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
In the last section I made a survey of Whitehead's treatment of all the major special value subjects - the pursuit of truth, ethics, esthetics and religion. But my main interest in discussing each of them wos merely to distinguish the value it pursues from the general value of "importance", and to determine the peculiar contribution of each of these specific ftelds of value to the understanding and realization of importance. Now, there are many special problems, or special formulations of more general problems, which are peculiar to each of these value fields. I have not explored any one of these fields thoroughly enough so far to reveal the adequacy or inadequacy of Whitehead's treatment of these special problems. The limits of this paper do not permit a detailed treatment of each of these fields, but I wish to choose one of them, ethics, for further investigation. I have chosen ethics primarily because there seems to be considerable doubt as to whether Whitehead actually does justice to some of the fundamental problems in this field, and even as to whether his metaphysics and general theory of value provide a basis for an adequate ethical theory.
I choose just two ethica1 problems to consider: (1) the universality and obligatoriness of ethical principles, and (2) the relative importance given to individual as opposed to social good, with particular emphasis on the value and dignity of the human individual.
Since Kent's pronouncement of the "categorical imperative", there has been considerable agreement, though it certainly has not been accepted by all, that the essential characteristics of an ethical principle are (a) universality, and (b) obligatoriness or "oughtness".
Kant said that a genuine moral principle must be "categorical" and not merely "hypothetical". A hypothetical principle was, he thought, one which held only "if" certain ends were sought, for example, if one sought pleasure, then one must avoid excess, and so on. A categorical principle was to be one that held regardless of ends sought or other conditions. Since the hypothetical principle, thus understood, is obviously one which is motivated by some Interest, the notion of a non-interested and obligatory relation to the principle is already latent in the notion of a "categorical" principle. In order to separate the relation of obligation, which the moral principle allegedly has to those for whom it holds, from its unconditioned character, I shall speak of the "universality" rather than of the "categorical" nature of moral principles. Modern logic, of course, interprets "universal propositions" as implications - that is, as what Kant would have called "hypotheticals", all of which serves to confuse the issue. What is meant by "universal" here, however, is unconditioned - the universal, moral principle is one which is understood a holding for all intelligible, or at least human, agents, in all times and under all circumstances (such as differences in motivation, probable consequences, and so on).
The question then is, "Does Whitehead recognize and formulate any universal moral principles?" Casual reading of Whitehead in the light of over-simple presuppositions about the character of his philosophy can produce either an unqualified "Yes! - or an unqualified "No!" answer to this question.
If the complexities of his doctrine of eternal objects are not understood 1, the uncritical tendency to attribute everything to the ingression of forms will incline one to look for universal moral principles. Whitehead's occasional appeals to moral "intuitions 2" would seem to support this view. I think, however, that in these cases he either uses the word "intuition" in a popular and unexamined sense, or also he means by it merely an immediacy of awareness, with no intention of suggesting that the awareness must be of a universal truth 3. I agree with Schilpp, however, that these appeals to moral intuitions don't seem to fit very well with most of Whitehead's other statements about moral principles 4. Whitehead's vagaries in the use of language have already been commented on 5.
Secondly, if the complexities of his notion of God are not understood, and Whitehead's God is associated with some traditional view of this entity, statements can be found in Whitehead which seem to be abstract and subjectivized formulations of the Biblical notion that God inscribed universal moral principles on tablets of stone.
Also God, as conditioning the creativity with his harmony of apprehension, issues into the mental creature as moral Judgment according to a perfection of ideals 6.
It would take the recapitulation of great sections of this paper, of course, to provide an adequate interpretation of this statement, but let me merely point out that the "harmony of apprehension - here referred to is God's primordial nature, which presents nothing definite to any actuality, only the total push of infinite possibility, and that the "moral judgment" performed by the individual is subject to all the conditions of assessing absolute value which I have been discussing in the last two chapters. In general, if Whitehead does believe in universal moral principles, it cannot be in either of the overly-simple ways here indicated.
But does Whitehead believe in universal moral principles? The emphasis on ceaseless flux and on, the local and passing nature of all realized order in his philosophy would seem to rule out such a notion altogether. And certainly Whitehead makes some strong negative statements. He sees the Eighteenth Century idea of "absolute individuals with absolute rights" as resting on a non-organic and non-historical view of existence.
The human-being is inseparable from its environment in each occasion of its existence. The environment which the occasion inherits is immanent in it, and conversely it is immanent in the environment which it helps to transmit 7.
Ethical standards are, then, peculiar to different local situations.
Each society has its own type of perfection, and puts up with certain blots, at that stage inevitable. Thus the notion that there are certain regulative notions, sufficiently precise to prescribe details of conduct, for all reasonable beings on Earth, in every planet, and in every star-system, is at once to be put aside 8.
Such a notion would be part of a notion of an absolute realized perfection, a notion which, as we have seen, Whltehead rejects 9. But even within a single cultural context, Whitehead thinks that codified moral principles should be regarded as useful guides, better to follow in average situations, but not as applicable to every possible individual situation and variation.
The codifications carry us beyond our own direct immediate insights, They involve the usual judgments valid for the usual occasions in that "epoch". They are useful, and indeed essential, for civilization. But we only weaken their influence by exaggerating their status 10.
