METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR A THEORY OF VALUE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF A. N. WHITEHEAD   William Hendrichs Leue Abstract    The first word in my thesis is "Whitehead", and the last word is "justification." In between I try to present a justification for discussing Whitehead's views on value. This task is made difficult principally by the circumstance that Whitehead's philosophical writings do not contain a formal discussion of theory of value as such. In his later period - from the publication of Science and the Modern World on (which contains the writings of Whitehead with which I am primarily concerned) - his discussions ramify through most of the field of general philosophical interest. Though he is constantly and deeply concerned with "values" - almost all of his discussions center around metaphysical and cosmological problems, and so his apparent statements about aspects of values are often disguised metaphysical or cosmological statements, and even his genuine discussions of value problems are likely to be merely concrete illustrations or partial aspects of metaphysical discussions. One reason, however, why Whitehead still may have a significant contribution to make to the study of the problems of value is that many formal studies of theory of value, conceived as an independent, or at least autonomous, study have reached what - to me - looks like a dead-end. Even if the positivistic reduction of value terms to instances of the "emotive" and therefore non-cognitive use of language is not accepted, still many tendencies in modern theories of value reduce the general notion of this entity to something rather dead and uninteresting - either to entities peculiar to one or more of the natural sciences (especially biology or psychology), and therefore to modes of existence deliberately stripped of value; or to abstract essences, universal qualities or relations, which are, in themselves at least, even more "dead" and valueless. It is my contention that this common fate shared by most recent ventures in the theory of value is due to their sharing a common metaphysical presupposition either explicitly stated, or implicitly presupposed. This is the metaphysical assumption of the independence of axiology from ontology, or, if it is stated in less metaphysical terminology, the separation of value and fact. The significance of Whitehead's philosophy for the future discussion of the problems of value rest, I believe, on his rejection of this metaphysical assumption, and on his substitution for it of the assumption that value is very closely associated with concrete existence. The nature of this close association, and the consequences which it has for the solution of the problem of value I discuss in Part II of my paper. But these issues cannot be settled until the nature of the concrete existence with which value is closely associated is understood. This strictly metaphysical problem is taken up in Part I of my paper. (2) Unfortunately, familiarity with the notion of concrete existence in Whitehead's philosophy cannot be assumed, nor will a very brief exposition make it clear. There is a great deal of disagreement concerning the interpretation of Whitehead's fundamental metaphysical notions among his commentators; many of them claim that Whitehead's metaphysics is riddled with internal inconsistencies, and none of those whom I read, in my opinion at least, grasped the whole of Whitehead's central metaphysical notion. I therefore found myself committed to a somewhat lengthy analysis of several of Whitehead's metaphysical notions in order to establish the rather unorthodox interpretation which seemed to emerge from my reading of his works with the problems of value in mind. It is my contention that Whitehead's metaphysics centers around a notion of concrete existence as multiple and continual creative activity. To exist concretely is to be a creative act. There are two kinds of these creative acts: the one infinite but never completed creative act which is God, and the many finite and fleeting creative acts which Whitehead calls "actual occasions". My interest is primarily in the latter, but, since for Whitehead all creative acts operate in and are partial determinants of each other, I must also discuss the former in so far as it is a factor in the latter. In order to interpret actual occasions as creative acts, I need a criterion of creative activity. Since this term has seldom been used in a technical sense, I must turn to Whitehead himself in order to find such a criterion. Thus I am finding in his philosophy only what I have admittedly taken out of it. My justification for this procedure is that though the notion of creative activity is central to Whitehead, he is usually concerned, because of his preoccupation with the history of philosophy and scientific thought, with the analysis of only some of its aspects. I am merely reorienting his analyses to point up their center and consistent focus. I express my criterion of creative activity in twelve conditions, or, using the term in the rather loose sense in which Whitehead uses it, "categories". These are divided into two groups, reflecting a major division in the normal uses of the word "creative". In theological contexts, this word suggests the making of something out of nothing. So I try to show that Whitehead's occasions are creative in some similar sense, because they are ultimate realities, are "self-caused", and are the sources of the being of all other entities. The second sense of "creative" is drawn from the fine arts, where it designates a non-routine and free and spontaneous process generation. Whitehead's occasions are creative in this sense too. While all the analyses of process which have been made during the history of thought - such as temporal sequence itself, causal relationship, teleological relationship, and so on - are aspects of creative process, or are generated by it, the process itself, as it goes on inside each individual occasion, includes and transcends all of these analyses. In order to show that Whitehead's actual occasions formulate a concept of existence as creative activity, I follow Whitehead through some of each occasion into "prehensions" or "feelings" and into successive "phases" of feeling, during which each occasion moves from an initial phase of incorporating within itself real aspects of the entire actual universe, through supplemental phases in which the occasion