Process Neo-Platonism
The Platonic Side of Whitehead's Philosophy
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them”.
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
Whitehead did not speak of his philosophy as "process philosophy." He spoke of it as a "philosophy of organism," and he was as interested in the eternal as in the temporal, in permanence as in change. He develops the idea that certain objects in our universe, intellectually entertained, are eternal or timeless, and that there are two types: those pertaining to mathematics and those pertaining to subjective experience. Both are real. He believed that the "ultimate evil" (his phrase) is the perpetual perishing of time and that events in the world have their ultimate value in the everlasting arms of a loving God whose primordial nature is non-temporal: that is, a timeless activity of feeling the eternal objects in a conceptual way. Is Whitehead a Platonist? Well, no, insofar as he did not think eternal objects more real than the actual world. Eternal objects are pure potentials, lacking agency of their own. But they are as real in their way as are actual occasions in their ways. He is, as it were, a process neo-Platonist whose organic outlook on life transcends simple dichotomies between process and permanence. Why not say "yes" to both?
This page offers quotations from or about Whitehead, a podcast on Mathematics and Platonism offered by the BBC, and an essay on Whitehead and mathematics to encourage that "yes."
- Jay McDaniel, 1/28/23
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
Whitehead did not speak of his philosophy as "process philosophy." He spoke of it as a "philosophy of organism," and he was as interested in the eternal as in the temporal, in permanence as in change. He develops the idea that certain objects in our universe, intellectually entertained, are eternal or timeless, and that there are two types: those pertaining to mathematics and those pertaining to subjective experience. Both are real. He believed that the "ultimate evil" (his phrase) is the perpetual perishing of time and that events in the world have their ultimate value in the everlasting arms of a loving God whose primordial nature is non-temporal: that is, a timeless activity of feeling the eternal objects in a conceptual way. Is Whitehead a Platonist? Well, no, insofar as he did not think eternal objects more real than the actual world. Eternal objects are pure potentials, lacking agency of their own. But they are as real in their way as are actual occasions in their ways. He is, as it were, a process neo-Platonist whose organic outlook on life transcends simple dichotomies between process and permanence. Why not say "yes" to both?
This page offers quotations from or about Whitehead, a podcast on Mathematics and Platonism offered by the BBC, and an essay on Whitehead and mathematics to encourage that "yes."
- Jay McDaniel, 1/28/23