Complete relativity of moral standards to the social group and even to the individual cannot be Whitehead's final word, however, After all, he has provided for the making of comparative judgments of absolute value, and there are absolute values realized in moral acts. Therefore there must be something of or contributing to absolute value in the formulation of moral principles. There is a large element of particularity in every definite moral principle or set of moral principles, but, still, Whitehead believes that they must have something in common - a universal aspect.
First, it is true of all moral principles that, "the moral code is the behavior pattern which, in the environment for which it is designed, will promote the evolution of that environment towards its proper perfection 11." Now we have seen that, although each society or epoch has a peculiar and limited kind of participation, which it may even be better to transcend, still it is an absolutely valuable thing - valuable for all reality that each of these limited perfections be fully realized, Only thus can God fulfill his principal intent of giving maximum realization to all possibilities 12.
But this interpretation is only to say that promoting the continuing success of creative process is the universal element in all moral principles. This is true, but it is too general: it makes moral principles equivalent to the general principles of importance. I suggested in the last section of this chapter that insofar as each special kind of value is fully attained, it tends to transcend its own limitations and coalesce with the others. Certainly Whitehead goes too far in some of the statements which he makes about morality, and so loses its distinctive character.
Morality consists in the control of process so as to maximize importance. It is the aim at greatness of experience in the various dimensions belonging to it.But only so far as we can adumbrate it, do we grasp the notion of morality. Morality is always the aim at that union of harmony, Intensity, and vividness which involves tbe perfection of importance for that occasion 13.
If there is any limitation expressed in this statement which still distinguishes morality from general importance, it is the limitation to "aim". But in this statement the aim is toward a goal within the "aiming" occasion rather than in the future of the society of which it is a part. It seems to me that, in accordance with Whitehead's own notion of morality, the aim must be more limited in order for us to formulate a distinctively moral principle.
The reason why Whitehead rejects the effort to formulate universal moral standards may give us a clue as to the aspect of universality which all such standards do have, He associates adherence to set standards of conduct with the kind of ethical conservatism which prevents a society from developing new standards to most new problems, and which eventually brings about decay. It is essential to the notion of "right" moral notions that they are not eternally self-evident to all men in all places, but that they are genuine novelties which appear in process. And they are not realized as soon as they appear. Indeed, insofar as moral ideals and principles approach genuine universality, they are never completely realized, and they grow as process goes on. He points to the example of the notion of the dignity of the individual human being, which originated in the slave societies of ancient times and, though it has won some victories, is still in the process of being defined and actualized 14. And elsewhere he says that showing mercy, certainly a high moral principle, is not at all a universal principle. There are societies of people to which the notion could not even' be explained, because their concepts and languages are not ready to embody this notion 15. Whitehead conceives of something which be thinks is bettor than universal moral principles, accepted by all men at all times. He conceives of progressive "revelation", or "discovery", or "creation" of more adequate moral notions.
In looking, therefore, for an aspect of universality in existing moral principles, we should look to see whether they further or thwart future development. The absolute value of any moral principle is its function in preserving and increasing "the value experience of the universe". "We have no right to deface the value experience which is the very essence of the universe 16." But the merely conservative moral principle defeats its own end, because it lends to the gradual fading and loss of that which it seeks to preserve. What is universal in moral codes is an effort to preserve and further importance. Destruction of some aspects of the past may be necessary to this end.
There is no one behavior-system belonging to the essential character of the universe, as the universal moral ideal. What is universal is the spirit which should permeate any behavior-system in the circumstances of its adoption.Whether we destroy or whether we preserve, our action is moral if we have thereby safeguarded the importance of experience as far as it depends on that concrete instance in the world history 17.
What is universally valuable in moral principles then is the tendency both to preserve and to enhance value. Order at any sort, and therefore moral order, is good insofar as it both preserves past achievement and establishes a basis for further development. Whitehead has an ambivalent attitude towards all order, which is shown in his ambivalence towards formulated moral principles. On the one hand achieved order is obstructive - it demands conformity and so inhibits novelty and further creative successes. Whitehead feels that the encouragement of novelty also has a universal moral claim upon us 18. And he refuses to side with the pessimists who feel that an age of moral darkness is descending upon us because our old moral codes are being questioned and changed 19.
On the other hand, however, it is equally part of Whitehead's doctrine that order is necessary to the creative advance. Higher forms of order can only rise upon the basis of the lower. Lack of order is an approach to nothingness. So, in morals, Whitehead is not exactly a revolutionary; indeed, in Adventures of Ideas he repeatedly emphasizes the slowness and difficulty of moral progress. The risks of a too rapid change are, if anything, greater than the risks of stagnation. Change must be controlled and its dangers understood 20.
So order is both necessary to and yet obstructs the creative advance. We have encountered this problem several times before 21. It is a tension in Whitehead's philosophy which he, perhaps, never satisfactorily resolved 22. But insofar as this tension can be resolved, it can be said that not all order is good, or that order is not good as such; but that order is only good insofar as it furthers continuing creative success. In the limited case of morals, therefore, it may be possible to formulate the universal aspect of all moral codes in some such maxim as this. Under any system of mores, act in accordance with them insofar as they preserve and further importance.
