Category: reason
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A Hegelian Tour of Philosophy from Parmenides to the French Revolution
A slightly revised transcript of my introductory lecture from a course on Hegel’s Absolute Idealism. I just want to begin by noting that Hegel’s time was a time of revolution in Europe. The French Revolution, in many ways, shaped the political categories that all the modern liberal democracies have been assuming for the last couple…
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Truth in the Making: On the Possibility of Metaphysics in a World-in-Process
“…‘becoming’ is the transformation of incoherence into coherence.” -Whitehead (PR 25) “There is not one completed set of things which are actual occasions. For the fundamental inescapable fact is the creativity in virtue of which there can be no ‘many things’ which are not subordinated in a concrete unity. Thus a set of all actual occasions…
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Philosophies of Ontogenesis: Evolution by Artistic Selection
First, have a listen to Timothy Jackson’s recent Lepht Hand podcast about the ontogenetic stance: Then have a read of his essay on Darwin, Simondon, and Battaile and the importance of a “variation first” approach that replaces classical effective theory ontology with an account of ontogenesis. One consequence of such an approach is that we can only…
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The Cosmic Poetry of Whitehead’s Philosophy: Notes on my dialogue with Ingrid Rieser
You can listen to my conversation with Ingrid over on her Forest of Thought podcast, or read the revised transcript of my remarks below. We recorded this in Claremont, CA back in June at the “Is It Too Late?” conference on ecological civilization (you can watch my conference presentation on Whitehead’s advice for the business mind here). “Philosopher” is…
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From Substance to Creativity, Or on the Modernity That Could Have Been
Yesterday in my history of Western philosophy course, where my students are reading Richard Tarnas’ Passion of the Western Mind (1991), I lectured on a couple of seventeenth century philosophers in an attempt to catch the nature of the shift that historians call “the Enlightenment.” I then connect their innovations to a couple of nineteenth and twentieth…
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Between the Speculative and the Prosaic: Life, Imagination, and Individuation
Timothy Jackson and I went deep into descendental philosophy and aesthetic ontology, core concepts developed in my last book Crossing the Threshold (2023). I try to argue against both scientistic neutrality and dogmatic theology. I believe that any attempt at thinking the most general conditions of reality inevitably touches the spiritual. If it did not then natural science…
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Jung, Simondon, and the Ontogenesis of Philosophy
We just wrapped the “Forever Jung” conference co-hosted by CIIS and the San Francisco Jung Institute. Tim couldn’t be with us in person, but I enjoyed his Zoom presentation on Jung and Simondon (video of his talk should be online soon; you can listen to mine here). Below are some LLM assisted notes on Tim’s exegesis of the…
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Matter, Life, and Mind: Love as a Cosmological Power
This was recorded on Saturday, September 13, 2025 as part of the Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, CO. Below is the recording and a lightly edited transcript. Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by thanking you all for allowing your curiosity to draw you here. We are engaged in a…
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Value at the Root: Cultivating Virtue in a Post-Truth World
Context The following reflections grow out of my live dialogue with Bonnitta Roy about the metaphysics of value. She’ll be sharing the discussion in her pop-up school for those who subscribe. Here I wanted to offer some further reflections on what was stirred up in me. A few orienting points: First, we wanted our philosophical conversation to…
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Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process
Below is a draft of a chapter for a book on radical and process theologies. My contribution is based on a conversation I had with Peter Rollins earlier this year: Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process By Matthew David Segall Ahead of turning to the body of this exposition, a…
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Cosmology, Democracy, and the Spirit of the Earth: Talking Process-Relational Political Theology with Tripp Fuller and Aaron Simmons
I joined Tripp and Aaron to discuss the changing role of religion in public life in our tumultuous political moment. We were discussing my lecture offering a Whiteheadian process cosmological response to Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. “Between Earth and Empire: Cosmopolitical Democracy Beyond the Liberal Horizon“ When Tripp asked how a process philosopher might…
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Infinite Intimate: Dialoguing with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein
Matt Segall: Hi Marc, pleasure to meet you. Marc Gafni: Good to meet you, Matt. Matt Segall: Really, as I said in my email, it’s an honor and it’s humbling to get to talk to you and Zak. I’ve had a chance to spend a little time with Zak. But yeah, great to connect with you. Where are…
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Whitehead’s Evolutionary Theology: Reflections on Process-Relational Panentheism
Below is a lightly edited, somewhat abridged transcript derived from a conversation I had earlier today with Jack Roycroft-Sherry. You can watch the conversation here. The Polysemic Nature of God What do we learn about God from Whitehead’s metaphysics? This is a difficult question because the term “God” is polysemic. Whitehead has a concept of God…
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In Defense of Participatory Platonism: Dialoging with Tim Jackson about Dan McQuillan’s Critique of Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism
Tim and I read McQuillan, Dan. Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism. Philos. Technol. 31, 253–272 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0273-3 Key themes discussed: Transcript: Matt Segall: Hey Tim. Timothy Jackson: Hey, man, how you doing. Matt Segall: Cool sweater—are those sea slugs? Timothy Jackson: Yeah. Nudibranchs. Matt Segall: Nice. Timothy Jackson: Naked gills. Matt Segall: So you are underslept and overread? Timothy Jackson: Oh, yeah, big time. I…
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It from Bit from Chit: Philosophizing at the Threshold of Artificial Intelligence (dialogue with Robert Prentner)
Summary of my dialogue with Robert Prentner: I apologize for the sound quality, but there is a full transcript below! Robert began by explaining his shift from skepticism to engagement with AI. Early versions of ChatGPT struck him as underwhelming, but newer models like GPT-4 and Claude impressed him with their linguistic and problem-solving fluency.…
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The Invariance of Variation: Or Why Metaphysics Must Become Ungrounded (Dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Above, Tim Jackson and I dialogue about a number of conversations we watched, including: Matt Segall: So this is going to be laid back. We didn’t read anything, but we did listen to a whole bunch of conversations. I guess three. Okay, I threw another one in there. So, there’s the Levin and Deacon dialogue…
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An Anthropocosmic Approach to the Nature of Consciousness (My Talk at the UTOK Conference on Consciousness)
“What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his ‘soul.’ Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for…
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