PART II
- PR, Process and Reality
- SMW, Science in the Modern World
- MT, Modes of Thought
- AI, Adventures of Ideas
- AE, The Aims of Education
- SmB, Symbolism, its Meaning and Effect
- RM, Religion in the Making
- FofR The Function of Reason
- OT Organization of Thought
Section B:
An adequate theory of value must not only explain the nature of value in general, but it must also explain the major differences among values and the peculiar nature of each kind of value. By different kinds of value I mean the values peculiar to different ranges of human experience such as intellectual experience, moral and political experience, esthetic experience, and religious experience. It there are values realized in each of these kinds of experience, they should constitute a species or value in general exemplifying the general nature of the latter but also characterized by some differentiae peculiar to themselves. It is further necessary that the differentiae be compatible with the generic characteristics of value. I mean by this that since the generic characteristics of value in Whitehead's philosophy are, as I see it, linked to the metaphysical notion of creative activity, the various species of value must be discriminated from each other also on the basis of aspects of creative activity.
The last requirement may seem unnecessarily stringent, but I believe that in Whitehead's philosophy, at least, it is required, because his resolution of concrete existence into activity and reduction of the ultimate formal elements to an infinity of equipotential possibilities leaves no reliable line for the permanent demarcation of one sort of thing from another except within the nature of concrete creative activity itself. We have seen in Part I of this paper that, though creative activity is obviously not the sort of thing that is capable of complete analysis, and though in any instance of its operation it is always making and remaking its own character; nevertheless Whitehead feels that by a process of "genetic division" it is possible to know something about what goes on in any creative act while it is taking place. This insight reveals a set of "phases" all of which are necessary to every complete creative act, that is, to every "actual entity" - finite "actual occasion" or God himself. There is some confusion in Whitehead's own writing as to the exact number of these phases and as to the possibility of their further analysis into sub-phases, but I have taken the position that, in general, he emphasizes four different moments in each creative act. These are the "conformal" phase - the activity of prehending past actuality - the "supplemental" phase or phases - the activity of integrating the past with the peculiar aim of the present act by drawing upon relevant possibilities, the "satisfaction" - the attainment and enjoyment of a complete contrast in which every item of the actual and possible world is ordered into a definite perspective - and the phase of "objective immortality" in which component feelings of the now "completed" occasion function as components in all subsequent occasions 30.
The general kinds of actual occasions - such as physical, biological, and "mental" occasions - are differentiated from each other in terms of the relative development or lack of development of each of these phases in each occasion of the group. In physical occasions only the "conformal" phases are well developed, and the "supplemental" phases are particularly suppressed. Occasions of mature human experience, on the other hand, are characterized by particularly well-developed "supplemental" phases.
In older philosophies, in which the kinds of objects with which experience was concerned could be kept entirely separate and distinct, it was relatively easy to distinguish the different species of values from each other. Esthetic values were found in beautiful objects, religious values in God, and moral values in moral acts or dispositions. But, even without Whitehead’s special way of identifying the object and the experience of the object, modern discussions of values with their increased emphasis on "subjectivity" have found it difficult to preserve the older scheme. This change has been particularly obvious in the case of esthetic theory, where in modern times the locus of esthetic value has quite generally been shifted from the work of art to the experience of creating or of appreciating it. Indeed, in a significant way, Whitehead represents a swing away from this extreme subjectivism and towards the restoration of a more objective position because of his protest against the "bifurcation" of nature". Experience in general, and therefore esthetic experience as well, is not merely subjective; it makes the actual and shared world 31. But every aspect of the actual and shared world is generated In individual creative acts. If, therefore, there are different kinds of value in the world as we know it, we must look for the roots of these differences within creative activity itself. I therefore return to the "phases" of a creative act. It seems to me that, insofar as Whitehead makes any attempt to distinguish one kind or field of value from another, it is here that the basis of the distinction must be found. It seems true, however, that the enterprise of looking for such distinctions will not be crowned with complete success, because Whitehead does not really make a very good job of distinguishing them. He is usually preoccupied with only one of these kinds of experience at a time. and so it tends to become identified, while he is discussing it, with all value. This is particularly true of esthetic value; it is almost always hegemonous in his value claims 32. And religious value is hard for anyone to put in its place when he is trying to take it seriously. Nevertheless, I believe that Whitehead does give clues for the discrimination, on the basis of differential emphasis within a creative act, of the different special types of value. It is true that any of these individualized forms of value can occur only in very highly developed occasions, in which all of the phases are significant; but, still, it is possible for emphasis to be placed on some of the phases more than on others.
I shall examine four special kinds of value to see how each is derived from creative activity: (1) truth value, (2) ethical value, (3) esthetic value, and (4) the value realized in religious experience. I will not in this section be exploring all that Whitehead has to say about knowledge, ethics, art and religion. Such a task is not within the scope of this paper. I will not even be considering all of the important value aspects of these fields. For example, I won’t try to differentiate the special qualities peculiar to each of the arts - music, painting, poetry, and so forth 33. I shall concentrate on the one question of how each kind of value is related to the other kinds, to value in general, and to the metaphysical foundations of value in Whitehead's philosophy 34.
Although, like the pragmatists, Whitehead stresses the instrumental value of knowledge, as a preliminary to solving problems and attaining more adequate satisfactions, he does not look upon knowledge as a purely subjective reaction to an alien and essentially unknowable world. Knowledge is not merely a positivistically interpreted operation for gaining certain results; it is a grasp of the actual world. He claims to be a 'realist" in epistemology. Where he departs from traditional notions of realism, it is not to substitute a merely subjective interpretation of the world, but to transcend the realistic aspect of knowledge by the addition of new but equally real factors in the world 35. Knowledge has two poles: one is the data, the actual world to be known; the other is the satisfaction of the knowing occasion, the new world to be integrated out of the data in accordance with the "subjective aim" of the knowing occasion 36.
