Essential Relatedness
Nonexperiential process,
likewise enjoyment could be nonprocessive. → traditional theists have claimed
that the notion of God as immutable experience is not strictly
self-contradictory.
The notions that
the actualities are processes and that they consist of the enjoyment of
experience do support each other. The
same is true of the relation between the notions of process and essential relatedness.
Much of the
history of philosophy concerns the attempt to understand how substances which
are essentially unchanging can have relations.
The things that
endure are series of these occasions of experience. Electrons, molecules
and cells are examples of such enduring things. Like-wise the human soul, or stream of experience, is composed of a series of distinct occasions of experience.
In fact, it
begins as a multiplicity of relations,
and achieves its individuality through its reaction to and unification of these
relations. It is not first something in itself, which only secondarily enters
into relations with others. The relations are primary. → Whitehead’s technical terms for the relations are prehension and feeling. → the present
occasion prehends or feels the previous occasions. The present occasion is
nothing but its process of unifying the particular prehensions with which it
begins.
The idea that
the experiencing processes are momentary is the basic difference of Whitehead’s
philosophy from that of Leibniz. → monad
did not experience anything beyond themselves. The monads did not really enter
into each other’s experience. Each one was completely windowless with no opening for the outside world to enter. Essential
attributes define the identity of the substances. The rejection of openings to
outside influences was necessary to protect this identity.//how much clear
window?
Each of Whitehead’s occasions of experience
begins, as it were, as an open window
to the totality of the past, as it prehends all the previous occasions. → window close. The occasion of experience
forms itself by response to these influences. As soon as this process is completed, the
windows of the world are again open
Whiteheadian
process though gives primary to interdependence
as an ideal over independence
God
is not viewed as devoid of relations to the world, and in human existence
primary importance is given to one’s
relations with God and other humans. →Humans are understood as essentially
belonging to a community. Process thought supports the relational, communal
thrust of the Biblical view of God and humanity while extending this to include
the rest of the world.
Ethical independence as a
characteristic of ourselves as enduring persons is still appositive idea. That
is, it is good not be swayed form ethical principles by shifting circumstances.
Our concrete moments of experience are
richer to the extent that they include others and are thereby dependent upon
them. Our enjoyment emerges out of its inclusion of the enjoyments of our
predecessors. To the extent that we are open to these contributions, we will
enjoy existence more deeply, and will have more contribute to future
actualities.
Process thought
supports the relational, communal thrust of the Biblical view of God and
humanity while extending this to include the rest of the world.
Incarnation
The past
experiences are incorporated into the present experience. To prehend a past
experience is to include it. →
2 qualifications
1)
The past experience is not fully incorporated in
the present one. The inclusion is selective
and limited.
2)
The past present as having been an experience,
as an experience that was enjoyed.
Memory is the most immediate example of
the incarnation of the past in the present, and of the two qualifications.
Objective immortality → the past
experience is in the present experience objectively, not subjectively. It is
present as the object of the present subject’s experience, not subjectively in
the sense of still experiencing. The past is not nothing; it lives on. But it
lives on objectively, as objectified by and hence incarnated in the present. //모든 것이 기억될 수 있다.
Religious significance
of this doctrine
1)
Each occasion is a selective incarnation
of the whole past universe. Our activities will make a difference throughout
the future. Future occasions will necessarily prehend us. The doctrine of
influence as incarnation implies that we will be objectively immortal.
2)
Efficient
causation, which is the causation of one actuality upon another, is by
means of incarnation in the other.
We are members
of one another: Paul’s insight.
The notion that
the causation between two actualities involves the incarnation of the cause
into the effect also has obvious relevance to the question of how God
influences the world in general, and of how God was related to Jesus in
particular.
Creative self-determination
The processes of
enjoyment arise out of their feelings
or prehensions of other such process, and then contribute some of their
feelings to future occasions of experience.
Equally
essential is the notion that the processes of enjoyment are partially self-creative.
Precisely how it
incorporates the past feeling, precisely how it integrated the multiplicity of
feelings into a unified experience – this is not determined by the past. The
past does not dictate precisely how it will be immortalized. This is determined
by each present actuality. → for each actuality is partially self- creative; it finally creates
itself out of the material that is given to it.
After the
influences from the environment have given birth to it, the occasion of experience
takes control of its own existence, completing what others had started.
Final causation finishes what efficient
causation had begun. Final causation is the power of the end or purpose. The purpose of every occasion of experience is
enjoyment of an appropriate kind. The aim of the present occasion of experience
is first of all to create an enjoyable experience for itself out of the available materials.
