A History of Philosophy | 62 Whitehead and Process Theology

did everybody get a copy of the instructions for the book reviews to the end of the semester this is the third time I've been Hawking these which means that you people have missed two times let's see who else was there anybody back here okay we turn our attention back today to Whitehead and I wonder concentrate particularly on whiteheads conception of God but in order to do that we have to have some understanding of his overall philosophical scheme particularly his metaphysics because it goes without saying I suppose that how one conceives of God and God's relationship to nature is really going to be dependent on the metaphysical scheme but God concept is system dependent in that sense the god concept is system dependent yeah because how you conceive of God in relationship to nature depends on how you conceive of nature quite obviously so and last time we were introducing Whitehead and I was emphasizing the fact that for Whitehead the basic constituents of all reality and not substances with an enduring unchanging identity but rather events events can be very moment hurry like one fiftieth of a second in Eurasian one fiftieth of a second is pretty small he tends to call those tiny events actual occasions and reserves the word event and sometimes the word entity actual entities for the more large-scale events but whether your sport talking of the micro events or more maxi events like this class period or your college education or the history of the United States you see each of those is an event of a different size the different Eurasian no matter what the event you're talking about all the events some can be described in terms of three constituent elements the three factors and as we indicated last time these three factors are the objective data which really amount to the the causes the efficient causes if you like objective data eternal possibilities and the decision and I repeat this simply because it's so very important to understand it so that if you conceive of a process going along what initiate some you event but what initiates the new event is the intersection of two processes so that the objective data of this second process intersect with the existing states of affairs in the first process so that at that point of intersection there are objective data and they're going to make a difference they say let's say cause effect mechanism yeah and in as much as the basic model for all of these posts current things are human consciousness in human consciousness we would say that the objective data are we're aware of them through what he calls physical prehension prehension of course is a lightness term it's the shortened version of apprehension or if you like comprehension but the pre hint something is simply to to accept it to be aware of it for it to affect you he points out that couldn't be positive and negative prehension positive prehension where you yes you accept the influence and it you absorbed negative pretension where you simply reject it ignore it turn away from it but the the new event by virtue of objective data that are physically pre hindered and that is an effective kind of experience not a cognitive experience an effective experience so he criticizes the representational theories of knowledge in people like Descartes and Mark Berkeley and Kant by saying that they give primacy to the cognitive primacy to the concepts of the idea but the first initiating thing in a perceptual experience in a perceptual event is not the idea but the cause and stimulus the effect if not the cognitive and that perceptual experience is the paradigm for all events of all other sorts so that even in unconscious beings there is a low-grade equivalent to physical prehension namely the cause-effect mechanism so physical prehension eternal possibilities are simply abstract logical possibilities which are if you like brought to bear by virtue of the objective data what's going to be the effect of this objective data of this new experience well they could go various ways alternative possibilities Yesi and those eternal possibly those eternal possibilities in conscious experience of course their ideas which are apprehended by what he calls conceptual prehension which plainly is cognitive so the idea is not the primary thing as it was for Descartes of law can't have an experience you're just bombarded with ideas no human was more on target its forceful and vivacious impressions and the ideas follow it's the effective thoughts rather than the cognitive so you have eternal possibilities he he recognizes that if they're logical possibilities that sort of objective logical possibilities that is to say in the very nature of things that are these logical possibilities they're not something we invade we don't invent possibilities we may actualize possibilities but we don't invent the possibilities we may recognize the possibilities but we don't create them so in that sense the possibilities are there whether we know it or not there are objective possibilities and so you find him in his later writings especially calling these eternal objects meaning they're objects of thought like ideas of objects for luck they're objects of thought objective possibilities that you become aware of something in response to this causal stimulus of the objective data there arise all sorts of possibilities which in conscious processes we're aware of in unconscious processes are still there yes a there are still those possibilities whether you know that there's anybody to know what they are or not and from those possibilities what determines the future is what he calls the decision in human consciousness it's