“One and many : creativity in Whitehead and Chinese cosmology” (Publication, 2010)
Year
2010
Text
Wen, Haiming. One and many : creativity in Whitehead and Chinese cosmology. In : Journal of Chinese philosophy ; vol. 37, no 1 (2010). (WhiA58)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Wen, Haiming
(um 2010) : Associate Professor, School of Philosophy, Renmin University
Mentioned People (1)
Whitehead, Alfred North
(Ramsgate, Kent 1861-1947 Cambridge, Mass.) : Englischer Philosoph, Mathematiker ; Senior Lecturer University College London and Imperial College London ; Professor of Philosophy Harvard University
Subjects
Philosophy : United States of America
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (1)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1911-1933 |
Alfred North Whitehead and China : Sekundärliteratur 1965 Fang Dongmei [Fang Thomé] : The so-called freedom is to create incessantly. Both in man and in nature there is always something new and progressive which indicates the realities of both man and nature. The whole universe exhibits novelty and wonder all the time and everywhere, and there seems to be a high order to which it abides. So let's borrow the words from Whitehead, nature in essence is a 'creative advance'. Yu Yih-hsien : Fang's philosophy is closely allied with Bergson's vitalism and Whitehead's philosophy of organism and is against materialistic mechanism. (WhiA1) 1971 Wu, Joseph S. : Whitehead has offered not merely a synthesis within the Western tradition, but also attempted to include the cultural contributions of the East. Contemporary Chinese philosophers have respected Whitehead as one of the greatest speculative philosophers in the Western world. Romantic poetry has taught Whitehead that an adequate concept of nature can never be divorced from aesthetic values. This has led him into the saying that philosophy is akin to poetry. This is perhaps one of the major reasons that he is so respected by contemporary Chinese thinkers. (WhiA28) 1974 Tong Lik Kuen [Tang Liquan] : Whitehead once admitted that his philosophy seemed closer to the Indian, or Chinese, way of thought than to the Western-Asiatic, or European, way of thinking. For Whitehead Being, the field of all existence, is in essence a field of creative activity. Creativity, not God, is the ultimate metaphysical principle. In Whitehead's cosmology God is the principle of concretion, functioning both as the reservoir of potentiality and as the coordinator of achievement, so the Tao of Heaven and Earth in the I Ching is what determines the field order of I, being the 'way' (tao) of its creative operations. Just as in Whitehead the variable and the permanent textures of Being are equally essential to the field character of Creativity, so in the I China I includes in its meaning both the changing (p'ien i) and the unchangeable (pu i). Lying at the heart of Whitehead's ontology and cosmology is the idea of 'organic synthesis', which replaces both the Aristotelian primary substance and the concept of matter in scientific materialism. In so far as Whitehead is concerned, organic synthesis, which defines the real essence of Creativity, is basically what the field theory of Being is all about. What are the ultimate principles or root-conditions of contextuality upon which organic synthesis depends ? Whitehead's answer is basically contained in this five-fold analysis : 1. Pure potentiality, which consists of the multiplicity of 'eternal objects' (the Platonic Forms) given in the 'primordial nature' of God, may be called the root-condition of character. 2. The Extensive Continuum, which forms the general system of relatedness of all eternal objects, may be called the root-condition of character. 3. Real Potentiality, belonging to the 'actual world' of past actual entities which in consummation are received into the 'consequent nature' of God, may be called the root-condition of heritage. 4. God, conceived both as the reservoir of potentiality (pure and real) and as the co-ordinator of achievement (through synthesis of his primordial and consequent natures), may be called the root-condition of concretion. 5. Actuality, which belongs to the 'living acts' of Creativity arising from the compulsion of power (what is the meaning of 'substance' for Whitehead) in the actual world, may be called the root-condition of agency. According to Whitehead, objective or physical time has its origin in the temporalization of Creativity, that is, in the creative advance of actual entities. The Whiteheadean idea of the extensive region finds its counterpart in the I Ching in the idea of 'wei' or 'position'. Just as in Whitehead the extensive region has a temporal as well as a spatial aspect, so 'wei' in the I Ching includes both the meaning of 'shih' or time and the meaning of 'fang wei' or 'wei' in the narrow sense, that is, spatial location or direction. (WhiA29) 1978 Cheng Chung-ying : After becoming familiar with Whitehead's philosophy, particularly as embodied in Whitehead's book Process and Reality, many Chinese philosophers have made the suggestion that Whitehead's philosophy resembles Chinese philosophy to a great measure and therefore is highly comparable to Chinese philosophy. What the Chinese philosophers have in mind when they assess the resemblance between Chinese philosophy and Whitehead's philosophy is that Whitehead had developed a system based upon the fundamental notion of reality as a process of change which has always been the fundamental notion of Chinese philosophy, beginning with the I ching. Whitehead, even though he explicitly defines speculative philosophy as the attempt to frame a 'coherent, logical, necessary system of ideas' to 'interpret experience', his metaphysics of organism as a system of ideas should possess ontological significance of agency and efficacy and should form an important ingredient for the constitution of the world and life. Both, Whitehead's philosophy and Chinese philosophy have more than conceptual resemblance : both would agree that philosophy is real, not merely conceptual. The resemblance between Chinese philosophy and Whitehead's philosophy is not a matter of static comparison, but a matter of dynamic interaction. Whitehead's position seems to approximate to the position which the great Neo-Confucianists from Chou Tun-I to Chu Hsi generally held. Specifically, Whitehead can be understood as reaching a position represented in the well-known Discourse on the Diagram of the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi T'u Shuo) as developed by Chou Tun-I and generally accepted by Chu Hsi and other