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Fourteen FACT, VALUES, INDIVIDUALS, and OTHERS

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Fourteen FACT, VALUES, INDIVIDUALS, and OTHERS Fourteen FACT, VALUES, INDIVIDUALS, AND OTHERS: TOWARDS A METAPHYSICS OF VALUE Michael Halewood 1. Introduction In order to establish whether Whitehead’s later works, Adventures of Ideas and Modes of Thought, complete his metaphysics might seem to require, as a starting point, some kind of a summary of his bold cosmological vision as set out in Process and Reality. I intend to shirk this task and instead will come at the problem from an angle—the status and role of value within Whitehead’s philosophy. Various attempts (for example Belaief (1975), Shindler (1983), George (2004)) have been made to address this question and to explain Whitehead’s attempt to develop a metaphysics that moves beyond static con- ceptions of objects and facts. These works outline Whitehead’s refusal of the scientistic model of a universe composed simply of objects, and relations be- tween objects, and describe his challenge to that “tendency in modern West- ern philosophy to equate the ‘actual’ with the ‘factual’” (Shindler 1983, 117). Yet, these accounts of Whitehead’s re-introduction of value into the meta- physical scheme often seem to take for granted what is meant when he dep- loys the term “value.” They tend to assume that value has a readily unders- tandable meaning or that it refers to something; there is, supposedly, a specif- ic content to value. This chapter will contend that the radicality of Whitehead’s approach is that he does not assume that there is any such specific content to value and, instead, the task that he sets himself is to account for the general status and role of value within existence. In this sense it is precisely a metaphysics of value rather than a description of what values are. On this view, to reinvigo- rate the object (or objective) world with value is not simply a matter of re- integrating or re-imposing already existing values (peace, sustainability, gene- rosity, etc). The difficult task that Whitehead sets himself is, rather, to devel- op an account of the place of value in existence without either making value a solely human creation or readily assimilable to any pre-existing examples of value that humans might hold dear. This chapter will also argue against the temptation to conflate value with nature (or Nature) which is to be found in some commentaries. Whitehead’s 228 MICHAEL HALEWOOD philosophy deals with the philosophy of science and its limitations but his work is not a philosophy of nature; it is a description of existence. This is not to say that there is no value in nature but that any value in nature will be a specific example of the wider notion of the value of existence; nature is not the progenitor or privileged home of value. The value of nature has to be de- fined, not assumed. This chapter will demonstrate how Whitehead’s meta- physics involves a description of the essential role of potentiality in existence. In proposing such an approach, Whitehead does use the terms value and valu- ation at various points to express the integration of potentiality into actuality but he does so many fewer times and much more carefully than some of his commentators suggest. I also hope to show that Whitehead developed his thinking on value over time and that this is evident in the different emphases that are to be found in his texts. This is not to say that he changed his mind or that his texts are contradictory but it is clear that he brings different aspects of the character and role of value to the forefront on different occasions. For example, in Religion in the Making he attempts to situate value in relation to individuality. But such a relation, or such a description of such a relation, does not exhaust or completely delimit the scope of value within his meta- physics. Hence, in Adventures of Ideas, he re-approaches the status of value and seems to suggest that those actual values which seem to permeate the world do so as the outcome of the activity of the universe as opposed to being a prior or separate realm which generates such activity or against which it might be judged (as a Platonist might hold). In this way, I hope to point to the complexity but coherence in Whitehead’s account and for the need not to latch on to one aspect of his discussion of value but to respond to the wider conceptual demands that it makes on us and our thinking. To recap: rather than simply enabling us to re-assert our existing values and their content (be it in terms of generosity, selflessness, beauty, conserva- tion, sustainability), it would seem that Whitehead develops a metaphysics of value which accounts for its role within his philosophical framework but gives no indication of what such values are or how they might be ranked. Such decisions are for us to make and take responsibility for. The point is not to confuse value with virtue. 2. Whitehead and Value In Concept of Nature, Whitehead states that, “The values of nature are per- haps the key to the metaphysical synthesis of existence” (CN 5), which would seem to suggest that an account of such values will be central to that text. However, it should be noted that the next sentence is, “But such a synthesis is exactly what I am not attempting” (CN 5). Concept of Nature is not about the value of nature; it is about how to account for our perceptions of nature. It is not a philosophy of nature but a philosophy of that which is presented to hu-.
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