An Analysis and Assessment

THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE CHARLES HARTSHORNE'S GLOBAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE: AN ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY DONALD WAYNE VINEY Norman, Oklahoma 1982 CHARLES HARTSHORNE'S GLOBAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE: AN ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT APPROVED BY M A jP^À: DISSERTATION COMMITTEE For Jenny ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe so much to so many. Professor Hartshorne has my undying gratitude for having agreed to be a member of ray committee. It is a rare privilege to be able to write on a philosopher of Hartshorne's stature. Rarer still is for that person to read and correct one's work. My debt to Dr. Robert Shahan is probably beyond r e payment. By inviting Dr. Hartshorne to serve on ray commit tee, he is directly responsible for offering me the oppor tunity of a life-time. My mother and father, Wayne and Noni Viney, also had their part in the making of this work. My father invited me to accompany him on an expense free trip to Harvard Univer sity in January 1982. There, 1 was able to read Hartshorne's dissertation. Without this opportunity the present work would have remained incomplete. The other members of my committee are also to be thanked. The bulk of this dissertation was written in the span of two months. Drs. Tom Boyd, Francis Kovach, Kenneth Merrill, and Stewart Umphrey are to be commended for staying IV abreast of this deluge of material. Special thanks are in order for Drs. Boyd and Kovach whose comments, more than once, saved me from ambiguity of statement or, in some cases, outright error. I will always be grateful to Drs. Gary Nowlin and Peter Hutcheson. Through long hours of conversation and lengthy correspondence with these friends, many of my ideas took shape. Finally there is my wife, Chris, whose constant faith in my potential was no small factor in the attainment of the goals I sought. KEY TO HARTSHORNE REFERENCES References to Hartshorne's books occur in brackets throughout the text. The source is cited by an abbrevia tion of the book title followed by the page number. OP An Outline and Defense of the Argument for the Unity ÔT Being in the Absolute or Divine Good, unpublished doctoral dissertation. Harvard 1923 BH Beyond Humanism: Essays in the Philosophy of Nature. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1975, originally published 1937 M\'~ G Man ' s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism. Chicago: Willett, Clark § Co., 1941 DR The Divine Relativity : A Social Conception of God. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948 RSP Reality as Social Process : Studies in Metaphysics and Religion. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1953 PSG Philosophers Speak of God. With William L. Reese. Chicago : University of Chicago, 1953 LP The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclas- sical Metaphysics. La Salle, II.: Open Court, 1962 AD Anselm's Discovery. La Salle, 11.: Open Court, 1965 NT A Natural Theology for Our Time. La Salle, II. : Open Court, 1967 CS Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. La Salle, II.: Open Court, 1970 WP Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1955-197 0. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1972 VI AW Aquinas to Whitehead : Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion. Milwaukee: Marquette University Pub., 1976 WV Whitehead's View of Reality. With Creighton Peden. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1981 There have been arguments to prove or disprove a purely ab solute being; and others which, if they proved anything, could only establish the existence or nonexistence of a purely relative and contingent God; but what is hard to find (until Schelling or later impossible) is an argument expli citly and clearly bearing on the question whether there is a God both absolute or necessary and (in another aspect) rela tive or contingent, that is, reflexively transcendenr. Such arguments are possible, and only when philosophers have con sidered them with something of the care they have bestowed upon arguments dealing with a less intelligible conception will it be time to say that the arguments for God's existence have been either validated or invalidated. The question we need to investigate concerns the existence of a being whose nature conforms to the formal structure of the idea: "sur passing self and all others." Charles Hartshorne (RSP, 124-125) TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................. iv KEY TO HARTSHORNE REFERENCES................................vi INTRODUCTION................................................... 1 Chapter I. THE IDEA OF A CUMULATIVE CASE.......................... 5 II. THE GLOBAL ARGUMENT: PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.......................................26 III. NEOCLASSICAL THEISM................................... 38 IV. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT............................ 66 V. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT............................ 87 VI. THE DESIGN ARGUMENT.................................. 