Neo-Confucianists. The organic unity among the Neo-Confucian categories we do not seem to find in Whitehead's system of creativity. It appears that all the Whiteheadian categories are given in confunction and there is no specific effort explicitly to demonstrate or to assess their interdependence. (WhiA30) 1979 Julia Ching : Whitehead has developed his thinking somewhat in opposition to that of Thomas Aquinas. It is not incorrect to assert that Chu Hsi shares common ground with both, Aquinas and Whitehead, agreeing, with the former, that God is in come respects above change, while also insisting, with the latter, that God is immersed in change itself. A comparative study of Chu Hsi and Whitehead is especially appropriate and useful for several reasons. Whitehead was personally conscious of possible resemblances between his philosophy and that of China or East Asia – of which Chu remains an important representative. Chu Hsi and Whitehead shared a common interest in the world of nature – the starting-point in their respective philosophies. Each is a systematic thinker, proceeding from where he is in the direction of a totality, consciously constructing a metaphysical doctrine as a manner of inheriting critically from the entire legacy of tradition and of opening new horizons to the future. Each evolves a philosophy which bears striking resemblances in structure and content to that of the other. The final summary of Whitehead's philosophical views on God and the World is especially presented in a series of antitheses in each of which a shift of meaning converts the opposition into a contrast. The intended effect is the emphasis on relational significance rather than underlying substance. And this is the effect of the ideographic Chinese language, where the absence of a proper copula has made of metaphorical suggestiveness a substitute for equations, thus enforcing what is known as the logic of correlative duality, in which the dialectical opposition of terms has been put to maximum use. Chu Hsi's metaphysical model – as given in his commentaries on Chou Tun-yi's Diagram of the Great Ultimate – is much less determinate, and therefore much more ambiguous one, than Whitehead's. Where both man make use of a paradoxical language, Chu Hsi's remains much more symbolic, by its reference to a Diagram which is itself a symbolical structure, and Whitehead's tends to be more rationalistic, by its reference to ideas taken from modern physics, and by its concern for making God simultaneously a supreme exemplification of most of its principles as well as a supreme exception from some of its principles. In this sense, Chu Hsi appears to represent a great degree of logical coherence than Whitehead. Chu Hsi's metaphysical choice is similar to Whitehead's. He has rejected the anthropomorphic image of the deity as this is given in classical Chinese religion. (WhiA32) 1979 Tong Lik Kuen [Tang, Liquan] : Whitehead was profoundly impressed by the English Romantic poets – especially Wordsworth and Shelley. These nature-intoxicated Romantics wrote at a time when there was in Western Europe a general appreciation of – and indeed admiration for – Chinese culture : its humanistic philosophy, its reasonableness in the form of government, its naturalism in the arts (including gardening) and poetry. And if Whitehead's philosophy was in fact influenced by Romantic poetry in its ultimate intuitions, some historical connection between Whitehead and Chinese though might perhaps in a roundabout way be established. Chinese philosophy has always been closely tied to poetry, to the language of the heart and feelings. The fact that both Chinese philosophers and Whitehead held fast to the notion of life as essentially an emotional activity can be clearly seen in their conception of mind or 'hsin' – in their emphasis on the non-cognitive over the cognitive and on the intuitive over the intellectual-conceptual. It is noteworthy that there is no elaborate theory of consciousness in either Whitehead or Chinese philosophy, with a consequent lack of epistemological or phenomenological interests so characteristic of the Western philosophical tradition – especially in the modern period. Whiteadian emphasis on the 'aesthetic moment' or the vital here-and-now as the ultimate facts of Life is in perfect agreement with the spirit of Chinese philosophy which, in contrast to the eternalistic outlook of Indian and Western metaphysics, is always a philosophy of the Present. For both Whitehead and Chinese philosophy, the eternal, which consists in the infinite wealth of potentials graded in relevance to the world and thus forming the primordial nature of God or 'T'ai-Chi'. Both Whitehead's God and the Chinese 'T'ai Chi' refer to the field character of Nature responsible for the shifting character of 'sheng' or creativity. In both Whitehead and Chinese metaphysics, the providential character of God or Heaven-and-Earth is often described symbolically in various images or metaphors. In so far as Chinese metaphysics is concerned, the most prevalent symbolism is that of parental care. The most outstanding imagery in Whitehead's conception of God is that of 'the poet of the world'. The conception of God and World as interdependent co-creaters of Life which Whitehead shares with Chinese philosophy certainly runs counter to the prevalent Western conception in which the God-World relation is marked by a one-sided dependence. Both Chinese philosophy and Whitehead recognize the importance of polarities in an adequate understanding of Nature. In fact, the uniqueness of the Chinese and Whiteheadian world-views is best seen in the way polarities are conceived in them, that is, dialectically through the field concept. From the Chinese philosophical standpoint, Whitehead's character-centered philosophy is neither sufficient nor adequate. It is not sufficient because his theory of character is too general : it fails to do justice to the uniqueness and complexity of human character. And it is inadequate because it fundamentally lacks the existential orientation : it fails to recognize the proper relationship between theory and practice, between the vision of character and its real-life achievement. From the Whiteheadian standpoint, the preeminently symbolic approch of the I Ching with its characteristic vagueness and ambiguity of expression, must seem lacking in intellectual rigor, judged by the standard of rationalist thinking. The key to understanding Whitehead really lies in the ambivalence and tensions of intuition and intellect, of the poetic and the logical-mathematical, of character and nature, of the aspectative and