often a conscious decision this is what I'm gonna do with the new Givens conscious decision but even in unconscious processes biological physical so forth there's a cut-off point a selectivity that's involved well not all of the possibilities can be actualized and so some are in the natural course of events you'll see now this this decision is what provides what he calls a subjective because in the decision the possibility which is selective becomes the goal at which you aim that's what you're gonna go for you're going to actualize that possibility yes see now the the initial subjective aim is that which is presented by the natural causal process let us say given these dumb outcome and in any process that's determined then the initial subjective aim is simply the subjective aim of this new event subjective in the sense that it becomes some intrinsic end for the new event by virtue of the new day no which you've been absorbed in title did trinsic notice he's got a teleological explanation of everything a teleological explanation it's not a mechanistic universe it's a teleological one now in the case of beings with consciousness that initial subjective aim can become a modified subjective aim the modified subjective a so that you might resist the effect of something upon you and Hindle they new input in some other way and of course even your pet dog resists your call your whistle at times and goes chasing after the cat next door the initial subjective aim becomes a modified subjective thing and it smells the cat I always think dogs smell before they look you know the motto look before you leap would apply very well to dogs in that sense some human beings I think before they look dogs smell before they look and so forth but the look can provide a modified subjective thing so the initial and the modified subjective aim so this is the way it is for for all events and as I said last time these are gradualism so that in varying degrees this is conscious or unconscious across the whole range of things in heaven and ups now the notion of a subjective aim is teleological where does that lead well that leads to the completion of the event if they and when the possibility inherent in this new data is achieved then okay that's the completion of the event it's as if there is a genetic process and and try the biological metaphor a genetic process so that you've got conception not in the cognitive sense but in the biological sense okay you've got conception because of the causal stimulus you have conception you have the mental process with the possibilities of merging and being selected during embryonic development if you like until the birth of the new event with the decision and the achievement in maturity his subjective aim and then of course the mature event gradually subside so you can see it like birth maturity death which gives rise to birth maturity death Hey dialectics Hegel yeah thesis antithesis synthesis the influence of the daily information in this whole understanding of the world process the whole world process is a dialectical kind of thing it has a dialectical structure in the synthesis the objective data represent by new possibilities that they provide the synthesis well the completion of the event then leads to what he calls satisfaction satisfaction and and again notice that that's a term drawn from conscious perceptual experience it's the paranoid you know what I mean by paradigm you have certain paradigm verbs in foreign language you see if you want to know how to conjugate a verb you go back to the paradigm a Moammar so Martin Thomas amatis amant in why don't just we to ales la New Sun Wu Zetian salt and French so forth so they the conscious perceptual experience is the paradigm and in perceptual experience is the satisfaction when you rarely see as you have opportunity to absorb it it is for the satisfaction is for Whitehead an aesthetic satisfaction that was thetic initially in the continental Germanic sense of sensory satisfaction ice then am i having to do with the senses cants transcendental aesthetic having to do with senses but it's also aesthetic in the english-language sense of it an aesthetic and aesthetic satisfaction how do you describe this aesthetic satisfaction which is the culmination of the experience well it's that everything in the event all these three elements together to provide a unity so that the event is one feeling it's one experience now notice how we use the term experience along those lines it could be your first taste of pecan pie what an experience it could be the four years of a college education the Wheaton experience it could be that at the end of some phase of human history the historian looks back and says that whole history was a human experience singular in an identity of its own that provides unified field so this this satisfaction is a unity harmony of the opposites opposite yes contrasts of actuality and possibility the intensity of feeling that's associated with the ordered harmony of the opposing ingredients within the overall experience now you know that's the way some people explain describe the experience of beauty in the arts yes a contrasts harmonized in that final moment where the symphony brings it all together have you ever wondered how everybody knows when the clap when the synthesis is achieved the experience is complete and he uses those aesthetic analogies and in those sorts of processes those kinds of events the God is what contributes to that satisfaction yes a the good is instrumental towards beauty explicitly for white his ethic is a utilitarian ethic good is a means to aesthetic aids and evil is the fragmentary transitory opposition to that harmony either by