Footnotes2Plato

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

Tag: Process philosophy

Whitehead, God, and Eternal Objects (Dialoguing with Darren Iammarino)

Darren and I had an intense geek out session exploring some of Whitehead’s categoreal scheme. Key points include: Here’s my paper on eternal objects (a shorter version was just published in Process Studies): “Standing Firm in the Flux: On Whitehead’s Eternal Objects”

December 22, 2023
Kant, Reality, Freedom: Dialoguing with Mahon McCann

Timestamps:

December 8, 2023
In Dialogue with Gary Herstein on War Machine Podcast

Matt Baker invited me back on the War Machine podcast to chat with Gary Herstein, coauthor with Randall Auxier of The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism (Routledge, 2017). We discussed Gary’s recent blog post about the uses and abuses of Whitehead’s God concept: “Happy-Touchy-Feely-God talk”. I tried to push back a bit as I…

November 19, 2023
Schelling, Whitehead: Crossing the Threshold (dialogue with Cadell Last)

Cadell Last invited me on his Philosophy Portal podcast a few weeks ago. Here’s the video, which just premiered on YouTube. The Genesis of an Idea “Crossing the Threshold” germinated from my dissertation, titled “Cosmotheanthropic Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead” (2016). This work was a philosophical experiment, a quest to…

November 13, 2023
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…

October 23, 2023
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”…

October 7, 2023
Taming the Technological Dragon, with Michael Levin

Selections from the transcript of this conversation (complied by AI): Matt Segall: I just finished your paper “Technological Approaches to Mind Everywhere” that came out last year and really enjoyed it. The more I read your stuff, the more I am shaken free of some philosophical commitments that I think I had arrived at because…

September 15, 2023
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…

September 13, 2023
Audio of my International Whitehead Conference presentation at Munich School of Philosophy

This talk was delivered on July 29th, 2023 at 4:30pm at the Munich School of Philosophy. Thanks to Godehard Brüntrup for chairing the session. You can find the paper I am summarizing here: “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism: Turning Idealism Inside Out“

August 2, 2023
From Transformational Festival to Whitehead Conference and Back Again

On Wednesday I’ll board a jet-powered steel tube and sky-sail to Europe for a few weeks. I land in Madrid, Spain where I’ll immediately catch a shuttle to drive along the southern side of the Sierra de Gredos mountains across the boarder to the small town of Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal, just north of which is the…

July 17, 2023
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…

July 10, 2023
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…

June 21, 2023
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…

June 8, 2023
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.

June 4, 2023
“Whitehead’s Transcendental Cosmology” By James Bradley

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy: James Bradley (2021; edited by Sean J. McGrath). Bradley is criminally under-appreciated, but this collection is sure to change that. While reading McGrath’s wonderful introduction, I noted his footnote (p. 7) about an as yet untranslated article Bradley published in the French journal Archives de philosophie,…

June 3, 2023
Whitehead’s Ontology of Pure Feeling: Living in a Time of Dying Podcast

I had a lovely time dialoguing with Meghan on her Living in a Time of Dying podcast. Listen here.

June 2, 2023
Michael Levin’s Latent Space of Biological Form

Iain McGilchrist mentions my dialogue with Michael Levin a few weeks ago at the start of this video, before proceeding into an inquiry concerning the whereabouts of ideal form: Where are the forms in the ‘latent space’ of biological possibility? I think everyone in the conversation, including Iain, senses that asking “where”–while essential for noting…

May 30, 2023
Mind and Life in the Cosmos

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

May 7, 2023
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…

April 30, 2023
Online Book Release Event this Saturday, April 29 at 12pm PT

My new book Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead (Integral Imprint/Revelore Press) was published a few days ago. Next weekend (4/29 at 12pm Pacific), I’ll be doing an online book release event in my Discord server (you can access Discord from your browser if you don’t have…

April 24, 2023
RevLeft Radio podcast on my new book

April 10, 2023