Abstract

Martin Heidegger's Being and Time can be broadly termed a transcendental inquiry into the structures that make human experience possible. Such an inquiry reveals the conditions that render human experience intelligible. Using Being and Time as a model, I attempt to show that Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality is not only aligned with Being and Time in an opposition to many elements of traditional Western philosophy but also exhibits a similar transcendental inquiry at work. With this reading, Process and Reality contains concepts much like Being-in-the-world, ecstatic temporality, and others found in Being and Time. Most importantly, this interpretation considers Whitehead's treatment of human experience to be paradigmatic for understanding his cosmological scheme in general. Finally, the results of this study are employed in a sketch of a phenomenology of holy experience