Geraldine James as Rosalind in As You Like It, © Ellie Kurttz / RSChttps://www.whatsonstage.com/news/rscs-as-you-like-it-review-older-age-takes-centre-stage_1486034/
A friend of mine, a scholar of English literature, is about to read Whitehead's Process and Reality on her own. "How should I approach the book?" she asks. She expects it to read like an axiomatic argument, starting with clearly stated first principles and then deducing conclusions. However, the book is quite different. It is more of an ongoing exploration, where Whitehead introduces ideas gradually, sometimes in a convoluted way, often coining new words, appealing to intuition, and occasionally engaging in flights of fancy that are hard to follow. His writing can be both ambiguous and clear, sometimes using vivid imagery and poetic language, and sometimes using philosophical prose and mathematical reasoning, to gradually create a gestalt—a narrative about the nature of the universe, without any pretense of certainty or finality.
I suggest she read it as if it were a Shakespearean play.
"But I thought it would present a 'system,'" she says.
"Yes," I say, "but it's also just a likely story. Whitehead doesn't want you to cling to it as if it were final or definitive."
"Is it a tragedy, a comedy, or a tragi-comedy?"
I tell her she can decide, but it's probably closer to a tragi-comedy: honest to the realities of violence and sadness, but with something of a happy ending. What follows is the advice I offer:
Interpretation and Invitation
A Whiteheadian text, like a Shakespearean play, is open-ended. It doesn't just require interpretation; it invites interpretation, and many interpretations are both possible and desirable.
Shakespeare scholars know this. A Shakespearean play does not come alive until it is performed, and every performance is an interpretation. The same applies to Whitehead's texts. The interpretations of a Whiteheadian text add something to Whitehead, apart from which the text is incomplete, as is the case with a Shakespearean play.
The idea that a Whiteheadian text or a Shakespearean play should have one and only one meaning is incorrect. To put it another way, a Whiteheadian text, like a Shakespearean play, is indeterminate: an invitation for the reader to add something that is not clear in the text itself. In this sense, a Whiteheadian text, like a Shakespearean play, is happily incomplete. What makes it great, if it is, is that it will always be incomplete.
A Whiteheadian text, like a Shakespearean play, will be tentatively completed by those who interpret it or, in the case of Shakespeare, perform it, but a tentative completion is indeed only tentative. The process continues. The universe, says Whitehead, is a creative advance into novelty. A Whiteheadian text, like a Shakespearean play, is part of the adventure.
Language and Understanding
Moreover, a Whiteheadian text, like a Shakespearean play, can have language that is difficult to understand. In Shakespeare's case, this is because the language is a kind of "exalted" language, not typically found in ordinary speech on the street but expected by the audiences who first enjoyed his plays at the Globe Theatre.
In Whitehead's case, this is because the speech is academic, sometimes obscure, filled with neologisms, and often metaphorical, even when it appears to be literal. Like Shakespeare, Whitehead often turns back on himself in a radial way. An idea is presented in one moment, and then it reappears in another moment, with something new, like a character in a Shakespearean play.
Shakespeare does not offer a linear progression in his plays, proceeding step by step toward a foregone conclusion; instead, he gives us episodes and scenes, and sometimes the dramatic conclusions occur in the middle of the play and not the end. In many ways,
Whitehead, too, writes episodically. There is no dramatic conclusion; there is, instead, an invitation for further reflection based on paragraphs, which function on the analogy of scenes in a Shakespearean play.
Embracing Ambiguity
In addition, there are times when, in reading Whitehead, you must let his language wash over you, without having a clear understanding of each word or sentence, but instead by getting a feel or impression of what he is saying, a sense of the idea. And the same applies, of course, to Shakespeare. In watching a Shakespearean play being performed, or in reading a script, a desire for word-by-word clarity gets in the way of truly understanding what is being said. The reader needs to have tolerance for ambiguity and, indeed, even a joy in ambiguity.
A recognition of the constructive role of ambiguity and open-endedness gives us new eyes for what it means to present a "system." Whitehead is often approached as if he offers a "system" of ideas which fit together to form, as it were, a perfect and detailed map of something called "reality"—a map which, if fully understood, would answer all questions. But this would be as false to Whitehead's own intentions as it would be to Shakespeare's intentions in composing a play. The purpose of a Shakespearean play is to leave us with more questions, to avoid one-sided thinking by seeing both and sometimes competing sides of questions, such that, in our minds, we live with contrasts, which can sometimes be comforting and sometimes unsettling. And so it is with Whitehead.
Don't look for a perfect map. Instead, look for propositions or ideas which function, in his words, as 'lures for feeling,' and which, when held together, offer contrasts (his word) and contrasts of contrasts of contrasts. That's what Shakespeare offers. He invites us to enter into an adventure of ideas. Whitehead does the same if we read him with Shakespearean eyes.
Life is the Teacher
There is wisdom to be gained by reading Whitehead and there is wisdom to be gained by enjoying Shakespeare. We can gain a sense for the interwovenness of things, the fluidities of life, the harmonies, and intensities. We can be inspired by insights that are new to us and important. we can be presented with ideas and questions we've never considered before. But we can never rest in the finality of a statement. We must let life be our teacher, and there is more to life than our minds comprehend. Whitehead knew this, and Shakespeare did, too. As Shakespeare put it: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." And, as Whitehead puts it, "In philosophy the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly."
Approaching Whitehead
My suggestion, then, is that those of us who read Whitehead approach his works as if they were Shakespearean plays, whether tragedies, comedies, historical dramas, or tragi-comedies. It is arguable that his understanding of the universe is indeed both tragic and comic. All things pass away, there is conflict and violence, and yet there is a harmony of harmonies into which all things feed, a recognition of which gives a sense of peace. There is also laughter: Christ is nailed to the cross, he says, but the fairies also dance.
Shakespeare presents us with dancing fairies, too, and also with victims of violence. The genius of Shakespeare's great plays is not that they offer simple answers to complex questions; it is that they avoid simple answers altogether and lead the reader to see many sides to multiple issues (political, personal, familial, for example) through characters who have their own complex "logics" of emotion, thinking, motivations, and actions.
The genius of Whitehead's writing is that it opens up new ways of thinking and feeling about the world, inviting us to explore the interconnectedness of all things and the creative potential of each moment, rather than providing definitive answers. Whitehead offers insights and, in some ways, a story about what "reality" is like. But he does not offer a final statement. He offers lures for feeling to which we add our own, which then become lures for whatever succeeds us.
The fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.
- Jay McDaniel