Thus "truth" is at least a "double-barreled" if not a downright "weasel" notion for Whitehead. He has both a "correspondence" and a "coherence" theory of truth, and the latter supplements the former. Also, neither can be interpreted along traditional lines. The notion of "correspondence" involves still a duality of knowledge and the thing known, whereas since knowing processes are themselves highly developed prehensive processes, the knowing process does not merely "indicate" or even "reproduce" the object of knowledge, it directly appropriates and incorporates aspects of it into the knower. Secondly, the "coherence" sought by knowledge is not merely consistency with an abstract system but felt contrast with a system itself in process of generation.
With these considerations in mind, we can perhaps see how "truth" has for Whitehead not merely an instrumental but also a kind of intrinsic value; for attaining "truth" is itself a genuine part of the creative process which generates existence and value. Truth is itself a creative success. In attaining truth value, however, it is not the complete creative act which is being evaluated. Emphasis is on the earlier phases of a creative act: the conformal and supplemental phases.
The simpler notion of truth, that which is closer to the "correspondence" notion of truth, is the notion of the successful performance of the prehensive act Indicated by the "category of transmutation". To a group of physical prehensions performed in the conformal phase of an act - that is to a group of actual things which bring feelings belonging to those actual things directly into the new occasion is added in the supplemental phase of the new occasion a conceptual prehension of a structure which that group of physical things actually shared and emphasized in common 37. To the extent that the conceptually prehended properties really were in the physically prehended feelings, truth is attained. Now, why is this truth valuable? The following quotation suggests the answer.
A great defect in truth limits the extent to which any force of feeling can be summoned from the recesses of reality. The falsehood thus lacks the magic by which a beauty beyond the power of speech to express can be called into being, as if by the wand of an enchanter 38.
The physically prehended feelings indicated by the "subject" of a "proposition" are not really "reduced" to the conceptually prehended "predicate"; when the proposition, itself a "feeling", is true, the cumulative feeling intensity of the "subject feelings" is harmoniously released through the propositional feeling to share in the integration of the prehending occasion. This is the more detailed description of the process through which the past is harmonized and preserved in the present, which has already been mentioned as a factor in importance 39.
We seek knowledge and therefore truth about the present too. In this instance, however, Whitehead’s metaphysics leads him to forsake "realism". What is really contemporaneous with the knower is independent of the knower. The sense experience characteristic of the supplemental phases of highly developed occasions - what Whitehead calls "prehension in the mode of perceptual immediacy" rather than the more primitive and more "conformal" "prehension in the mode of causal efficacy" is a "projection" of abstract qualities by the knower upon the contemporary world 40. But even here Whitehead says that the central question concerning the truth of sense experience is whether it is giving us the emotional and value experience of the region on which it is projected 41. Truth in general for Whitehead is not primarily a matter of duplication of isolated details but always a matter of capturing or of furthering intrinsic actuality, that is, value.
Indeed the furthering of intrinsic actuality is primary, so, either there are reaches and meanings of truth beyond what has already been mentioned, or also we must say that knowledge and the intellectual aspect of life seeks something more than, and even other than, truth. Whitehead is never quite sure which of these alternative statements he prefers, as the quotations cited in the next few pages will show, Sometimes he rejects truth as a goal of intellectual operation, and sometimes he expands the notion of truth to make it equivalent to this goal.
The supplemental phases of an occasion are concerned primarily with integrating the prehended world into a new, unified over-all perspective - the satisfaction of the new occasion. The unifying of masses of previous occasions under concepts is only part of this process. The concepts, the structure developed must fit into a total structure which it is the aim of the developing occasion to complete. so Whitehead says,
It is more important that a proposition be Interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experienoe is its interest, and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one. Also action in accordance with the emotional lure of a proposition is more apt to be successful if the proposition is true 42.
Knowing is never "disinterested". When true, a propositional feeling communicates the feeling of the past. But as a feeling itself and as involved in the process of the occasion, it is subject not only to the demands of its “data" but also to the demands of the occasion of which it is a part. "Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose 43." The emotional demands of the particular occasion in which the proposition operates may outweigh the claims of its data for full perpetuation, This is another way of saying that although each occasion must respond to its actual world, it selects and suppresses and emphasizes so as to determine "how" it will respond. As far as knowledge is concerned, at its worst this process results in falsification and distortion of the facts. But eventually the processes in which this occurs will suffer loss and fading influence. But at its best this freedom of manipulation will result in something "truer" than mere reproduction of the past. The past will be preserved and even amplified under patterns only latent in itself but brought out by the prehending occasion 44. Aiming at both recapture of the past and integration of it into the present, the prehending occasion may produce error, but this error is also a "novelty" and may prove more successful at the integrating task than the "truth". This is what Whitehead means when he says that appreciating the "worth" of an idea is more important then testing the truth of the propositions in which it occurs 45.
There is in the highly developed occasions which occur in conscious human experience a certain free play with conceptual prehensions, with possible forms of integration, more or less independent of application to physical prehensions. But this interest in and manipulation of forms - such as the activity of the logician, the mathematicians and even the artist is never free of all considerations of application 46. But the application is not merely to the past, but, above all else to the present problem of creating new Integrations for the ever new world facing us.
Man understands structure. He abstracts its dominating principle in the welter of detail, He can imagine alternative illustration. He constructs distant objectives, He compares the variety of issues. He can aim at the best. But the essence of this human control of purposes depends on the understanding of structure in its variety of applications 47.
Man's preoccupation with structure has then an intrinsic value.
The notion of intellectual distinction or of fineness is somewhat broader than that of "truth", which is ordinarily cited in this connection, There is a grandeur of achievement in the delicate adjustment of thought to thought, which is independent of the more blunt question of truth. We may term it 'beauty', But intellectual beauty, however capable of being hymned in terms relevant to sensible beauty, is yet beautiful by stretch of metaphor 48.