It is questionable, however, how much practical moral guidance such a maxim can give. It certainly allows much to the discretion of the individual agent, for he must assess not only the situation to see how the existing moral code applies to the individual case, but must also constantly reassess the code itself. And he has at most only what Kant would have called a "hypothetical Imperative" to act in accordance with the existing moral code.
Of course, not all moral codes and principles are on the same level, according to Whitehead, Some moral notions actually do embody more of the universal moral intent than others. In our epoch and our existing moral notions, Whitehead singles out two as worthy of our unswerving loyalty.
Although particular codes of morality reflect, more or less imperfectly, the special circumstances of social structure concerned, it is natural to seek for some highly general principles underlying all such codes. Such generalities should reflect the very notions of the harmonizing of harmonies, and of particular individual actualities as the sole authentic realities. These are the principles of the generality of harmony and of the importance of the individual. The first means "order", and. the second means "love" 23.
So, here again we have order and immediate process with its emphasis on change as the universal concerns of moral action, Even if they are reconcilable on the ultimate metaphysical level, on the level of moral action they conflict with each other. The moral conflict which they represent will be that of the social versus the individual good, which I propose to discuss in sub-section (2) of this section.
First, however, I want to take up the question of "obligatoriness" or "oughtness" which many ethicists think is the most distinctive character of moral principles. The idea is that though we are related to most goods, even such highly developed value as the enjoyment of beauty and intellectual insight, by desire, interest, and inclination, we, the moral agents, have a special and different relation to moral principles: we feel that we "ought" to realize them and make our acts correspond to their dictates. We may also happen to desire the realization of these ideals, but the desiring of them is irrelevant to the moral issue. If we perform the "right" act because we desire it or enjoy the realization of an ideal, this circumstance does not make the act "moral". The act is moral only if we do it because we feel that we "ought" to do it. This is a position held by many ethical theorists in one form or another since Kant 24.
The words "ought", "obligation", and "duty" do not occur very frequently in Whitehead's writing. A conspicuous exception is the list of "Categorical Obligations" in the first part of Process and Reality. Though Whitehead remarks that "... every obligation should be a specific instance of categorical obligations." 25. I have already pointed out that it is difficult to translate these statements, which seem to be principally concerned with metaphysical problems, into definite statements about values of any sort 26.
There is, however, a place for a notion of "duty" in his ethical thought, though Whitehead doesn't say very much about it. One of his few specific references to it is: "Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice 27. As I interpret this statement, then, there is no absolute or universal duty. When a man or a group have no knowledge of a superior value to be preserved or realized, they have no duty to preserve or realize it. Duty is, then, a derivative rather than a primary aspect of the moral life. This may be what Whitehead means in saying that "the moral element is derivative from the other factors in experience 28".
As I see it, what Whitehead means is that we have a duty to follow the dictates of our more profound moral insights but these insights - our primary ethical experiences - are not themselves characterized by obligation. Human experience, the occasions of which are characterized by highly developed "supplemental phases" are characterized by a great deal of "selectiveness". But,
The selectiveness of individual experience is moral so far as it conforms to the balance of importance disclosed in the rational vision; and conversely the conversion of the intellectual insight into an emotional force corrects the experiences in the direction of morality. The correction is in proportion to the rationality of the insight 29.
What is here called "insight" in primary - a direct enjoyment of a universal moral principle. "Duty" is imposed on the less developed occasions of our own and others' experiences. We have a duty to be true to our own and the moral insights of our civilization. When we realize these insights, or superior ones, ourselves. we transcend duty. Inferior "interests" should be subject to duty, but the morally best experiences are motivated by an expanded and deepened interest.
Morality of outlook is inseparably conjoined with generality of outlook. The antithesis between the general good and the individual interest can be abolished only when the individual is such that its interest is the general good. Thus exemplifying the loss of the minor intensities in order to find them again with finer composition in a wider sweep of interest 30.
For Whitehead there in no isolated "natural" level of interest, merely biological or sensual in nature. Interests are as "naturally" directed to ideal as well as to "material" ends. "Men are driven by their thoughts as well as by the molecules in their bodies, by intelligence and by senseless forces 31." It follows from the "ontological principle" that everything that is effective in concrete process must be produced in concrete process. This applies to moral principles. They are not in the first instance independent standards to which actual occasions "must* or even "ought" to conform; they are in their inception at least freely chosen goals which are aimed at, desired, and enjoyed by the occasions in which they originate.
And even toward ideals which have been formed, ideals to which Whitehead himself feels that we owe loyalty, Whitehead questions whether "duty" is the best way to describe this loyalty. Duty is an "ought to do ". Kant said that we must do our duty "though the heavens fall". Whitehead says that such a program may bring only self-destruction and the destruction of the civilization that was advanced enough to give rise to the conceptual grasp of the ideal. Just to keep the idea alive, to understand and appreciate it, may be in some circumstances the "morally right act" 32. Whitehead questions whether "duty" can be expanded to include this kind of "act", which is more of an attitude or esthetic appreciation.
Furthermore, the more general and universal moral principles are too far removed from the concrete texture of events for a simple imperative to act upon then to have much application, No ideal can be completely realized in a single act, Realization is, for Whitehead, always a matter of degree of relationship to a total context. In order for ideals to be "realized", the whole society has to be reorganized, and, the very "laws of nature" alter. Whitehead points to the long struggle, the only gradual acceptance, and the present still partial and insecure actualization of the Platonic-Christian moral ideals 33.
