Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES Whitehead's Theory of Reality. By A. H. JoHNSON. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952. Pp. 276 with index. $4.00. Professor Johnson is no neophyte in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Since he knew the English thinker personally, he has devoted himself to the study of his philosophy of organism, and over many years given the readers of philosophy the fruits of his interpretation in many learned articles. The present work, which is the most complete and definitive available on the basic concepts of Whitehead, will certainly be the standard and classic text. Doctor Johnson himself claims nothing more for his book than an introduction to Whitehead's theories on actual entities, but in this study he rightly sees the explanation of Whitehead's entire concept of reality. By his theory on actual entities, his interpreter shows in the first chapter, Whitehead hoped to reach and explain reality, but more especially to use reality as a norm for human experience, since he conceived philosophy not simply as a corpus of ideas and theories, but as a faithful mate for action. In the following two chapters, Professor Johnson derives from the words of Whitehead a summary of his theory of reality based on the doctrine of the actual entities. This summary is the product of many clarifications on the part of the interpreter, since Whitehead himself had no such dear notion, or at least never expressed it. In this summary, the problem of the relation of efficient and final causes constantly emerges, though Dr. Johnson never seems to come to grips with it. He does indeed faithfully repeat that Whitehead combined these two causalities in any actual entity. The actual entity is striving for a purpose; such striving being an actual desire for an end, and, at the same time, an efficient cause is operating on the actual entity itself. But certainly there must be some relation between the aim of the actual entity and the end intended by the efficient cause if there is not to be a conflict. Doctor Johnson says that God arranges the eternal objects, but "God" and " eternal objects " remain elusive and vague concepts in both master and disciple. God, it is said, while an actual entity, yearns for some actuality . The word " some" modifying actuality indicates the vagueness of God's yearning. Which has priority-God or the subjective aim of the actual entity? Neither Whitehead himself nor his commentator provide a solution. Some readers might be tempted to provide their own interpretation from the Judaeo-Christian doctrine on Divine Providence. God gives each thing its own nature, and one of the properties of human nature is 118 BRIEF NOTICES 119 the free will. However, such a proposed solution would contradict other phases of Whitehead's thought. And thus the problem of the relations between the actual entity, the eternal objects and God remains unsolved even by this very helpful commentator. In the chapter on the mind, Professor Johnson says that Whitehead: " seems to reject personal immortality in the usual sense." (p. 77) An even more important problem for the psychology of Whitehead is the possibility of person even in this life. Although other types of philosophy might say that the fact of personality is so obvious that it needs no proof, Whitehead's theory of actual entities seems to make the continuity required for personality impossible. The chapter on value sets out to consider truth, good, beauty, evil and morals, and while there is the usual vagueness and shifting meanings customary to Whitehead, Dr. Johnson's skillful analysis causes to emerge the supreme value in the philosophy of Whitehead. This supreme value is seen to be truth which is promoted to this position even as beauty is demoted. In some ways, the seventh chapter, which is devoted to Whitehead's relation to other philosophers, is the most enlightening part of the book. Whitehead himself had the habit of imagining that his philosophy had affinities to many other systems, especially to those of Alexander and Bergson. Professor Johnson who undoubtedly knows Whitehead points out that these similarities to previous and contemporary philosophies are more apparent than real, and that Whitehead is unique. This...