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: Romantic Philosophy

  • Cosmic History in Steiner and Whitehead (dialogue with Formscapes)

    This was a really fun conversation with Formscapes (check out his content on YouTube). The dialogue begins with Whitehead’s ideas on hybrid prehension and how they might relate to Steiner’s cultivation of higher organs of spiritual perception. Whitehead appears to have been open to esoteric ideas, based on some evidence that he tried contacting his…

  • Register for McGilchrist Conference

    Registration is now open for in-person and online attendance at the Metaphysics and the Matter With Things conference. We expect the limited number of in-person tickets to sell out quickly. Student discounts are available (please email me from your .edu student email account for information about this: msegall@ciis.edu). I’m very excited about the line-up of…

  • Navigating Kantian Thought with John Vervaeke

    This dialogue with John Vervaeke about my new book Crossing the Threshold was recorded earlier this year. Claude’s summary: The book discusses overcoming Kant’s epistemological barrier between the world and human reason. Kant erected this barrier to preserve human freedom and agency against the mechanistic worldview of science. Matt aims to develop an “etheric imagination”…

  • Process Theology and the Modern World: Science, Religion, and Christology After Teilhard and Whitehead

    Below is a draft of my chapter to be published as part of an anthology coming out of the Teilhard and Whitehead conference hosted by the Center for Christogenesis at Villanova University a few weeks ago.

  • Seminar Series next month on Process Approaches to the Philosophy of Biology

    The Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee, which I chair, will be hosting a series of seminars next month featuring the contributors to a new book, Process-Philosophcal Perspectives on Biology: Intuiting Life (Cambridge, 2023). The book challenges the reductionist, materialistic metaphysics often adopted by biologists, arguing that this approach overlooks the intricate complexities and essential characteristics…

  • Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist

    I’m very excited to announce that my graduate program (Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS) and the Center for Process Studies are cohosting a conference March 29-31, 2024 focused on the work of Iain McGilchrist. The temporary conference landing page is HERE. You can provide an email address for updates on conference registration in the…

  • Energy is Information, Information is Communication: Thinking with Vervaeke and Henriques

    Have a listen to Greg Henriques and John Vervaeke exploring the limits of reductive naturalism and the dangerous of decadent romanticism: John and Greg got some thoughts stirring, which I shared in the video below: For more on the communicative ontology I am proposing here, see this article of mine in Process Studies on Whitehead…

  • Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism: Turning Idealism Inside Out [draft article]

    Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism: Turning Idealism Inside Out [draft article]

    Below is a draft of a chapter I was asked to write for a book on Cambridge Idealism. It is still a bit rough in places and I’ll be continuing to update it in the coming weeks and months. I’ll be presenting some of the ideas explored in it at the International Whitehead Conference in…

  • NYTimes profile on mycologist Merlin Sheldrake mentions Whitehead (and me)

    Today’s New York Times featured a profile on my friend, mycologist Merlin Sheldrake. In addition to discussing the philosophical implications of his scientific research, the article shares a bit about his magical childhood and fascinating family. Do give it a read. Merlin was kind enough to mention a collaboration with me to sort out the…

  • Crossing the Threshold on the War Machine Podcast

    Yet another podcast discussing my book, this time with Matt from the War Machine podcast. We talk theurgy, the role of feeling and willing in our thinking, and how to experience the soul, God, and the cosmos after Kant’s critiques.

  • From German Idealism to Anthroposophy: The Spiritual Scientist Podcast

    Mick Young invited me on his Spiritual Scientist podcast to discuss the importance of German Idealism in Rudolf Steiner’s development. I introduce the concept of ‘etheric imagination’ as a form of cognition by which we can consciously participate in the formative forces responsible for generating living organisms, including our own bodies. Participating in these etheric…

  • Rudolf Steiner and Racism

    Update Jan 31, 2024: The conversation continues on our Urphänomen Substack page. As a teacher, I do my best to actively encourage deep and sustained dialogue about the racism, implicit or explicit, that shows up in the statements or actions of any figure studied with my students. Many modern European and American thinkers, including all…

  • Mind and Life in the Cosmos

    I’m sharing a version of a lecture I delivered for the Pari Center earlier this morning.

  • The Integral Stage Authors Series (interview by Layman Pascal about “Crossing the Threshold”)

    I’ve pasted the transcript below with timestamps (this is autogenerated from YouTube and so has some errors, but it is readable!). 0:34 welcome back to the author series on guess what The Integral Stage. I’m Layman Pascal on behalf of myself, Bruce 0:41 Alderman, and the Unspeakable future of life on Earth. And today we’re…

  • Pre-order my new book ‘Crossing the Threshold’

    My new book Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead is now available for pre-order (thanks to Revelore Press/Integral Imprint). Orders ship on Earth Day (April 22). “Segall’s new book is a sustained blissful effort to re-infuse 21st century thought with the courage, generosity, and imagination that he himself…

  • My presentation at the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies

    This presentation was given on February 16, 2023 at the Claremont United Church of Christ. My paper was titled “Physics Within the Bounds of Feeling Alone.” The draft is available here. Visit the conference website here.

  • “Physics Within the Bounds of Feeling Alone” [draft article]

    I’m sharing the first draft of a paper that I’ll be delivering later this month at the Center for Process Studies’ 50th anniversary conference. My track is on February 16th, 2023 and is titled “Science and Philosophy: Nature and the Nature of Reality.” My panel within this track is titled “Physics and Metaphysics: Facts, Values,…

  • Six Lectures on Whitehead’s ‘Process and Reality’

    Below is a series of six lectures originally recorded in 2017 going through each part of Alfred North Whitehead’s magnum opus Process and Reality.

  • Thinking with Rudolf Steiner

    It is hard to believe I’ve been thinking with Steiner for almost 15 years. He is, as the late BBC documentarian and author Jonathan Stedall put it in the title of his 2011 biopic, a “challenge.” In contemporary German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s words: Steiner created a kind of antenna anthropology that we can no longer…

  • Carl Schmitt’s ‘Political Theology’: A Process Theological Intervention

    “Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: A Process Theological Intervention” By Matthew David Segall Introduction This essay critically engages with Carl Schmitt’s anti-liberal political theology, offering important interventions from the related perspectives of Alfred North Whitehead’s cosmopolitical process theology, philosophical personalism, and Bruno Latour’s Gaian political ecology. Schmitt’s criticisms of early 20th century liberalism are tested against Dan Dombrowski’s…

  • In dialogue with Iain McGilchrist

    See also my blog review of McGilchrist’s new book The Matter With Things.