Does the Universe Enjoy Itself?
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A Reflection on Whitehead's Aesthetics of Self-Enjoyment
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Abstract

An actual entity is concrete because it is such a particular concrescence of the universe.. — A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality


The organic philosophy interprets experience as meaning the ‘self-enjoyment of being one among many, and of being one arising out of the composition of many.’  - A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality


The consequent nature of God...is the realization of the actual world in the unity of his nature, and through the transformation of his wisdom.


I offer a suggestion. The universe enjoys itself in two ways - through self-enjoyment of each finite actual entity as it gathers the universe into concrescent unity, and through the consequent nature of God, which includes the actual world within its nature. In both instances there is an enjoyment of beauty: a harmony and intensity. But the beauty enjoyed is not merely 'happy.' The self-enjoyment of the universe includes suffering and loss as well as satisfaction and pleasure. The beauty enjoyed is a tragic beaty. In the consequent nature of God, this beauty is woven by, and into, tenderness and love, as is possible. God is "a fellow sufferer who understands."

Self-Creativity and the Aim at Satisfaction

The world is self-creative; and the actual entity as self-creating creature passes into its immortal function of part-creator of the transcendent world. In its self-creation the actual entity is guided by its ideal of itself as individual satisfaction and as transcendent creator. The enjoyment of this ideal is the ‘subjective aim,’ by reason of which the actual entity is a determinate process...This subjective aim is not primarily intellectual; it is the lure for feeling. This lure for feeling is the germ of mind. — A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality

Depth of Satisfaction is Narrowness and Width

“Any ideal of depth of satisfaction, arising from the combination of narrowness and width, can only be achieved through adequate order.” — A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality

In Process and Reality, and again in Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead offers a philosophy of aesthetic achievement—or better, a philosophy of aesthetic enjoyment, since the aesthetic side of life, for Whitehead, is more than an achievement to be recognized by others. It is a mode of self-enjoyment. It is the "self-enjoyment of being one among many," 

The satisfaction in this self-enjoyment is not a datum among the data in an actual entity's experience. It is instead the very activity of spontaneity, of subjective immediacy, of feeling and self-creation, in the moment at hand. This means that as human beings we don't have our self-enjoyment as if it were property. We are our self-enjoyment, including our desire to live with satisfaction. Even if we do not matter to anyone else; we matter to ourselves. Our self-enjoyment is our internal, spontaneous, and non-objectifiable self-mattering: our private, internal aliveness.

This aliveness includes the public world that is experienced: the hills and rivers, trees and stars, laptops and guitars, other people and God. They are "in" our experience even as they transcend us. Indeed, our experience is a concrescence of the universe. But this concrescence has its own private side: our feelings (prehensions) and emotions (subjective forms) and decisions and subjective aims. Their subjective immediacy is our self-enjoyment.
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This individualized enjoyment is found in any and every actual entity in the universe: from the smallest of quantum events through mammalian life on our planet to the very soul of the universe, God. Wherever there is actuality, there is enjoyment, It is in neural minds: that is, creatures with brains. But it is also non-neural minds if indeed they have sentience - plasma minds, microbial networks, planetary consciousness, artificial concrescences (AI), They, too, will be self-enjoying. They, too, will have a private side. They, too, will matter to themselves. 

And, I quickly add, they will be creative. In the second passage above, Whitehead notes that self-enjoyment cannot be separated from self-creativity. Each actual entity has a "subjective aim" which is guided by the ideal of an individual satisfaction in the immediacy of the moment. This subjective aim is "not primarily intellectual; it is the lure for feeling within the entity itself. It creates itself by means of this lure, this aim, for satisfaction and for influencing the future as a "transcendent creator" - that is, an objective achievement that affects the future.

Narrowness and Width

In the third passage above then notes two dimensions of this self-enjoyment: narrowness and width. I offer word about each as related to human life.

​In human experience, another word for narrowness is focus on particulars. This requires directing attention toward certain aspects of experience while relegating others into the background, where they feel, in Whitehead’s words, “vague” compared to what is focused upon. Narrowness always involves foreground and background. 