Indeed, Whitehead seems to have a sort of esthetic revulsion to the notion of duty. He associates it with stagnation, repression, and a kind of negative morality. He feels that an esthetically oriented morality would be more effective. Indeed, his chief program for improving the life of our society is not to give all men moral lectures on their duties and obligations, but rather to acquaint everyone with some kind of esthetic experience 34. He tells us that if art is made a part of popular culture, religion and morality will be strengthened, and that if art is neglected in popular culture, we will get a "bad" political revolution, characterized extreme inhumanity 35. What we should seek to produce in our society is the man who possesses "culture" which is, "activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty, and humane feeling 36". "Rightness of conduct" should be appreciated and enjoyed as a kind of "beauty" 37. To this end Whitehead praises Thucydides' report of Pericles' speech.
The peculiar civilization of the speech arises from its stress upon the aesthetic end of all action. A Barbarian speaks in terms of power. He dreams of the superman with the mailed fist. He may plaster his lust with sentimental morality of Carlyle's type, but ultimately his final good is conceived as one will imposing itself upon other wills. This is intellectual barbarism. The Periclean ideal is action weaving itself into a texture of persuasive beauty analogous to the delicate splendour of nature 38.
What is needed for ethics, then, is not so much a general awareness of duty as an application of the "taste" of the connoisseur and the "style" of the skilled artisan to the general problems of life and human intercourse.
Style in its finest sense is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being, The administrator with a sense for style, hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style, economizes his materials; the artisan with a sense for style, prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind 39.
These assertions would seem to place Whitehead's ethical theory closer to those of Eighteenth Century England than to that of Kant. He rejects the subjectivism of the former, however, His spirit is really closer to that of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics - his ethical ideal is the fully developed life. But he lacks the fixed standards that helped stabilize Aristotle's picture. Life, for Whitehead, must develop its own standards, and it is best when it is transcending them and developing new ones.
There are certainly dangers in such a view, No man really "knows" his duty. His society can help him by inculcating good habits of action and preference in him, but these social standards are never to be trusted completely. According to Kant's third form of the "categorical imperative", the will must regard itself as though it "could" legislate universal law 40. For Whitehead the peculiar subjunctive mood which Kant used for his tentative ventures into metaphysics is removed. The moral agent is a metaphysical creative force, and he does seek to legislate for process beyond himself. Other processes and God's various natures impose some checks on his exercise of this function, to be sure, but the moral attitude which Whitehead encourages is not primarily one of a feeling of obligation to universal principles, but one of self-confident exercise of creative skill.
It is true that Kant's categorical obligations tend to be rather empty, but the second form of the categorical imperative at least - the obligation to treat "humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal [in itself], never as means only 41". seems to have some real and indispensable moral content. Whitehead would seem to condone tampering with this obligation - admiring it but not acting on it if society might be in danger of dissolution by so doing 42, or ignoring it if you wanted to pursue a new goal which seemed even better to you. His rejection of obligation as essential to morality may not, however, have these dire consequences. It is better to examine directly this issue of the ultimacy and inviolability of the value of the individual in Whitehead's ethics.
Finally, I want to focus the discussion of Whitehead's ethics on an issue which has not only theoretical interest, but is also of tremendous practical concern to all of us in the present state of the world - the issue of the individual good versus the social good. In case of a conflict between them, which is most valuable? If one or the other must be sacrificed or abridged, which should it be? I take the position that the dignity and sanctity of the human individual is an ethical principle which any adequate theory of ethics must justify, This is not a theoretical conclusion; I merely assert this position as an ethical "fact" which must be taken account of by ethical systems. I will not have it explained away, though I am willing to have this principle "harmonized" with the general good. Now, there seen to be certain suggestions of a concession to "collectivism" in Whitehead's "organic" philosophy, so this issue constitutes a serious test of the validity, certainly, of his ethics, and perhaps also of his general theory of value, and even of his metaphysics, for anyone who feels deeply the ethical claim of the dignity of the human individual.
I shall discuss this issue in two stages: (a) first I shall consider the general relation of individual and social good in Whitehead's philosophy, and (b) secondly, I shall ask whether the sanctity of the human individual is provided with adequate safeguards according to theory,
Certainly, Whitehead recommends an alteration in our view inherited from the Eighteenth Century of the individual moral agent and his relation to the community. I have already quoted his objections to the notion of "absolute individuals with absolute rights" 43. This notion of morality, which Whitehead rejects as being too "subjective", he says is based on the old metaphysical notion of "substance", a notion which he rejects, or at least alters radically 44.
The doctrine of minds as independent substances leads directly not merely to private worlds of experience, but. also to private worlds of morals, The moral intuitions can be held to apply strictly only to the private world of psychological experience 45.
Whitehead says that the world is now suffering from the excesses of this kind of moral individualism 46.
The philosophy of organism, he feels, corrects this excessive moral Individualism. Our highly developed supplemental phases in the occasions of human experience tend to obscure for us the social relations which make our existence possible,
Human nature has been described in terms of its vivid accidents; and not of its existential essence. The description of its essence must apply to the unborn child, to the baby in the cradle, to the state of sleep, and to that vast background of feeling hardly touched by consciousness., Clear conscious discrimination is an accident of human existence. It makes us human. But it does not make us exist. It is of the essence of our humanity. But it is an accident of our existence 47.