virtue of resisting the emerging aim with its grain synthesis or by virtue of sheer triviality that gets to be boring yeah there's a novel that's boring is a bad novel a lecture that's boring is a bad lecture and one in which there are things that really are extraneous and interfere with the developing movement of the thing about but much of what we call evil is simply the the conflict of opposites that are going to be harmonized in the synthesis so that when white had talked about his son who was a flier with the British in World War 1 what they called the Royal Flying Corps back there what became the Royal Air Force his son was shot down and dogfight over the trenches in France when he talked about that he he talked of his life coming to a beautiful completion as it merged into history his problem of evil notice if you like the evolutionary optimism and idealism of the 19th century well you see then that this characterization of an event like perceptual experience is the characterization of a person's life it's the characterization of all human history of all cosmic history and remember that his category of the ultimate let us say the ultimate explanatory category is creativity the way in which novelty emerges out of the conflict of opposites how one event gives birth to another event in dying we live well if then this is the nature of the world process the creative process as it really is and as he takes it to be the creative process the world process what does it say about a human being well it says that a human being is essentially what David Hume said about personal identity remember that Hume said that personal identity as we know it in consciousness is simply a bundle of perceptions the present memory of past experiences that bundle of perceptions is the only personal identity you can describe now white-haired of course brings out those four sections over a period of time but it's the continuity of the experiences which gives identity so that you look at a photo of yourself 10 years ago and say yeah that's me anything you can identify with it because of that continuity but the human self he says is simply a society of events with a unifying structure a society of events not the the thing we want to get to today what about God now you look then at these three ingredients of all events keep in mind that God for whitehead is not an exception to these metaphysical generalities but is the example par excellence so God is conceived in the image of perceptual experience but in another way God is understood in terms of the experience of being God yeah the self-consciousness is the lens projected on the ultimate there was that mean well he says there are three phases three phases in the nature of God if you like the threefold nature of God with respect to any event all right here's the nature of any event and there are three there's a threefold nature of God in relationship to the threefold nature of an event the threefold nature of God is simply another example of a three-fold event in other words the being we call God is like any other being an event an everlasting event is a an event without beginning and without it an everlasting event what he talks about in this threefold nature is the primordial nature of God his primordial nature his consequent nature and the super ejected nature okay fine now you learn not just to memorize meanings of words but to figure them out when you see them and that word super ejected Latin yeah Keo is the verb to throat cast super over on yeah so that it's in the super ejected nature of God that God as it were give something to nature to the world but the consequent nature of God God gets something from world so you have to start with the primordial nature of God to know as it were what God begins with and how an event affects God and then what God gives back to the event because that's the way it is you see what - what everlasting is the primordial nature of God that never changes that never changes consequent nature super ejected nature those are changing with the primordial nature never changes what is the primordial nature it is the ordered harmony of all eternal objects eternal objects of the eternal possibilities in other words what he's saying is that you you have to think of God as the sum total of all logical possibilities now get that in mind and then see how it echoes the past the st. Augusta the ratio needs a tyranny those eternal forms eternal ideals play notes forms are what their conceptual possibilities in the mind of God archetypes in the mind of God sure that that's what Agustin got from those Alexandrian church fathers from that Lagos tradition in the early church that was so influenced by the middle Platonism and remember of the three influences on whiteheads thought that we were talking about last time the third was these Alexandrian church fathers so in effect what Whitehead is doing is picking up on the Platonic theory of forms as it was translated through the middle Platonism into the Lagos language of the Stoics that the Christian Church adopted and applied to the Creator God and the incarnate got us in houma hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge yes all Recio knees a terror all forms that's the way they explained his omniscience the third way was in the Alexandrian tradition in Justin Martyr in Agustin in Anselm in Thomas Aquinas the whole medieval tradition you see but it's back to the Alexandrians that Whitehead likes to go in so they you have him thinking of God and God's experienced God's own experience you have to think of his thinking on these thoughts his eternal wisdom the possibilities transcreation now as nature itself the world in the world's