If there be "truth value" in sheer intellectual operation, it is dependent on a notion of truth closer to the traditional idea of "coherence" than to that of "correspondence". And, like the value of the more direct notion of truth, its value depends on its function in creative process. It is the value of the preliminary phases of a creative process.
But, since the whole process is creative rather than being merely a process of realizing a biological adjustment or a subjective enjoyment, it cannot be said that the value of these preliminary phases is merely "instrumental". Indeed, it is the expansion of these preliminary phases that has most to contribute to creative success. It is here that we find "adventure", an aspect of process which has great importance. It is here that creative process reaches out to grasp the world end discovers the forms that will achieve its new integration. Intellectual operation has greater intrinsic value when it is reaching out and exploring new possibilities than when it is merely "knowing" what is settled. Here we have the value of attaining new insight, of penetrating deeper into things than old "truth" does.
My thesis is that when we realize ourselves as engaged in a process of penetration we have a fuller self-knowledge than when we feel a completion of the process of intelligence 49.
What Whitehead calls "understanding" is always more than a passive, conformal kind of knowing 50. Whitehead carries this notion over into his pedagogical theories, insisting that the learning process will be more valuable when it is made to wear an aspect of newness, of discovery, of adventure 51.
And yet the most valuable kind of intellectual operation has not been attained, There is still a superior "truth" which is the synthesis of the old and the new. It is this kind of achievement which is the goal of human "reason". In The Function of Reason Whitehead conceives of reason, as I have already mentioned, as a "counter-entropic" agency. Mere preservation of the past leads to slow decay. Mental operation "seeks to vivify the massive physical fact, which is repetitive, with the novelties which beckon 52. But this makes mentality an organ of "anarchy". Sheer anarchy brings, usually, only rapid destruction instead of slow decay. Only reason can assure continuing creative success.
But mentality now becomes self-regulative. It canalizes its own operations by its own judgments. It introduces a higher appetition which discriminates among its own anarchic productions. … Reason civilizes the brute force of anarchic appetition. Apart from anarchic appetition, nature is doomed to slow descent towards nothingness. Mere repetitive experience gradually eliminates element after element and fades towards vacuity. Mere anarchic appetition accomplishes quickly the same end reached slowly by repetition. Reason is the special embodiment in us of the disciplined counter-agency which saves the world 53.
It is not clear from Whitehead's own statements whether in this section I have gotten beyond the consideration of the value of truth. Sometimes he talks as if there were a higher and a lower truth 54. But even if truth be confined to the conformity of a concept with the facts to which it is applied, this "truth" owes its value to the same source as the wider intellectual operations which I have discussed in this section - its function in the earlier phases of a creative act. It is valuable in itself because it is neither isolated contemplation of independent existence, nor subjective manipulation of an alien world so as to achieve a merely subjective and local enjoyment: attaining "truth" and Intellectual operations in general are creative acts recreating an old world and creating a now one.
In the final section of this chapter I intend to discuss some problems of ethics in considerable detail. My concern in the present sub-section is merely to distinguish the peculiarity of the value realized in ethical acts from esthetic end other varieties of value. Ethical value shares with truth value a comparative neglect of the "satisfaction" phase of the creative act, but it differs from truth value in that the major emphasis is on the post-satisfaction rather than on the pre-satisfaction phases. Ethical value is most concerned with the "objective immortality" of the occasions in which it occurs. Of course, this difference is only a difference of emphasis, since the creative act is always whole, and all of its phases are necessary to it.
The effect of the present on the future is the business of morals. And yet the separation is not so easy. For the inevitable anticipation adds to the present a qualitative element which profoundly affects its whole qualitative harmony 55.
Moral good, then, is primarily the present enjoyment of a contribution of value which an occasion feels itself as making to the future. The future is, of course, as yet undetermined, for it, like the present, will consist of creative processes. But there is a segment of the future, the 'relevant future', that which is close to or at least familar to the present occasion, to which the present process feels itself contributing important parts of itself, important component feelings in itself - that is, "real potentiality"56.
It will be remembered, however, that the process of the present can pass on either good or evil to the future - it can pass on an enrichment or an enfeeblement of the past. The moral issue, then, is in what it feels itself to have done to the realized good which is transmitted through it. So, though morality is directed primarily towards the f'uture, it is secondarily directed towards the past. When oriented towards moral values, the occasion is de-emphasizing its own novelty; it is emphasizing its role as a transmitter of value, from the past to the future. It may consider its role as one of enhancing value, but it is largely by the standards of it immediate past, its society, that it judges itself and is judged. Thus Whitehead sees the feeding activity of living things as a focus of morality.
This food is destroyed by dissolving it into somewhat simple social elements [catabolism]. It has been robbed of something, Thus, all societies require interplay with their environment and in the case of living societies this interplay takes the form of robbery, The living society may or may not be a higher type of organism than the food which it disintegrates. But whether or no it be for the general good, life in robbery. It is at this point that, with life, morals become acute, The robber requires justification 57.
Though aiming at preserving importance - absolute value -, the moral agent, perhaps because he is discounting the glimpse of alternatives and of total possibility which his own supplementary and consummatory phases give him, is peculiarly prone to confusing relative value with absolute value - the peculiar realizations of his own society with the preservation of all absolute value. Insofar as he suppresses his own novelties and peculiar creative achievements, he tends to be insensitive to the need for novelty and development in order really to preserve absolute value (which rests on continuing creative success). This seems to be a very frequent theme in Whitehead, though I have here stated it more fully, and in the light of the general theory of value, developed in this paper, than he does at any one point.
