>It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operates by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as tomorals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present. >"In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute 'wisdom.' The final summary can only be expressed in terms of a group ofantitheses, whose apparent self-contradictions depend on neglect of the diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast. >"It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. >"It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many. >"It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently. >"It is as true to say that the World isimmanentin God, as that God is immanent in the World. >"It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God. >"It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God... >"What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world... In this sense, God is the great companion – the fellow-sufferer who understands."
god is real and he desires to know more about the world
unfortunately he is stuck with us pinheads
Adam Morgan
is it really knowledge he is after? or the satisfaction of an infinite appetite for intensive contrasts?
Landon Robinson
hard to tell really. but if it's the latter that is quite frankly an idea i can get behind anyways, given that i often feel the same way
based god. i think i'm starting to like this guy
Christopher King
check out science and the modern world for more
Andrew Gonzalez
Whitehead is essentially just describing Spinozist pantheism.
James Harris
thx
Austin Morris
i concur. the whitehead + spinoza alliance will btfo all those unfortunately afflicted by having been born with scrotum-heads where the divine logos instead might instead dwell
this whole section is pretty fun and maybe it will clear up the uh oh of our contemporary champions of *science!* for science's sake or at least the implicit positivist dogmatists on this board and everywhere else
a brick is a route of occasions, an enduring pattern a brick thrown through a window is a society the glass on the street the passing of that society into immortal objectivity
Whitehead is absolutely based, but it's unfortunately that he saw it necessary to include a God in his philosophy. As he himself describes the concept "God" as we are familiar with isn't applicable: >In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed 'creativity'; and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also sequivalently termed 'The Absolute.' In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, 'eminent' reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinse, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate. An an atheist I interpret Whitehead's category of the ultimate as creativity as describing a much more complex notion, that creativity is inherent in all things, and that creativity doesn't require consciousness or intent. In a sense "everything is art" not as a dialectic between creator(s) and creation(s), but the omnipresent verb creating that is very much related to the arrow of time. The cosmos is a self-creating tapestry not as a creative unity relating the many to its own unity, but rather a creative multiplicity where all strands co-create each other. I see Whitehead's God as a placeholder for the categorical Other that one relates to, with this Other described not in a totalizing way involving determinism and destiny, but the mutual creation of partially indetermined becomings. As human beings we form relationships with literally everything around us, personifying them in a way using our agent-based reasoning, and this includes our relationship with our life as a process.
>Bruno's teachings combined the new science of his time with traditional Cabalistic mysticism. He believed in a universe of infinite space with infinite planets, and in a kind of dualistic pantheism, in which the divine is incarnate in every part but always in conflicting forms that both oppose and support each other. Whatever his link with occult secret societies, he influenced Hegel, Marx, theosophy, James Joyce, Timothy Leary, Discordianism, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich. - RAW
those are lovely thoughts, i don't think inconsistent with whitehead's conceptualization. and the image you've chosen is apt, i think; the heart or self (though not yet the soul) the locus of relations in a continuous growing together. an infinity of converging and diverging lines. whitehead draws from the deep well of western civilization, and christianity is one of its feeding aquifers. his language and imagery, by intention, possesses a quality of its source. the image of god is inescapable for someone with such an inheritance, even if it is transformed in his own vision, which is part poetic but also highly technical. in my current mood i favor a somewhat darker interpretation. i see an inchoate intelligence blindly groping after intensities, to feed its boundless appetite. there is nothing in these concepts to suggest a universe favorable to our own aims, beyond the mere fact of our having washed out of the ceaseless beating of its waves. a grunt of pain and a moan of pleasure can share the same pitch, and their echo will be received alike, not indifferent to the offering but certainly to its source.