history development takes place natural events God who is all experiencing experience is the world and he can be touched with the feeling of what's going on in the world nothing so God feels what's going on God's bus don't move it you think God feels with us that's the language that Whitehead keeps using I'll read some of it to you shortly you think so that there is then here the conceptual prehension of possibilities here there is what he has called the physical prehension of objective data of what's going on and God experiencing in that very affective sense what's going on in the world while knowing conceptually all sorts of eternal possibilities for harmonizing what does he do in his soup objective nature he offers possibilities to the world process yeah it's God who provides the initial subjective aim god not some blind mechanistic force but God and of course in human experience you begin to see now that human beings have freedom to resist the will of God freedom to modify what God in His goodness offers those name purpose so God's primordial nature corresponds to the second ingredient in a natural event God's consequent nature corresponds to the first ingredient in a natural event God's super ejected nature corresponds with the third that is to say the third which then leads on into future events as it dies the Soviet as the next event comes down the pipeline as it were hideous metaphor the primordial nature of God incorporates some all possibilities for this new situation yes yes because the total possibilities included the possibilities that will arise in any new situation so the primordial nature is always there with those in reserve now I said the next event that comes down the pipeline of course it's not a matter of events coming down deep what Judy comes from another one beep no it's not that way it's it's much more like a well I suppose you have to say since I used sound some extremely complex but magnificent symphony you think or if you want to use strands it's more like a highly complex Bell telephone cable that takes them a week to sort out when it gets messed up yes a events weaving into events weaving into events and multitudinous lines of connection but for simplicity's sake he analyzes it in terms of one event leading to another event so what what sort of guard then does this give well it's um it's a God who orders God he says is the principle of order or to to use his term God is the principle of concretion now you look at that word concretions and I suppose you think concrete no don't never take his words at face value his technical terms come crashing seems to be his synonym for the word concrescence and if you have Latin and if you don't it's still the case that the word concrescence means growing together Cresco is the verb to grow con with growing together there used to be a cooking fat called Cresco until in these days of fat consciousness they all became liquid rather than solid Cresco was a cooling effect that makes the cakes rise so concrescence now god then is the principle of concretions conquests it's God who who keeps the growth going into that harmony of the symphony now notice God does not originate the world process God doesn't originate it the category of the ultimate is creativity there's always been creativity primary example is God the white it seems to think that there are natural processes that have been going on one or another going all the way back yes a and there's no reason in Whitehead to think that God was the first such process so I guess God in the Big Bang title of a lecture tomorrow night AC would be very different for a Whitehead Ian theologian than for a traditional theist nor does he think of God he doesn't think of him as an originator nor does he think of him as God who is the Terminator I guess that's a science-fiction term there in other words he doesn't have an eschatology he doesn't have an eschatology the end of the thing you say a teleology without an eschatology yeah the teleology just goes on and on and on and on and they not so the harmony is being created all the time and it's an everlasting harmony yeah it's an everlasting harmony so he doesn't think of history having some terminus towards which it's moving God is the principle of concretion the principle of order he also calls God the principle of limitation and because by virtue of his super ejected nature there are only limited possibilities available only limited possibilities available so the world process is not going to self-destruct for whitehead it couldn't if that's not in the possibilities God's objective nature doesn't have such possibilities so you notice then that his emphasis is on the creativity of God exercised with loving care in providing initial subjective aim in every event no matter how micro or macro in the entire world process in that sense God too is an event the all experiencing event it's not pen theism it's not traditional theism in any sense in which God is creator some process theologians will find in a moment seared as a kind of pantheism everything goes on within the experience that is God but the event the super all-inclusive experience that is God is much more than all the world process so pen aim the thing is now you may be tempted to ask us a friend of mine does whenever I remember him discussing this sort of thing well who's the experiencer you think what is the experiencer to which whiteheads reply is all right in your case as a perceiver what isn't perceiver what is a person it's in the only thing we can say is a person is a succession of events with the unity and harmony to the whole that memory theory of personal identity because this is a process philosophy not a