
1:09:39 you know work with material uh to bring to bring new shapes
1:09:45 and sounds um textures into the world uh are are
1:09:50 engaging in Cosmic imagination just as much if if not in some likes more so
1:09:55 than those of us who work with with Concepts um and you know those who are oriented
1:10:01 toward compassionate work in in service uh of of sentient beings who suffer
1:10:10 um you know are aligning with the good and in this way also advancing the work
1:10:15 of cosmic imagination and so you know improper integral spirit I
1:10:22 think you know those of us who do have more facility or who are just more called to one or another
1:10:27 aspect of this Trinity really do we do need each other and we do need to
1:10:34 attempt to balance ourselves out you know and so
1:10:40 I can speak personally that uh I’m still seeking that balance
1:10:47 um I really do need to cultivate more
1:10:53 artisanal skills as a as a craft a Craftsman right
1:11:00 and I I kind of long for this because it’s a underdeveloped part of myself right and so you know for those for whom
1:11:07 um the conceptual realm and is not as as developed and for whom
1:11:13 um books of philosophy or the last thing that they’d ever want to to read whether
1:11:18 they just find it boring or um can’t make sense of it you know I would say
1:11:24 um you do have the capacity to think uh and
1:11:29 um you just need to let your eyes adjust to what might first appear to be darkness
1:11:35 and you’ll begin to see uh the Contours of these Concepts so you know we just we need to uh
1:11:44 recognize that inevitably there are differences in capacities across these domains of
1:11:49 human expression and uh and try to you know grow into those
1:11:55 areas where we’re underdeveloped right and so I certainly don’t think of the work of the philosopher uh as
1:12:06 as most important in any sense philosophers need art to provoke them the philosophers need uh virtuous people
1:12:15 to emulate um but you know at the end of the day I
1:12:21 hope that being a philosopher is is not um you know absent the pursuit of
1:12:27 excellence in these other domains as well so other than simply being done what are
1:12:35 you proudest about in regards to this book I’m proudest of um my complete lack of
1:12:45 respect for disciplinary boundaries it’s it’s a wild text that transgresses
1:12:53 the science and religion dichotomy that transgresses methodologies
1:13:02 um you know I try to be rigorous in my thinking but I also try to say hey you’re not going to understand this unless you’re willing to feel what I’m
1:13:10 talking about and most philosophical texts just stick
1:13:15 to conceptual argumentation and I say right at the beginning of the book this is not a logical argument I’m not going
1:13:21 to prove anything to you this is an experiment and
1:13:27 I think we need more philosophy like that and I hope that um this this can
1:13:33 serve as an example uh to be improved upon um but uh but yeah I think I’m committed
1:13:41 to transdisciplinary work and I’m proud of the way in which this book
1:13:47 cannot be at least easily um categorized
1:13:53 yeah there’s something in it for everybody and something in it that will I I I I don’t expect that any readers
1:14:00 even those who love a lot of it will agree with everything I think I tried to be
1:14:05 equally uh provocative both to academic
1:14:11 philosophers to scientists to yeah cult practitioners so
1:14:16 yeah is there uh is there next text on the
1:14:22 horizon is there a further reaches of the etheric imagination or what are you
1:14:28 looking forward to doing creatively it’s it’s hard to say
1:14:34 um what’s next because you know I have I can tell you about my
1:14:39 plans but knowing how things have unfolded in the past um what I plan to write is often not
1:14:45 when you end up writing um but you know I’ve I’ve been um deepening
1:14:51 into the work of Rudolf Steiner and I do
1:14:57 include some of his ideas in this text but I’m really interested in trying to
1:15:03 um write a book about something like the the place of the human being in Cosmic
1:15:11 evolution and I think the title I’m playing with is the cosmological context of human
1:15:18 evolution and to try to um integrate the very esoteric and often
1:15:26 um mind-blowing crazy sounding ideas that Steiner comes
1:15:32 up with with Whitehead who is more grounded in
1:15:38 um Natural Science not that Steiner’s not grounded in in the Sciences but
1:15:43 um I think Whitehead’s cosmology provides some helpful ways of elucidating
1:15:49 what in Steiner remains somewhat esoteric and obscure and so I’m I’m hoping to be
1:15:55 able to unpack some of the connections I see between their thoughts and really bring two very different
1:16:01 communities together um anthroposophists and uh academic
1:16:07 philosophers um though you know those interested in Whitehead among the academic philosophers are a strange enough breed
1:16:13 that they might be open to this sort of uh attempted synthesis so that’s what I’m planning to move towards in terms of
1:16:20 a next book but uh don’t hold me to it we’ll see what happens great this has been uh
1:16:27 lovely and fun and um intellectually challenging thanks very
1:16:33 much for having this conversation with us Matt my pleasure Layman you’re very good at what you do and it’s always
1:16:41 wonderful to be in dialogue with you so thank you
Footnotes2Plato 
What do you think?