Process
thought on human existence: summary notes
General
features:
�
A
series of events/happenings/occasions rather than a substance with properties:
the human person as a succession of events with personal
order, maintaining a high degree of similarity through
time, a certain style, and such that in looking for
causes we look to previous mental or bodily events. But not only
to past mental and bodily events: the distinction
between past mental events, the body and the social and
natural environments is only a relative distinction -- I
am a (creative) function of my body and of my total
natural and social environment. Which is
stronger or more important in an individual case is an
empirical matter. I
am constituted by/constitute myself on
the basis of my total past environment, in view
of the total future, which is in this sense also my
total future. In
the final resort, I am everything that affects me and
everything that I affect.
�
Creative
becoming: creative taking into account of the past
as the very character of human existence--Freud and
Jung; Rosemary Curran; Merleau-Ponty. This is not
always an easy matter.
�
Relatedness, organic or 'artistic' unity versus
individualism but also versus totalism: reality as a
Social Process, human beings in society and in nature as
part of this process.
Everything is a more or less
creative taking into account of its total past
environment, to the future of which environment it in
turn contributes.
�
Naturalism: human
beings as an interacting part of nature, different in
degree, not in kind, from the rest, and depending on the
rest for their survival and fulfillment: human beings as
creative taking into account
of their environments, to which environments human and
natural they in turn contribute.
Implications for ecology and social
ethics:
�
Social
Ethics: with
regard to the relationship individual-communities,
neither individualism nor totalism: even if the totality
e.g. family, school, college, university, state, church
etc. is nothing other than the parts in their
togetherness, given internal relations the parts in
their togetherness are different than what they would be
in isolation: people depend on their communal insertion
for their fulfillment and very survival, and their
communities in turn depend on them. Not to get rid
of communities nor to reduce our social dependence to a
necessary minimum but to have grace-filled rather than
sin-filled communal structures. Relationships
themselves can become goals of activity.
�
Ecological
Ethics: we
are an interacting part of nature, natural beings
alongside natural beings, environmental entities. On the other hand we do this creatively, and
therefore responsibly:
artistic co-creation, responsible participation,
rather than total insertion (organism) or total
independence (mechanism).
In respect of responsibility no need or
metaphysical basis for restricting intrinsic value to
human beings, though there is still the possibility of
thinking in terms of degrees of intrinsic value,
relative to level of life form. Human beings
and sparrows. (See
later, segment on process thought and ecology.)
�
Beauty
as the ultimate value rather than ethical goodness --ethical
goodness and truth as a value defined in terms of
beauty. Ethical
goodness as a certain kind of beauty of character. Life as
artistic creation, making my life a good story, making
my social and natural environment a good place for other
people and other life also to thrive..
.
�
a
dipolar personality or character or style as the
most appropriate ideal --in the image and likeness of
the dipolar divine reality. Life as active
receptivity and receptive activity.
�
History
as the history of structures of human existence = context of and possibilities for
self-determination.
The salvation/liberation of existential theology. See Cobb and
�
Power
in its ideal form as persuading and empowering, like the divine power, not lording it
over people --makes a lot of sense. Divine power =
the ideal of power = Persuasive-Responsive Love.
Difficulties: questiones disputatae:
1. Personal
Identity and the problem of assigning Moral
Responsibility, having resolved a human person into a
series of actual entities.
On personal
identity, see Rosemary Curren;
also my article in Humanity and the After Life. It is possible
to develop a reasonable theory of personal identity
starting with a so-called 'Bundle Theory', and indeed
Process people are in a much better position to do this
than e.g. Hume.
On moral
responsibility: how can the present event be held
responsible for something 'I' did yesterday? Or last week? or two years
ago? Rather
like the question the scribe asked Jesus: who is my neighbour?? Not who is my
neighbour but who may I be a
neighbour to?? I'm
responsible for 'saving' whatever affects me, and for
doing my best concerning whatever I may affect. But what am
'I'? Am 'I'
only the present 1/10 of a second event? Sounds crazy. This is just
the present focus of 'I'. I am and am
responsible for everything I affect and everything that
affects and helps to constitute me, everything I
inherit, including for example past treatment by my
culture and society of aboriginees
etc.
2.The
Psychology of Human Decision Making: a series of events as deciding? rather
than me? But then I am a series of events. When is a
decision taken? When
one of my events takes/is a decision? Or is decision
a block, social deed, the deed of a series of events?
These are all
serious problems once I am broken up into a series of
events.
(Related to
the previous.)
3.
Subjective Immortality as distinct from merely
Objective Immortality?
Whitehead;
Hartshorne: objective immortality only; Griffin:
subjective immortality also, continuation of the same
series; Lewis Ford and Marjorie Suchocki: personal
immortality; Jan
Van der Veken: living in God, saved in the same manner
in which I save my 10 year old self only more strongly.
Whitehead: Process
and Reality, last few pages, on 'objective
immortality'.
Summary of
Whitehead's position in "A Whiteheadian Reflection on
Subjective Immortality", Process
Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring 1977, pp. 1-4.
Hartshorne:
Excerpt from
Omnipotence and other
Theological Mistakes, pp. 32-32, pp. 97-99.
Summary of
Hartshorne's position in Santiago Sia, God in
Process Thought, pp. 101-107. Also Hartshorne's response, pp.
121-123.
More recent
views:
1) David
Griffin:
"The
Possibility of Subjective Immortality in Whitehead's
Philosophy", in The Modern Schoolman, LIII, Nov.
1975, pp. 39-57.
"Postmodern
Animism and Life after Death",
2) Marjorie
Suchocki and Lewis S. Ford:
Lewis S. Ford
and Marjorie Suchocki, "A Whiteheadian Reflection on
Subjective Immortality", in Process Studies,
Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring 1977, pp. 1-13.
Marjorie
Hewitt Suchocki, "Subjective Immortality", Ch. V of The
End of Evil, by Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (State
University of New York Press, Albany, 1988), pp. 81-96.
3) Jan
Van der Veken
"Talking
Meaningfully about Im-mortality",
in God and Change: Process Thought and the Christian
Doctrine of God, edited by Jan Van der Veken
(Center for Metaphysics and Philosophy of God, Leuven,
1987), pp. 1-13.