A more embodied approach to philosophy

A conversation with Matt Segall about imagination and reality (and what's between)

Last week, I had the pleasure of talking to philosopher

Matthew David Segall

about his book, Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead.

I made a disclaimer at the outset of the conversation, that I haven’t read Schelling and Whitehead myself - for that matter, I’ve barely read any philosophy in my life at all!

But I told Matt that listening to him in conversation with various thinkers that I’ve encountered online had made me very curious because the way he explains his understanding of human experience had directly impacted my own.

I was gratified when Matt said at the close of our conversation, “While I really enjoy hanging out in those airy realms of ideas and doing metaphysics, it’s ultimately only of value to me and other people if it can be put into practice.”

I encourage you to listen to the full conversation.

Below I share a few creative thoughts of my own based on what I believe Matt is pointing to, in the tradition of “process philosophers” like Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) and contemporary philosopher, Michael Marder, whose concept of “plant thinking” is featured in Matt’s book.

As a preview, here’s Matt talking about Whitehead’s idea of “concrescence”:

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Imagine you are in a swimming pool, splashing about.

If you pause a moment, standing mostly still in the shallow end, you will be able to recognize how the water all around you is moved by other swimmers. You feel it’s movement against your body, coming from all sides.

Likewise, if you stir the water (or get into a splash fight with a friend) you can easily see how your movement ripples out into the experience of others.

Now suppose that your body, and the bodies of all the other swimmers, were transparent. Suppose that you could see through the skin to admire the complex interaction of all the organs and the bones of the skeletons.

Suppose that somehow the movement of thought and emotion through the interior of these bodies was also revealed you - and yet, that this movement too, like the ripples through the water, crossed skin boundaries, whether by way of spoken words, facial expression or more invisible and silent energies.

Suppose that the water itself was made from feeling. Suppose that ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’ were not so separate, only different realms of one continuous experience.

Suppose you were to face another swimmer and look into their eyes with the sense that you were looking in the mirror.

If they were to scratch their head, you wouldn’t feel it directly, but you would have a sense for it, as if their head was a phantom limb of your own body.

If they were to tell you honestly about their grief, you wouldn’t feel it as intensely as they would. Yet you might feel tender and open and feel tears form behind your eyes.

If they were to vivaciously express their joy, you might feel your own body infected by the impulse to celebrate.

Suppose you could experience all these things on land as well, that you could know the air - the “ether” - as a fluid medium of movement just like water.

Not only do you feel vibrations coming towards you. You also know the creative potential for “making waves” of your own. Even a single thought creates ripples all around, changing the experience of everything you perceive.

And perhaps the most sensitive beings around you can feel what you are thinking.

Suppose you were not the only one that felt these things, that, in their own unique ways, and to different degrees, the rocks and the trees and the birds and the bees and the earth and the stars all felt these things too.

And that each one of these beings was also a mirror of you, or another part of “you.”

Matt helped me to understand Whitehead’s term concrescence, which describes how the present moment unfolds - again and again - at the meeting place of actual past events and the pure unscripted potential of the unknown future.

He told me, “With each concrescence, the universe is, in a sense, born anew.”

Can you imagine how consciously relating to this way of seeing could invite a new and richer way of being, a more complete tasting of the fruits of life in your body, mind, heart and soul - and in your movement through a more magical world?