This essay discusses the views of historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who sets forth that democratic societies tend toward a determinist outlook; she fears that the weakened belief in free will and its heroes endangers a democratic society. She regards H. G. Wells as the founder in 1920 of the "new history," with its antiheroic bias. She welcomes therefore the television series The Civil War for having achieved "a history from above and history from below," with its heroes among common soldiers as (...) well as the generals and statesmen. Himmelfarb criticizes the "debunking" historians who not only belittle the significance of heroes but find in "small causes" (e.g., the origins of Hitler's obsessive anti-Semitism) a basis for large-scale events (e.g., the Holocaust). Himmelfarb finds that H. G. Wells's Outline of History was intended not only to displace military conquerors as the heroes of history but to elevate the scientific elite in their place as history's truly constructive people. Americans, however, were, earlier, first introduced to another variety of "new history" by two Columbia University professors, Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson, who wrote textbooks used by perhaps millions of high school students; Beard had derived the concept in 1906 when he read the Socialist History of France, much of it written by the French socialist, Jean Jaurès. The philosophy of history still remains in a position similar to that which has long prevailed in the philosophy of physics, where determinism and indeterminism have persisted irreconcilably. (shrink)

For many philosophical thinkers down through the centuries, the notion of a creation out of sheer nothing has been found to be quite unintelligible. Nevertheless the idea of creation preserves an important insight and needs to be freed from the difficulties of this traditional formulation. Alfred North Whitehead has offered an alternative theory of creation worth exploring: each individual actuality creates itself out of prior creative acts. God then serves to direct this creative process.

A breathtaking detective story, this book charts the adventure of Whitehead's ideas in a remarkably detailed and careful reconstruction of his metaphysical views.

Bradley and Whitehead certainly deserve a book-length comparison on such topics as experience, internal and external relations, particularly whole-part relations, time, and God. Leemon McHenry has explored these issues soberly and responsibly, and his conclusions are most informative. Yet I sometimes wonder whether the connection would be as firmly made had there not been one remark about Bradley in the preface to Process and Reality.

Gottfried Martin has recently reminded us of a useful distinction between two possible ways of doing metaphysics. We may proceed by framing a “theory of principles” or by proposing a “theory of being”. Aristotle explicitly formulates both possibilities as the task of metaphysics, formulating a theory of principles in his doctrine of the four types of causal explanation in the first book of the Metaphysics, while exploring the theory of being in a number of other passages, such as Book I, (...) chapters 6 and 9; Book X, chapter 2; and Book XIII. These passages do not elaborate principles whereby we can analyze the structure of certain entities, be they causes, substances or forms, but rather concern themselves with the ontological status of these entities—in what sense can they be said to be? In Plato this distinction is more implicit, but we may contrast the theory of forms developed in the Phaedo and the Republic with the subsequent probing investigation of the being of these forms in the Parmenides and the Sophist. Kant “explicitly claims to have discovered and presented a complete and necessary system of the basic concepts and principles. The proof of the completeness and necessity of this system is the aim of the middle part of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Transcendental Analytic.” Yet. (shrink)

WHILE THERE ARE MANY AFFINITIES between classical and process theism, the differences are more startling and more difficult to cope with. Process thought departs from received wisdom in at least three principal ways.

CLASSICAL THEISM HAS USED THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY TO EXPRESS GOD’S SIMULTANEOUS TRANSCENDENCE OF, AND IMMANENCE WITHIN, THE WORLD, BUT HERE A TWOFOLD DISTINCTION, SUCH AS THAT PROPOSED BY RICHARDSON OR HARTSHORNE, WILL DO: GOD AS ABSOLUTE AND GOD AS RELATED. WHITEHEAD HAS SEEN A DOUBLE PROBLEM, FOR THE WORLD ALSO TRANSCENDS, AND IS IMMANENT WITHIN, THE WORLD. FOR THIS DOUBLE PROBLEM A THREEFOLD DISTINCTION IS NECESSARY: THE PRIMORDIAL ENVISAGEMENT, THAT DIVINE INSTANTIATION OF CREATIVITY WHICH UTTERLY TRANSCENDS THE WORLD, (...) THE PRIMORDIAL NATURE OR LOGOS, PART OF WHICH IS INDIVIDUALLY IMMANENT WITHIN EACH CREATURE AS ITS INITIAL AIM, AND THE CONSEQUENT NATURE, WHICH IS THE WAY EACH CREATURE, TRANSCENDENT TO GOD IN ITS BECOMING, IS ULTIMATELY INCLUDED WITHIN THE ONGOING TEMPORAL EXPERIENCE OF GOD. (shrink)

IN "THE INCARNATION AS A CONTINUING REALITY," RELIGIOUS STUDIES 6,303-27 (DECEMBER 1970), DAVID PAILIN CLAIMS THAT THE INCARNATION REVEALS THE NECESSARY, EMPIRICALLY NON-FALSIFIABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S "ACTIVE ACTUALITY". GOD’S "PASSIVE ACTUALITY," THE WAY HE EXPERIENCES THE WORLD, IS METAPHYSICALLY KNOWN, BUT NOT HIS "ACTIVE ACTUALITY," THE WAY IN WHICH HE RESPONDS TO THE WORLD, FOR HE COULD HAVE RESPONDED OTHERWISE. NEVERTHELESS GOD’S CONCRETE RESPONSE IS EMPIRICALLY NON-FALSIFIABLE, FOR EVERYTHING THAT CAN POSSIBLY HAPPEN IN THE ACTUAL WORLD WILL REFLECT THAT RESPONSE. (...) I REPLY THAT THE METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES AS WELL COULD CONCEIVABLY BE OTHERWISE, BUT GOD’S PRIMORDIAL DECISION DETERMINES WHICH MUST BE EXEMPLIFIED BY ALL POSSIBLE ACTUALITIES WHATSOEVER. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF GOD’S RESPONSE TO THE WORLD IS THEREBY METAPHYSICALLY KNOWABLE. THE INCARNATION OF THE CHRIST REVEALS TO US THE CONTINGENT CHARACTER OF GOD’S RESPONSE TO THE PARTICULARITIES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, AND THIS. (shrink)

Far from being an unnecessary appendage to Whitehead’s system, temporal atomism is, in my judgment, the basis for pansubjectivity and other fundamental ideas such as becoming, concrescence, and subjectivity.