ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD – PART II
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
3d ago
“The desire for peace is the mark of all civilized men and women.” – Henry Kissinger, 1973 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. In the last four blogs we looked in some detail at ultimate reality as schematized by Alfred North Whitehead, the last major philosopher to formulate such a system. Whitehead is convinced that our primary experience of the world comports best with a metaphysical structure that conjoins modern scientific cosmology with a philosophy of organism and creativity. To this he adds a speculative element of divine wisdom and agency which transforms potentiality to actuality and envelop ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – A.N. WHITEHEAD – PART I (end)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
2w ago
CREATIVITY For Whitehead, creativity is the universal of universals, the ultimate metaphysical principle which underlies all things without exception, including God.19 His description of the categories, interdependency, nexūs, process, and the divine formulate the matrix which establishes the defining feature of reality, its dynamism or creativity. On the one hand there is a physical component of creation. At this level God is the principle actor, initiating a continuous process of potentiality becoming actuality, wherein elements are synthesized into new unities or “concrescences”. On the oth ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – A.N. WHITEHEAD – PART I (second continuation)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
3w ago
INTERDEPENDENCY/PROCESS Whitehead  asserts science and experience inform us that each event in the universe is a factor in every other event such that “all things ultimately inhere in each other”12 – there are no isolated events. The real world then is an interdependency of interrelated parts more descriptive of an organism than a machine. Moreover all occasions develop within the spatio-temporal continuum and are qualified in past, present, and future. New actual entities arise from prior occasions and eventually themselves perish, but not before being objectified by still later occasion ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – A.N. WHITEHEAD – PART I (continued)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
1M ago
‘CATEGOREAL’ SCHEME Whitehead believes that philosophy serves to explain the abstractions that we develop from our interaction with the concrete world. These abstractions originate from a framework of “generic notions inevitably presupposed in our reflective experience,”5 specifically actual entities, prehensions (cogitation or ideas), ‘nexūs’ (plural of nexus – involvement of actual entities with each other through prehension), and ontological principles.6 This intuitive base leads to his second major philosophical principle: we bring the abstract and the concrete together using a ‘categoreal ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – SCHOPENHAUER (final continuation)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
1M ago
In concluding Schopenhauer’s thoughts on relationship to his vision of ultimate reality as Will – the thing-in-itself for each thing including us, and for everything, i.e. Nature and the Universe – I will extract liberally from his own writings some tasty morsels for the reader’s intellectual palate, with the hope it may lead you to his very readable, even poetic prose. “Any willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering. The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire las ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – SCHOPENHAUER (continued)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
1M ago
Last time I discussed how ultimate reality for Schopenhauer is Will and also that the world is an Idea arising within the human mind. Schopenhauer is, for many, the greatest philosophical pessimist in history because on his account: the all-controlling Will is a purposeless, striving and yearning without rhyme or reason. It is insatiable or only briefly satiable, and is seemingly inescapable. Free will then can be reduced to a dubious freedom to suffer from an unquenchable will. Schopenhauer must have thought long and hard about this dilemma seeking an exit. For instance he considers and rejec ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – HEGEL (final continuation)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
3M ago
HISTORY For me the most intriguing part of Hegel’s philosophy of ultimate reality is his integration of human history with his first three components – Geist, Idea, and Nature – creating a then unprecedented intersection of philosophy and history. Briefly the logical power of Spirit or Mind – the Idea – enters and guides mortal men in historical events and learning. “All dialectical thought-paths lead to the Absolute Idea and to a knowledge of it which is itself.8 As such, the Begriffe, or universal notional shapes are evinced in the facts of history and the ways in which they align themselves ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – G.W.F. HEGEL (continued)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
3M ago
IDEA For Hegel the Idea is very tightly related to Geist, and I suspect some scholars might argue they are identical, but I understand the Idea as emanating from Geist as the abstract thought or logical power of the divine that enters and guides mortal beings. The Idea is absolute, and thus “remains untouched by the human passions which actualize it.”3 Idea includes the laws of logic coming from the divine mind constitute Reason. And the greatest principle of divine logic is that thoughts and events encounter counter-positions and events that resolve into new paradigms or situations wherein th ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE MEANINGUL LIFE – KANT – PART II (end)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
4M ago
CONCLUSION We have seen that for Kant, ultimate reality is the transcendental underpinning of the phenomenal world we live in. It has four foci which we can partially access – reason, the thing-in-itself, the divine, and good will. In the final analysis, these epitomize the wholly abstract and the absolutely concrete. On the one hand there is tremendous overlap of these facets and of our accessing them, and on the other hand they comprise extractions of a single realm which is just outside our grasp. Pure and practical reason and freely chosen moral conduct are the human activities vital to ou ..read more
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ULTIMATE REALITY AND THE THE MEANINGFUL LIFE – KANT – PART II (continued)
Philosophical Guidance
by Greg Ciliberti
4M ago
For Kant, the third noumenal contact point is God, not as an ontologically demonstrable being, but rather as the inferred ground of reason, being, and morality. Connection here begins when reason is used to apprehend three noumenal features of the divine: (1) the ‘holiness’ of God – who as ‘the Author of the world’ -displays absolute good will in the decision to create the world even while aware that one consequence is unavoidable phenomenal evil, (2) the ‘goodness’ of God – i.e. the divine process of creating engenders the optimal balance of good and evil within the phenomenal world, and (3 ..read more
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