substance philosophy don't look for a substratum a stuff an entity a thing that thinks and feels no not a thing that thinks and feels but thinking and feeling that's what's real so this is way it comes out let me read you some of what Whitehead says so that you can get the sense of it this is the his major work process and reality and towards the end there's a section on God and the world and here it is in the great formative period of theistic philosophy which ended in the rise of Mohammedanism after a continuance coeval with civilization three streams of thought emerge you know it's noticeable how often he talks of three those dialectical triads you see three strings of thought emerge which amid many variations in detail respectively fashion first God in the image of an imperial ruler second God as a personification of moral energy third God in the image of an ultimate philosophical principle now what did he have in mind these three schools of thought can be associated respectively with the divine seasons remember how the Roman seasons were divinized the Roman Senate he has become a guard as it was said of one the Imperial ruler God the imperial ruler the second personification of moral energy the Hebrew prophets the third the ultimate philosophical principle Aristotle but Aristotle was NT dated by Indian and Buddhist thought and Hebrew prophets to be paralleled in traces of earlier thought Mohammedanism and the divine Caesars merely represent the most natural obvious idolatrous theistic symbolism at all epochs and phases the history of theistic philosophy exhibits various stages of combination of these three diverse ways of entertaining the problem however there is the Galilean origin of Christianity not Galileo but Galilee okay the Galilean origin of Christianity they yet another suggestion there that doesn't fit well with any of the three main strands it doesn't emphasize a ruling Caesar or a ruthless moralist or the unmoved mover it dwells upon the tender elements in the world which slowly and in quietness operate by love and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom that's not of this world it doesn't look to the future but find its reward in the immediate present the kingdom of God is a monkey yes Lee every sparrow when it falls is seen the hairs of your head are all numbered some of you it's a much bigger task than others yeah something in God in votes terms and he's caught up you see by not Christian theology but caught up by the image of Jesus as it was in a certain liberal theological tradition that emphasized Jesus as the man of love you see that was very very active in his younger years his background then let's see 346 yeah we conceived of the patience of God tenderly saving the turmoil of an intermediate world by the completion of his own nature God's role is not the combat of productive force with productive force of destructive force with destructive force it lies in the patient operation of the overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization what's the overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization the primacy of the primordial nature which is yes his conceptual harmonization of all possibilities hence his ability to work all things together for good so let's see the patience of God yeah the revolts of destructive evil purely self-regarding a dismissed into their triviality and yet the good they did achieve an individual joy and individual sorrow in the introduction of needed contrast is saved by its relation to the completed whole the image is that of a tender care that nothing be lost God does not create the world he saves it or more accurately he's the poet of the world with tinder patients leading it by its vision of truth beauty and goodness and the creation achieves the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it's reached its final term its everlastingness so there it is he talks of of leading by love and he has a long disquisition in in one place long disposition no repeated talk in one of his books about love which he takes to be eros in adventures of ideals this is love which he takes to be eros not agape but eros because eros is the platonic word for love which is what a love of the gold so it's in this overarching love of good that God acts the desire for good you see and it's that which in the initial aim that God gives the initial subjective aim is being spread abroad the desire for good and you recall how in the medieval teleology Yesi all of nature has its natural tendency towards its natural good and even human beings who mistake what is the good dilled still desire the good even though they have said evil be thou my good they still desire that good you see so he's trying to recapture that teleology and in this way well any any comments any questions no no no in fact the incarnation doesn't either now you see he he talks of the historical Jesus but not of the incarnate second person of the Trinity so that as in Hegel so in Whitehead Christian theological concepts are simply symbols not to be taken as conceptually true yes II remember in Hegel you get the final triad in the absolute spirit moving from art to religion to philosophy where religion is a symbolic expression it's philosophy that conceptualizes it so religious talk it's symbolic talk Incarnation then is symbolic of what of the imminent loving activity of God in history in nature in fact some years ago I taught a seminar on Whitehead and process theology in which ii in which the second half of the term after having studied whitehead each person in the class was responsible for one twentieth century process theologian and for what that theologian had to say on certain key