The individual actuality exists only as a focus of all the past, and it also has affiliations with the future, The nature of existence is such that the individual good is inextricably tied up with the social good 48.
At this point, however, another question arises: can there be anything but social value? Can there be an individual good to oppose the social good? The real individual actualities are gone in a moment, so even "survival" must be a social, value - the survival of a pattern of partial feelings through a sequence of occasions. And if it is not the metaphysical individual but the human individual that we are talking about, it is clear that since the human individual is himself a highly organized hierarchy of societies - a society of societies - his value must take its place among the social values.
The wide scope of the notion of society requires attention. Transcendence begins with the leap from the actuality of the immediate occasion to the notion or personal existence, which is a society of occasions. In terms of human life, the soul is a society. Care for the future of personal existence, regret or pride in its past, are alike feelings which leap beyond the bounds of the sheer actuality of the present. It is in the nature of the present that it should thus transcend itself by reason of the immanence in it of the "other". But there is no necessity as to the scale of emphasis that this fact of nature should receive. It belongs to the civilization of consciousness, to magnify the large sweep of harmony 49.
And there is no reason for stopping short at that "personal society" which Whitehead sometimes poetically calls the human "soul", for this society is entwined with other societies so intimately that it is difficult to see how it can have a unique value. It looks as though its value must inevitably merge and be superseded by the values of the larger societies in which it finds itself 50.
Beyond the soul there are other societies, and societies of societies. There is the animal body, ministering to the soul: there are families, groups of families, nations, species, groups involving different species associated in the joint enterprise of keeping alive. These various societies, each in its measure, claim loyalties and loves. In human history the various responses to these claims disclose the essential transcendence of each individual actuality beyond itself. The stubborn reality of the absolute self-attainment of each individual is bound up with a relativity which it issues from and issues into ... 51.
Despite the qualification introduced by the phrase "the stubborn reality of the absolute self-attainment of each individual" introduced in the last sentence of this quotation, it looks very much as if the value of each Individual or subordinate society is to be merged with the value of the larger societies to which it belongs.
Furthermore, Whitehead frequently tells us that values must be achieved by cooperation rather than by competition. Only thus can the environment be modified to favor the species 52". For this purpose the individual organism is almost helpless. The adequate forces require societies of cooperating organisms 53." And, we have already seen, moral ideals require long periods of history for their realization 54.
Finally, Whitehead's notion of "freedom" doesn't seem to give enough weight to freedom of dissent. It is a little too much like Hegel's notion of freedom - freedom to express one's real nature through an organized society -, or the kind of freedom which the Russians claim they have in their country.
The essence of freedom is the practicability of purpose. Mankind has chiefly suffered from the frustration of its prevalent purposes, even such as belong to the very definition of the species. The literary exposition or freedom deals mainly with the frills. The Greek myth was more to the point. Prometheus did not bring to mankind freedom of the press. He procured fire, which obediently to human purpose cooks and gives warmth. In fact, freedom of action is a primary human need. In modern thought the expression of this truth has taken the form of the economic determination of history 55.
Certainly freedom of action is necessary to a complete notion of freedom, but one worries about the freedom of the dissenter when other kinds of freedom are dismissed as "frills", Freedom of action, as conceived by Whitehead, is a freedom that calls for a social rather than an individual expression.
There are other aspects to Whitehead's thought however, which emphasize the individual. First, the individual is necessary to the realization of social values, because only the individual is capable of the "adventure" and can produce the "novelty" that will save the society from decay. This is a central point in Adventures of Ideas 56. But this emphasis is not completely reassuring, because what it stresses is the usefulness of the individual to society, not his intrinsic value, Whitehead, for example, in one of his essays opposes anti-Semitism on the grounds of the valuable contributions which the Jews have made to Western culture, saying that they have been a constant source of "originality", and adds, "The question at issue is not the happiness of a finite group, It is the fate of our civilization 57." The emphasis here is still on social value rather than on the value of the individual in and for himself. On the same page, however, he makes a statement which reveals a more convincing anti-collectivist tendency that will be discussed further below 58. "Governments are clumsy things, inadequate to their duties, A. wise government makes provision for the interweaving of alternative forms of community life 59."
But a return to metaphysics reveals a firmer basis for the superior importance of individual value over social value. The "ontological principle" must be kept constantly in mind, The individuals are the only completely real entities. Societies are only real insofar as they function as factors in individuals. Societies can increase the importance of the value realizations of individuals, but they cannot supplant these realizations. And Whitehead's fundamental opposition to "collectivism" and an organismic view of the state or society is based on this sound principle. After all, "society" or the "state" is an abstraction: it cannot act. Only the component individuals can act; it cannot feel. nor suffer, nor enjoy - all these are irrevocably located in individuals, according to Whitehead's entire philosophical doctrine.
