Author: Matthew David Segall
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Returning to Whitehead…
After finishing my first comprehensive exam on Schelling, its now time to dive back into Whitehead. For starters, Adam over at the new minimalist Knowledge Ecology has recently been posting brilliant snippets of what I believe is a longer tract he is writing about the ecology of ideas. Here is one titled “The Alien Light“: On…
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Simon Critchley’s “Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology”
Just ordered his newest book Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (2012) after watching Critchley and Cornel West’s recent discussion. There are many reviews of the book around, but here is one I enjoyed from the Los Angeles Review of Books by David Winters. He writes: Critchley…[claims] that politics consists of reconfigurations of religion. In…
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The Politics of Renaissance Hermeticism, and the Magic of Science
I’ve been reading Frances Yates’ Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964). Part of her project is to dispel the myth that Bruno was burnt at the stake primarily for his heliocentrism and generally scientific and materialist attitude. This was certainly one of the Roman Inquisitions many accusations, but the real reasons the Church lit…
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Neuroscientist Christoph Koch comes out as a panpsychist?
Now that I’m just about finished with my comprehensive exam, let’s see what interesting things are happening around the blogosphere… WOW! According to Michael Zimmerman, Christoph Koch has come out as a panpsychist in his new book Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. Koch generates an information-theoretic account of consciousness, which he labels Φ, suggesting that all…
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[Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – The nature of human freedom
For a PDF of the entire essay, click The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. The Nature of Human Freedom The Naturphilosoph comes to understand “Nature as subject.”232 This does not imply that nature necessarily conforms to the transcendental structure of the human mind (a form of anthropomorphism), but rather that human consciousness…
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[Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – The difference between Hegel’s and Schelling’s system of philosophy
For a PDF of the entire essay, click The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. The difference between Hegel’s and Schelling’s system of philosophy Early in his philosophical career while still a high school teacher in Nuremberg,116 Hegel suggested that, as a schoolmaster of philosophy, he is committed to the belief that philosophy…
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[Rough Draft] “The Re-Emergence of Schelling” – Literature review
Again, sorry for the lack of italics. I don’t know how to paste from Pages while keeping the formatting. For a PDF of the document (with italics in tact!), click: The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. Literature review This section assesses the reasons for the contemporary resurgence of scholarly interest in Schelling.…
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“The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency” (2014)
Preface The philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) cannot be adequately grasped in abstraction from the spirit that animated his individual personality. While he spent his philosophical career striving to realize the Absolute system, he did so in full recognition of the fact that the Absolute is not finally a logical system, but a…
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Rough draft of research paper on Schelling’s Contemporary Re-Emergence
I’ve just finished the rough draft of a comprehensive exam on the context of Schelling’s thought and the reasons for his contemporary resurgence (a list of recent scholarship). The most difficult section to write was definitely the one on the difference between he and Hegel’s approaches. I didn’t want to caricature Hegel, but nor did…
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Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology
I’m in the middle of writing a long essay on Schelling and the resurgence of interest in his work of late, at least in the Anglophone world. I’ll be posting the essay in installments as I finish each section. For now, here is Jerry Day, from his book on Schelling’s influence on Eric Voegelin, describing…
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The Colorado Shooting: Why it’s Time for Critics of “The Newsroom” To Lay Down Their Guns
Originally posted on Reel Change: NOTE: This post has been updated from its original content. Critics of HBO’s “The Newsroom” – and there have been many of them – have chided the show’s writer-creator Aaron Sorkin for being too preachy. These criticisms have come from both the right and the left. The Wall Street Journal…
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Schelling on Nature, Humanity, and God (re-reading Iain Hamilton Grant)
Last year, some colleagues and I at CIIS participated in a panel discussion on Speculative Realism called “Here Comes Everything.” My lecture drew primarily upon Grant’s text Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (2006). This summer, I’ve been doing research for a comprehensive exam on the recent resurgence of Schellingian philosophy (HERE is my reading list). I…
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A Long-Expected Journey
Originally posted on Becca Tarnas: So it begins… This is the first day of a long-awaited journey, one that is two years in planning, and will at last be embarked upon. Two people, a Ford Focus, 18 days, and 6,000 miles (at least!) This morning Matt and I depart upon our cross-country road trip from…
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Schelling’s Pantheogenic Naturphilosophie
In his bok The Origin and Goal of History, Karl Jaspers’ claims that Schelling “clung with complete conviction to the theory that the creation of the world took place six thousand years ago, whereas today no one doubts the bone finds which prove man’s life on earth to have gone on far more than a hundred…
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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…
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“From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization” by Arran Gare
I stumbled upon this great essay on Schelling and process metaphysics recently published in the journal Cosmos and History by Prof. Arran Gare. He really makes it clear how compatible Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is with Whitehead’s cosmological scheme. “From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization” Here is a sample: Schelling’s work…
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Jonathon Keats: What the World Needs is More Curious Amateurs
Jonathon Keats: What the World Needs is More Curious Amateurs. Or as the poet John Keats described it, we need more people capable of “negative capability.”
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What is Philosophy? – A walk in the woods.
Contrapoints made this video to open up his history of philosophy series. Here is my response.
Footnotes2Plato 