theological topics yes I and I don't think we found a single one who gave any traditional interpretation of the Incarnation it was always symbolic and similarly with other Cardinal Christian doctrines no I'm not gonna say it couldn't be done and I didn't read all the stuff that I had them read I was getting them to do my reading for me which is you know best reason for teaching a seminar get other people to do you sometime I'd like to go back and do it for myself it's telling somebody that when I retire that book I have up my sleeve is a white hit book I've been reading Whitehead working on Whitehead on and off for 40 years I'd like to bring it to fruition someone but one of the things I'd want to do is to go through all that literature you're seeing see if there's any of them who really do move beyond white and in that regard they may but certainly in the literature it's not at all evident in describing yeah you're concerned with what the term god being used he yeah yeah if yeah and that's a good question does he mean that God is actually a conscious and self conscious Ness I I think so but then but then on the other hand you know you have a shred of doubt could he be using it in terms of a degree of influence coming from something dad you see that he speaks off that way because that's the way he speaks of everything the paradigm being consciousness no I think he means it's consciousness and he suddenly seems to talk that way in some evening conversations with him that were recorded and transcribed after his death suddenly seems to talk that way yes let me let me make this point I think this may help to to clear it up but for white hen in contrast to say Thomas Aquinas in Thomas Aquinas God is the efficient cause of creation the formal cause of creation the final cause of creation right there's no material cause because creation is ex nihilo now it seems to me that in Whitehead God is the formal and the final cause but not the efficient cause God is the formal cause in the sense that his primordial nature conceives of all logical possibilities in logical order okay he is the final cause by virtue of the super ejected nature by which he lures events and that's his term lure now I'm no fisherman but I know what a lure is it doesn't kick the fish in its tail what it does is to attract the fish a lure is a final cause not an efficient cause so it's the winning way of a lure that's significant in the winning way of an idea that's significant in a finalization so God's relationship to the world for Whitehead is that of a formal cause and a final course but not an efficient pillars which means God does not act if by act you mean what is meant in biblical history the mighty acts of God in the history of Israel yes a the mighty act of God in the Incarnation or in the second coming as you raise it yes I know God does not act and I think the underlying nature his metaphysic precludes God from acting in in fact I did an article on Whitehead a few years ago that I called why God cannot act why God cannot act it's in a book called process theology by edited by Ronald Nash that's in the library and it seems to me that the reason God cannot act is that whiteheads God is essentially a Hogg alien God it's a god of us a schleiermacher who is more and of being than a personal agent yes II and so as though these agency categories of acting don't apply just the ground of being you rely on the ultimate ground that influences nature and indirectly and so just as in the liberal theology of the 19th century you have no special revelation it's all imminent from within yes a you have no supernatural act it's all natural process by virtue of the divine creativity within it's the same in whitehead so if you familiar with the history of 19th century theology and the schleier Marquis and tradition the romanticists tradition well that's whitehead and as I said Whitehead that seems to have read what the Whitehead yeah seems to have read Wordsworth as if it were the Bible you remember that line from last time okay so I think this is a romanticized version of 19th century theology that comes out in a 20th century process metaphysic yeah yeah and there are some process theologians who try to do that some who try to do that and I think I'm right in saying that Charles Hart Shawn is one who is perhaps the the best-known process think he was not himself influenced by Whitehead but developed sort of parallel to him and he taught or at Harvard for a number of years then at Chicago then in his retirement at Texas Hart Shawn did very much the pan in theist and he could be a pen Hin theist if creativity as God influenced a lot of people perhaps today the best-known process theologian is John Cod who I think I'm right in saying as a Claremont School of Theology and California John Cobb but lots of them around we don't have time to talk about that okay next time what I'd like to do and this is a pattern will follow on these books you're reading what I'd like to do is some commentary on his book science in the modern world so I urge you to give it a reading may not enough of her maybe not enough of a reading to do the review but give it a reading and we'll do some commentary on it and we can discuss things that you want to talk about

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Keywords: wheaton, college, illinois, Wheaton College (College/University), A History of Philosophy, Arthur Holmes, Philosophy (Field Of Study), Alfred North Whitehead (Author), Process Theology, Theology (Field Of Study), History Of Philosophy (Field Of Study)

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Length: 64min 3sec (3843 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015