Today civilization is in danger by reason of a perversion of doctrine concerning the social character of humanity. The worth of any social system depends on the value experience it promotes among individual human beings. There is no one American value experience other than the many experiences of individual Americans or of other individuals affected by American life. A community life is a mode of eliciting value for the people concerned.It is true that there is a mystic sense of coordination and eternity of realized values. But we here approach the basic doctrine of religion. To attach that coordination of value to a finite social group is a lapse into barbaric polytheism 60.
Whitehead feels that his philosophy is much more sympathetic to democracy than to some kind of collectivism 61.
Finally, it must be remembered that all responsibility for whatever happens rests, according to Whitehead, on the individual. Metaphysically, he insists that though causal influences from the past and causal and teleological influences from God pour in upon the individual occasion, still the way in which these influences count in the individual process, and the final pattern of them, cannot be determined from any or all of those influences put together. Even when the individual's process largely conforms to the dominant patterns of its past, it is its free act so to do. The past is dead, or at least ineffectual, unless there is a present actuality, which dominates the past because it is more real than the past, and which alone makes the final decision about its own character, and therefore about what it is going to pass on to the future 62. And Whitehead claims that this metaphysical situation is the actual basis for our awareness of moral responsibility and freedom 63.
How can these two tendencies in Whitehead - the tendency to assign a high value to social achievement, and also to assign a high value to the individual be integrated? Perhaps they can't completely, for what we have here is another aspect of the tension between the values which he assigns to form, a social entity, on the one hand, and to individual, concrete processes on the other 64. It will be remembered that the most universal aspects of our moral principles, according to Whitehead, are "the generality of harmony", and "the importance of the individual", or "order" and "love" 65.
Whitehead goes on to explain, however,
Between the two there is a suggestion of opposition. For 'order' is impersonal, and 'love', above all things, is personal. The antithesis is solved by rating types of order in relative importance according to their success in magnifying the individual actualities, that is to say, in promoting strength of experience. Also in rating the individual on the double basis, partly on the intrinsic strength of its own experience, and partly on its influence in the promotion of a high-grade type or order. These two grounds in part coalesce. For a weak individual exerts a weak influence 66.
In other words, Whitehead feels as the Greeks did that good societies make good individuals, and good Individuals build good societies. But such a formula, even if it were applicable to the small, tightly-knit societies of the Greek city-states, can hardly apply to complex and always partially disorganized modern societies in which the individual has cultural resources that stretch beyond those furnished by his group, and in which, partly as a consequence of the intervention of Christianity, a notion of the individual is prevelant which was not current among the Greeks. Even when the individual no longer is conceived as a "substance" and as having an immortal soul 67, still something of the finality and inviolability of the notion of the individual survives to disturb this harmonization, even for Whitehead.
The arguments which I have just presented for the superior, or at least equal, value of the individual to the value of the society do not in themselves assure the superior value of the individual human being, however, and they certainly do not guarantee an ethic which holds the human individual to be inviolable. For the individual referred to in the statements I have just quoted from Whitehead is, for the most part, not the individual human beings, but the metaphysical individual - the actual occasion. A human being is not an actual occasion. He is a vast society of societies of occasions. Indeed, it is rather difficult to locate the individual's life and personality that is such a central concern of modern ethics within the framework of Whitehead's philosophy. Unsuspected ambiguities in the terms which we are used to employing in order to refer to individual persons appear.
There are ... three different meanings for the notion of a particular man. Julius Caesar, for example. The word 'Caesar' may mean, 'Caesar in some one occasion of his existence': this is the most concrete of all meanings. The word may mean 'the historic route of Caesar's life from his Caesarian birth to his Caesarian assassination'. The word may mean "the common form, or pattern, repeated in each occasion of Caesar's life 68.
Since ethics is concerned with the continuity of an actual process 69, it must be primarily with the second and third meanings as specified in this quotation that it is concerned. The situation is even more complicated than this quotation suggests, for we have to consider not only Caesar's personality and experience, but also his body, and this in turn is closely associated with many societies of occasions in the external environment. Man for Whitehead can have no "mind" or "soul" which is sharply distinct from his body - such a notion involves a 'bifurcation of nature" , but Whitehead sometimes uses these terms. I do not wish to go into the complexities of the various kinds of relations which Whitehead thinks can hold between actual occasions' "nexüs" and various kinds of societies 70 - at this point. Suffice it to say that, though Whitehead encounters some of life's problems in constructing "self-identity" out of his mass of fleeting and yet internally related actual entities, be does consider each mature human organism to be dominated by a rather special kind of society of occasions, which constitutes that man's experience and in whom the pattern of his personality is most fully realized.
The one individual is that coordinated stream of personal experiences, which is my thread of life or your thread of life. It is that succession of self-realizations, each occasion with its direct memory of its past and with anticipation of the future. That claim to enduring self-identity is our self-assertion of personal identity 71.
If we grant, however, that the human individual constitutes a distinct and recognizable society, we must see that the issue of the comparative value of the human individual and of those larger societies of which he is a member - family, community, state, culture, species - is not primarily the issue of the comparative value of a concrete individual actuality on the one hand and of one or more of the social patterns which it manifests on the other. It is rather the issue of the comparative values of different kinds of society. Now, why should that peculiar form of society which is a human individual have a greater value than that kind of society, say, which is a state?
We can see why a human individual should have greater value than a sub-human society. It is more complex and fulfills the conditions of importance more completely - its occasions achieve more intense experience and more subtle contrasts, But Whitehead gives similar reasons for the superior value of a human individual over a state, or similar society.
