Whitehead on Civilizations,
Ecological and Otherwise 

Philip Clayton 

“A Century of Process Thought” conference, Harvard, Sept. 27, 2024 

 
In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.  – Sir Walter Scott  
 
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.  ― Mark Twain 
 
Our hosts have urged us to “highlight Whitehead’s interdisciplinary and global impact.” There is probably no more wildly interdisciplinary topic one can find in Whitehead’s opus than his philosophy of civilization. But here’s the problem:  
 
Many of us use the expression ecological civilization so frequently, so glibly, that we rarely stop to think what we mean by “civilization.” Worse, most environmentalists in the West use the term “civilization” in a mostly negative sense: the globalized culture of late modern materialism; the globalized system of capitalist economics; the unsustainable global culture of our day; or, indeed, any nation or culture that seeks dominance over all others, not matter what the cost. When people ask us how a civilization can be genuinely ecological, we struggle to answer. 
 
This is a weakness that we must overcome. If the goal of achieving an ecological civilization is going to draw leaders and guide policies, both words need to be clear, attractive, and persuasive. The term “ecological” already plays these positive roles; the concept of civilization does not … yet. Today I will suggest that Whitehead’s  work can help rectify this problem.  
 
Whitehead's philosophy of civilization is spread across his entire opus. To grasp it, one needs to understand his philosophy of history, his philosophy of culture, his aesthetics, his social and political philosophy, and his theory of education; but also his metaphysics and his theory of religion. What makes it particularly difficult to grasp Whitehead’s theory of civilization is that he makes little reference to the great theories of civilization: Edward Gibbon, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, Albert Schweitzer, Jared Diamond, and others. What Whitehead does offer, however, is a crucial corrective to the usual ways of talking about ecological civilization. My argument proceeds in six steps. 
 
1, The art of Whitehead's theory of civilization 
 
Whitehead doesn’t define civilization by ideas or artifacts, nor does cultural anthropology play a major role in his work. Instead, five concepts form the heart of his theory: truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.i  
  
Consider what it would mean to conceive civilization through these five nouns. I suggest that they shift the idea of civilization from a static, universal concept to a dynamic set of value ideals.ii You may remember Zachary Simpson’s important book, Life as Art: Aesthetics and the Creation of Self.iii His brilliant discussion of aesthetics and recommendations for living by existentialist philosophers from Nietzsche to Camus and Foucault becomes concrete in his references to indigenous lifeways. The fusion of aesthetics and value in both Simpson and Whitehead identifies a genre that is crucial for interpreting Whitehead’s philosophy of civilization: the genre of Lebensphilosophie ― a philosophy of life. 
 
Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun captured this insight in their Claremont EcoForum a few years ago by shifting the focus from abstract principles of environmentalism to the task of forming “eco-persons.” I agree. Ecological civilization, when interpreted through Whitehead, relies on a life philosophy ― a distinctly ecological mode of being in the world.  
 
2, The five features of civilization  
 
To get a sense of the philosophy of life Whitehead has in mind, consider his five terms. Taken together, they convey what it means to live a civilized life: 
 
* Adventure is forward-looking, not rooted in the past; it involves novelty, change, and innovation, but also risk. Whitehead writes in Adventures of Ideas that a society “preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.”iv 
 
* Peace for Whitehead is not the absence of conflict; it refers to the balance or harmony of fundamental forces. Deeper peace stems from the dedication to beauty, a transcendence of inner and outer conflict, and the transition from narrow selfishness to a love of humanity as such.v  
 
* By truth Whitehead means not the possession of final certainty, but devotion to the process ― a devotion that depends not only on personal commitment but also on social structures, educational institutions, and the civic virtues that promote the quest for truth. 
 
* Beauty for Whitehead is the fit of motivations, actions, and results into a broader harmonious whole.  
 
* Finally, the brilliance of art, according to Whitehead, lies in its ability to turn the abstract into the concrete, and the concrete into the abstract.vi  
 
3, An Aesthetic Theory of Civilization 
 
The centrality of beauty and art suggests that Whitehead’s is an aesthetic theory of civilization. Art is an external expression of an aesthetic mindset; it draws us into a deep, perceptive relationship with our surroundings. In Whitehead’s aesthetic, the artist seeks to create beauty in ways that increase the value and quality of life. Artistic creations, in their combination of novelty and discipline, express emotions and insights in ways that are both time-bound and timeless. 
 
Whitehead didn’t publish a separate book on his philosophy of art. But what emerges across his opus is an understanding of art that is grounded in values, beauty, and a metaphysics of process. Art expresses an inherent aesthetic order (or lure) that moves from potential to actual in the flow of actual occasions across the universe. In Whitehead’s metaphysics of aesthetic/axiological interconnectedness, every experience is an aesthetic experience; each one is characterized by unity, beauty, and value. 
 
