Footnotes2Plato

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

Author: Matthew David Segall

  • Thinking Law, Politics, and other Modes of Existence with Bruno Latour

    Thinking Law, Politics, and other Modes of Existence with Bruno Latour

    Below I’ve pasted a couple of excerpts from Latour’s work on politics and law. “Why do we regret that politicians ‘don’t tell the truth’? Why do we demand that they be ‘more transparent’? Why do we want ‘less distance between representatives and those whom they represent’? Even more absurd, why do we wish that ‘politicians…

  • Facing Gaia with Bruno Latour

    Facing Gaia with Bruno Latour

    “…there is nothing about the Earth as Earth that we don’t know through the disciplines, instruments, mediations, and expansion of scientific networks: its size, its composition, its long history and so on. Even farmers depend on the special knowledge of agronomists, soil scientists and others. And this is even truer of the global climate: the…

  • 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.

  • America and Me (for Ginsberg and Whitman)

    America and Me (for Ginsberg and Whitman)

    “ “America and Me (for Ginsberg and Whitman)” by Matthew D. Segall Originally performed December 2nd, 2017 at CIIS in San Francisco. America, you’ve given me everything and now you are nothing. America 21 trillion 114 billion dollars in debt April 3rd 2018. I no longer own my own mind. America when will we end…

  • The Simplicity Argument for Panpsychism

    Agreeable thoughts from Philip Goff.

  • Mind and Nature in German Idealism, a graduate course

    Mind and Nature in German Idealism, a graduate course

    I’m very excited to teach a 10-week online course at CIIS next semester (Spring 2017, running from Jan – Mar) called Mind and Nature in German Idealism. The course includes readings and lectures on Kant, Fichte, Goethe, Hegel, and Schelling. Note that you do not need to be enrolled in a graduate program at CIIS in…

  • A conversation with the founders of Erowid.org in January 2017

    A conversation with the founders of Erowid.org in January 2017

    I’ll be in conversation with Earth and Fire, the founders of Erowid.org, on Jan. 26th, 2017 at 7pm at CIIS in San Francisco, CA. If you’re not local, there will be a podcast version posted shortly thereafter. Click here for more information or to purchase tickets.

  • Archetypal Panpsychism: Whitehead, Jung, & Hillman

    Archetypal Panpsychism: Whitehead, Jung, & Hillman

    If you happen to live near Boise, Becca and I will travel there in January to give a weekend workshop for the Idaho Friends of Jung. January 20-21, 2017 Archetypal Panpsychism:  Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman A presentation by Matthew D. Segall, PhD, & Becca Tarnas, ABD Friday Lecture, 7:00 – 9:00 PM; Saturday Workshop, 10:00 AM –…

  • New Online Masters Degree in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness

    CIIS is accepting applications for the Fall 2017 semester for a new online masters degree program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness with concentrations in Archetypal Cosmology, Integral Ecology, and Process Philosophy. I’ll be teaching mostly in the Process Philosophy Concentration. Check out the website for more information.    

  • Panpsychism and Emergentism: a discussion with ProfessorAnton

    I posted Neil Theise’s video “Complexity Theory & Panpsychism” on FaceBook last week, and Corey Anton posted a response criticizing panpsychism and defending his own emergentist perspective. Their videos are below. Corey and I have gone back and forth on this issue a number of times over the years. I posted a set of responses to…

  • Brian Swimme on “Why We Study the Universe”

  • Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead and Cosmology (2nd edition)

    I decided to revise and republish a second edition of my 2013 monograph on the relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism to contemporary scientific cosmology. It should be available in paperback in a few weeks. Here is a PDF if you prefer an electronic version.  

  • Slavery and Capitalism in America

    I’m about halfway through The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014) by Edward Baptist. Baptist’s book embeds an economic history of post-revolutionary America in the personal stories of slaves. He brings into question the still dominant version of American history, “the half that has ever been told,” which argues that slavery…

  • The Ecology of Capitalism

    This post is largely in response to this interview with the ecological Marxist John Bellamy Foster. Foster spends most of his time responding to criticisms of his work by Jason W. Moore. I haven’t read Moore’s work, so I’m not sure whether the misunderstanding of Latour arose with him or with Foster’s characterization of the latters “constructionism”…

  • A talk on Ecodelic Philosophy at the Symbiosis Gathering

    A talk on Ecodelic Philosophy at the Symbiosis Gathering

    I’m headed back to the Symbiosis Gathering later this year. I’ll be offering a talk on the role of psychedelics–or “ecodelics” as author Richard Doyle refers to them–and the philosophical insights they engender that may be of service to steering through our planetary crisis. When ingested in carefully crafted ceremonial containers, ecodelics reveal the deeper connections and interpenetration of…

  • PDF of my Dissertation

    Here’s a PDF of the version I submitted to the UMI database. I plan to substantially revise this before publishing it as a book sometime in the next year. But for now, I welcome feedback on the current draft. Cosmotheanthropic Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead

  • The Function of Reason and the Recovery of an Earthly Architecture

    The Function of Reason and the Recovery of an Earthly Architecture

    Click here to view this essay at the publisher’s website, FunctionLab. The Function of Reason and the Recovery of an Earthly Architecture By Matthew David Segall, PhD June 2016 “[The] relatedness between us and the world…which begins to exist wherever there is living structure is as important in the sphere of building as it is…

  • Angela Davis at CIIS Commencement

  • Thoughts on System in Kant and Whitehead

    A reading group I’ve participated in for several years now just finished Shaviro’s Without Criteria. We wrapped up the discussion thinking through, among other things, the contrasting conceptions of “system” articulated in Kant’s and Whitehead’s works. Here are some excerpts from the two philosophers that get at the contrast. “The reader must naturally have a strong…

  • CIIS Commencement Speech 5/22

    CIIS Commencement Speech 5/22

    Thank you, President Subbiondo. Thanks also to our Academic Vice President Judie Wexler, to our honorary degree recipients Angela Davis and Josef Brinckmann, and to all CIIS faculty and staff for the work you have done to make this day possible for me and for my fellow graduates. I am a philosopher, which is not to…

  • Mercury Transits the Sun

    Mercury Transits the Sun