119 VII. THE EPISTEMIC ARGUMENT............................. 147 VIII. THE MORAL ARGUMENT..................................167 IX. THE AESTHETIC ARGUMENT............................. 187 X. AN ASSESSMENT OF THE GLOBALAR G U M E N T .............2 04 HISTORICAL N O T E ............................................ 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................. 239 CHARLES HARTSHORNE'S GLOBAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE: AN ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT INTRODUCTION Charles Hartshorne has long been known for his lively defense of the ontological argument. What few realize, how ever, is that the ontological argument is not the only rea son, or even the most important reason, that Hartshorne is a theist. Hartshorne says. If 1 were asked, "Why do you believe in God?," 1 would not reply, "Because of the ontological argument." Rath er, 1 would say that it is because of a group of argu ments that mutually support one another so that their combined strength is not, as Kant would have it, like that of a chain which is as weak as its weakest link, but like that of a cable whose strength sums the strength of its several fibers.^ The nexus of arguments to which Hartshorne refers is called the global argument. Surprisingly, even some careful stu dents of Hartshorne's thought are ignorant of the important role the global argument plays in Hartshorne's theism. David Charles Hartshorne, Forward to The Ontological Argument of Charles Hartshorne by George L. Goodwin (Mis- soula, Montana: Scholar's Press, 1978), p. xi. Pailin, for example, criticizes Hartshorne's ontological argument on the grounds that it does not prove that the con cept of God is coherently conceivable.” This is a criticism Hartshorne, time and again, has acknowledged.^ Hartshorne never took the ontological argument to be a complete proof of theism. In the twelve years since Hartshorne first expli citly formalized the global argument, not one article, book, or dissertation has dealt with the argument in more than a cursory fashion.^ Hartshorne admits that he may be partially responsible for the neglect of his argument. The 1970 pre sentation of the global argument is sketchy and brief.^ Nevertheless, the present work (see especially Chapter II) proves that the global argument has been part of Hartshorne's philosophy ever since his days at Harvard in the 1920s. The misunderstanding of Hartshorne's position and the relative neglect of the global argument provide the raison d 'etre of this work. It is also my purpose to high- 2 David A. Pailin, "Some Comments on Hartshorne's Presentation of the Ontological Argument," Religious Studies, 4, 1 (1968), p. 114. ^Charles Hartshorne, "What the Ontological Proof Does Not Do," Review of Metaphysics, 17, 4 (June 1964), pp. 608- 609. ^The global argument was published in The Monist, 54, 2 (April 1970), pp. 159-180 and as Chapter XIV of CS. ^In a letter dated February 2, 1981 Hartshorne writes, "The account of the arguments in Creative Synth. [sic] is very brief and, I now think, is one reason it has had so little attention." light the fact that the global argument is a cumulative case. The case for God's existence is built on a series of interrelated arguments which support each other at their weakest points. Too many philosophers of religion labor u n der the assumption that theism stands or falls with the suc cess or failure of a single argument. The global argument is a much needed remedy for this prevalent misconception. Chapter I discusses the concept of a cumulative case and answers the few objections that have been raised against such an enterprise. Chapter II deals with the history and form of Hartshorne's cumulative case. Chapter III familiar izes the reader with Hartshorne's concept of God. Chapters IV through IX take up the elements of the global argument on an individual basis. Thus, there are discussions of the ontological argument, the design argument, the moral argu ment and so on. Chapter X attempts to show the interrela tions among the elements of the global argument and offers some critical observations of Hartshorne's position. According to Hartshorne, an entire metaphysical sys tem can be spun from a sufficiently clarified concept of God CCS 39). The global argument, therefore, could be under stood as a restatement of some of the major themes of Hartshorne's metaphysics. Understanding this, I often became dizzy contemplating the complexity of the task before me. To keep the work to a manageable length it was often neces sary to discuss problems with less thoroughness than they deserve. Nevertheless, it is hoped that this overview of the global argument can serve as a basis for a better under standing of Hartshorne's thought and as an impetus for fu ture dialogue. CHAPTER I THE IDEA OF A CUMULATIVE CASE Rational support for theism has traditionally taken the form of offering one or more of the standard proofs of God's existence. The proofs are usually presented as if each one must bear the full weight of the theistic conclu sion, much as the center post of a tent must support the entire weight of the canvass.

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