This doctrine of
the partial self-determination of every actuality reconciles efficient and
final causation, real influence with real freedom.
Recognizing the
equal necessity of efficient causation
and self-determination, some have
suggested that we need to affirm the paradox
that we are totally determined and yet that we are free. Whitehead allows us to
conceive both freedom and efficient causation without contradiction.
This recognition
that we partially created by our
environment and partially self-created
is, when conjoined with the notion that we are essentially characterized by enjoyment, of religious significance
for the notion of liberation.
The most we can
do is seek to provide an optimum environment, which heightens the probability
that the enjoyment will be enhanced.
Environment VS.
self-created.
This is also
true of God→ the divine reality so relates itself to us as to heighten the
probability that enjoyment will be enhanced. But God does not compel us to
enjoy. The individual experience finally determines, within the limits made
possible by God and the world, what enjoyment it will realize.
The aim at
enjoyment is not derived from the past world, for it is unique to the new
occasion. The occasion chooses its own subjective aim.
The attractive possibility, the lure, in
relation to which its act of self-determination is made, is derived from God.
This lure is called the initial aim.
God is the divine Eros urging the world to new heights of enjoyment.
Creative self-expression
The doctrine
that every occasion of experience aims at
its own self-creation points to only one half of its creative aim. Equally essential is the occasion’s aim to pervade the environment i.e. to be creative of the future.
The vision
involved in this aim may be negligible – the aim may be only a blind urge to
perpetuate a particular form of enjoyment into the next fraction of a second. →
but however negligible, the aim to express oneself is universal. → like the aim
at self-creation, the aim at self-expression is final causation, but it is also the anticipation of oneself as
sharing in the creation of the future, and hence as an efficient cause.
An occasion of
experience in creating itself does not aim solely at its own private enjoyment;
it also aims to create itself in such a way as to make a definite contribution
to the enjoyment to others.
This doctrine has
several religious implications
1)
no actuality is concerned solely with itself.
2)
The fact that the concern for the future is a
variable means that it can be enlarged and strengthened. This is function of
morality, which is, therefore, important for the achievement of god’s purposes
in the world.
3)
In order to maximize the possibilities for the
enjoyment of actuality, the environment is not the only relevant factor. The
anticipated reception of the occasion’s expression of itself.
Novelty
The present
experience decides precisely how to incorporate the elements available to it. It
might be thought that this creative response merely involves a modified arrangement of elements already
realized in the past but this is not the whole truth. Novel elements, previously unactualized in the world, are also
incorporated.
These actualized
possibilities are contained in one of two basic ways. They can either be part
of the objective content of a feeling.
Or they can qualify the subjective form with which this content is felt, i.e., how it
is felt.
The possibilities
that were contained as their objective content can be actualized as its own
content; and the new occasion can feel this content with the same subjective
form. Furthermore, what was the how of feeling in a past occasion, the
subjective form, can be the what of a present feeling, the objective datum. →
this is already a type of novelty, that a possibility which previously showed
up in a subjective reaction is now in the objective content of an experience.
There is a more
radical kind of novelty. Possibilities that were never actualized in one’s past
can be actualized.
The
possibilities in an actuality arise by means of prehending other actualities.
However, the principle is in fact maintained. The possibilities that were
previously unactualized in the world are derived from the divine experience. One
aspect of God is a primordial envisagement of the pure possibilities. They are
envisaged with appetition that they be actualized in the world.
This means that the
divine reality is understood to be
the ground of novelty.
The God of
process thought is also the ground of order, but this is a changing and developing order, an order that must continually
incorporate novelty if it is not to become repressive of enjoyment. The
positive appraisal of novelty resulting from this vision pervades process
theology
God relatedness
What has been
said of the divine incarnation in
the world, the derivation from God of the initial
aim toward enjoyment, and God as the organ
of novelty, shows that our prehension of God is an essential part of all
experience.
God relatedness
is constitutive of every occasion of experience. → this does not restrict the freedom of the occasion. // freedom은 진리에 귀속되는 것이다.
If we could think
at all of a world apart God, it would be a world of repetition lapsing into
lesser and lesser forms of order according to the principle of entropy.
//entropy는 evil demon인가?
It is God who, by confronting the world with
unrealized opportunities, opens up a space for freedom and self-creativity.
Although this
divine power is persuasive rather that controlling, it is nevertheless finally
the most effective power in reality.
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