Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Search results for: “schelling whitehead”

“Philosophy Chat” dialogue on Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Whitehead

Had a great chat with Marty yesterday on his podcast “Philosophy Chat.” We covered a lot of territory… those interested in German Idealism, Naturphilosophie, and Process-Relational Philosophy will have plenty to chew on.

February 25, 2021
Naturphilosophie as Process Philosophy in Schelling and Whitehead

Christopher Satoor and I discussed Schelling, his German Idealist context, and Whitehead’s inheritance of Schellingian ideas about mind and nature.

August 30, 2020
Physics of the World-Soul, a short course on Schelling and Whitehead at Schumacher College next week

>More information on this course<< Recommended Readings (PDF)

June 12, 2018
Organic Science in Schelling and Whitehead

A lecture from last week’s class Brief History of Western Thought on Romanticism and the crisis of modern science as it played out in the organic nature philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead.

December 11, 2016
Draft of my dissertation: Cosmotheanthropic Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead

If anyone wants a PDF of my dissertation, shoot me an email at msegall@ciis.edu and I’ll send you a draft. I’ll wait to post it here until after I’ve uploaded the final draft with technical edits included to the UMI database.

March 17, 2016
Schelling’s Descendental Philosophy (and its Whiteheadian resonances)

Much of the rather fragmentary thoughts to follow were spurred by my reading of Jason Wirth’s wondrous little essay in the HUGE Palgrave Companion to German Idealism (2014), “Nature of Imagination: At the Heart of Schelling’s Thinking.” Based on the subtitle of his newly published book Schelling’s Practice of the Wild: Time, Art, and Imagination…

October 22, 2015
Schelling & Whitehead inheriting Spinoza & Leibniz: God and the Modern World

I’ve just finished Matthew Stewart’s popular book The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World (2006). I was hoping to fill out my own understanding of the historical context surrounding these two thinkers. I was not disappointed on this front. Stewart combed the archives and stitched together…

March 24, 2014
Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy from Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead

I’ve just submitted my dissertation proposal for review. Click on the title below for the PDF. Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy From Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead I welcome suggestions, critiques, sources, and/or extensions. Basically, I’m doing a comparative study of the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, the esotericist Rudolf Steiner, and the mathematician and cosmologist Alfred North…

December 17, 2013
Imagining Nature with Schelling and Whitehead

Schelling and Whitehead were speculative philosophers. This appellative, like that of metaphysician or theologian, may carry with it certain baggage that those of a skeptical or positivist bent are wont to do without. But aside from those epochal moments when thinkers are suddenly inspired by speculative imagination, or by the break through of concept creation,…

July 17, 2013
Reflections on Thomas Nagel’s mentions of Schelling and Whitehead in “Mind and Cosmos”

The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-body problem is not just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding ofthe entire cosmos and its history. The physical sciences and evolutionary biology cannot be kept insulated…

March 29, 2013
Philosophy of the Human in Whitehead and Schelling (response to Knowledge-Ecology)

Adam/Knowledge-Ecology just posted a fine reflection on the place of the human in nature. Below is my response. I think there is an elephant in the room here. Just before the line you quote in Modes of Thought, Whitehead says “In mankind, the dominant dependence on bodily functioning seems still there. And yet the life of…

June 21, 2012
[final draft] Poetic Imagination in the Speculative Philosophies of Plato, Schelling, and Whitehead

Poetic Imagination in the Speculative Philosophies of Plato, Schelling, Whitehead The Garden of Eden and Expulsion from the Garden by Thomas Cole “I am convinced that the supreme act of reason, because it embraces all ideas, is an aesthetic act; and that only in beauty are truth and goodness akin.–The philosopher must possess as much…

May 9, 2012
Nature in Whitehead, Hegel, and Schelling

In order to correct what I fear may have been an unfair caricature of Hegel presented in some of my posts earlier this year (HERE and HERE) after reading Iain Hamilton Grant‘s Philosophies of Nature After Schelling, I’ve sought out perspectives from thinkers more sympathetic to Hegel’s approach. First on the list was the integral…

July 12, 2011
Process Ontology in Schelling and Whitehead

In preparation for a larger speculative project, I’ve been reading a translation by Judith Norman of the 2nd draft of Schelling’s unfinished manuscript entitled Ages of the World (1813). I’ve been intrigued by Schelling’s philosophies of nature and freedom for several years, but never had the time to do a closer study. Iain Hamilton Grant‘s…

June 4, 2011
Science and the Soul of the World: Participatory Knowing in Goethe and Whitehead

I’m teaching for Schumacher College again, this time online. This course focuses on two towering exemplars of the organic approach to science, the German poet and naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). The course will run via live video conference on Saturday mornings (PST) for…

November 25, 2020
Metaphysics in Process (reflections on Whitehead’s system of philosophy)

As best I understand it, in Part IV of Process & Reality, Whitehead attempted to account for how geometrical measurement of the physical world is possible without any empirical presuppositions. He was worried that physics had not yet fully accounted for its own experimental practices and so searched for a presuppositionless mathematical starting point for…

December 2, 2019
Who is Alfred North Whitehead & What is Process Philosophy?

Environmental lawyer, philosopher, and fellow Whitehead enthusiast Tam Hunt and I started an email exchange a few weeks ago after I stumbled upon his interview with the physicist Carol Rovelli. Our emails grew into a pretty extensive conversation on all things Whitehead, which I am sharing below. We discuss the importance of Whitehead’s ideas for…

February 7, 2019
Whitehead’s Quantum of Explanation: Thinking with Auxier and Herstein

“Our central idea is that concrete existence explains the abstract aspects of experience and not vice-versa.” -Auxier and Herstein “So long as necessity is taken to be the guarantor of rationality, the conception of rationality advocated will be as useless to science as it is to practical life.” -Auxier and Herstein Below I offer some…

November 20, 2018
The Place of Life in the Cosmos (draft of 11th International Whitehead Conference paper)

Below is the draft of a paper I’ll present at next week’s International Whitehead Conference in the Azores. Feedback appreciated! 2017 International Whitehead Conference Matthew T. Segall The Place of Life in the Cosmos: Feeling the Origin of Organism “A philosophic outlook is the very foundation of thought and of life. The…

July 19, 2017
Toward a Communicative Cosmos: Whitehead and Media Ecology (updated draft)

Below is a draft of a paper I’ll offer at the MEA Convention in a few weeks. I share it here in the hopes that my readers may provide feedback that helps me improve it. I have something like 15 minutes to present as part of a panel on “Philosophical Perspectives,” so I’ll only be…

June 11, 2017
“Nature is a priori” -Schelling

Thanks to milliern for his commentary on and reflections about an exchange Professor Corey Anton, myself, and others have been having on YouTube. I’m reposting my comment to him below: I wanted to offer a few clarifications of my own position. I don’t normally think of myself as a “Heideggerian,” though I suppose most people…

December 26, 2013