Of course it is true that the defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change, Perhaps countless ages ago respectable amoebae refused to migrate from ocean to dry land refusing in defense of morals 58:
And, a little further on, a more balanced and positive estimate of moral value:
Morale consist in the aim at the ideal, and at its lowest it concerns the prevention of relapse to lower levels. Thus stagnation [since it brings decay] is the deadly foe of morality. Yet in human society the champions of morality are on the whole the fierce opponents of new ideals. Mankind has been afflicted with low-toned moralists, objecting to expulsion from some "Garden of Eden'. And in a way they are right. For after all we can am at nothing except from the standpoint of a well-assimilated system of customs, that is, of mores. The fortunate changes are made 'Hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow' 59.
Since moral value to not complete absolute value, it is deeply touched with relativity. This seems to be the main cause of Whitehead's frequent depreciation of morals. And yet the moral emphasis is essential to the realization of absolute value. It needs supplementation, by esthetic value, as we shall see shortly, and by religious experience.
Morals can be discovered in the higher animals; but not religion. Morality emphasizes the detailed occasion; while religion emphasizes the unity of ideal inherent in the universe 60.
And yet one wonders whether Whitehead doesn't mean that moral experience on the human level is something more. Perhaps there are higher and lower moral experiences as there are higher and lower intellectual experiences, as we have seen in the last sub-section. All of these special value fields, being less than the whole, are subject, each, to typical kinds of distortions and weaknesses, but in their higher manifestations they tend to coalesce, or, at least, to make their own contributions to creative success, and so to absolute value. None of them, certainly, is to be absorbed into one of the others. "Coherence" holds among them, as among all the other aspects of Whitehead’s philosophy 61.
Furthermore, the emphasis on preserving and passing on achieved values and patterns for the guidance of future actualities, which is dominant in morality, must not be so construed that it leaves out of consideration moral responsibility and moral freedom. Although each actuality is influenced by and largely passes on the patterns of its society, it is only through its own decision that this can be done. Its process is not merely causal; it is also self-caused. It selects the aspects of the past to whIch it responds in the light of achieving its own ends - its own satisfaction and its own aim at influencing the future (which is part of its end as a creative process). Indeed, the awareness of moral responsibility and freedom is evidence of the extent to which in the highly developed occasions of human experience actual process transcends sheer causal determination and involves teleology and real freedom of choice 62.
Whitehead has more to say about esthetics than about any of the other value fields. He also makes a host of distinctions which are never compared to each other and organized. For example he distinguishes between "art" and "beauty", between the "beautiful" and "beauty", and between "major" and "minor" beauty. Furthermore, esthetic experience is sometimes spoken of as an essential aspect of all process, and at others, restricted to "conscious experience”, at one time associated with the evocation of "deep reality" and at another time limited to "appearance". And beyond statements which can be more or less surely identified as statements about esthetic subject-matter, there are a host of statements about sociology, science, and especially metaphysics which are expressed in esthetic imagery. Sometimes it seems that esthetics holds the key to the understanding of Whitehead's whole philosophy, or, at least that all intrinsic value is fundamentally esthetic. Indeed, Whitehead quite frequently says something of the sort, as, "The most penetrating exhibition of this force ["the sense of value, the sense of importance"] - is the sense of beauty, the esthetic sense of realized pertection 63".
I shall in the conclusion of this paper take up the charge of "estheticism' which is frequently brought against Whitehead. Here I am concerned with a more limited kind of esthetic value. Even for Whitehead, esthetics is not everything.
… when the topic of aesthetics has been sufficiently explored it is doubtful whether there will be anything left over for discussion, But this doubt is unjustified. For the essence of great experience is the penetration into the unknown, the unexperienced 64.
In the next paragraph to the one in which this quotation occurs, he says that a limitation of both esthetics and logic, which have certain similarities is that they deal with the "closed feet", whereas experiences which bring "disclosure" are better 65. However, elsewhere, he seems to provide for this distinction within esthetics, making it part of the basis of the distinction between "minor" and "major" beauty 66. As we have already seen in the cases of "truth value" and "moral 'value", it seems to be Whitehead's idea that all special forms of value are subject to omissions and abstractions peculiar to each, but that at the upper limits of these experiences they tend to transcend these limitations and coalesce with the missing aspects to achieve creative successes important for all reaches of experience: the really great insight or the saintly act may have an esthetic quality, and the greatest esthetic experiences give insights into the nature of things, are morally good, and even have a religious quality. However much this notion applies to ethics and intellectual experience, it is certainly true of esthetics, according to Whitehead, Even for esthetic experiences, however, there is a more moderate range of values, where it does not coalesce with and tend to include all values. For example, he says that there are reaches of esthetic value to which morals are irrelevant 67.
The phase of creative activity which esthetic values tend particularly to emphasize is the one most neglected by the kinds of value already discussed: that is, the 'satisfactions" of actual occasions. Subjectively, it is the moment of enjoyment; objectively the moment of achieved harmony in which, despite its suppressions and omissions, all things are held together In a contrast, a perspective. The emphasis is on the peculiar achievement of each actuality and group of actualities. Continuity with the past, at least in the lesser esthetic experiences, is minimized, and, particularly, concern for the future is momentarily stilled. There is a premium on the present harmony and on the contributions' to it of current processes. Because of this concentration on the contribution of the present actualities, there is a secondary emphasis on the "supplemental" phases of the creative process. Supplemental phases and satisfactions, then, are the aspects of creative process particularly emphasized in the realization of esthetic values.
Mr. Morris is right in saying that Whitehead's theory of esthetics is one of "self-expression" 68. But existence in general is self-expression for Whitehead, That makes all existence esthetic in nature. True, but existence in general is other expressive and whole-expressive as well as self-expressive. Most low-grade occasions limit their self-expression pretty much to other-expression. In esthetic experience we encounter occasions which have developed self-expression to a particularly high degree. Although the expression of the "other" and the "whole" have most to hope for from these highly developed occasions, still, in their individuality there is a kind of estrangement, temporary perhaps, to the "other" and the "whole".
In Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead explains this estrangement by adopting the old metaphysical distinction given prominence by Bradley, "appearance" and "reality". "Reality" as a factor in actual process is, for Whitehead, the mass of physical "causal" prehensions which constitute the conformal phase of an occasion. In the highly developed occasions of human experience, however. this reality is submerged by its radical transformation during the "supplemental phases". For the vague, emotional, causal push of "reality" is substituted the more abstract sense experience and conceptualization whIch, though tied in many ways to the physical prehensions, tend to obscure the background out of which they arise. As a result of the operation of these supplemental phases, particularly when they rise to the level of consciousness, comes a "satisfaction" which may be rather remote from the actual world out of which the occasion arose. This sort of satisfaction, in which the sensory and conceptual components added in the "supplemental" phases are primary, and the contribution of "reality" is pushed into the dim background, Whitehead calls "appearance". And, "In a general sense, the Appearance is a work of Art 69."
This appearance is always to some extent "artificial".
Consciousness is the weapon which strengthens the artificiality of an occasion of experience. It raises the Importance of the final Appearance relative to that of the initial Reality, Thus it is the Appearance which in consciousness is clear and distinct, and it is Reality which lies dimly in the background, with its details hardly to be distinguished in consciousness, What leaps into consciousness is a mass of presuppositions about Reality rather than the intuition of Reality itself 70.
With the original emotional push of reality suppressed, the esthetic experience tends to lack the depth and violence of reality. There is reenactment and projection on a conceptual and sensory plane of the more intense feelings. What is too real is excluded from art because it is too dangerous too overwhelming, too immediate. The original feelings must be softened and rationalized, contrasted with possible alternatives and compared with other feelings which were incompatible with the original feelings on the more primitive level. So typical esthetic experience is not complete creative activity. It is always somewhat abstract. It is abstract, first, by overemphasizing the satisfaction at the expense of the other phases of an occasion, and, secondly, in over-emphasizing the contribution made to this satisfaction by the "supplemental" phases, as against the contributions made to it by the "conformal" phase and anticipations of future significance 71.
Although this is the general nature of esthetic experience and value, a nature which it sometimes seems is never completely transcended, Whitehead does say that Beauty is better, more important, insofar as it tends to overcame these deficiencies.sm by reference to elements in experience which are, neither clear nor distinct. On the contrary, they are dim, massive, and Important, These dim elements provide for art that final background of tone apart from which its effects fade. The type of truth which human art seeks lies in the eliciting of this background to haunt the object presented for clear consciousness 72.
Thus, to the extent that art readmits reality, its importance is heightened. The same judgment applies to its readmission of concern for the future.
The claim to aesthetic attention thus represents the indirect importance of anticipation and purpose as factors in the immediate enjoyment of the immediate percipient, The danger of a street crossing is for the pedestrian a regulative factor in the aesthetic values of the apparent scene, The concept of completely passive contemplation in abstraction from action and purpose is a fallacious extreme. It omits the final regulative factor in the aesthetic complex.
The final point is that the foundation of Reality upon which Appearance rests can never be neglected in the evaluation of Appearance 73.
But esthetic value in general is not the sum at all absolute value. All things aim at their satisfactions, but they also aim at preserving past achievements, at furthering future process, and at actualizing new aspects of the total possibility which God's primordial nature presses upon the world. In its emphasis on the present satisfaction, esthetic value tends to neglect the aspects of importance.
The teleology of the universe is directed to the production of Beauty. Thus any system of things which in any wide sense is beautiful is to that extent justified in its existence. It may however fail in another sense. By inhibiting more Beauty than it creates. Thus the system, though in a sense beautiful, is on the whole evil in that environment 74.
Indeed, though Whitehead has kinder things to say in general about art than about morality, esthetic value needs supplementation by moral value.
With a larger view and a deeper analysis, some instance of the perfection of art may diminish the good otherwise inherent in some specific situation as it passes into its objective actuality for the future. Unseasonable art is analogous to an unseasonable joke, namely, good in its place, but out of place a positive evil. It is a curious fact that lovers of art who are most Insistent an the doctrine of 'art for art's sake' are apt to be indignant at the banning of art for the sake of other interests 75.
Indeed, I would say that it is an Indication of the comprehensiveness of Whitehead's notion of complete absolute value that he is able to provide for both the claims of morality and art without subjugating one to the other.
Finally, however, the strengths of esthetic value must be admitted. It contributes what morality lacks, an appreciation of the contribution of the present moment of reality to all reality, and this Whitehead sees as rather a paradox.
It is a tribute to the strength of the sheer craving for freshness, that change, whose justification lies in the aim at the distant ideal should be promoted by Art which is the adaptation of immediate Appearance for Immediate Beauty. Art neglects the safety of the future for the gain of the present. In so doing it is apt to render its Beauty thin. But after all, there must be some immediate harvest. The good of the universe cannot lie in indefinite postponement. The Day of Judgment is an important notion: but that Day is always with us.
It's [Art's] business is to render the Day of Judgment a success, now 76.
Our experiences of beauty give us a glimpse of the sort of attainment that the universe strives for, even the sort of attainment which God enjoys in his consequent nature 77.
God, for Whitehead, is at once an abstract metaphysical principle, or set of principles; an actual entity, that is one among the many actualities that constitute reality; and, finally, an aspect or the concrete process of each finite actual occasion. These complexities may be necessary to explain the traditional ubiquity and illusiveness of religion in the world, but they do not make any easier the task or isolating that particular kind of importance which may be called religious value.
