Shaken into New Becoming:
Whitehead, Empathy, and the Trembling Self
“We do not grow only by adding;
sometimes we grow by trembling.”
“Each kiss a heart-quake,” writes Lord Byron in Don Juan (Canto II, clxxxvi, 212). And each page of Process and Reality a worldview-quake—or, for short, a viewquake—say many enthusiasts of Whitehead’s philosophy. In both cases, the reference is to a kind of quaking that occurs within the self when confronted with a new emotion or idea—an inner trembling amid revelation.
Such inner tremors mark the moments when both thought and feeling are reconfigured—when the self is, in Whitehead’s sense, shaken into new becoming. The shaking arises through what Whitehead calls contrasts—the felt tension between what was experienced in the past and what is felt in the present. It is this contrast that evokes the trembling.
With its idea that we can, quite literally, feel the feelings of others, Whitehead’s philosophy invites us to recognize that we can experience viewquakes and heartquakes in daily life through empathy—when, in listening to others, we are jolted into realizing that other people have ideas and feelings different from our own, yet fully worthy of respect and care.
Consider, for instance, a simple conversation. You are speaking with a friend who has just lost someone dear. As you listen, something in you shifts. Their sorrow enters your awareness not as information but as feeling—your chest tightens, your eyes grow moist, the air seems heavier. In that moment, your world expands. You glimpse life from within another’s grief, and your own heart rearranges itself around that new understanding. This is a small heartquake, a gentle viewquake. You feel the world from another persective: that of your friend.
Indeed, Whitehead’s philosophy invites us to see that such moments are not exceptions but revelations of our very nature. They remind us that others are part of us amid, not apart from, their differences—that they belong to the “many” that “become one” in the immediacy of our lives, a togetherness of the many in the one. Our very selves are not self-contained substances but momentary occasions of experience—each a unity that is many as well as one.
They also remind us that we, too, are in process—that beneath our surfaces, something is always shifting, sometimes gently, sometimes with force. Like the earth itself, we ripple and reform, shaken not only by loss or revelation but also by the quiet movements of growth that we scarcely notice. Each tremor, whether subtle or seismic, is a reminder that stability is not the goal; aliveness is. To live is to be in motion, to be reshaped by the rhythms of relationship, memory, and discovery. Our trembling is not a weakness but a sign that life continues to move through us, inviting us to become new once again.
Such inner tremors mark the moments when both thought and feeling are reconfigured—when the self is, in Whitehead’s sense, shaken into new becoming. The shaking arises through what Whitehead calls contrasts—the felt tension between what was experienced in the past and what is felt in the present. It is this contrast that evokes the trembling.
With its idea that we can, quite literally, feel the feelings of others, Whitehead’s philosophy invites us to recognize that we can experience viewquakes and heartquakes in daily life through empathy—when, in listening to others, we are jolted into realizing that other people have ideas and feelings different from our own, yet fully worthy of respect and care.
Consider, for instance, a simple conversation. You are speaking with a friend who has just lost someone dear. As you listen, something in you shifts. Their sorrow enters your awareness not as information but as feeling—your chest tightens, your eyes grow moist, the air seems heavier. In that moment, your world expands. You glimpse life from within another’s grief, and your own heart rearranges itself around that new understanding. This is a small heartquake, a gentle viewquake. You feel the world from another persective: that of your friend.
Indeed, Whitehead’s philosophy invites us to see that such moments are not exceptions but revelations of our very nature. They remind us that others are part of us amid, not apart from, their differences—that they belong to the “many” that “become one” in the immediacy of our lives, a togetherness of the many in the one. Our very selves are not self-contained substances but momentary occasions of experience—each a unity that is many as well as one.
They also remind us that we, too, are in process—that beneath our surfaces, something is always shifting, sometimes gently, sometimes with force. Like the earth itself, we ripple and reform, shaken not only by loss or revelation but also by the quiet movements of growth that we scarcely notice. Each tremor, whether subtle or seismic, is a reminder that stability is not the goal; aliveness is. To live is to be in motion, to be reshaped by the rhythms of relationship, memory, and discovery. Our trembling is not a weakness but a sign that life continues to move through us, inviting us to become new once again.