Probably one of the most disconcerting things about Whitheadian process philosophy (or the philosophy of organism – as Whitehead called it) was its “theological” reception and transmission via American process theology (particularly Charles Hartshorne mentioned in this talk several times). It is a historically incontestable fact, that Whitheadian process philosophy survived in that milieu in mid XX century, although overall the chapter dedicated to God in ANWs magnum opus Process & Reality: An Essay in Cosmology is rather small. It almost feels like an afterthought.
I publish this here for anyone wanting to hear a contemporary discussion about inner and outer relations. This talk is a crash course of sorts through the difficulties (if completely unfamiliar with Whiteadhead’s metaphysics) but also a proof of the vivacity and constant evolution of process philosophy in today’s world. One could of course pick and choose favorite morsels about cells, agency, causality, and organizational levels – from this talk. To conclude with the conclusion of Bonnitta – the best of contemporary science and especially new contemporary scientific advances have to inform our metaphysics and philosophy – the same way the scientific advances of Whitehead’s time (quantum formalism and general relativity) were inspiring and reshaping those insights.
Whiteheadian Marxists like Steven Shaviro have taken another route entirely than the usual process theologians (check the pdf God, or the Body Without Organs from which I will quote heavily) and bringing forth Whitehead’s own criticism of both Leibniz’s and Spinosa’s notion of God, even if their positions are closer to him than anyone else. But like all thinkers of the last 2000 years (to quote Shaviro) they allow “ethical and religious interests. . . to influence metaphysical conclusions” (173). This Kantian Whitehead or critique of religion is indeed a different beast that we have become acquainted with (through let’s say essential immanentist readings like Isabelle Stengers’s Thinking with Whitehead). His criticism of religious belief is from a transcendental position rather than an immanent, Spinozian one. Rather than eliminating God (Shaviro underlines) like Nietzsche he seeks to accomplish a “the secularization of God’s functions in the world” (1929/1978, 207). This startling attempt is part of the Enlightenment project, but with a twist, because it does not seek to eliminate religion, only diminish its importance. Whitehead seeks to establish a God without religion as he wants to respect the findings of physical science without supporting “science’s reductionist positivism or tendentious separation of facts from values.” This secularized God is God as the Principle of Concretion. Coherence is here the most important thing and Shaviro continues to explain why in a passage from 2008 that is both memorable and crystal clear (coherence- a notion that is not so much logical as ecological):
The principle of coherence stipulates that “no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe” (3). In order to exist, a given entity presupposes, and requires, the existence of certain other entities, even though (or rather, precisely because) it cannot be logically derived from those other entities, or otherwise explained in their terms. Coherence means, finally, that “all actual entities are in the solidarity of one world” (67).
God, or the Body without Organs, ~Steven Shaviro
TimeSpace Warps 