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within the passing flux at immediate things; something which is real, and yet awaiting to be realized; something which is a restate possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes Apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, end yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
Since Whitehead finds the other special kinds of values associated with special emphases in concrete process, religious value must be realized through the last aspect of God mentioned above, its functioning as an aspect or aspects, of the process of each finite occasion. There is divine intervention in each occasion, though the awareness and effectiveness of this functioning may vary greatly from occasion to occasion, Since there is spontaneity and freedom in each occasion, God. is not responsible for everything that goes on in each occasion: He is a partner in creative process, according to Whitehead, not, as in older religious views, the sole creative agent 78. Paradoxically, perhaps, the functioning and awareness of God are most evident in the more highly developed occasions where spontaneity, freedom, and individual creative success are at a maximum 79. But the functioning of God in concrete process cannot be limited to any of the "phases" of creative activity with which the other kinds of value are primarily associated, nor does it constitute a separate phase of its own. It comes "before" the conformal phase and "after" the phase of objective immortality, and permeates all the phases. God's primordial nature is the final condition to which all occasions must conform, but, since it makes total possibility available to each occasion, it is perhaps more Immediately relevant to an occasion's supplemental than to its conformal phase. God's consequent nature gives each occasion a special kind of objective immortality which saves the full achievement of each occasion 80. But, as I shall explain shortly, there is an even more immediate and pervasive functioning of God in each occasion - God's "superjective nature -, which is perhaps more closely associated with religious value.
The question of a religious value is obviously not primarily a question of religious doctrine or of theological speculation, but of religious experience. It is an immediate aspect of finite creative process and of its self-enjoyment 81. This immediate religious experience is a value experience, but what sort of value experience? As already noted, Whitehead recognizes three as yet unanalyzed factors in our immediate experiences of value - value for self, for others, and for the whole 82. Religion is founded on this value and experience.
Religion is founded on the concurrence of three allied concepts in one moment of self-consciousness.
These concepts are:
1. That of the value of an individual for itself.
2. That of the value of the diverse individuals of the world for each other.
3. That of the value of the objective world which is a community derivative from the inter-relations of its component individuals, and also necessary for the existence of each of these individuals 83.
What religious experience seems to be is a further valuation performed on this immediate value experience, though this further valuation may also be immediate in the sense of being directly felt rather than being merely a conceptual valuation. It is the direct awareness of the final sources of Importance an awareness of the worth for the whole, and for the individual himself, of his own creative act and of the value of the society or societies with which he identifies himself.
The moment of religious consciousness starts from self-valuation, but it broadens into the concept of the world as a realm of adjusted values, mutually intensifying or mutually destructive. The intuition into the actual world gives particular definite content to the bare notion of a principle determining the grading of values. It also exhibits emotions, purposes, and physical conditions as subservient factors in the emergence of values 84.
Thus religious experience gives us an awareness of the absolute value in our relative values; it shows us and allows us to enjoy what is really the creative achievement of ourselves and our world.
That contribution [of "our immediate experience of religion"] is in the first place the recognition that our existence is more than a succession of bare facts. We live in a common world of mutual adjustment, of intelligible relations, of valuations, of zest after purposes, of joy and grief, of interest concentrated on self, of interest directed beyond self, of short-time and long-time failures and successes, of different degrees of life-weariness and of life-zest.
It is not true that the finer quality is the direct associate of obvious happiness or of obvious pleasure. Religion is the direct apprehension that, beyond such happiness and such pleasure, there remains the function of what is actual and passing, that it contribute its quality as an immortal fact to the order which informs the world 85.
How does this religious insight develop? It cannot achieve its fulfillment till man gets beyond his relative, local point of view. Now the characteristics of this relative local point of view are not so much the reduction of all value to value for self - that is already a critical position, which may, if not stagnated in, itself be a step towards enlightenment, The uncritical relative point of view is to assess the value of all things and of oneself in terms of the standards of the social group of which one is a part. It is this external relative point of view which must be broken through and transcended in order to achieve the deep insight into absolute values which is developed religious experience 86. The first step is for the individual actuality to become aware of its own contribution to the world, and the world's dependence upon it.
Life is an internal fact for its own sake before it is an external tact relating itself to others. The conduct of external life is conditioned by environment, but it receives its final quality, on which its worth depends, from the internal life which is the self-realization of existence. Religion is the art and the theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things 87.
Whitehead seems to conceive of this developing self-awareness as a sort of crisis the individual passes through in order to attain mature religious experience. He calls this experience "solitariness", and says, "Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness 88. In his solitariness, the individual feels forsaken by the social values and causal ties which bound him as a creature in his environment. He discovers himself as a creative agent and realizes his real value in relation to the unity of the universe which seeks and harvests all value.
In its solitariness the spirit asks: What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claims with that of the objective universe. Religion is world loyalty 89.
What religious experience gives to an actuality, then, is a full awareness of the metaphysical nature of value - of the meaning of value for the world as a whole and of the individual's responsibility as the finals, real, creative agent, to fulfill this need as far as is possible for him 90.
Does this awareness of the nature of absolute value which comes in religious experience bring with it a definite theology, a definite metaphysics? Does it carry in itself Whitehead's metaphysics and his complex notion of God? "
Religion is the longing of the spirit that the facts of existence should find their justification in the nature of existence 91." Whitehead says,There is a rightness attained or missed [in religious experience] with more or less completeness or attainment or omission.
There is a revelation of character, apprehended as we apprehend the characters of our friends. But in this case it is an apprehension of character inherent in the nature of things 92.
