God as a Single Processing Actual Entity

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Rem B. Edwards ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Actual Entity

Reverence, Revision and Creaturely Life: Whitehead’s Political Theology of Enjoyment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Symbolic Code ◽  
Strategic Motivation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

‘The art of free society’, A.N. Whitehead declares in his essay on symbolism, is fundamentally dual. It consists of both ‘maintenance of the symbolic code’ and a ‘fearlessness of [its] revision’. This tension, on the surface paradoxical, is what Whitehead believes will prevent social decay, anarchy, or ‘the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows’. Bearing in mind Whitehead’s own thoughts on the nature of symbolism, this chapter argues that the figure of the creature has been underappreciated in his work as a symbol. It endeavors to examine and contextualize the symbolic potency of creatureliness in Whitehead’s work, with particular attention directed toward the way the creature helps him to both maintain and revise an older symbolic code. In Process and Reality, ‘creature’ serves as Whitehead’s alternate name for the ‘individual fact’ or the ‘actual entity’—including (perhaps scandalously, for his more orthodox readers) the figure of God. What was Whitehead’s strategic motivation for deploying this superfluous title for an already-named category? In this chapter, it is suggested that his motivation was primarily poetic (Whitehead held the British romantic tradition in some reverence) and so, in this sense, always and already aware of its rich symbolic potency.

Discussions and Applications

1997 ◽  
pp. 60-106
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Modal Theory ◽  
Real Essence ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter analyzes Part II of Process and Reality. It begins with a discussion of fact and form, and states that for Alfred North Whitehead, to be an actual entity is to be fully formed, fully definite, with no indeterminations left unresolved. From the welter of what it could be, an actual entity decides what it will be: realizing certain potentials and positively excluding others; taking a definite stance with respect to everything in the ideal and actual worlds. Its real essence, structured by its associative hierarchy, comprises the full particularity of its status in the universe and of the universe in it: its unique way of housing and pervading this world populated by these actual entities. The remainder of the chapter explains the extensive continuum; order, society, organisms, and environment; the modal theory of perception; and a theory of judgment.

Whitehead's Theory of Human Agency

Dialogue ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-441
Author(s):  
Douglas Browning
Keyword(s):  
Microscopic Theory ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Macroscopic Theory ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
The Universe

An adequate theory of the self must provide for the fact of human agency. I would like to show that (1) we can put together a theory of human agency from Whitehead's later writings, but that (2) this theory is not satisfactory. This discussion will be, first, expository and then critical of Whitehead's position. An elaboration of Whitehead's theory has two moments. For Whitehead, all factors of the universe are finally derivative from the ultimately actual things, which he calls actual entities. The fact of agency is no exception. The establishment of such agency is the job of what I shall call Whitehead's microscopic theory. We are interested here, however, in the human being as agent. A person, according to Whitehead, is not an actual entity, but a society of actual entities. Whitehead's theory of human agency may be called the macroscopic theory. After an examination of these theories, I shall conclude by briefly criticizing them in two ways. First, for Whitehead there are no acts but only processes. Second, an adequate theory requires a doctrine of the persistence of the agent which Whitehead is unable to provide.

Whitehead's 'Actual Entity' and the Buddha's Anatman

1971 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth K. Inada
Keyword(s):  
Actual Entity

Realisation of Self and Power

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Debaise
Keyword(s):  
Final State ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
End Point ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Universe ◽  
As If

The process of individuation has an end. The passage from disjunctive diversity to the unity of a new entity embodied by the subject has a conclusion, namely, the effective realisation of the entity, its full actualisation. This end point of individuation is reached following the determination of every positive and negative prehension of the entity, that is, when all of its relations with other entities have been established. It is, then, fully a perspective, a being-situated in the universe, a junction between and a unity of everything that exists. It attains, in its final state of concrescence, what Whitehead calls ‘satisfaction’. This ‘satisfaction’ is not a common end, identifiable with all the others, as if there were a pre-existing finality in individuation that would be actualised in a particular manner. It is ‘a generic term: there are specific differences between the “satisfactions” of different entities, including gradations of intensity’ (PR, 84). In the same way that every prehension is singular and belongs to the subjective orientation of every actual entity, the end of an entity is specific, it is that end for that entity.

Konsep Tuhan dan Agama Menurut Alfred North Whitehead

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-184
Author(s):  
Agustinus Nicolaus Yokit
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Main Issue ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Actual Event ◽  
Scientific Materialism

This article discusses the concept of God and religion according to Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy. The main issue is how to describe Whitehead's concept of God and its implications for religious life. Whitehead's critique of scientific materialism is an entry point to understand the characteristics of his thought. This criticism leads to Whitehead's cosmology in which each actual entity is in the process of becoming. God is not excluded from this cosmological scheme. In this way of thinking, God is the source of eternal objects or values. God experiences every actual event that occurs in the temporal world. Thus, God can be understood from two perspectives: the former refers to a cosmological frame, while the latter refers to religious experience. In Whitehead's language, God has two distinct natures, a primordial nature, and a consequent nature. From the perspective of religious life, Whitehead's concept of God seems to put more emphasis on divine immanence.

Language about God in Whitehead's Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-218
Author(s):  
Palmyre Oomen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Actual Entity ◽  
Ordinary Meaning ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Concrete Language ◽  
The Way

The way Whitehead speaks of God in his "philosophy of organism," and the evaluation thereof is the subject of this article. The background of this issue is the position—broadly shared in theology, and here represented by Aquinas—that one should not speak "carelessly" about God. Does Whitehead violate this rule, or does his language for God express God's otherness and relatedness to the world in a new, intriguing way? In order to answer this question, an introduction into Whitehead's philosophy is given, and especially into his category of existence, the "actual entity." For Whitehead, God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence. His perception of the similarity and greater dissimilarity between God and the worldly actual entities (and clusters thereof) is analyzed. In the main andfinal section of this article, these insights are used as tools to decrypt Whitehead's God-language. Here, I compare the status of Whitehead's and Aquinas's statements about God, discuss Whitehead's ideas concerning the analogical character of concrete language, and argue that in Whitehead's philosophy too there is no discourse about God without a shift or breakdown of the "ordinary" meaning of language

On De-Mythologizing Whitehead’s Actual Entity

1974 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Barbara Parsons ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Actual Entity

Whitehead'S Philosophy: Actual Entities

Philosophy ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 16 (63) ◽  
pp. 285-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney E. Hooper
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
New Creation ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Genetic Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Efficient Causation ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Universe

I have tried to expound Whitehead's doctrine of Creativity and of actual entities. Nothing remains but to give a brief summary of what has been said in the foregoing notes.Creativity is the ultimate activity and principle of novelty in the Universe.The world is said to consist of “actual entities,” not substances. An actual entity is also called an “actual occasion.” It is essentially a genetic process, having two sides, (I) the process of “becoming,” and (2) the outcome of the process named the “satisfaction.” The satisfaction is the fully determined achievement abstracted from the process. On attaining satisfaction the actual entity viewed as a self-creating subject loses its “final” causation, and as a subject perishes, but the “satisfaction” remains as a potential constituent for the emergence of a new actual entity. This is its “efficient” causation. The potentiality of the satisfaction for a new creation is called its “objective immortality”: in this capacity it functions as an “object” for the self-creation of another actual entity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document