Footnotes2Plato

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

Category: imagination

  • God Beyond and Within (Dialogue with Roman Campolo)

    Below is a ChatGPT summary of my conversation with Roman (which I’ve reviewed for accuracy). You can find the exact transcript on Substack. Roman began by sharing his thoughts on a documentary he recently watched about Mount Athos, a place he had not known about before. He explained that Mount Athos is an island off…

  • The Evolution of Consciousness and the Destiny of America (Dialogue with Formscapes)

    In a spontaneous three-hour livestream, Kehlan and Matt explored the thoughts of influential thinkers and the implications of America’s Pluto Return. They discussed consciousness evolution, materialism’s challenges, and the spiritual mission of the U.S. They expressed concerns over populism and the need for a moral vision amidst societal fragmentation, emphasizing a harmonious approach to spirituality…

  • Mumbling to the Mother of All

    As sleepwalkers, we drift in broad daylight— senses singing us to sleep despite the solar bell resounding overhead. “Wake us up,” we do not hear ourselves crying, while shadows of longing hitch rides on every breath. We can but mumble in reply to its endless smile, answering its Michaelic messages with a verse we ourselves…

  • Christ After Christianity: Metamodern Reconstructions of Religion (dialogue with Brendan Graham Dempsey)

    Transcript: Brendan Graham Dempsey: Hey? How’s it going? Brendan Graham Dempsey: Good to see you, too, man? Matt Segall: Yeah. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Who’s that? Matt Segall: This is Philo. Matt Segall: He loves attention, especially when we’ve got Zoom sessions. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Very cat-like. I have a cat named Shadow that looks very…

  • The Spiritual Mission of America (dialogue with Edward Suprenant)

    Below is a summary of our conversation that I have heavily edited but that was originally generated by ChatGPT: As our conversation wound down, we both felt more prepared to think about the future. I appreciated Edward’s thoughtfulness, which helped me reaffirm my sense that America’s spiritual mission remains vital, unfinished, and worth striving for.…

  • Illusionism Meets Panpsychism: Dialogue with Keith Frankish

    I greatly enjoyed my dialogue with Keith Frankish this morning. Thanks is due to Justin for getting us together. I’d say we had a fascinating conversation exploring process-relational metaphysics and my Whiteheadian form of panpsychism, Keith’s version of illusionism, and how these positions bear on the nature of consciousness and meaning. Keith sent me a few articles to read…

  • Machinic Heterogenesis and Ecosophic Futures: Thinking With Félix Guattari

    The video above records my thoughts after reading a chapter from Felix Guattari’s book Chaosmosis (1995). Turning again to the work of Guattari and his frequent collaborator Gilles Deleuze felt important as the US enters a dangerous moment in its own history. Fascism is not just an external threat, not just about those bad people over there. As…

  • Neoplatonic Henology and the Overcoming of Metaphysics (Dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    The discussion of Reiner Schürmann’s article on neoplatonic henology in Plotinus, Eckhart, and Heidegger begins at 30:07. The first half hour is a discussion of Tim’s work on improving interactions between venomous snakes and human beings.  The conversation begins with Tim recounting his recent work in India, where he has been engaged in projects addressing the pervasive…

  • The Nature of Consciousness and What To Do About It (Dialogue with Jack Bagby)

    In this dialogue, Jack and I explore the nature of consciousness. I suggested at the get go that conscious thought is a process of “becoming other,” an ongoing participatory transformation with reality rather than a separate substance or quality somehow realized inside the head.  I opened with a couple of lighthearted but probing questions to…

  • Good Science, Bad Philosophy: Predictive Processing as Reheated Kantianism

    Below I am sharing some open-ended reflections on the turf war between enactivist cognitive science, predictive processing approaches, and Whiteheadian cosmology. … Predictive Processing (PP) approaches (including Active Inference, the Free Energy Principle, etc.) are fantastic models that will surely continue to find important applications not only in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology, but in…

  • Discussing Whitehead with Jeffrey Mishlove on “New Thinking Allowed”

    It was a real pleasure to join host Jeffrey Mishlove on his show, New Thinking Allowed. He invited me on to discuss (surprise, surprise) the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. We explored Whitehead’s historical context, his engagement with contemporaries like Bertrand Russell, F.H. Bradley, and Ludwig…

  • Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science

    According to Susanne Langer, who was one of Whitehead’s students at Radcliff in the 1920s, every great philosophical scheme “must, in its original form, be regarded as a myth[1], which sets forth freshly and naively some new point of view [and] reveals new opportunities for rational construction” (The Practice of Philosophy, p. 178). Whitehead understood…

  • Reflections on the Whitehead Centennial at Emerson Hall

    My trip to Harvard gave me occasion to reflect not only on Whitehead’s legacy, but on his resonances with Emerson and their shared vision of philosophical education. It was raining Thursday afternoon when I arrived in Cambridge. My room at The Friendly Inn was a few blocks from Harvard Yard, and with the rain slowed…

  • “Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse” By Isabelle Stengers

    Isabelle Stengers’ recent book Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse provides a thorough exploration of the relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy, particularly in navigating the “post-truth” era and the broader planetary emergency. Stengers focuses on how Whitehead’s ideas can help reconstitute a form of common sense in a world where…

  • C. S. Peirce’s “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God” (1908)

    In his 1908 essay, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” Charles Sanders Peirce offers a “humble hypothesis” meant to be accessible to the expert logician and clodhopper alike. God is identified as the ens necessarium, or the necessary being. This necessary being, according to Peirce, is the creator of all three (or at least…

  • Thinking With Owen Barfield (dialogue with Ashton Arnoldy and Daniel Garner)

    Ashton Arnoldy and Daniel Garner joined me to discuss the work of Owen Barfield. Here’s a quick summary of what we discussed: … I’ve been thinking with Barfield for many years! Here’s an essay comparing his ideas to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Quentin Meillassoux: https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/05/05/towards-a-christological-realism-thinking-the-correlation-with-teilhard-and-barfield/

  • Rudolf Steiner and the Dream of External Matter: Toward a Physiosophy of the Senses

    Over the weekend, I gave a talk at the Mysteries of Technology Conference: “Etheric Imagination as Participatory Knowing“ Unfortunately, I had to skip a few slides due to time constraints, so I wanted to share those ideas here. Below is something of an addendum to that talk, so a lot of what follows will make…

  • Rudolf Steiner’s Threefold Social Organism

    An abridged transcript of my talk is below. For a more in depth look at social threefolding, you can also check out my article “The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World Still At War With Itself” (2023). I am grateful for the invitation to share a bit about the threefold social organism, or social threefolding…

  • Etheric Imagination as Participatory Knowing: A Process-Relational Reading of Rudolf Steiner’s “Light Course”

    Transcript:  It’s really lovely to be here this morning, though it’s quite early for me. I’ve been enjoying the last three days of the Mysteries of Technology conference very much, and I’m very grateful to have been invited. I think what MysTech is doing is important, not only for the wider world to see the ways in…

  • Becoming the World-Body

    You are not your brain, and you’re not just your body either, at least not if you think of your body as just what’s encased within the skin. To really understand what’s going on inside your body, you would need to understand its history, which is as old as the universe. Understanding the body means…

  • Between Phenomenology, Science, and Process Ontology (dialogue with James Schofield)

    In this video,  James Schofield and I have detailed discussion about process philosophy, with a focus on our respective backgrounds, interests, and scholarly work. James begins by introducing his academic journey, highlighting his studies in anthropology, consciousness, and philosophy, which led to his book on Errol Harris. He shares his dissatisfaction with traditional anthropology and psychology, which propelled…