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

  • My first course, Spring 2017 at CIIS

    I’ll be teaching my first graduate level course next Spring at CIIS. I have a lot of reading and research to do between now and then.Please do add to my list of books or articles if you have resources relevant to the topic. Speaking of which, poet-activist Drew Dellinger gave me a ton of leads in…

  • Socialistic Capitalism (a rant)

  • Hillary v. Bernie and the Future of American Democracy

    I’ve been meaning to write about the primaries for a while now, but administrative duties at CIIS, finishing my dissertation and other writing projects, and online teaching has taken up all my time and energy. Lack of time hasn’t stopped me from rushing off a ton of tweets and FaceBook posts in support of Bernie Sanders’ campaign,…

  • dissertation progress…

    Below is the table of contents of my substantially revised and extended draft. Also some excerpts that have been important for me. “The Cosmotheandric [sic] vision is the most obvious human experience, so obvious that it becomes an obstacle to see it once we begin to specialize in our knowledge and forget the whole…The vision of…

  • 1st draft of dissertation submitted

    I submitted the first draft of my dissertation to my committee a couple of weeks ago. I’m aiming to defend in March. Here’s a sneak peak of the table of contents. I still need to fill out the introduction and conclusions. Originally, I had no intention of writing so much about Kant, but he proved…

  • Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology

    Originally posted on Becca Tarnas: We in the Northern Hemisphere find ourselves in the heart of the darkest time of year, the Solstice—from the Latin solstitium, when the Sun stands still. Tonight we enter the longest night, when the stars are visible across the sky for the greatest number of hours each year. At this…

  • Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation (h/t Schelling)

    I meant to post this back in August when Levi Bryant finally started blogging again, but it somehow got stuck in my drafts (a veritable grave yard of unfinished thoughts and undead ideas). The philosophical spirit Bryant expresses in his writing is rather unique in its capacity to inspire me to resist. I am very grateful to him for this.…

  • John Horgan’s article in “Scientific American” on Panpsychism

    John Horgan published an essay in Scientific American a few days ago criticizing Tononi’s integrated information theory of consciousness. I don’t understand Integrated Information Theory well enough to defend it, but I applaud the effort to make progress toward a scientifically operationalizable definition of consciousness. But it seems to me that part of the problem…

  • Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapies & Research at CIIS

    California Institute of Integral Studies is launching a new certificate program in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapies and Research. Certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Research – Information and Application. The Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research Certificate serves a growing need for the training of skilled therapist researchers who will ideally seek advanced training for future FDA approved psychedelic-assisted and…

  • Essay republished in “Center for Ecozoic Studies Musings”

    I forgot to link to this back in July, but Herman Greene, editor of the CES Musings newsletter, republished my essay Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology (2013) in their December 2014 issue. You can find the PDF of the issue by clicking here. Or…

  • Defeating Daesh

    It is clear that American foreign policy and Western colonialism more generally have played a huge role in fanning the flames of “Islamic” terrorism. I’m heartened by the many peaceful Muslims who are speaking up to say that terrorists are most definitely NOT Muslims, including this brave fellow: Be that as it may, these suicide…

  • PCC Forum – Jamie Socci, MA – “Ceci n’ est pas Michel Foucault”

    If you’re in the Bay Area, join us at CIIS on December 11th @ 6:30pm on the 5th floor/room 565 for this talk by the brilliant and always entertaining Jamie Socci. She’s been deeply immersing herself in Foucault’s work for several years now and I for one am excited to hear about the fruits of…

  • Latour building on Whitehead’s critique of substance

    In Latour’s words, Whitehead replaced the concept of substance with that of subsistence. I appreciate Latour’s insistence on the need for the creation of institutions that encourage and sustain themselves through transformation. Question is, what would such institutions look like?

  • Critique of Pure Feeling: Whitehead on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic

  • Cosmic Pessimism: Response to a post by S.C. Hickman

    The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions, Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fix’d into furrows of death. -William Blake Read the engaging and wide-ranging post here: The Cosmology of Nick Land: Bataille, Gnosticism, and Contemporary Physics I have noticed my own tendency to waver between a less extreme version of the cosmic pessimism Hickman describes…

  • 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…

  • Essay in “Being Human”: “The Influence of R. Steiner on my Philosophical Development”

    A biographical piece published in the last issue of Being Human. Special thanks to my friend Max DeArmon for making this possible. See also this essay Thinking With Steiner Beyond the Brain: Reflections on my Bildung and the Philosophy of Freedom.

  • The Interrupted Irruption of Time: Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help From Bergson and Whitehead

    Above is my talk for the Jean Gebser Society conference held at the California Institute of Integral Studies the weekend of October 16th. Title: The Interrupted Irruption of Time: Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help from Bergson and Whitehead Abstract: Gebser suggests that the world-constituting reality of time first irrupted into Western consciousness with the publication…

  • Changing of the Gods

    Originally posted on Becca Tarnas: There are moments in life when you feel deeply grateful for the family you were born into. I’m blessed to have had many such moments, but I’m feeling it with particular poignancy of late. Throughout most of my childhood and teens my father was busy writing the book Cosmos and…

  • Sunday Speculations

    Some thoughts while riding on the subway into the city to dialogue with Rupert Sheldrake: Anyone who is versed in Hegelian philosophy or who has a deeper than normal appreciation for Plato’s chosen dialogical medium of philosophizing–really anyone who understands the dialectical basis of reason and rational discourse–will agree that materialism and idealism as polemical…

  • 11th International Whitehead Conference (2017 in the Azores)

    The 11th International Whitehead Conference will be hosted by the University of the Azores on Sao Miguel Island. The conference website is now up. The title of the 2017 conference is Nature in Process: Novel Approaches to Science and Metaphysics. The section headings and descriptions should be available in a few months. I’m told there…