But, he goes on to say that "there is a large concurrence in the negative doctrine that this religious experience does not include any direct intuition of a definite person, or individual 93 . And, it is not the character of the "rightness" itself that we prehend so much as the partial conformity and partial lack of conformity of the world to it 94. Also, Whitehead says that he is opposed to over-simplification in theology, and appeals to the analogy of the development of scientific knowledge - as the testimony of sense experience has become more complex and subtle, why not also the testimony of religious experience 95 ? He says that "rational religion" needs a metaphysics to fix the meaning of its terms, but, also it contributes its own evidence, which any metaphysics must take account of 96. Finally, Whitehead notes that as religions have developed there has been a shift of interest from the *will of God" to the "goodness of God", the first being typical of the primitive "communal" religions, and the second of religions based on heightened religious experience 97.
All of these arguments combine to further the conclusion that religious experience is primarily a value experience, and that religious "truth" is primarily a deep insight into the nature of absolute value.
The peculiar character of religious truth is that it explicitly deals with values. It brings into our consciousness that permanent side of the universe which we can care for. It thereby provides a meaning in terms of value for our existence, a meaning which flows from the nature of things 98.
Though religious experience gives a deep insight into values, I do not think that Whitehead means that it is a complete insight. It does not itself create the values which it re-evaluates* Nor does he mean, I think, that through religious experience we gain an insight into the determination of being by value. Neither in the order of knowing nor in the order of being is there a clear assertion by Whitehead that value proceeds existence. The two, value and existence, are too intimately involved with each other to assert any order of reality between them. All departments of value experience contribute, each its peculiar emphasis, to the complete notion of importance; and all kinds of experience, the relatively dispassionate and "factual" experiences of science as well as moral, esthetic, and religious value experiences all contribute, according to Whitehead, to our knowledge of the nature of reality. His principle of "coherence" denies complete priority to any one of them. His final metaphysical notion is that of creative activity which is the source of both value and existence, insofar as the latter two notions can be given limited and distinct meanings 99.
The main point of this subsection, however, is that religion is primarily a particular kind of value experience, We have seen that religion starts in experience of values. And, even after the excursion into Whitehead's metaphysics that religious experience suggests to him, he returns at the end to value experience. For, at the end of Process and Reality he tells us that there is, beyond the "primordial" and "consequent" natures of God, a "superjective" nature of God, in which God's consequent nature transcends its own self.enjoyment and re-enters the world as an objective condition to be prehended and enjoyed by each finite occasion. This superjective nature of God is, then, a particularly rich and satisfying religious experience.
For the kingdom of heaven is with us today. The action of ... [God's superjective nature] is the love of God for the world. It is the particular providence for particular occasions. What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes back into the love in heaven, end floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion - the fellow sufferer who understands 100.
Although Whitehead does not specifically make the identification, there are indications that this is the kind of value experience which at the end of Adventures of Ideas he calls "Peace" 101. "'Impersonality' is too dead a notion, and 'Tenderness’ too narrow, I choose the term "Peace" for that [experience of the] Harmony of Harmonies which calms destructive turbulence and completes civilization 102" "
I am not referring to political relations. I mean a quality of mind steady in its reliance that fine action is treasured in the nature of things 103." This reliance must come from some experience of God's consequent nature in which all finite achievements are "saved". Indeed, this culminating religious value experience has something in it of the Christian notion of "Grace", for Whitehead says, "The experience of Peace is largely beyond the control of purpose. It comes as a gift 104.
The experience of "Peace" or of the "superjective nature of God" may be the highest finite value realization but it is not all of value, nor, when interpreted in the light of Whitehead's complete view, does it belittle or make unreal the rest of finite creative achievement.
In this section I have tried to show how the notion of value in general, as the feeling of anything as a factor In creative process, and the notion of absolute value, or importance, as a measure of creative success explain the major varieties of value experience, and, In turn, are confirmed and expanded by Whitehead's observations in these special fields of value.
31 In his insistence that experience is part of the actual process of the world and not merely a subjective and ineffectual epiphenomenon, Whitehead is close to Dewey. And, indeed, it is particularly in their esthetic theories that their similarities to each other are conspicuous. In Art as Experience Dewey locates beauty in the esthetic experience, but this experience becomes the real esthetic object. It is also interesting that this book is the most "metaphysical" of all Dewey's works. I would even suggest that the consideration of esthetic experience performed a somewhat similar service for both Dewey and Whitehead as far as the development of their philosophies is concerned: it drew them out of their previous narrow preoccupation with science and gave each of them a broader and deeper appreciation of the contribution which all departments of human experience can make to philosophy. Whitehead seems to make some such admission in his "Autobiographical Note" (Schilpp, op. cit., pp. 1-14), and it is also suggested by his pedagogical theory that specialized technical education should be supplemented not by "general courses" touching lightly on all fields of human experience, but by concentration on one or more of the fine arts (SMW., ch. 13).
32 See below, ch, 8, pp. XXX, of this paper.
33 Besides the limits of space and topic which I must observe, there are other good reasons for not going too deeply into any one of these fields, the chief one being that Whitehead himself doesn't. He has more to say about esthetic value than about the value peculiar to any of the other fields, but he never gets very far in distinguishing its sub-species. This is because Whitehead is not primarily interested in the separate exploration of any one of those value fields by itself, even esthetics. He discusses each of them, and I'd say especially esthetics, only as an avenue of approach to more general value and metaphysical insights.
34 More detailed consideration is given to a few of the problems of ethics in Sec. C of this chapter.
35 This statement seems justified despite the distinction made in ch. 14 of AI., between "appearance" and "reality", because "appearance", the additions and novelties introduced by one occasion or society can, if stabilized and preserved, become "reality" to subsequent actualities.