the entitative modes of thought, of one and many, of God and World, and a host of other pairs of polar opposites whose creative synthesis constitutes strategically the goal of his speculative endeavor. In comparing Whitehead to Chinese philosophy, we need to bring about a dialectic contrast with respect to each major pair of opposites. (WhiA32) 1979 King, Winston L. : Basic presuppositions of (Western) Whiteheadeanism and (Eastern) Hua-yen philosophers : It is obvious that Western organicism will always take care that individuality be preserved. While the most overt form of this in the West has been the humanistic personal version, science too has had its own special variety in terms of precise quantifications and a generally atomistic viewpoint. Whitehead is very critical of this ; his organic emphasis is precisely a critique of such atomism. Yet his strong insistence on the independence and individuality of the basic building blocks of the universe, actual entities, is also notable. With him, therefore, it is a matter of providing for the reality of individuals within the larger order and as integrally related to other entities, but not so integrated as to lose their reality and integrity in any sort of Greater Reality, including the Universe and God. The Hua-yen (Eastern) bias is somewhat different. It would be almost accurate to say that the trust here is to save the System at the expense of the individual, the Whole at the expense of the parts. To be sure, Buddhism rejects a substantive Absolute, and warns against substantializing Emptiness. Nonetheless, there is the same Indian-Brahmanical tendency to look with suspicion upon the particularity of time-space existence, and to distrust the perceptions of the personal individuality found therein. Human individuality in the long run is a misfortune ; it feeds on a diet of particulars, attributing ultimate significance to them – from which flows all human misery. Comparison between Whiteheadean and Hua-yen immanentalism : it will be useful to distinguish four levels of immanence and to inquire as to the degree of acceptance and incorporation of this in the two systems of thought : a) immanence as influence, b) immanence as organic inclusion, c) immanence as partial identity, d) immanence as complete identity. (WhiA56) 1979 Charles Hartshorne : The aspect of social order of which Confucius gives a special version for a particular society is taken into account by Whitehead when he says that order and love complement each other, love relating to individuals, taken one by one, and order to the need for pattern and predictability in social life. Mo Zhu's absolute ideal is included in what Whitehead calls 'peace' (in the chapter on that topic in Adventures of Ideas), as is Lao Tzu's sense of unity with the principle of all things. The technicalities of Whitehead's thought are not to be closely matched by anything in Chinese philosophy, whether that of Lao Tzu, Mao Tsetung, or some thinker between these two. The technicalities in question are responses to issues that arise sharply only in a culture that takes seriously and develops intensively mathematical knowledge, pure and applied, and in which theological isses are also carefully discussed. (WhiA33) 1979 Fu Charles Wei-hsun : From the Chinese point of view, Whitehead's metaphysical language is not entirely liberated from the onto-theological fixation of language, thought, and reality. The Chinese conception of metaphysical language as a multi-functional and multi-dimensional enrichment and depending of everyday natural language can help us resolve the problem of Whitehead's metaphysical language. (WhiA34) 1980 David Yu : The philosophical affinity between Whitehead and Chu Hsi has been an intriguing question for students of comparative philosophy ever since Joseph Needham referred to Chu Hsi's Neo-Confucianism as philosophy of organism bearing notable similarities with Whitehead's metaphysics. [Needham, Joseph. Science and civilization in China. (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1957). Vol. 2 : History of scientific thought]. Is a comparative study between these two men justifiable ? My answer to this is positive for two reasons : 1. A common process tradition. There have been agreements among some Chinese and Western philosophers since the turn of the century that Chinese philosophy emphasizes changes and relations in its apprehension of reality and truth. This philosophical tradition is more akin to the organistic tradition of Leibniz, James, and Whitehead than to the 'substance' tradition as represented by Descartes, Locke and Hume. 2. Continuing interest of scholars. There have been some initial comparative works between Whitehead and Chinese/Asian philosophy in more recent years in the West which reflects a growth in quality and quantity. This can be taken as a sign that expository and critical works between Whitehead and Chinese/Asian philosophy can be pursued. (WhiA35) 1989 Yu Yih-hsien : In his works, Chen Shih-chuan argues that the philosophical elements in the Yi jing are consonant with that of Whitehead's philosophy of organism. According to Chen, the authors of the Yi jing and Whitehead share the same view that all read existence is natural and self-creative ; it acts in accordance with natural order and leaves no room for supernatural intervention. Chen enumerates four instances of consonance between Hua Yan Buddhists and Whitehead's philosophy. First of all, the Hua Yan Buddhists and Whitehead both regard real existence as 'event', not as 'matter' or 'fact', which arises from the multiplicity and complexity of the universe in accordance with the principle of dependent-origination, nor in accordance with mechanical law. Whitehead's doctrine of the ingression of eternal objects into actual entities is very close to Hua Yan's teaching of the 'non-impediment between eternal principles (li) and transient events (shi) '. The Whiteheadian God is very close to Huan Yan's Buddha, since their characteristics indicate a pantheistic nature. Hua Yan's teaching of 'organic non-impediment' is close to Whitehead's doctrine of prehensions. They both argue for interrelatedness among things and against all kinds of mutual exclusive dualism. (WhiA1) 1998 Jim P. Behuniak : If Confucius considered the Odes to behave like 'propositions' this sheds some light on his ethical and aesthetic thinking. It indicates that the introduction of verse was not intended to be morally instructive but rather emotionally evocative, and that emotion was admired as an effective ethical stimulus. I suggest that such stimulation of 'feeling' in the