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

  • Last lines of Goethe’s Faust

    Everything past is but a metaphor! What cannot be calculated is happening right here! What cannot be described is being accomplished right here! The Eternal Feminine (Mother Chaos, Mother Night) evolves us ever more and ever more. translation by Tom Mellet

  • Disambiguating Spirit and Matter (reflections on scientific materialism)

    For several years now, I have from time to time engaged in philosophical debate with commenters over at Pharyngula (the atheist and biologist PZ Myers‘ well-traffic blog). It is often impossible to maintain a civil discussion or sympathetic reflection about the topic at hand (usually having to do with the ontology of life, the meaning of consciousness,…

  • On Corporate and Creaturely Personhood

      Adam at Knowledge-Ecology has posted a reflection on the need for an object-oriented ecology (what’d I’d call an ecological ontology, or, following Whitehead, a philosophy of organism). Adam agrees with my comment about the moral significance of techno-capitalism’s assault on Gaia, writing that “this moment is, ecologically, what slavery was, sociologically.” What the world…

  • An essay on the history of participation by Becca Tarnas

    Here is a link to my partner Becca’s recent essay on the ecological significance of participatory theory. She offers a great summary of and reflection upon a chapter by Jacob Sherman in The Participatory Turn (2008): Full of Gods: Divine Participation for an Ecological Era

  • Rudolf Steiner and the Angelic Hierarchies

    In a recently posted essay on Christian Ecosophy, I referred repeatedly to angels. Though they are as prevalent in today’s popular imagination as they ever were in the past, the secular intelligentsia tend to dismiss them as relics of our pre-scientific childhood. I think it is important that lines of communication be opened between secular…

  • God and the Chaosmos: Thinking with Catherine Keller

    Several months ago, a discussion erupted across the SR/OOO blogosphere concerning the implications of various forms of nihilistic and theistic realism. Some of my critiques have since ended up in a Wikipedia article. In one of my responses to Graham Harman and Levi Bryant, I toyed with the idea of Whitehead’s panentheism as a kind…

  • Integral Imaginings: Essays on Earth, Soul, and Spirit

    The essays in this are all available free on my blog, but in an effort to preserve library ecologies (and design a sweet cover!)… ——————————————————————— Integral Imaginings cover astrophotography by Peter A. Suchsland 

  • The Spirit of Integral Poetry: “Waring” the Symbolism of Organism

    The Spirit of Integral Poetry: “Waring” the Symbolism of Organism Introduction In the preface of his magisterial account of the evolution of consciousness, The Ever-Present Origin (1985), Jean Gebser warns of a crisis “of decisive finality for life on earth and for humanity,” a spiritual crisis heralding the end of the deficient mentality of the…

  • Poet Drew Dellinger w/ Cosmologist Brian Swimme

  • Remembering Creation: Towards a Christian Ecosophy

    “The Lord was born with me [Wisdom] at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth…Then I was beside Him, as a master artist, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world,…

  • Occasionalism in Whitehead and Harman

    An important discussion continues to unfold in the comment section of this post over at Knowledge-Ecology. We are trying to figure out what metaphysical work Whitehead’s eternal objects do, among other things. Here is my last comment: I think Whitehead gives you withdrawal without returning to an ontology of substances. Adam and I have been…

  • Bruno Latour – “Waiting for Gaia: composing a common world through political art”

    Via Knowledge-Ecology, who linked to a barely audible mp3 of Latour’s recent talk at the French Institute in the UK recorded by Tim Morton. Thanks for the guerrilla media effort, Tim! I wish the Institute would release their high quality video for free!! We should be absolutely floored by what Latour has to say here, in…

  • The Difficulty of Christianity (a response to ProfessorAnton)

    Professor Anton will probably respond to my response, as is his kind habit. I’ll post it here when he does. (Be sure to visit the YouTube link so you can read the comment threads beneath my video. The dialogue is getting rather interesting…)

  • More on Myth, Panentheism, and Participation…

    Levi Bryant has posted a few more reflections on myth. I’ve pasted some of our discussion over on Larval Subjects below. Bryant also recently posted on what he calls “a-theism,” and I’m more inclined to follow him at least part way in what he suggests. I have a few caveats, however. I do interpret the…

  • Andrew Pickering on Cybernetics

    Philosopher Andrew Pickering on Cybernetics.

  • Thinking in media res.

    My Muse’s ideas remain mute to the world until given voice by the poet who courts her.  For this I use my mouth, my tongue, my teeth, and my lungs. As I inhale and prepare to name the world, it dawns on me that I have lost the ability to tell the difference between my…

  • William Irwin Thompson on the transformation of our economy

    COLUMN – THINKING OTHERWISE – The Digital Economy of W. Brian Arthur | Wild River Review. It would now appear that industrial and service economy “jobs” are disappearing at the same time that national currencies are in crisis and public universities and community colleges are being stripped of funds, so that they cannot take up…

  • American Academy of Religion in San Francisco: My schedule

    The AAR is here in San Francisco this year. It has been difficult to weed out my schedule this weekend, since there are very few weeds! There are at least 5 events I’d like to attend in every time slot. But here is what I’ve been able to single out: Friday at 4pm Theme: Homo…

  • Comic Reality

  • Reich speaks at #Occupy Cal

    Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich speaks at Occupy Cal in Berkeley yesterday (Nov. 15th): One thing that really sunk in: if the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech and corporations are people, then our government must also protect the rights of ordinary Americans to speak, and indeed, to speak in non-traditional ways (i.e., with…

  • Thinking with Latour and Bellah: Religion beyond Nature and Culture

    I’m giving a brief presentation in a course on Christianity and Ecology with Prof. Jacob Sherman on Thursday. In what follows, I’ll try to sketch out what I’d like to say. I plan to briefly summarize the cosmotheandric potential of Robert N. Bellah’s recent tome, Religion and Human Evolution (2011). Bellah develops an account of the…