... each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs. Any particular community life touches only part of the nature of each civilized man. If the man be wholly subordinated to the common life, he is dwarfed. His complete nature lies idle, and withers. Communities lack the intricacies of human nature. The beauty of a family is derivative from its members. The family life provides the opportunity; the realization lies in the individuals 75.
A human being is the kind of society in which the two opposing universal moral principles of complex, progressive order and individual fulfillment receive their maximum finite attainment. More abstract orders sacrifice individual fulfillment. The u1tirrate individuals - occasions - need the intimate association which they get in the sequence of a human life to achieve a high level of importance.
Beyond these arguments, there is still another consideration which is never fully formulated. In Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality Whitehead is critical of the notion of "substance", as an underlying permanent character beneath the changing appearance of things. He thinks that the notion arises from the tendency in human experience to generalize the many intimately related prehensions which we have of things and project them back into the original data 76. But by Adventures of Ideas he sees this process as a way of heightening the values of things, particularly of the other human beings whom we encounter, and, reflexly, of ourselves 77. "Substantiality" is a trait that we attribute to processes with which we are deeply concerned. It is a form of order or integration that is created in human experience, but it is not therefore merely subjective. It exercises a real function in the world. Indeed, there is even the suggestion that the "substantiality‚" which we create for ourselves, the "soul" may thus achieve a special permanent status in God"s consequent nature which amounts to a genuine kind of personal immortality 78.
This idea is never developed very fully, however. Perhaps it is inherently unclear. Or perhaps there is something missing in the fundamental principles of Whitehead's metaphysics which makes its full development impossible. It certainly seems to clash with much of what he has said, lie has rejected the idea of "substantiality" - of permanent underlying, real character for all actualities, and therefore supposedly also for the human soul. This idea has been the real bulwark of the dignity and inviolability of the individual human being. It is difficult to see how it could ever be reconstituted in Its original conception after the work of Whitehead and a host of other modern philosophers. At least, he and they have convinced me that it is an untenable notion in its original form. And yet, at least in the field of morals, I have some profound regrets in seeing it go. Without it, I think, he fails to provide an ethics which assures a due regard for the sanctity of the human individual. There are a few scattered suggestions that he himself realizes this and attempts a partial reconstitution of the original principle. There is a confused suggestion that, since actual process is a real creative force, and has created all its own achievements and fulfilled so many of its own ends and the ends of God; that, perhaps, somehow, on the level of human experience, it may create for itself a permanent character to which further process, at least on the human level (and maybe even on the divine) will feel obligated to owe a peculiar concern. But these notions do not crystallize. Something is still lacking in Whitehead's philosophy to make them come forth. Again, however, I do not on this account counsel the foresaking of Whitehead's basic philosophical principles. There is at least the seed of the hope that they can overcome their own deficiencies. Like many of the greatest thinkers, he has seen possibilities beyond the limitations of his own formulated or formulatable doctrine.
I have pushed the development of his ideas towards the exploration of general theory of value and its special fields, particularly ethics, as far as I find myself able to go at this time. If they still seem inadequate to make a complete conquest of this vast region, the fault is partly Whitehead's, but mostly it is mine. I hope, however, that I have shown that Whitehead has some stimulating suggestions to offer in this field, and that the kind of philosophy which be stands for is not restricted In its relevance in metaphysical and epistemological problems, but may hope, in the future at least, to make significant contributions to the study of the problems of value.
2 "There is a strong moral intuition that speculative understanding for its own sake is one of the ultimate elements in the good life (F of R. p. 30)."
3 The use of the word "intuition" proves very little anyway. It is used in a very different sense by Descartes and Kant, and Bergson, the arch foe of universals, uses it. Immediacy is about the only common aspect of meaning in its many uses.
4 Op. cit., pp. 611-12.
5 See above, ch. 1, sec. C, of this paper.
6 RM., p. 119.
7 AI., p. 80.
8 AI., p. 375.
9 AI., p. 375. 5ee above, ch. 8, 800, C (4) (a) of this paper.
10 MT., p. 19. Whitehead goes on to say that even the *Ten Commandments" should be construed with the aid of common-sense". "In other words, they are formulations of behavior which in ordinary circumstances, apart from very special reasons, it is better to adopt (MT., p. 20)."
11 AI., p. 377.
12 See above, ch. 6, sec. C, pp. XXX, of this paper.
13 MT., p. 19.
14 AI., ch. 2.
15 RM., p. 34.
16 MT., p. 151.
17 MT., p. 20. Whitehead says that even war and killing may sometimes be morally justified.
18 The Lebanese diplomat and devoted pupil of Whitehead, Charles Malik, in his memorial to Whitehead in the Jour. of Phil., vol. 45 (1948), pp. 572-582, seems to think of Whitehead as a moralist as much as as a metaphysician, and he expresses one of what he considers to be Whitehead's three fundamental moral principles as follows: “The third principle of morals is, if you are in danger of getting into a rut, seek the contrasting novelty which enriches. Professor Whitehead is the absolute sworn enemy of staleness. He believes in Adventure and freshness, in the endless experimental trying of new ways, always, however, with an eye to improvement and maximum harmony; repetition without significant novelty, namely staleness, is the exact definition of death; for death in the sense of absolute not-being does not exist (p. 579)."