synthesizes this vast multiplicity of material by drawing upon the resources of infinite possibility ("eternal objects") which the universe makes available to it through the mediation of the primordial nature of God, to a consummatory phase of "satisfaction" in which the occasion enjoys and actually is a unified version of the universe from a particular point of view. Finally, in the phase of "objective immortality" the occasion fulfills its claim to be a genuine creative process by making of itself not merely a moment of subjective and detached enjoyment but also a new "hard fact" which enters into the inner constitution of all subsequent creative acts and even adds to the fulfillment of God. The central chapter of Part I is concerned with the difficult issues involved in the role of "eternal objects" in Whitehead's philosophy. I attempt to show that Whitehead's appeal to these universal essences is not a return to "Platonism", that the limited metaphysical role which they play in his philosophy is not intended to conflict with the interpretation of concrete existence as creative activity in its own right, but rather is intended to make a philosophy of ceaseless flux intelligible; and, finally, that Whitehead's interpretation of actual forms and patterns - "real potentiality" as distinct from "pure potentiality" - shows that concrete existence is meant by him to fulfill one of the most fundamental of the conditions of creative activity - the generation by the existing entity of its own character and essence. (3) ..In Part II of my paper I attempt to show that it is with the notion of existence as creative activity that Whitehead closely associates value, and that while this association cannot be specified as "identity", it can be said that existence as creative activity is the "source" of value in general, and of the major distinctions among value. Failure to understand the metaphysical nature of the existence with which Whitehead closely associates value accounts, I believe, for the inadequacy of the interpretations which have usually been given of his views of value: interpretations which make him out to have a "psychological", a "formalistic", a "self-realizationalist", or an inconsistent view of the nature of value. I hold that Whitehead recognizes two closely interrelated kinds of value. The first is "relative value", which is based on the "feeling" of an entity as participating in a creative process. This notion of value makes everything valuable, for nothing can have any sort of being for Whitehead except in so far as it functions in a creative process (my reinterpretation of his "ontological principle"). But, also, this view of value is too extremely relativistic to be of much practical use because it calls for the independent assignment of values to everything by every passing moment of actuality. It needs supplementation by a notion of "absolute value". Whitehead's term for all aspects of absolute (in the sense of non-relative) value is "importance". Anything is important in so far as it enjoys or contributes to creative success. The principal criteria of creative success are increased "intensity" of experience and the achievement of more adequate "contrasts". These are concrete criteria. They cannot be completely formulated abstractly (though Whitehead has some very interesting comments on the "dimensions" of contrast), but we can recognize things which are important when they occur and can compare the importance of different things. The notion of importance involves a notion of the possibility of the achievement of genuine novelty and progress but it does not involve the postulation of an ideal perfection which serves as an absolute standard of importance, and towards the realization of which actual process moves. The concrete things which are most valuable absolutely - that is, most important - are those which both preserve the creative achievements of the past and achieve new creative advances of their own which are such as to promote further creative achievement in the future. On the basis of Whitehead's metaphysics and his general notions of value, it is possible to venture some comments on the more particular problems of value. In the first place, he is able to account for the reality of evil as well as good in the world. There is relative evil, which is pain and suffering; but there is also absolute evil, which is creative failure - the loss of past creative achievement without any compensatory achievement, or the failure to achieve something new when that achievement was possible. Secondly, Whitehead tries to distinguish between the major varieties of value experience - cognitive or "truth" value, ethical value, esthetic value, and religious value. He seems to do this mainly on the basis of the relative emphasis in the occasions involved in these experiences of different combinations of the "phases" of every creative act - the "conformal" and "supplemental" phases, and the phases called the "satisfaction" and "objective immortality". Finally, I attempt to focus Whitehead's view of values on a few of the basic problems of ethics - the degree of universality and obligatoriness that can be attributed to ethical principles, and the relation of the individual to the social good. Out of this discussion emerges a possible weakness in Whitehead's view on values, which is that he does not seem to provide an adequate basis for the enlightened ethical insistence on the peculiar dignity and sanctity of the human individual. The source of this weakness seems to be in the confusions involved in his treatment of the metaphysical notion of "substance". I suggest, however, that it may be possible to overcome this weakness within the general framework of his philosophy. On the basis of this discussion I conclude that Whitehead's general kind of philosophy may be able to make significant contributions to the study of the problems of value. It at least seems to favor a "valuable" notion of value, and it has some claim to superior universality, adequacy, and adaptability in the treatment of all of the phenomena associated with values. It displays certain weaknesses also, but its central notion, that of continuing creative activity in every moment of finite existence, is at least a very stimulating idea, and, I hope, may be also a significant philosophical concept.     Click here to move back to Table of Contents  Click here to move to Chapter One, the Introduction, part 1        Write me at maryskole@aol.com