Whitehead’s Philosophy. Selected Essays, 1935–1970 by Charles Hartshorne (review)

BOOK Rll)VIEWS Whitehead's Philosophy. ·Selected Essays, 1935-1970. By CHARLES HARTSHORNE. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. Pp. ~17. $7.95. This volume, as its sub-title indicates, brings together thirteen articles of Charles Hartshorne published between 1935 and 1979. To those who are already familiar with these articles: Whitehead after Forty-Five Years; Whitehead's Metaphysics; On Some Criticisms of Whitehead/s Philosophy; The Compound Individual; Whitehead's Idea of God; Is Whitehead 's God the God of Religion?; Whitehead's Philosophy of Reality as Socially Structured Process; Whitehead's Theory of Prehension; Whitehead: the Anglo-American Philosopher-Scientist (published here under the title: Whit~head's Generalizing Power); Whitehead and Contemporary Philososophy ; Whitehead's Novel Intuition; Whitehead and Ordinary Language; Whitehead and lJerdyaev: Is There Tragedy in God?, the present edition affords, besides the advantage of having brought all these articles together in one volume, the novelity of commentaries, at times very brief~ at times more expanded, (as on p. 6) added by the author here and there and enclosed in parentheses. . Some scholars will regret that other articles or communications of Dr. Hartshorne have not been reproduced in this collection. For those who, despite their deep interest in the thought of Whitehead, have taken no notice of Charles Hartshorne's studies, this volume will provide a valuable help, even, we may venture to say, an indispensable aid. For the thought of Whitehead cannot be penetrated in depth without taking into account the manner in which Professor Hartshorne has brought it out, even if one does not always agree with him (which would generally imply that on the point at issue one is not in agreement with Whitehead as well!) . We know for Charles Hartshorne St. John's affirmation, that "God is love, " which, in Whitehead, 1' perhaps more than in any thinker who ever lived," finds "its fully generalized interpretation," (p. 14) expresses the divine relativity. But when we affirm that God is love, does this truly place relativity in God, or does it affirm that the very Being of God i13love, that love in God is so profound and so radical that it is his very Being, and that such a love no longer implies relativity? Certainly love, on the intentional plane, is always relative (and love, on our level, is always intentional). Certainly, "love of A forB does render A in some genui:rw sense relative to B" (cf.. Ch. Hartshore, Whitehead in French J'erspective, in THE THOMIST, 33 [1969], 580); but if, in going beyond the intentional order, love is identical with being, then it ill no longer relative: it is. Evidently this presupposes a distinction between the order of intentionality and the order of being, and it .requires us to consider relation as a.mode of being and not as exhausting in itself alone all the richness of being. 410 BOOK REVIEWS In us, if I may be permitted to repeat myself, love remains· in the intentional order and is not coextensive with our being (we have often enough the sad experience that we are not love in all our being). Moreover, our knowledge always remains intentional; it is always relative to some object; that is why Plotinus denies that there is knowledge in God. But if the object known by the voii~ is the voii~ itself, and if this voii~ no longer implies any potentiality (a potentiality that limits the full actuality of knowledge), then such knowledge is no longer relative: God's knowledge is his very Being. And it is in knowing himself, in an infinitely simple act of contemplation (where there is no longer any distinction between the intelligence knowing and the obect known) , that God knows all that exists. That is why St. Thomas can state that " the relations between God and the world are not relations for God." (p. 144) In making such a statement St. Thomas wishes to show that God knows the world in knowing himself . Far from having a limited knowledge of the world, by means of the world itself, God knows the world through the gratuitous love by which he creates the world. God does not know the world except through...