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

Category: Hegel

  • Fall 2018 Online Course: “Mind & Nature in German Idealism”

    Fall 2018 Online Course: “Mind & Nature in German Idealism”

    I’ll be offering this course for the second time in Fall 2018 at CIIS.edu (the semester runs from late August through mid-December). Special students and auditors are welcome to enroll! Email me at msegall@ciis.edu for more information about registration.


  • Process and Difference in the Pluriverse: Plato, William James, & W.E.B. Du Bois

    Process and Difference in the Pluriverse: Plato, William James, & W.E.B. Du Bois

    I’m sharing the lecture from the first module of my course this semester at CIIS.edu, PARP 6135: Process and Difference in the Pluriverse. The lecture discusses Plato’s Republic, William James’ pluralism, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ critical inheritance of James’ philosophy. Here’s a PDF transcript of the lecture


  • Process & Difference in the Pluriverse, an online course at CIIS.edu

    A trailer for my course being offered this Spring at CIIS.edu. PARP 6135 Process and Difference in the Pluriverse will explore the ethical, social, political, and ecological implications of process-relational philosophy. You could call it a course in applied or experimental metaphysics. We will read and discuss texts by radical empiricist William James, revolutionary sociologist WEB…


  • Introduction to Process Philosophy

    Below is a lecture recorded for the online course PARP 6060 02 – Introduction to Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS.edu. I first discuss the meaning of philosophy from a Whiteheadian perspective, then run through a brief history of philosophy as relevant to process thought (Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Kant and his…


  • “Retrieving Realism: A Whiteheadian Wager” published in IJTS

    “Retrieving Realism: A Whiteheadian Wager” published in IJTS

    Retrieving Realism: A Whiteheadian Wager (PDF) Published in International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, Volume 36, Issue 1 (2017) Abstract: This essay argues that the organic realism of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) provides a viable alternative to anti-realist tendencies in modern and postmodern philosophy since Descartes. The metaphysical merits of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism are unpacked in…


  • Book Review of Dreyfus & Taylor’s “Retrieving Realism”

    World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research just published my review of Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor’s book Retrieving Realism (2015). Read my review here (it may be behind a paywall, sorry about that). I have another expanded article on their book coming out very soon in the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies that…


  • My Online Course this Fall: PARP 6133 – Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology

    I’m teaching another online graduate course for CIIS.edu this Fall (Aug-Dec) called Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology: Toward a Physics of the World-Soul (PARP 6133). Here is the proposed syllabus. Auditors and Special Students are welcome to enroll. Email me at msegall@ciis.edu for more information about how to do this.


  • Fragments on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

    Fragments on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

    Below are a few reflections after teaching a module on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit this past week. My natural inclinations draw me to Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, but every time I return to Hegel’s writing after some time apart I start to worry I’ve allowed myself to fall into a caricatured understanding of his trickster-like dialectical method. I’m reminded of…


  • Diagramming German Idealism

    Diagramming German Idealism

    I’m teaching an online graduate course called Mind and Nature in German Idealism this semester. Below I am sharing several diagrams that I’ve developed to depict Kant’s transcendental method as it evolves through the first three critiques, as well as Fichte’s radicalization of the Kantian project. I hope to continue developing this diagram to elucidate Schelling, Goethe,…


  • Mind and Nature in German Idealism: A Spring Course at CIIS

    Mind and Nature in German Idealism: A Spring Course at CIIS

    There’s still a few weeks left to enroll in my spring course at CIIS.edu as an auditor or special student.  Mind and Nature in German Idealism will start on January 17th and run until May 8th. Email me if you are interested and I can share the syllabus and/or enrollment instructions (msegall@ciis.edu).


  • 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.


  • 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…


  • 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.    


  • Pre-Defense Dissertation Draft Completed

    My dissertation defense is on Monday morning. I’ve just finished the “pre-defense” draft. I have until April 11th to finalize the published version. Below are the abstract, table of contents, and acknowledgements.        COSMOTHEANTHROPIC IMAGINATION IN THE POST-KANTIAN PROCESS PHILOSOPHY OF SCHELLING AND WHITEHEAD Abstract In this dissertation, I lure the process philosophies…


  • 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…


  • response to R. Scott Bakker on transcendental phenomenology and BBT

    Anyone who posits some form of efficacy or constraint outside the natural order on the basis of some kind of interpretation of ‘experience’ has the same argumentative burden to discharge: How do you know? What justifies such an extraordinary (supernatural) posit?…What makes the question so pressing now is that their instrument, reflection, has finally found…


  • Video of my lecture: an introduction to German Idealism/Romanticism

    Below is my lecture on German Idealism and Romanticism given yesterday (Sept. 30) for MA students enrolled in an Introduction to Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness course at CIIS.


  • Distilling my dissertation topic—>Etheric Imagination in an Ontology of Organism: Towards a Planetary Philosophy

    First, a few orientating quotations from the thinkers I will be boiling together in the alchemical vessel of my dissertation. “…if we had the choice between empiricism and the all-oppressing necessity of thought of a rationalism which had been driven to the highest point, no free spirit would be able to object to deciding in favor of…


  • Online course this Fall: “Mind and Nature in German Idealism”

    Below is the introductory lecture of a 10-week undergraduate course called “Mind and Nature in German Idealism” that I’m hoping will run this coming Fall (2014) for the University of Philosophical Research. If you’re an undergrad looking for an independent study, let me know.


  • Alexander Bard on Network Metaphysics

    I really dig Alexander Bard’s “network-dynamic persepective.” Geometrogenesis is also extremely relevant to my research on Whitehead’s and Rudolf Steiner’s ether theories (the former articulated an alternative to Einstein’s theory of relativity based on an “ether of events”; the later spoke of an etheric dimension of nature mediating between the material and spiritual dimensions). The idea…


  • Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy from Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead

    I’ve just submitted my dissertation proposal for review. Click on the title below for the PDF. Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy From Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead I welcome suggestions, critiques, sources, and/or extensions. Basically, I’m doing a comparative study of the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, the esotericist Rudolf Steiner, and the mathematician and cosmologist Alfred North…