Whitehead by John B. Cobb, Jr
Chapter 3: Man as Responsible Being
6. Peace
or to a spontaneous love arising quite unforeseen and beyond the bounds of duty. Perhaps it is possible to achieve such sensitivity, unconscious though it must certainly be, that we can hear and heed these changing dictates by which the direction of our lives is given to us.
inevitable, a need for experience after experience, each of which in turn passes into oblivion. Perhaps a certain cynicism may arise, the sense that, after all, such achievements are not worth the effort. Since beauty and discord alike fade away, it does not seem to matter which occurs.
One may alternate between a harsh quest for more and better beauty and a resigned indifference leading to nihilism.
If beauty is to be sought without ruthlessness, and if it is to be enjoyed without the poignant doubt of its worth, there must be an intuition that the worth of beauty exceeds its momentary enjoyment, that its
attainment is self-justifying beyond the ability of reason to grasp its value.(AI 367-368.) But this must mean that our private experience has value beyond itself and beyond our subsequent memories of it, that it contributes something to the whole of things, that it participates in some wider totality and shares in some larger harmony.
Whitehead’s deepest sensitivity here is that purely personal enjoyment, his own or someone else’s, closed in upon itself, cannot satisfy the ultimate hungers of the human soul. The value one seeks must finally be more than the passing sum of human attainments. Otherwise, the
restlessness of the soul is not quenched. Peace is the sense that indeed there are aims in the universe beyond our own and that our aims can be harmonious with them and contribute to them. It is the sense that what we attain is taken up into that larger whole and preserved in harmony with all the other achievements of value.
"The experience of Peace," Whitehead tells us, "is largely beyond the control of purpose. It comes as a gift. The deliberate aim at Peace very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anaesthesia." (The aim at peace leads to anaesthesia, because it leads to the curtailing of experience in the avoidance of disruption. But peace is not at all a limitation but rather an openness of experience. Interest is "transferred to coordinations wider than personality" and thereby "self" is lost.(AI 368.)
The truth of what is known in the gift of peace cannot be proved.
Philosophy in general must limit itself to an account of what is given in ordinary human experience. There is no logical process by which we can move from this common experience to the demonstration of the ultimate harmony of the universe. But there are exceptional experiences which stand out from ordinary experience.(AI 379. See also RM 29-32;
PR 521.) From these experiences arise those direct intuitions which give us peace.
Here, we are on the threshold of religion, or more accurately, well
across the threshold. The discussion of peace cannot finally be separated from the discussion of God, and that discussion I have systematically omitted from these chapters on man. We can note here, however, that what is altogether beyond evidence from ordinary modes of experience is not the reality of God in general but that particular mode of
relatedness to him which gives rise to peace. Peace is not a function of particular cognitive beliefs more or less intensely held; it is a direct apprehension of one’s relatedness with that factor in the universe which is divine. It is for this reason, and not because of a general introduction of the doctrine of God, that Whitehead appeals in these passages to the special and privileged experience.
It is time now to turn directly to a consideration of Whitehead’s doctrine of God. It arises out of philosophical necessity and is only slightly
affected, as in the discussion of peace, by special religious insight or need. Hence, in the subsequent chapters it will be discussed chiefly in philosophical terms, that is, in terms of what is given to us in ordinary experience and its rational interpretation. Only afterward (See Ch. VI, sec. 2.) will we return to the discussion of religious experience to see what light the understanding of man and God throws upon the
religiously important relations between them. In these discussions it will become clearer what Whitehead means by peace and especially what metaphysical beliefs support it and are in turn sustained by it.(See later discussion of this point.)
Key to References
Footnote references to books by or about Whitehead use the following abbreviations. Numbers after the abbreviations in the footnotes refer to pages unless otherwise indicated.
AI Adventures of Ideas. The Macmillan Company, 1933.
CN The Concept of Nature. Cambridge University Press, 1920.
Dial… Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, as recorded by Lucien Price. Little, Brown and Company, 1954.
ESP…Essays in Science and Philosophy. Philosophical Library, Inc., 1,947.
FR…The Function of Reason. Princeton University Press, 1929.
Imm "Immortality," in Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. See "Schilpp" below.
MT Modes of Thought. The Macmillan Company, 1938.
PNK An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.
Cambridge University Press, 1919; second ed., 1925.
PR Process and Reality. The Macmillan Company, 1929.
RM Religion in the Making. The Macmillan Company, 1926.
SMW Science and the Modern World. The Macmillan Company, 1926.
Works about Whitehead are listed in the first footnote entry by author and title. Subsequent entries are usually by author only.
Blyth John W. Blyth, Whitehead’s Theory of Knowledge. (Brown University Studies, Vol. VII.) Brown University Press, 1941.
Christian William A. Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics. Yale University Press, 1959.
Ely Stephen Ely, The Religious Availability of Whitehead’s God. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1942.
Hammerschmidt William W. Hammerschmidt, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Time. King’s Crown Press, 1947
Johnson A. H. Johnson, Whitehead’s Theory of Reality. Beacon Press, Inc. 1952.
Kline George L. Kline, ed., Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963.
Lawrence Nathaniel Lawrence, Whitehead’s Philosophical
Development University of California Press, 1956.
Leclerc Ivor Leclerc, Whitehead’s Metaphysics: An Introductory Exposition. The Macmillan Company, 1958.
Leclerc (Ed.) Ivor Leclerc, ed., The Relevance of Whitehead. The Macmillan Company, 1961.
Lowe Victor Lowe, Understanding Whitehead. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1962.
Palter Robert M. Palter, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science. The University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Schilpp Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Tudor Publishing Company, 1951.
Sherburne Donald W. Sherburne, A Whiteheadian Aesthetic. Yale University Press, 1961.
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A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North
Whitehead by John B. Cobb, Jr.
John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D. is Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California, and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies there. His many books currently in print include: Reclaiming the Church (1997); with Herman Daly, For the Common Good; Becoming a Thinking Christian (1993); Sustainability (1992); Can Christ Become Good News Again? (1991); ed.
with Christopher Ives, The Emptying God: a Buddhist-Jewish-Christian
Conversation (1990); with Charles Birch, The Liberation of Life; and with David Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (1977). He is a retired minister in the United Methodist Church. Published by Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1965. Used by permission. This book was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.