early Confucian tradition may have some affinity to aspects of Whitehead's thought. (WhiA36) 1998 Jang Wang Shik : Whitehead's cosmology can shed some light on the clarification of Buddhist cosmology, but also Buddhist cosmology can become a more appropriate type of cosmology with the helf of Whitehead's cosmology. (WhiA53) 1998 Gu Linyu : One of the unique contribution of Whitehead's process metaphysics is its potential tendency to develop an integrated view of time and emotion, which can be improved by appropriating the moralistic dimension on time and harmonization in Chinese 'Yi' philosophy. (WhiA37) 1998 Brook Ziporyn : The similarities between Whitehead's process philosophy and the Chinese Buddhist schools of Tiantai and Huayan have often been noted. Li Rizhang calls Whitehead's philosophy a 'western version of the doctrine of dependent co-arising and emptiness'. These two Buddhist schools and Whitehead agree, he says, on the following points : the denial of simple location, the denial of the independence of objects, and the denial of the absolute division of subject and object. More essentially, both assert that every object is 'in a sense everywhere at once'. But then he points out what he considers the two greatest differences, for there are two points found in Whitehead which, he feels, have no corresponding notion in the Chinese Buddhist schools : Whitehead's notion of God and his idea of 'eternal objects'. (WhiA3/WhiA55) 2001 Joseph Grange : Both, Whitehead and the Lotus Sutra refuse to grant dualistic thinking any metaphysical ultimacy. They condemn it for its abstractness and the way in which is saps intelligence of the strength needed to embrace the full range of our worldy experience. The Lotus Sutra offers the doctrine of 'sunyata' as the cure for dualism and its ailments. Whitehead offers a novel existential category that he terms 'contrast'. (WhiA39 2001 Steve Odin : Whitehead's organic process cosmology based on the principle of 'universal relativity', the Hua-yen principle of 'interpenetration between part and whole', and the Lotus Sutra principle of 'three thousand worlds in each thought-instant'. (WhiA40) 2001 Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki : In Whitehead's thought, as in Buddhist thought, all existence is interdependent. For Whitehead, each momentary bit of existence is a process of integrating feelings of the past with some sense of what the future can be. To Whiteheadian eyes, there are illumining similarities between the Sutra and a process vision of the world. These parallels do not necessarily signify commensurate ways of thinking, for each rests within a context of radically different sensitivities built up within divergent cultures. (WhiA41) 2001 Chen Shih-chuan : Whitehead's conception of 'creativity' is deficient from the standpoint of the Book of changes that takes 'creativity' as the fundamental function of the universe. Whitehead classifies 'creativity' together with the notions of 'many' and 'one' to the category of the ultimate. It is the ultimate truth behind individual facts of all creatures, while all creatures remain with it. In Whitehead's metaphysical system God assumes the highest position as 'the unconditioned conceptual valuation of eternal objects' and the introducer of order ad novelty. Got is not only the provider of the initial aims from which an actual occasion starts its self-creation, but also the aboriginal condition of creativity. 'Creativity' as 'the universal of universals' eventually does not create at all. From the standpoint of the Book of changes a philosophy of organism could have a metaphysical system without appealing for God's help. In his later writings Whitehead has suggested that language is the very factor that determines human civilization, 'human civilization is an outgrowth of language, and language is the product of advancing civilization. The metaphysical principles recorded in the Book of changes were conveyed by a system of diagrams that were appended in later years with a language full of metaphors and cosmological and axiological significance. In his nature philosophy Whitehead fuses together time and space into a spatio-temporal continuum. In terms of events both space and time are the essential constituents. While in the Book of changes the 'Ch'ien' (time), and 'K'un) (space) are concrete existence of heave and earth, and they are the manifestations of the function of creativity as well. Whitehead has once said, 'The universe is an ocean of feeling'. This is exactly what the Book of changes tried to tell us. In contrast with Whitehead's speculative cosmology, the Book of changes provides a creative cosmology with both the anthropomorphic flavor and the naturalistic temper. (WhiA42) 2002 Cheng Chung-ying : In a certain way, Whitehead followed Leibniz in constructing a system of metaphysical understanding in the same spirit of using a new logic and a new perspective on life and world derived from deep self-reflection and wide observation and knowledge of the world. Leibniz enjoyed his clear and logical vision of reason of existence in his essential monadology, whereas Whitehead was happily assertive of his grand system of the creative process of reality in his systematic concrescence theory. Both frameworks celebrate reason and speak of feelings, but it is Whitehead who came to make 'feelings' (positive prehensions of actual occasions), not reason, a universal principle ; in the Whiteheadian paradigm, it is in actual interchange and assimilation, not just conceptually, but physically, that the creation of actual entities (concrescence) take place. The crucial difference between Leibniz and Whitehead is this : Leibniz maintains a God of creation that can be regarded as transcendent, though world-inclining, whereas Whitehead discards such a principle of transcendence and regards God as a thorough-going principle of immanence, or immanence and transcendence in unity. In the light of Zhu Xi's system, one can see how Leibniz has primarily focused on the function of 'li', and thus developed a li-metaphysics of objects, whereas Whitehead has primarily focused on the function of 'qi', and thus developed a qi-metaphysics of actual entities. (WhiA43) 2002 Gu Linyu : Whitehead supposes that the process of experience is a creative harmony within which a mutual movement of dipolar forces (both physical and mental) takes place. The implications of the yin yang theory in the Yi jing can be used to reconcile the Whiteheadian harmony of dipolar processes with the harmony of tai ji (Great Primal Beginning) formed by yin and yang forces. In yi thinking, the