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

  • Wittgenstein and Language

    What is language? Wittgenstein’s early project was to define language in the terms most familiar to the Western tradition, running through Augustine up until Russell. His aim was to show that all philosophy consisted in defining the logical form of sentences. A certain proposition was thought to be isomorphic to a certain event in the…

  • Wonder

    I wonder what it is that turns the world round, That hides the far side of the Moon from the Earth, That sees with my eyes but cannot be seen. Why is it that I have a perspective? How is it that I exist as an individual, As a piece of space wrapped up in…

  • The Spiritual Animal

    Some have suggested that the human being can (and therefore ought to) live without God. I reject this claim. I propose that the human being is the spiritual animal, the organism that knows that it is. God is the “thatness” of existence, that transcendent quality of all that is but whose name cannot be spoken.…

  • The Zeitgeist

    The zeitgeist gives our individual lives their substance. Without this cultural matrix to create and sustain our sense of ourselves as subjects; as persons with responsibilities; as bodies with a rational will required by outer law to be in control (but by inner law to be spontaneous), we would be free to release our experience…

  • The Wise and the Foolish

    The bones between this body are burdensome but fair. They hold this flesh together while it breathes air, but balance the bargain with a fateful despair. The bones remain after the soul has gone home–a reminder for those who still seek, who still inhale and must eat. Death is the great equalizer, and a master…

  • What does liberation require?

    What does liberation require? Krishnamurti would stop us before we even ask the question, as to suppose enlightenment could have a cause in time is to mistake the temporal for the eternal. But supposing we are then merely trying to describe the experience of awakening metaphorically, rather than trying to scientifically break it down into…

  • The End of the Word (preliminary remarks)

    To engage in philosophy is to attempt to wake up from a dream. I had one once where I dreamt of these men’s thoughts: I believe one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.) It says that…

  • I cannot stick a thought (a stream of consciousness)

    Conceptualization has become impossible. I have thoughts, but the thinking doesn’t stick. It always slides off, becomes obsolete, without reason. One moment an idea seems to fit the real; in the next, it has been replaced by a blank stare into a broken mirror. I am lost in experience, so far outside myself that I…

  • Spellbound: Magic Words and Minds Without Self

    Introduction There was a time when physics, still high on the spirit of the Enlightenment, took seriously the idea that its measurements of the fundamental stuff composing the universe could explain just about everything worth knowing about. Granted, it didn’t have all the necessary measurements compiled just yet, but it assured everyone that it was…

  • Reality is a Reel

    All my life, I’ve been drawn to the big questions, But I cannot even begin my story Without revealing my bias in the first line. Why “big” questions? Are the answers especially “full” of goodness? Does it take a “long” time to find them?Are there really “more” than one? Questions and answers… A captain seeking…

  • The Limits of Language

    The Limits of Language It seems ironic, at least in light of the premise of this paper, that the thoughts of a man such as Socrates could have given birth to the last twenty-four hundred years of Western philosophical discourse. Was it not he who said “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance”?…

  • Integral Spirituality

    “When we ponder on [realization], we begin to perceive how feeble in their self-assertive violence and how confusing in their misleading distinctness are the words that we use. We begin also to perceive that the limitations we impose on the Brahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind that concentrates itself on…

  • Subtle Energy and Machines

    I wonder if electronic devices are a form of “captured” subtle energy…. Machines are not alive, but what does it mean to be alive? Life grows itself. Machines must be built by an outside agency. Because life grows itself, it is always following some hidden inner law or creative principle. Henri Bergson called this the…

  • Epic of Gilgamesh and Apocalypse

    Go, set off to Uruk, tell Gilgamesh of this Man of Might (Enkidu). He will give you the harlot Shamhat, take her with you. The woman will overcome the fellow as if she were strong. When the animals are drinking at the watering place have her take off her robe and expose her sex. When…

  • Is the Internet integral?

    Is all this blogging and vlogging, all this artificial symbol exchanging, really changing the world? I think the answer to that question depends on us. This whole activity itself (trying to save the world by networking) is the evolutionary zenith of the human conscience. It is our most self-consciously social undertaking in history. We are…

  • What does it mean to be integral?

    As of right now, I have no idea what I could end up saying about the essence of integral spirituality. You must of course trust that I have not edited the text and interfered with its temporal flow. I’ll admit I had to stop and reflect to gather my thoughts before I wrote each of…

  • Am I my Words?

    Learning to speak is learning to act. Verbal communication is reading the lines and putting them into character. That is, taking a text and giving it context: putting it with something else, making a connection (to something others will understand). The face, the gestures of the body: these are the instruments of meaning. It is…

  • Marvin Minsky’s Emotion Machine and My Own Consciousness

    Is higher immediacy not unlike satori? That is, to really get at the nature of the human being, to really “understand” what it means to be human, is it not required that the human that wishes to “understand” change the way they are in the world, that they somehow re-interpret the meaning of their experience?…

  • That you are what you are.

    Some have suggested that the human being can (and therefore ought to) live without God. I reject this claim. I propose that the human being is the spiritual animal, the organism that knows that it is. God is the “thatness” of existence, that transcendent quality of all that is but whose name cannot be spoken.…

  • No Control

    On a desert night beneath the moon, Cacti in full bloom, The little light that did reflect Off clouds fell into tune. It sang for me a song of smiles, Full of angels laughing, Enacting heaven’s holy joke: That even God has no control. The gagging subsided And the moon began to set. Darkness became…

  • The Purpose of Words

    The words, these words, appeared And since then, we hold them in esteem. More dear than the winter night’s breeze– Than any of the meaning we seem now unable to retrieve. The words, these words, have dissected, Labeled and laid claim. They have classified and cataloged What was once but mystery. They have caged and…