Conversations with Charles Hartshorne

Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne return to religion-online 47 Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (eds.) John B. Cobb, Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology, School of Theology at Claremont, California, and Avery Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate School. Franklin I. Gamwell. is Dean and Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Published by the University of Chicago Press . Chicago and London, 1984. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. (ENTIRE BOOK) These chapters present a criticsl discussion among eminent philosophers, theologians, and Hartshorne himself on Hartshorne’s method, his logic, his theism and his metaphysics. Both proponents and critics of this honored philosopher contribute essays to this volume, and Hartshorne writes extensive response to each writer. Preface Charles Hartshorne has become the most forceful and convincing interpreter of Whitehead, and to him belongs principal credit for shaping the influence of process philosophy upon contemporary philosophical theology. Introduction: How I Got That Way by Charles Hartshorne How philosophers think about religion may well depend largely on how they have encountered it in childhood and youth. Believing this, Hartshorne tells us a bit of the genealogy that makes up his genes and the background that provides the grounds of his theology. Chapter 1: Methodology in the Metaphysics of Charles Hartshorne by Eugene H. Peters For Charles Hartshorne, a metaphysical statement is a unique form of statement. It is to be distinguished from empirical (that is, factual) assertions, which if true at all are true contingently. Metaphysical statements, if true, are true not contingently but necessarily. Chapter 2: The Experience of God: Critical Reflections on Hartshorne’s Theory of Analogy by Schubert M. Ogden If we now understand religion and morality as forms of life and experience that are quite different http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showbook?item_id=2072 (1 of 3) [2/4/03 3:14:03 PM] Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne from that of science, the same can also be said of our understanding of philosophy and metaphysics. Chapter 3: On the Language of Theology Hartshorne and Quine by R. M. Martin Martin criticizes Hartshorne's methodology through a rigorous use of Symbolic Logic. He holds that Hartshorne does not develop an adequate concept of aesthetics in relation to metaphysics, and that his distinction between existence and actuality is hopelessly unclear. Hartshorne rebuts him point by point. Chapter 4: Hartshorne and Aquinas: A Via Media by William P. Alston The author disagrees in part with Hartshorne’s neoclassicism and his anti-Thomistic views. Hartshorne replies that becoming as sheer growth, increase without loss, is the concrete reality and the secret of both being and becoming. Chapter 5: Some Aspects of Hartshorne’s Treatment of Anselm by John E. Smith Does logic reflect the nature of reality, or is it a merely formal structure governing the use of language’? In short, are we to have no more than "logic without ontology’’? Smith believes that Hartshorne takes too lightly the view that logic marks out the domain of the "necessary," while the "real" coincides with the domain of fact. The problem with this juxtaposition is that the "real’’ and the necessary are mutually exclusive. Chapter 6: Nature, God, and Man by Paul Weiss The originality of Hartshorne’s discussions about the nature of God, and particularly his daring and novel defense of the ontological argument, have led some to overlook the fact that, as he himself says, his primary interest lies elsewhere. Weise indicates the way he believes Whitehead’s and Hartshorne’s views should be altered, and how they could be extended and filled out -- while maintaining their characteristic thrust and flavor. Chapter 7: Hartshorne and Peirce: Individuals and Continuity by Manley Thompson A brief exploration of Peirce’s use of continuity in his account of individual existence as well as a review of this account in the light of Professor Hartshorne’s criticisms. Chapter 8: Overcoming Reductionism by John B. Cobb, Jr. Hartshorne’s concern is more with the question of what anything must be to be at all, than with determining which entities in the universe have which characteristics. On the whole Cobb has http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showbook?item_id=2072 (2 of 3) [2/4/03 3:14:03 PM] Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne accepted and adopted Whitehead’s cosmology, though much in his thought is distinctively his own. Chapter 9: The Place of the Brain in an Ocean of Feelings by George Wolf Wolf looks at Hartshorne's philosophy from the perspective of a psychologist. He suggests tht we monitor spontaneous, complex events in individual atoms and transduce these events into a form that can readily be perceived. Suppose it turned out that people regularly sense something aesthetically or emotionally familiar in the atomic patterns but not in the control patterns. This would not by itself be convincing evidence that there is sentience present. But it would raise interesting questions for further inquiry. Viewed 420 times. http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showbook?item_id=2072 (3 of 3) [2/4/03 3:14:03 PM] Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne return to religion-online Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (eds.) John B. Cobb, Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology, School of Theology at Claremont, California, and Avery Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate School. Franklin I. Gamwell. is Dean and Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Published by the University of Chicago Press . Chicago and London, 1984. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. Preface Charles Hartshorne has become the most forceful and convincing interpreter of Whitehead, and to him belongs principal credit for shaping the influence of process philosophy upon contemporary philosophical theology. Text: After joining the faculty in philosophy at Harvard University in 1925, where he began editing the collected papers of C. S. Peirce, Charles Hartshorne also served as an assistant to Alfred North Whitehead. "I am becoming a Whiteheadian without ceasing to be a Peircean," he once said to Whitehead. Subsequently, Hartshorne became the most forceful and convincing interpreter of Whitehead, and to him belongs principal credit for shaping the influence of process philosophy upon contemporary philosophical theology. But Hartshorne pursued this course because he found in Whitehead’s thought the most systematic formulation of convictions at which he had previously arrived, in some cases with the help of Peirce. Accordingly, his intellectual adventure has been, above all, one of philosophical construction, appropriating Whitehead and Peirce especially for his own metaphysical statement. In the Preface to an early volume, Hartshorne wrote: ‘To the mountainous -- http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1894 (1 of 3) [2/4/03 3:14:13 PM] Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne I had almost said monstrous -- mass of writing devoted to ‘philosophical theology,’ what can there be to add? I answer simply, if without apparent modesty, there is exactitude, logical rigor." More than anyone else in this century, Charles Hartshorne has fulfilled this commission and, in doing so, has presented a comprehensive proposal which merits an assessment equally thorough and rigorous. This volume is designed to honor Hartshorne’s achievement by contributing to that assessment. Most of the essays included were originally presented at a conference on his thought held at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 1981. In 1928, Charles Hartshorne left Harvard to join the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago; in 1943, he was jointly appointed to the faculty of the Divinity School and thereby to the Federated Theological Faculty, which also served Chicago Theological Seminary, Disciples Divinity House, and Meadville Theological Seminary, and he held this joint appointment until leaving Chicago in 1955. Thus, the Department of Philosophy, the Divinity School, and these other theological institutions collaborated with the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, California, in sponsoring the 1981 conference, At an opening banquet, Hartshorne himself was the featured speaker, and his autobiographical remarks on that occasion, "How I Got That Way," are included as the initial presentation in this volume. The ordering of the essays that follow is not important to a reading of them. On the one hand, each is written as a more or less independent discussion with Hartshorne. On the other hand, precisely because coherence is, for Hartshorne, a criterion of adequate metaphysical formulation, a discussion of any one aspect of his thought implies comments upon his philosophy as a whole. For both reasons, then, one may without loss read in the volume as one prefers. Nonetheless, a broad pattern informs the organization. An opening essay on Hartshorne’s methodology is followed by eight others: the initial four focus in

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