world is a trinity of heaven, earth, and man, and it is led by the mutual transformation of yin and yang, in order to gain a harmonized end in which man and the world are inseparable. Both Whitehead and the Yi jing agree that our primary experience lies in the mutual correspondence between dipolar powers and the attainment of a harmony of two opposites. Whitehead's understanding of the world of process as one dominated by the transmission of feelings. In Whitehead's description, the world is a state of emotion flux, which he terms 'feelings'. These feelings make up the really real things of the universe, which are termed actual occasions. According to Whitehead, god supplies an initial aim that lures and guides the development of actual occasions. God's impact on the world of actual occasions is neither transcendent nor impersonal - rather, it is immanent and personal. For Whitehead, God creates the world and the world creates God ; God transcends the world and the world transcends God. For Whitehead, God is immanent in the world rather than above and beyond it. For Chan/Zen Buddhism, there is a fundamental goodness in the world that can be touched and experienced through right practice and right living. There also exist a fundamental agreement between Whitehead and yi Chan insofar as both postulate that a fundamental polarity exercises power throughout the cosmos : for Whitehead, it is the physical and mental dimensions of experience ; for Yi Chan, it is the yin yang methodology sourced from the Yi jing. Whitehead's God retains a transcendental dimension called the primordial nature, which harbors eternally all potentials for goodness. For Chan/Zen Buddhism, the Buddha is the nature of our own self. (WhiA44) 2003 Cheng, Chung-ying : Whitehead has provided his own framework of accommodating all religions against a background of understanding and a new interpretation of being and human being. But I like to interpret his purpose in terms of three levels of understanding of pluralism as follows : 1. See the theoretical and practical differences of existing religions such as Christianity and Buddhism. 2. See the theoretical and / or practical complementarity of different religions in light of an underlying philosophy of being and becoming. 3. See all religions (including both present and future religions) as off-springs of a comprehensive philosophy of being and becoming and the related understanding of humanity and the world. For the Yijing Onto-Cosmology the sense of time and the sense of temporal process are important for creativity is creativity in time and real in time and thus is related to the sense of becoming and transformation. The quality of harmonization in time is also a feature of Whitehead as we can see in the following quotation from Whitehead : "The doctrine of the philosophy of organism is that, however far the sphere of efficient causation be pushed in the determination of components of a concrescence – its data, its emotions, its appreciations, its purpose, its phases of subjective aim – beyond the determination of these components there always remain the final reaction of the self-creative unity of the universe." According to Whitehead, every actual being is a potential for every becoming of another actual being. In other words, any item of actuality is to be formed or concrescends from all actual and potential items in a process of becoming. The most clear statement from Whitehead is found in the following : "The principle states that it belongs to the nature of being that it is a potential for every becoming. Thus all things are to be conceived as qualifications of actual occasions." All major existing world religions could be found to share an ontology of God as the creative force as made explicit the Yijing-Whitehead ontology of process and change, and their assertions about the creativity of God as a creator could also be interpreted and given a meaning in the Yijing-Whitehead system of understanding. We could identify the religions sides of Confucianism and Daoism apart from their philosophical sides just as we need also make efforts to identify the philosophical sides of Christian theology and the Buddhist theology apart from their religious sides. I believe that this is precisely what Whitehead has intended to do and his process philosophy of organism could be said to embody his vision of a complementarily well-differentiated integration of Christianity and Buddhism as two major religions of the world, respectively representing the East and the West. (WhiA57) 2004 Nicholas F. Gier : Whitehead nonetheless follows later Confucians in extending relationality to all parts of the cosmos. Like the Cofucians, Whitehead does not sacrifice rationality because of his emphasis on relationality. The neo-Confucians are just as cosmologically focused as Whitehead, so such a venture would distract from our attempts to construct a more personalist process ethics of virtue. Whitehead's ontology is both rational and social like the Confucians. Whitehead and the Confucians have strikingly similar notions about the fusion of subjectivity and objectivity – the fusion of the inner and the outer. When we contras the process self of Whitehead and Confucius to the substantial self, we immediately see the psychological and philosophical advantages of the former. Neither the Confucian nor Whiteheadian view require us to put care of the self before care of others. The fact that evil happens even to good people is a challenge to all ethical theories, and the Chinese and Whitehead offer the same innovative solution. They both conceive of evil as basically discord and a lack of harmony. Whitehead's principle that if a thing is actual then it has some value precludes any separation of reality into the valuable and the valueless. He therefore joins the ancient consensus about the unity of being, goodness, and beauty. The Confucian concept of sincerity (cheng) proves to be a productive point of entry for a comparative analysis of these issues. When Confucians attribute sincerity to Heaven, which to them is essentially impersonal Providence, they mean that Heaven will always be true to itself. Heaven is not specifically moral and neither does any Confucian thinker say that its value is aesthetic. Whitehead is much more explicit : he holds that truth applies only to conformation to appearances, while beauty is 'realized in actual occasions which are the completely real things in the universe'. For Whitehead all order is ultimately aesthetic order. In Confucius and Whitehead, the expanded soul does not limit itself to a fraternity of propertied males ; rather, it extends into the world of large. For them the goal of morality is the attainment of universal peace and love, the latter virtue most clearly laid out. For Confucius and Whitehead this extension is cosmic in scope. Whitehead's distinction between the closed and open person finds an instructive parallel in the Confucian 'small or inferior person' and the 'junzi'. The latter thinks of virtue while the former thinks of possession and profit ; the 'junzi' seeks the Way and not a mere living ; and the 'junzi' brings the good things of others to completion' but the inferior man does just the opposite. Like Whitehead's person of 'great experience', the 'junzi' is expansive and other-regarding while the inferio person is self-regarding and restrictive. Neither Whitehead's God nor Confucian Heaven is a being with sense perception, so Whitehead would agree with Mencius that 'Heaven sees as my people see ; Heaven hears as my people hear'. Whether the Confucians also agree with Whitehead that God knows the future only as it is actualized in human history and nature is not clear. The most significant difference between Whitehead's God and Confucian Heaven is that the latter is strictly nontheological. The Confucian Heaven is constant and sincere, the latter meaning 'being true to itself'. Heaven's constancy can be eminently applied to Whitehead's God as well. Confucian, Aristotelian, and Whiteheadian ethics always aim at a personal mean that is a creative choice for each individual. Virtue ethics is emulative – using the sage or God as a model for virtue – whereas rule ethics is based on simple conformity and obedience. (WhiA45) 2005 Gu Linyu : Whitehead seems very much in appreciation of the Chinese idea of the two forces 'yin' and 'yang' embracing each other in a primal oneness. In order to offer a more detailed canvass, Whitehead constructs a categoreal scheme to articulate the process thereby opposites relate to each other. He sees reality as a world of 'feelings' that express various modes of process. Whitehead's philosophy also shares another profound dimension of Chan thought, namely, that all things in the world are made up to feelings (qing). For Chan, to preserve pure feelings is to keep disturbances away and therefore lessen the illusions that beset our visions. (WhiA48) 2005 John B. Cobb : Whitehead was critical of the modern world, and his followers pursue and extend that critique. But he wanted not just to tear down the ideas of the modern world, but also to replace them with more adequate ideas. His ideas are part of the movement of constructive postmodernism. Since Whitehead's understanding of reality is so close to that of traditional Chinese thought, the comments above about Whitehead's ability to act as a bridge between traditional ideas and the contemporary world are relevant. Whiteheadian thought could bring some traditional ideas to bear on contemporary problems. (WhiA3) 2005 David Ray Griffin : Whiteheadian process philosophy emphasizes the idea that organism are internally related to their environments, with human beings as the chief exemplification of this universal characteristic. Whitehead's philosophy leads to a bpolitical ethic that is cosmopolitan as well as communitarian. His philosophy provides the basis for a constructive postmodern political ethic. China is in a unique position to help overcome the world's self-destructive anarchy by taking a leadership role in the movement for global democracy. China's cultural heritage does not contain an imperialistic ideology. China is now in position to take a leadership role in determining the shape of human civilization as a whole. China has had abundant first-hand experience of the destructiveness of imperialism. China's indigenous religious-moral traditions have always been intimately related to political leadership. Whitehead's philosophy, by incorporating traditional Chinese values, could provide Chinese citizens interested in promoting global democracy with a framework for relating these values to modern and postmodern modes of thought. The affinity between Whitehead's philosophy of organism and Chinese thought has received considerable discussion. His philosophy, like Chinese thought, 'makes process ultimate', whereas the other type of thought 'makes fact ultimate', there is much more that is implicit in this point. Whitehead reveals his affinity with Chinese thought, it is based on the idea that a truly civilized people emphasizes 'the aesthetic and end of all action'. Whitehead sees the 'creation of the world' as 'the victory of persuasion over force'. (WhiA3) 2005 Fan Meijun ; Ronald Phipps : Chinese traditional thought and Whitehead's process thinking are alike in many ways. It is possible to integrate Chinese culture and the deeper Western cultures and philosophic process modes of thought found in strains of Western intellectual traditions. Whitehead's hope was that such integration would enrich and deepen that which is best in both traditions. According to Whitehead, process is conceived on the basis of mandates of movement and change. Chinese traditional philosophers observed the universe in fundamentally the same way as Whitehead. They also thought that process, development, movement, and change are omnipresent in all things. Whitehead considered that appreciation of the relation of the whole and the part is central to understanding reality. According to his thought, it is impossible to understand human experience without referring to relations of relations and classes of relations or classes of classes of relations. The essential sense of community in Chinese traditional aesthetics is both intra-species and inter-species, both mental and material. The traditional sense of wholeness in Chinese aesthetics is mirrored in Whitehead's process thought which emphasizes 1) Harmony, 2) The broad beyond with the infinite background of being, and 3) The profound interdependencies inherent in all existence. Chinese culture and aesthetics call for relation of compatibility, stimulation, and growth. Harmony-seeking expresses the Chinese traditional ideals of eternal peace and heavenly beauty. In the Whiteheadean terminology, actual entities must exist, function, and develop within open environments that promote mutual realization of the positive potentials of all beings, which are in community with one another. The ideal of harmonious community has given Chinese traditional arts a large and far-reaching influence in world culture. Chinese aesthetics seeks harmony of being. The mission of art is to represent this harmony and realize it in life. Such a mission is