Clearly, this is a radically different “frame” for a theory of civilization. Traditionally, “civilization” is associated with kingdoms, large cities, and the religions of the book; yet none of these is essential here. Indigenous lifeways are “civilized” on this view ― indeed, more civilized than the late modern consumerist lifestyle. For a civilized person is one whose life is devoted to the value ideals of adventure, peace, truth, beauty, and art. 
 
It is hard to overstate how radical is this vision of communities of “civilized” persons that manifest these five qualities. Peace is a state of calmness and harmony for an individual; but this state can also be manifested within a community, between communities, between nations, or in the connection between humans and their natural environment. Truth is a relationship of the mind to the nature of things. But it’s not about the mind alone; it encompasses the deeper fit or coherence between persons, their lifestyles, and the surrounding reality. Given that all is in process, truth cannot be a fixed mindset or a static set of beliefs; it’s a continual reharmonizing of thought and action with an ever-changing world.vii Adventure is an experience of the whole person who welcomes novelty and change with zest; yet the spirit of adventure is expressed not just in individuals, but in organizations, communities, and even in the spirit of an age. Finally, beauty is apprehended through the aesthetic sense and encompasses every dimension of human experience. Beauty is lived out in life as art ― in the life of individuals, communities, societies, religions, and cultures.  
 
4, Both metaphysics and life philosophy 
 
Although it lies beyond the scope of this talk, I want to note in passing that the coherence and persuasiveness of Whitehead’s philosophy of civilization is further strengthened by its deep coherence with his metaphysical position. His five features of civilized living are not arbitrary values; they are the implications, the direct outworkings, of his process metaphysics. Among recent publications on Whitehead’s aesthetic and axiological metaphysics, perhaps the most sophisticated is Andrew M. Davis’s Mind, Value, and Cosmos.viii Davis’s comparisons and contrasts with the differently grounded metaphysical proposals of Keith Ward and especially John Leslie bring to light the power and explanatory resources of a fully axiological metaphysics.  
 
Crucial for the present paper, Whitehead’s aesthetics and axiological emerge not only 
in Process and Reality, but also in books such as Adventures of Ideas and Religion in the Making ― books that also convey his philosophy of history and reflections on civilizations. For example, in Modes of Thought even democracy is grounded in metaphysics.ix Whitehead's more theoretical writings connect truth, beauty, adventure, art, and peace to the adventure of ideas, the lure of the divine, and the key components of his cosmology in Process and Reality. As J. R. Hustwit summarizes the resulting worldview, for Whitehead “art is fundamental to the cosmos. The very fabric of reality is an artistic process…”x 
 
5, Education and Formation 
 
In this presentation, however, we are focusing on how a metaphysics centered on beauty, value, and relationality becomes incarnate in a lived philosophy. Since Whitehead writes extensively on education and formation, they offer an obvious test case for his position.  
 
For Whitehead, the function of education is the formation of “civilized” persons. At first blush, it appears that his standard for “civilized” is very much derived from the great civilizations of the past, and on the history of Western civilization in particular. More specifically, critics have argued that the values expressed in his description of the civilized life are the values of late 19th-century, upper-class, university-based British colonial culture ― the British empire.xi One should take this criticism seriously. I well remember my year as a fourth form student in a London school. The weekly assembly for all students ended by all of us standing and singing with great passion, “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! For Britons never, never, never will be slaves.” 
 
One can't help but notice that, when Whitehead writes of the educational system and the social philosophy that best help to inculcate his five civilizational values, he leans heavily on the canonical texts and values of Western civilization, stretching in an unbroken line from the Greeks to the lifestyle of an Oxbridge faculty member. For example, students should carefully study Greek culture as the most civilized society that has ever existed; even high school students must attain fluency in moderately difficult Latin texts, and enough Greek that they can be come fluent in that language at university.xii  
 
Still, it is not difficult to generalize Whitehead’s insights beyond the limits of his particular cultural perspective. Education means formation of persons. Forming a “civilized” person, Whitehead argues, requires an educational system that supports creativity, independent thinking, and values-based reflection. The process moves through romance ― falling in love with a topic or area of study ― then precision, then generalization.  
 
Such formation goes far deeper than inculcating any particular set of facts or values. Instead, it equips people to think (and act) both critically and axiologically. Students are not to be programmed as narrow-minded specialists, mindless functionaries in a pointless but efficient economic system. One proof of the universal nature of Whiteheads philosophy of education is how well it can be applied in the context of Chinese culture.  
 