Width, by contrast, can be described as openness to diversity—a widening of subjective feeling that includes multiplicities otherwise neglected. In many instances it is allowing what otherwise might be background to become foreground, thus widening what is felt. An expansion of horizons.  

In each instance the components of experience can include the objective world and also our feelings (subjective forms) in response to it: our moods, emotions, and desires. And, of course, they can include ideas. Expanding horizons is not only about seeing new things in the world but also feeling and exploring new ideas. 

Moreover, each instance - focus and openness - has a healthy and unhealthy expression. Healthy narrowness, that is, healthy focus, might be the concentrated attention of a scientist working carefully on a single experiment, while healthy openness to diversity might be the willingness of a traveler to learn from the unfamiliar customs of another culture. Both narrowness and width—focus and openness —have their qualitative richness, their beauty. When they are harmonized, all the better. Focus can give rise to new ideas, and new ideas can become objects of focus. 

But focus and openness can have problems as well. Consider focus, with its impulse to relegate aspects of the experienced into a background status. Some degree of vagueness, of relegation into the background, is necessary for focus; it allows attention to be concentrated. The problem arises when there is too much narrowness of focus, and too much background vagueness, such that the enjoyment of variety is lost. An example might be a person so consumed by their career that family, friendship, and play recede into near-nothingness.

Likewise, openness to diversity can be problematic. When multiplicities are felt in ways that preserve their individuality, they appear as satisfying contrasts, like the multiple notes of a chord, each with its own place. But when they are taken in without attention to their individuality, openness to diversity falls into what Whitehead calls “triviality,” or what we might also call shallowness. An example might be people who pride themselves on sampling every cultural style or spiritual practice but treat them all superficially, without real depth or commitment.

In short, both of these qualities—focus and openness—have their place, but they must be held in balance and, where possible, combined, mutually enriching one another. Held together in this way, narrowness and width generate satisfying intensity in different contexts, some momentary and some more enduring. And neither of these qualities can or should be isolated from the wider context of life.

Morality enters when we coordinate our desires with the needs of others and the world, and when we recognize that our own enjoyment is enriched, not diminished, by community with others who likewise seek satisfying forms of beauty. Aesthetic self-enjoyment can be communal as well as individual, and oftentimes the communal is much more satisfying. There is a certain kind of aesthetic enjoyment that occurs only when preoccupations with the private ego drop away; when we 'enjoy' without being preoccupied with the enjoyment. Indeed, most enjoyment is pre-reflective and much of it is pre-conscious. We enjoy without knowing that we are enjoying.

Imagining Other Forms of Aesthetic Enjoyment

As noted above, the same holds true for other creatures. Whitehead offers a philosophy of aesthetic realization that is cosmic in scope. Not only human beings, but also other prehending entities—wherever they may be and of whatever size or type—seek satisfying combinations of narrowness and width, focus and openness, each contributing to their own unique forms of satisfaction. Consider, for example, the kind of collective enjoyment that can be part of an animal colonies: the satisfaction of moving, flying, or vibrating together, whether in foraging lines, flight patterns, or collective wing-humming. Or even exploratory delight: the thrill of discovering a new food source, novel scent, or fresh tunnel, bringing novelty into the flow of repetitive tasks.

The forms they enjoy might be very different from those human beings know and understand. In Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead develops the notion of the strength of beauty, suggesting that some forms of beauty are stronger than others in their capacity to integrate depth and breadth. Some satisfactions in other forms of life may be stronger, others weaker, than those available to human experience. And just as with human beings, aesthetic self-enjoyment for these creatures may be communal as well as individual, with the communal often offering a deeper satisfaction.

Even if we cannot know what other creatures experience with certainty, we can imagine them, and such imagining itself contributes to the breadth of our own experience. Indeed, with other animals we do it all the time - with pets, for example, and sometimes with wild animals. But it need not stop there. We can imagine what it is like to be inside a living cell enjoying its forms of satisfaction, or inside a quantum event enjoying its forms of satisfaction, or inside an octopus, or, for that matter, inside an extraterrestrial form of life realizing its own kind of beauty. There is no need to pretend we have certain knowledge, but we do have playful knowledge, and that playful knowledge itself can enrich human life.