in conformity with the Whiteheadead thought that the very perception of beauty derives from the perception of conformal and harmonious integration of the positive potentials inherent in the perception of events comprising the world : 'The perfection of Beauty is defined as being the perfection of Harmony' [Adventures of ideas]. Whitehead's sense of the vital importance of the beyond vividly finds a parallel expression to the same sense in Chinese aesthetics as he writes : 'In the future, if human natures loses its most precious quality, it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent'. Like Whitehead, Chinese traditional aestheticians have neber liked to talk abut individuals without considering community. The talk about individuals in a community, as individuals could exist and grow up only in a community. There are numerous and profound ideas common to process thought and the traditional arts of China. Whitehead himself said that his philosophy has a strong kinship with Eastern philosophy. Hence he hoped to stimulate unity between Western culture and Eastern culture. (WhiA3) 2005 Michel Weber : Whitehead's philosophical development has reached its acem with Process and reality : the move from a concept of creation to the concept of creativity is fundamental and is intrinsically pregnant with the concept of co-creation. Assessing the proximity between Whiteheadian and Taoist philosophies requires the questioning of the possible similarity between the co-creation advocated by the former and the eventfulness of the later. Process and reality renounces the mono-principal and adopts a bi-principal ontology so characteristic of Chinese thought : remember that Process and reality does not advocate dualism but operationalizes two 'archai' that are both independent and interdependent. There are not many signs to inducate that Whitehead had a deep, direct acquaintance with Indian, Chinese or Japanese thought. But Whitehead had various opportunities to meet Buddhist-inclined scholars (William Ernest Hocking and Joseph Needham). Although he might have been interested in the peculiarities of Buddhist logic, the field developed only later. In the Dialogues he confers about China with Walter B. Cannon and later refers to Confucius. (WhiA3) 2005 Xie Xenyu : Whitehead recognized 'non-sensuous perception' in his experience, in which he conceived a subjects in terms of actual entity. In explaining his metaphysics, Whitehead treats the concept of actual entity as the fundamental concept. (WhiA3) 2005 Wang Zhihe : The postmodern dimension of Whitehead's philosophy, can be helpful for both the West and China to overcome the dominant closed mentalities such as the 'imperialistic attitude' and Yelangism. The postmodern dimension of Whitehead's philosophy lies partially in the fact that he never regards his own philosophy as a final truth. Furthermore, in his emphasis on complexity, and in reminding us of avoiding the 'narrowness inherent in all finite systems', he underscored his empathy for postmodern thinking. Whitehead's postmodern philosophy paves the way for appreciating and affirming openness to other cultures, ever radically different ideas and insights. It provides a new forum from which Chinese philosophy can creatively engage in solving the core issue we face today with its own thought resources. Facing the powerful worldview and modern way of thinking, postmodern thinkers not only need to form coalitions with others, but also need to take advantage of traditional thought resources from different traditions and cultures. (WhiA3) 2005 Han Zhen : The universe in Whitehead's thought is an infinite, open, dynamic, and becoming process, full of diversity, creativity, and life. As part of such a universe, human society contains all these characters. Conceiving the universe in term of process, Whitehead perceives adventure as a fundamental theme in his cosmology. It follows that human civilization is a creative process with abundant potentiality. (WhiA3) 2005 Zhang Nini : Whitehead in his Sciene and the modern world offers some analyses into the modern concept of nature. He points out that the notion of simple location is the key principle in the modern concept of nature. Whitehead felt a similarity between 'rationalized faith' in the Medieval Ages and 'reason based upon faith' in 17th and 18th centuries. He was not satisfied with the mechanist concept of nature in modern science. In Whitehead's scheme, space and time mean not only limitation but also prehension. That is, material in spatial-temporary location should be thought as a thing containing in itself infinite components, gathering in inter-relation and constituting as a grasped unity. Every thing is a unity of a prehension. Nature in Whitehead's thought is the nature of an organic whole, which is possessed of innate vitality and needn't get any laws from alien force. (WhiA3) 2005 Dirck Vorenkamp : As interest in Huayan thought among Western scholars has grown over the last few decades, a number of individuals have noted similarities between Whiethead's ideas of reality as a process of arising actual occasions and Huayan doctrines concerning the independent arising of dharmas. Whitehead's view requires temporal asymmetry such that the present arises as a creative advance toward an open future. In contrast, Huayan is well known for advocating a symmetrical view of reality, and the Huayan view of time, it has been argued, is no exception. (WhiA51) 2005 Yu Yih-hsien : In Whitehead's view, in the history of human civilization there were two rational religions, Buddhism and Christianity, which exercised great influence on many peoples' religious life, though their influence may now be in decay. These two world religions have their separate sets of dogmas and give different answer to the questions of human suffering and evil. Buddhism finds evil arising from the very nature of physical and emotional experience, and the wisdom which it inculcates is meant to release us from such experience. This is to lay the foundation of its doctrines on a general speculation of human experience. Whitehead keenly observes that Buddhism is a religion developed from metaphysical doctrines, that is, Buddha's teachings, whereas Christianity is a religion based on religious facts from which its metaphysical doctrine is derived. He has not only an insight into the very essence of the Eastern Asiatic thought, but also the essence of rational religion. For the Confucians or the Buddhists, there had never been a supernatural, personal God in their religious experience. Their spiritual pursuit was directed to seek a