19 "The middle-class pessimism over the future of the world comes from a confusion between civilization and security. In the immediate future there will be less security than in the immediate past, less stability. It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is Inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages (SMW., p. 299)."
20 "It is the first step in sociological wisdom to recognize that the manor advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - like unto an arrow in the hands of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows (SmB., p. 88)."
21 As in trying to determine what things are valuable in the world; see above, ch, 6, Sec. C (5), of this paper.
22 Perhaps the diversity of the influences operating on Whitehead helps account for this tension. On the one hand, there is the Bergsonian emphasis on the flux and the creative advance, and on the other there is the interest of the mathematician and scientist in pattern and order. Whitehead wants to make pattern and order serve the interest of process. He rightly rejects Bergson's anti-intellectualism. But still there is a static and obstructive character to order which always obtrudes.
23 AI., p. 376.
24 W.D. Ross, for example, thinks that there are two different kinds of value essences - the "good" and the "right". Others, such as J. Frankena and Professor C.I. Lewis hold a "naturalistic" theory of general value but think that moral values cannot thus be explained because of their peculiar quality of obligatoriness.
25 PR, p. 31.
26 See above, ch. 6, sec. C, p. XXX, of this paper.
27 AE., p. 23.
28 AI., p. 12. The context in which this statement occurs is, "The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence into prominence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty. The moral element is derivative from the other factors in experience. For otherwise there is no content for duty to operate upon. There can be no mere morality in a vacuum. Thus the primary factors in experience are first the animal passions such as love, sympathy, ferocity, together with analogous appetitions and satisfactions; and secondly, the more distinctively human experiences of beauty, and of intellectual fineness, consciously enjoyed." This passage by itself would, I imagine, be compatible with a theory that isolated moral obligation from general value, but I think that it is also compatible with the view I am here presenting. It does not by itself establish either theory.
29 PR., p. 22.
30 PR., p. 23.
31 AI., p. 58.
32 AI.. ch. 2.
33 AI.. pp. 152-53.
34 SMW., ch. 13.
35 AE., pp. 64-65. "Modern industrialization has been morally evil in its disdain for the aesthetic aspects of daily life, and the revolutionary reaction against these Industrialized societies suffers from the same moral deficiencies."
36 OT., pp. 3-4.
37 AI., p. 190.
38 AI., p. 65.
39 AE., p. 19.
40 Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (AbbottTranslation), London: Green & Co., 1937 p. 63.
41 Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (AbbottTranslation), London: Green & Co., 1937 p. 63.
42 See above, quotation on p. XX of this sub-section.
43 See above, p. X of this section.
44 See below, pp. XXX of this sub-section
45 SMW., p. 281.
46 SMW., p. 281 ff..
47 MT., p. 158.
48 On this point Emmet says, "So if, in Whitehead's language, the individual concrescence arises out of its prehension of the rest of the world, we can no longer hold to another old antithesis that between egoism and altruism. For it we think of ourselves as arising out of our relations with others, we finally come to think of our good as identical with theirs (Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism, p. 279)."
49 AI., pp. 375.
50 See below (b) of this sub-section.
51 AI., pp. 375-76.
52 SMW., p. 296.
53 SMW., p. 164.
54 See above, pp. XXX of this section
55 AI., p. 84.
56 As emphasized in the preface, p. vii.
57 ESP., pp. 52-53.
58 See below, p. XX of this sub-section.
59 ESP., pp. 53.
60 ESP., pp. 52.
61 "The basis of democracy is the common fact of value-experience, as constituting, the essential nature of each pulsation of actuality (MT., p. 151)."
62 PR., p. 339.
63 "in the case of those actualities whose immediate experience is most completely open to us, namely, human beings, the final decision of the immediate subject-superject, constituting the ultimate modification of subjective aim, is the foundation of our experience of responsibility, of approbation or of disapprobation, of self-approval or of self-reproach, of freedom of emphasis (PR., p. 74)."
64 See above, pp. XXX of this section.
65 See above, p. XX of this section.
66 AI., pp. 376-77
67 Though he rejects "substance" and doesn't seem to provide a very firm basis for a clear notion of immortality, Whitehead is not willing completely to give up the latter notion - see his lecture on "Immortality" (Schilpp, op. cit., pp. 882-700), and his consideration of the peculiar value of the individual human being even makes him try again to give some meaning to the former (see below, p. XX of this paper).
68 SmB., pp. 27-28.
69 See above, sec. B, pp. XXX of this paper.
70 See above, Pt. I, sec. C, pp. XXX, of this paper.
71 MT., p. 221.
72 See below, XXX of this sub-section.
73 MT., p. 222.
74 SmB., p. 64.
75 ESP, p. 52.
76 For example, see SMW., p. 279.
77 AI., pp. 337-38.
78 "How far this soul finds a support for its existence beyond body is: - another question. The everlasting nature of God, which in a sense is non-temporal and in another sense is temporal, may establish with the soul a peculiarly intense relationahip of mutual immanence. Thus in some important sense the existence of the soul may be freed from its complete dependence upon the bodily organization (AI., p. 267)."
Move to Chapter Eight.