Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism (Dialogue with Nathan Hawkins)
Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording (above) that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface noise of the culture war.…
How does it feel to be on your own?: Society and the Modern World – A Whiteheadian Reading of Hartmut Rosa and Charles Taylor
We finished our Hartmut Rosa reading group this morning (recordings are available here). I am grateful for Tripp Fuller’s invitation to study this text. It was my first…
Sacred Swimmer
I came to this cityat the edge of the continentas so many dreamers before mefollowing the westward winds of timelike the gold-glinting eyesof greedy men who mistook the ocean’s endless horizonfor a promise made only to them.I was destined by a different orenot yet hardened but still…
#surrealism
“Sky Fishing 2” - Catrin Welz-Stein, c. 2018
Here is my latest post following @footnotes2plato.substack.com dialogue with Graham Harman & my past podcast conversation with him on Michael brooks, CIIS, & the Left. Might be of interest to @nieaufgehenderrest.bsky.social & @mattpolprof.bsky.social followers.
www.erikhaines.org/p/on-god-abs...
Graham Harman and @footnotes2plato.substack.com discuss why philosophy is more than pure logical analysis. youtu.be/YPgiLm6nVso?...
The Logical Animal – Earth to Humanity: Put Down Your Maps
The frogs are croaking on my left down in the Eel River, and on my right is the low roar of semis on the 101. This is nearly my last night in Humboldt County. I came out to the hot tub one last time to take in the night sky. It happened to…
Thinking Things with Graham Harman: Whitehead’s Way Beyond Philosophies of Human Access
Rahul Samaranayake has had me on his podcast a few times over the years, including an especially generative conversation with Peter Rollins last year. This time he invited me and Graham Harman into dialogue.…
Thinking with rocks.
These rocks, stacked by human hands along a canyon creek near Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, are not simply aggregates or piles. Neither are they simply the freely created artwork of humans. The left-hand stack of eleven rocks (if you count earth) towers toward the…
Poetics of Life and Death: Dialoguing with Andreas Weber
Matt: Hi, Andreas. Good morning. Andreas: Good morning. Sorry to keep you waiting. Matt: That’s quite all right. Andreas: I was late anyway, and then Zoom decided it needed to do a new install, like in the old Windows times. Matt: Of course.…
Ontologizing Enactivism: Worldmaking with Ezequiel Di Paolo (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Timothy Jackson and I were back in the saddle, this time to discuss Ezequiel Di Paolo’s article seeking an enactive ontology: Di Paolo, E. A. (2023). F/acts: Ways of enactive worldmaking. Journal of…
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,…
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…
“Time and World” By Hartmut Rosa: Reading Group Invitation
I want to invite you to join a new online reading group I’m co-hosting with my friend Tripp Fuller. We’re going to be working through Hartmut Rosa’s Time and World. The group will happen over Zoom in a seminar style with plenty of time for…
Thinking With David Krakauer
Listening to David Krakauer on Jim Rutt’s “Worldview” podcast while making dinner made a few things snap into place for me. You can listen to it here: I appreciate how rigorously he avoids collapsing the epistemic into the ontological. Krakauer is very lucid about…
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…
There’s no scientific evidence that consciousness exists.
Evidence, in a scientific age, is usually thought of in a very specific way. We tend to assume evidence means empirical measurement: can I record this on a camera, or on some kind of detector? Can I transform what I observe—signals,…
Excellent reflection on the hideous distortion of the person and message of Christ by so-called 'Christian Nationalists'
Matthew David Segall (@footnotes2plato.substack.com) - Christ and Ceasar: Christian Nationalism in the News
footnotes2plato.com/2026/01/07/c...
Islam and the West: Dialoging with Jared Morningstar
In my recent conversation with Jacob Kishere as part of his “Christianity beyond itself” series, we attempted to navigate the ways the “Christ impulse” can so easily get hijacked by culture-war crusader energy. Spiritual renewal thereby risks…
Flights and Perchings: A 2025 retrospective and a look ahead as I turn 40
As the new year begins, I decided to take a look back at my speaking engagements in 2025. I turn 40 later this month, so this has been an occasion not only to recollect the recent course of my intellectual development, but…
Christ and Ceasar: Christian Nationalism in the News
I wish I didn’t care that Nick Fuentes’ star continues to rise. I wish it didn’t matter. But I fear Christian nationalist Joel Webbon may be right when he says (in the first of a series of new interviews) that Fuentes is “not merely the most…
Simone Weil and the Sacred Heart of Humanity (dialogue with Pedro Brea and Karsten Jensen)
We discussed Simone Weil's "Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation." You can read it here: Transcript: Matt Segall: Well, I really enjoyed our last conversation, and I haven’t read much Simone Weil, so…
Anthroposophy and Critical Race Theory: Rudolf Steiner at Harvard Divinity School
A few days ago, I shared a conference retrospective about Harvard Divinity School’s Rudolf Steiner centennial: I’ve since had a chance to listen carefully to another talk on the subject of racism in Steiner’s work by…
Romantic Imagination and the Recovery of Nature’s Intrinsic Value: Whitehead, Barfield, and Our Crisis of Perception (transcript)
Over on Substack, I shared an essay based on the transcript of my remarks at a presentation earlier today for the Center for Process Studies. You can read that essay…
Contemporary Natural Philosophy Needs a New Theory of Forms
In this disputation with Jacob Given and Adam Robert, I was defending the thesis that contemporary natural philosophy needs a new process-relational theory of forms, and that Whitehead’s notion of eternal objects can play that role. Adam…
The Word in Every Tongue: From Crusade to Conversation in the Movement of Christianity Beyond Itself
I sat down with Jacob Kishere for another conversation as part of his Christianity Beyond Itself series. Our first conversation was over a year ago: you can listen to it at this link. This series,…
"A truly novel political movement from outside the corporate duopoly is needed"
Yes. The late 70s/80s in Europe saw the Green movement form in response to the impending ecological crisis. Because of its electoral system (and utilitarian leanings), the U.S. has so far not seen a comparable movement.
Nick Fuentes and the Hollow Soul of America: Is there an America After the Idols?
Trump seems to be losing control over the MAGA movement he created. His surrogates remain confused, comparing Zoran Mamdani’s success mobilizing young New Yorkers to the rise of the Hitler Youth. Meanwhile Zoomers on…
The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead (1925–1927): General Metaphysical Problems of Science url: scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/ps/artic...