36 See above, Pt. I, ch. 2, Sec, D, of this paper.
37 See above, Pt. I, ch. 2, Sec, D, of this paper.
38 AI., pp. 384-85.
39 See above, Oh, 6, Sec. C, of this paper.
40 See above, Pt. I, ch. 2, Sec. D, of this paper.
41 AI., pp. 322-23.
42 AI., 313.
43 AI., p.5.
44 The evidence for the last statement is deeply embedded in the dense technical writing of PR., but I offer the following quotation as indicating the kind of statement to which I refer. "When a non-conformal proposition [that is, an untrue proposition] is admitted into feeling, the reaction to the datum [that is, the new feeling or its subjective form] has resulted in the synthesis of fact [the previous occasions] with the alternative possibilities of the complex predicate. A novelty has emerged into creation. The novelty may promote or destroy order; it may be good or bad. But it is new a new type of individual, and not merely a new intensity of individual feelings [which is what a conformal, or merely "true" proposition gives]. The member of the locus [the new occasion prehending the past under this new non-conformal pattern] has introduced a new form into the actual world or, at least, an old form in a new function (PR., p. 284, italics mine)."
45 AE., p. 45.
46 As some logicians maintained. I gather that even same of the former supporters of this view have now reconsidered their positions.
47 MT., p. 305.
48 AI., p. 12.
49 MT., p. 88.
50 MT., pp. 58-60.
51 "He says, "Education is discipline for the adventure of life; research is intellectual adventure; and the universities should be homes of adventure shared in common by young and old. For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must either be new in itself or it must be invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow or other it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance (AE,, pp. 146-7),
52 FofR.. p. 27.
53 FofR, pp. 27-8. Reason is called a "valuation of valuations", that is a reconsideration of the lure of conceptual novelties. What is here called "reason" seems to be identifiable with what Whitehead calls "Wisdom" in Al. "After instinct [blind, conformal prehension of the past and intellectual ferment have done their work, there is a decision which determines the mode of coherence of Instinct with intelligence. I will term this factor 'Wisdom'. It is the function of wisdom to act as a modifying agency on the intellectual ferment so as to produce self determined issue from the given conditions." Wisdom, he says, is the determination of the whole over the occasional flashes of insight which thus maintains the efficiency of thought (AI,, p.59).
54 See below, sub-section 4), of this section for a consideration of “religious truth".
55 AI., p. 346.
56 "The greater part of morality hinges on the determination at relevance in the future. The relevant future consists of those elements in the anticipated future which are felt with affective intensity by the present subject by reason of the real potentiality for them to be derived from itself (PR., p. 41).
57 PR., p. 160. 1 am forcibly reminded by this quotation of the prob1em which Laird raises as to what notion of value is involved when we say that it is better that a man escape from a tiger than that the tiger eat the man, though, obviously, the former alternative frustrates a "tigerish good" (op. cit., p. 323). Whitehead, in opposition to many contemporary ethicists, would seem to insist that this assertion cannot be justified on the basis of ethical considerations alone, but rests on considerations of general value and its metaphysical background.
58 AI., p. 345.
59 AI., p. 346.
60 MT., p. 39.
60 See above ch. l. Sec. XX of this paper.
61 PR., p. 339. Here Whitehead says that an occasion has the feelings which it does have because they aim at an end, which is the "feeler". But this feeler is not just the subjective enjoyment of the feelings. In the formidable terminology of PR., it is a "subject-superject" - that is, what it is for itself and what it is for process beyond itself. Then he says, "in our own relatively high grade of human existence, this doctrine of feelings and their subject is best illustrated by our notion of moral responsibility. The subject is responsible for being what it is in virtue of its feelings. It is also derivatively responsible for the consequences of its existence because they flow from its feelings." See also, above, ch. 2, Sec. D.
62 AE.,, p. 63.
63 MT., p. 86.
64 MT., p. 87.
65 AI., chs. 17 & 18.
68 MT., pp. 17-18 .
67 Morris, B., "The Art Process and the Aesthetic Fact in Whitehead's Philosophy", in Schilpp, op. cit., p. 477.
68 AI., pp. 362-3.
69 AI., p. 347.
70 AI., pp. 349-50.
71 AI., p. 348.
72 AI., p. 340.
73 AI., p. 341.
74 AI., p. 345-6.
75 AI., p. 346.
76 RM., p. 143.
77 SMW., p. 274.
78 See above, Pt. I, ch. 4, Sec. B, of this paper.
79 See above, Sec. A of this chapter.
80 See above, Pt. I, ch. 2, Sec. D, of this paper.
81 Mr. Ely even suggests that the God of religious experience, even for Whitehead, is not the same as the God of his metaphysics, but he doesn't show in exactly what respect they differ.
82 See above, oh, 8, Sec. B, & Sec. C, of this paper.
83 RM., p. 58.
84 RM., p. 59-60.
85 RM., p. 80, The previous discussions of God's nature and function in Whitehead's metaphysics, and of the nature of absolute value without the involvement of a notion of absolute perfection allows, I believe, for the understanding of these statements without the "absolutist" Interpretation which is usually given to them.
86 There are passages in RM. which seem to expound a notion in some ways similar to Bergson's distinction between the "closed" and the "open" society in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Bergson's book, however, was published several years after RM. See RM., p. 2$.
87 RM., pp. 15-16.
88 RM., p. 16.
89 RM., p. 60.
90 RM., p. 158.
91 RM., p. 85.
92 RM., p. 60.
93 Ibid
94 RM., p. 60-61.
95 RM., p. 77.
96 RM., pp. 78-79.
97 RM., p. 41.
98 RM., p. 124. Also, on p. 281 of PR., "Again, consider strong religious emotion - consider a Christian meditating on the sayings in the Gospels. He is not judging 'true or false'; he is eliciting their value as elements in feeling. In fact, he may ground his judgment of truth on his realization of value."
99 See above, ch. 5, Sec. B, & ch. 6, Sec C, of this paper.
100 PR., p. 332.
101 See above, ch, 6, Sec. C (5), of this paper.
102 AI., p. 367.
103 AI., p. 353.
104 AI., p. 368.
Move to Chapter Seven C.