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15. Proposal for a Thomistic-Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Becoming (2000)
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f i f t e e n Proposal for a thomisticWhiteheadian metaphysics of Becoming (2000) This essay is my first tardy response, after some twentynine years, to my own invitation (essay 2) to attempt to fuse the better elements of the respective metaphysics of St.Thomas Aquinas of the thirteenth century and Alfred North Whitehead of the twentieth. It was about time— and also about being and becoming. A notion of how such an unlikely merger might be effected had gradually taken shape in my mind and is expressed in the following essay. I followed the ideas fairly closely in the fuller expression of the book Coming to Be (2001) and more perfectly in its sequel, aims: a Brief metaphysics for today (2007). It is my perhaps narcissistic impression that I have at least partially achieved that goal by devising a new way in which Whitehead’s metaphysics can be adapted so as to enrich 198 Originally published as “Proposal for a thomistic-Whiteheadian metaphysics of Becoming,”InternationalPhilosophicalQuarterly40,no.2(2000):253–63.Reprinted with permission. Proposal for a Thomistic-Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Becoming 199 that of Thomas. The following essay attempts to draw the broad outlines of such a revised metaphysics and is perforce moderately technical. “It has been remarked,” wrote Whitehead, “that a system of philosophy is never refuted; it is only abandoned.”1 there can be no demonstration of its falsity, but after being seriously tried it may eventually be found wanting in its ability to interpret the multifarious aspects of human experience. It has become unbelievable, often under the impact of criticisms from competing systems, and in any case after deeper introspective reflection on the part of the philosopher. the search is on for another view, one that is intellectually more satisfying because it rings truer both to immediate experience and to what science progressively tells us about experience. In adopting this view of the eclipse rather than the refutation of one philosophic system by another, Whitehead anticipated in philosophy what the late thomas s. Kuhn later said about scientific revolutions . Kuhn pointed out that difficulties or apparent anomalies are never enough to disprove a theory and, consequently, that scientists never abandon a theory until they have a better one to put in its place.2 this essay, of course, is addressed more to philosophers than to scientists , and indeed to philosophers who, whether of one school or another, are unfashionable enough to take metaphysics seriously. the breed has never been entirely extinct. as etienne Gilson put it: “It is an objective fact that men have been aiming at such knowledge for more than twenty-five centuries and that, after proving that it should not be sought, and swearing that they would not seek it any more, men have always found themselves seeking it again.”3 more specifically, I invite process philosophers indebted to the thought of alfred North Whitehead, and thomists inspired by that of saint thomas aquinas (hereafter “thomas”), to ask themselves whether their respective systems do not suffer from anomalies sufficiently grave to call for abandoning those systems as they presently stand and devising a better alternative rooted in, but transforming, those two systems. [3.81.222.152] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:32 GMT) 200 Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy Whiteheadian process philosophy and contemporary thomism have been jostling each other for some sixty years, and their mutual criticisms have not only proved salutary to each view but seem to point toward the possibility of a new paradigm derived by adapting both systems in such a way as to form a new synthesis embodying the chief advantages and avoiding the disadvantages of each system as it now stands. at least that is the possibility that I should like to point to in this essay, although in only a very preliminary way. I make the proposal with fear and trembling, haunted by the poet Horace’s warning in his Ars Poetica of how silly it would look if an artist were to paint a human head onto a horse’s neck, together with assorted feathers. But before applying brush to canvas, I review in more detail the revolutionary state of affairs. tWO COmPetING metaPHYsICs 1) Process philosophy’s criticisms of Thomism were often inaccurate or misplaced, attacking only a caricature of thomas’s doctrine and lumping his thought indiscriminately with that of other medievals. Yet they did point to real weaknesses and provoked a salutary rethinking on the part of thomistically oriented philosophers...