harmonious relationship to men and nature, to universal principles of humanity, as well as to the aesthetic order of the universe. Whitehead suggests there are three main renderings of the concept of God. First is the Eastern Asiatic concept of an impersonal order to which the world conforms, which offers a doctrine of immanence with regard to the reality of a supreme being. Whitehead was not a sinologist and his understanding of Chinese thought was spare and inseparable from that of Buddhism and Indian thought, he still has a great insight into the essence of Chinese thinking. He makes his philosophy attractive to Chinese philosophers and opens a channel for East and West dialogues. Whitehead did not take serious consideration of Chinese thought in spite of his casual mentioning of it. The formidable difficulty of Whitehead's philosophy also made it impervious to most of the Chinese philosophers. For Whitehead, the Oriental thought of India and China gives an alternative to the metaphysical exposition of reality, which makes 'creativity' the ultimate instead of substantial God or brutal facts. Though he never came to understand the Yi jing and its philosophical implications, he has precisely characterized this essence of Chinese thinking and set up a most promising agenda for the dialogues of East and West. As Whitehead has shown his interest in Chinese thought at a time when Chinese culture was at its low ebb and discarded by most of the Chinese intellects, for those who sought to restore traditional Chinese culture and national confidence Whitehead's philosophy lent them a friendly hand. (WhiA1) 2010 Wen Haiming : In reconstructing a proper understanding of Chinese cosmology, Whitehead's process theory on creativity helps, and vice versa, and Chinese perspectives in turn present that things and events are contextually creative as human beings are cocreative with the cosmos they are located. For Chinese philosophy, the cosmos is a process of 'creatio in situ', which is transformational : It is not that one thing comes after another, but one thing becomes another. From Whitehead's viewpoint, the cosmos is the con6tinuity of many actual beings, each of which is an expression of the whole. The major task of Whiteheadian cosmology is to elucidate the meaning of the 'Manyness'. Cosmology, for Whitehead, uncovers the contextual creativity between One and Many, which is another term for the common understanding on flux of myriad things. This defines a creative process of a novel unity which becomes 'One' in negating its past 'Many' occasions. Whitehead holds that things and events happen together with one another in an actual context. It is creativity that makes the One actualize its potentiality to become plurality ; likewise, in this contextual process of diversification, the Many is synthesized into One in creativity. For Whitehead, 'becoming' contains that the Many contextually creat the One, which is itself novel. The Whiteheadian cosmos is self-creative and everything is coexistent and interrelated to each other. The Whiteheadian idea of creativity supports a cosmological view on change. Whitehead holds that creativity is a process in which Many become One, and are increased by One. From this perspective, the Chinese cosmological creativity might be rendered through mutually creative process, which is contextual in the sense that Many and One are different ways of looking at things, beings, and entities. Like Whitehead, the Daodejing and the Yijing allege that both experience and the world are mutually creative in an unceasing process. The cosmological dao in Chinese philosophy, if interpreted through Whiteheadian sense, does not creat myriad individual things, but functions underdeterminately to become novel actualities – that is, any determinate being. For Chinese thought, the genuine creative force is yinyang correlativity which conveys the significance of 'creatio in situ'. Whitehead describes how the feelings of plurality integrate into a continual oneness, and he has to use paradoxical language. Whitehead's metaphysical language not only indicates that the one cannot be separated from many, but also expresses a manifestation of a holistic underterminacy that metaphysicians cannot avoid. Like Whiteheadian indeterminacy, the common phenomenon of the Chinese idea of interterminacy is the duplication of key metaphysical terms. For both Chinese and Whiteheadian cosmology, creativity makes the One transform into Many, and the Many into One. In other words, the world creates through mutual transformation. It concludes that contextual creativity is the key to understanding how One transforms into 'Many', and how the Many transform while maintaining plurality. Chinese philosophy tends to carry out mutual creativity from the perspective of continuous process of the yin and yang ; whereas Whitehead begins his analysis from the perspective of eternal entities, actualities, and God. Though there is a difference between Whiteheadian and Chinese cosmological rendering of the relationship between One and Many, there are many mutually informative and entailing enlightenment when taking Whiteheadian version of creativity to rethink the contextual creativity in Chinese cosmology. (WhiA58) 2011 Yang Li ; Wen Hengfu : The research on Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism have started since 1920' in China. During 85 years, we can recognize four periods of our research on Whitehead's theory. From 1920' to 1940', it was the beginning as well as an important time that Chinese scholars did their study of Philosophy of Organism. Then, the next 30 years, from 1950' to 1980', was a 'depressing' period for this study. However, there was an increasing attention to Whitehead' study since 1990'. Especially, the research and application of Philosophy of Organism were most conducted in Education area. In the latest 10 years, the research is getting more on the comparison between Whitehead and Chinese and other philosophies. The scholars in science area have taken less participation in the research of Philosophy of Organism, which has influenced on the understanding of Whitehead's theory. As we concern, it is a great need to expand his theory to larger areas which definitely will benefit for both scientific discovery and the development of human civilization. Among philosophers of 20th century, Whitehead is unique one, not only because he is a both mathematician and logician, but a scientific philosophy. He is independent of all philosophy but adopting Oriental philosophical thoughts. (WhiA59) |
|
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
|