This approach to education is highly individualized and thus carefully adapted to the particular formation-needs of each student. A. H. Johnson gives powerful expression to the deeply personal nature of forming “civilized” persons: “When a young person has succumbed to the lure of beauty, felt it intimately, immersed herself in the depths of aesthetic experience ― then, unmindful of the narrow self, she will have a vision of peace, the harmonization of activities, directed toward ideal aims.”xiii 
 
6, Conclusion 
 
So how does Whitehead’s view of civilization transform the term “ecological civilization”?xiv Adding the term “ecological” expresses one’s commitment to apply the way of being in the world that Whitehead advocates to a specific context, a set of challenges, and underlying cause. The context is global climate disruption caused by one species living beyond the carrying capacities of this planet. The challenge is how to mitigate the disastrous effects of human exceptionalism, and how to adapt to a planet whose entire biosphere is on the edge of collapse. The underlying cause is that humans view the resources of nature as commodities to be extracted without limit in order to maximize economic gain and to satisfy their apparently unlimited desire for increased comfort and pleasure. 
 
For Whitehead, “civilized” represents a novel way of being in the world that involves the complete transformation of an individual. It is not a purely subjective or inner process, but one that manifests in actions with others and with the environment. This transformation is thus impossible without an entire community that helps form and support such persons; and they in turn form communities that live by these values.xv  
 
Civilized living ― the mixture of truth, beauty, adventure, art, and peace ― manifests in a family, a school, a community, a village, a region; in religious or spiritual practices; in a culture, in the spirit of an age or an epoch; indeed, finally, in a planetary way of being. As we have seen, the net effect of a life lived toward these five qualities is an individual who is finally tuned to the deepest values of living well ― living for the well-being of others. 
 
We too often speak of ecological civilization as a thing, a product, a distillate. In this paper I have sought to show the fundamental flaws in that approach. We have discovered that “civilized” is instead a living, breathing way of being in the world, fresh every morning. It can’t be reduced to doctrines or equations. Learning to live in this “civilized” way means fanning a fragile, tiny flame. What Emily Dickinson writes of hope applies equally to being civilized ecologically: It is 
 
… the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune without the words, 
And never stops at all…xvi 
 
Endnotes 

1 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (1933), 353: “A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.”
2 H.A. Johnson, Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 172.
3 Zachary Simpson, Life as Art: Aesthetics and the Creation of Self (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012).
4 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 360, italics added. Whitehead actually uses the word “race,” but we now have multiple biological and philosophical reasons to dispute the accuracy of this term and to be concerned about its misuses.
5 Cf. Johnson, Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization, 4
6 Angelo Caranfa, “Literature, Art, and Sacred Silence in Whitehead's Poetics of Philosophy,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29/4 (2015): 474-502; cf. Johnson, Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization, 7.
7 Thus in the final paragraph of his book on symbols, Whitehead writes, “Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows”; Whitehead, Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect, The Barbour-Page lectures, University of Virginia 1927 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), chapter 3, p. 88.
8 See Andrew M. Davis, Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2022).
9 For example, Whitehead writes, “The basis of democracy is the common fact of value-experience, as constituting the essential nature of each pulsation of actuality. Everything has some value for itself, for others, and for the whole,” Modes of Thought, 151).
10 See J. R. Hustwit, “Alfred North Whitehead’s Artistic Cosmos,” in “Cultivating Creativity: Arts Education in an Artistic Universe,” Open Horizons, https://www.openhorizons.org/alfred-north-whiteheadrsquos-artistic-cosmos-j-r-hustwit.html. Hustwit’s full text on this topic reads: “If we take Whitehead’s philosophy seriously … then we see there are two messages for artists. First, art is fundamental to the cosmos. The very fabric of reality is an artistic process, and human art is just one manifestation of the most basic activity of reality. Second, societal change is impossible without art. Only the combination of truth and beauty in artistic expression can inspire other humans to see the world as it is, to think new thoughts, to feel new feelings, and to imagine better possibilities for the way we live…. I invite you to imagine that the very fabric of reality is artistic…”
11 For example, Eric Hoffer writes, “…Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and the cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that” (Hoffer, Before the Sabbath [1979]), pp. 40-41).
12 I highly recommend chapter 5 of H.A. Johnson’s Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization, which draws on a number of difficult-to-obtain sources to lay out his theory of education.
13 Johnson, Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization, 5. I have changed the gender of his pronouns.
14 Chinese scholars and leaders have been at the forefront of studying and applying the term “ecological civilization.” China is at present the only nation to have included the goal of becoming an ecological civilization in its national constitution. For more details, see Philip Clayton and Andrew Schwartz, What is Ecological Civilization? Crisis, Hope, and the Future of the Planet (Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2019). Andrew and I formed the Institute for Ecological Civilization in 2015 to research, publicize, and apply ecological civilization thinking; see EcoCiv.org. Together with the staff and partners of EcoCiv, we have led programs on this topic in 13 countries over the last ten years.
15 Whitehead does not sufficiently flesh out the role of community in this process. He moves too quickly from individual experience and formation, what the Germans called Bildung, to broader cultural and world-historical developments.
16 Emily Dickinson’s poem

“Hope is the thing with feathers” is in the public domain:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.