Tragic Beauty

However, all this talk of aesthetic enjoyment should not belie the reality of suffering—both in human life and in more-than-human life. In Whitehead’s philosophy, there are two kinds of suffering that are especially painful: discord, otherwise called felt pain, and missed possibility. There is no reason to think that humans alone undergo these feelings. Other animals and creatures do as well. These forms of suffering belong to the very aesthetics of their emotional lives. They, too, must struggle to find ways of weaving such experiences into a larger harmony, however briefly, for whatever duration it may last.

This is a point at which Whitehead's notion of tragic beauty plays a role. Tragic beauty is an experience of intensity that includes discord and missed possibility. Of course, we know this in human life in many ways. But there is no reason to think that other animals and creatures too might not experience their own forms of tragic beauty. Mention should also be made of the particular form of aesthetic beauty found in the soul of the universe, that is, in the consequent nature of God. In this side of God, aesthetic satisfaction is itself an experience to be known and enjoyed in both its depth and its breadth, its focus and its range. But this experience likewise includes the tragic side of life that can be so difficult for sentient beings and beings capable of prehensive unification.

This is a point at which Whitehead’s notion of tragic beauty plays a role. Tragic beauty is an experience of intensity that does not exclude discord and missed possibility but includes them within a heightened aesthetic whole. We know this in human life in countless ways. Yet there is no reason to think that other animals and creatures might not also experience their own forms of tragic beauty, however different from ours.

Divine Beauty

Mention should also be made of the particular form of aesthetic beauty found in the soul of the universe, that is, in the consequent nature of God. On this side of God, aesthetic satisfaction is itself an experience to be known and enjoyed in both its depth and its breadth, its focus and its range. But this divine satisfaction likewise embraces the tragic side of life—the discord, the loss, and the missed possibilities—that can weigh so heavily upon sentient beings and upon all creatures capable of prehensive unification.

Ultimately, Whitehead's philosophy of self-enjoyment is also a philosophy of empathy, of love. The consequent nature of God receives each and all with a tender care that nothing be lost, whatever form of satisfaction the being at issue felt or yearned. As human beings we can participate in this empathy, this feeling of the feelings of others, as best we can, and in our finite ways. This may be, for us, one of the strongest forms of beauty of which we are capable. It is both wide and deep: it includes the many and it is resonate with the particular, with each life. It is a Whiteheadian Bodhisattva Vow: vowing to feel the feelings of each and all, and to seek their lasting satisfaction, and to promise never to enter any state of final bliss, any ultimate self-enjoyment, until they, too can come, too. Of course this time will never arrive historically, but that doesn't matter. In the very aim to return again and again, forever, there is divine beauty.

Does the Universe Enjoy Itself?

An actual entity is concrete because it is such a particular concrescence of the universe.. — A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality

In Whitehead’s philosophy, each actual entity is a unification, a concrescence, of the entire universe. This concrescence is not a cold aggregation but an act of self-enjoyment—a striving toward satisfaction, toward some form of intensity. In this sense, the universe does indeed enjoy itself in and through each actual entity. To say the same thing, each actual entity is the universe enjoying itself.

Yet beyond the many individual acts of concrescence, Whitehead also envisions the consequent nature of God as the ultimate unity of the universe: the ongoing weaving together of all things into a harmony of everlasting beauty. In this sense, the consequent nature of God is the universe itself, taken up into the divine life. God, then, is not just one reality. God is many as well as one: the countless multiplicities of actual entities, enfolded into divine unity.

If we think of this manyness gathered into divine completeness, then the universe enjoys itself in still another way. In addition to the finite creatures, it enjoys itself in an everlasting life that seeks satisfaction through the world, itself self-enjoying. So to the question, Does the universe enjoy itself? the answer would again be yes. But the divine Yes is not simple or untroubled. It is the yes that includes tragic beauty as well as joy. Indeed, for Whitehead, it is the yes whose very nature is love—patient in feeling the feelings of each and all, with empathy, and patient in seeking the well-being of each and all, in this life and whatever other lives creatures might enjoy in continuing journeys.  Here, too, God would be a Buddhist Bodhisattva magnified by infinity.