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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 1964
An adequate theory of the self must provide for the fact of human agency. I would like to show that (1) we can put together a theory of human agency from Whitehead's later writings, but that (2) this theory is not satisfactory. This discussion will be, first, expository and then critical of Whitehead's position. An elaboration of Whitehead's theory has two moments. For Whitehead, all factors of the universe are finally derivative from the ultimately actual things, which he calls actual entities. The fact of agency is no exception. The establishment of such agency is the job of what I shall call Whitehead's microscopic theory. We are interested here, however, in the human being as agent. A person, according to Whitehead, is not an actual entity, but a society of actual entities. Whitehead's theory of human agency may be called the macroscopic theory. After an examination of these theories, I shall conclude by briefly criticizing them in two ways. First, for Whitehead there are no acts but only processes. Second, an adequate theory requires a doctrine of the persistence of the agent which Whitehead is unable to provide.
1 Throughout this paper, the page numbers and the sources of all quotations from and references to Whitehead's writings will be inserted in the body of the text in parentheses. The following abbreviations will be used:
PR Process and Reality. New York. 1929.
AI Adventures of Ideas. New York. 1933.
MT Modes of Thought. Cambridge. 1938.
IMM “Immortality,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, edited by P. A. Schilpp. 2d. Ed. New York. 1951.
FR The Function of Reason. Beacon Press. Boston. 1958.
2 This, of course, is what Whitehead means when he says, “Feeling is the agent which reduces the universe to its perspective for fact” (MT 13). Since, however, it is only with the development of the mental pole that the actual entity enters upon its autonomy of development, mental prehensions are factors of agency in a special sense. They are, in fact, the decisions themselves. ”Mentality is an agent of simplification” (AI 273). “Mentality is the urge towards some vacuous definiteness, to include it in matter-of-fact which is non-vacuous enjoyment. This urge is appetition. It is emotional purpose; it is agency” (FR 32).
3 Passages in AI appear to deny personal order to inorganic and certain organic objects. “But the lower forms of animal life, and all vegetation, seem to lack the dominance of any included personal society. A tree is a democracy” (AI 264). “Also each of these enduring objects, such as tables, animal bodies, and stars, is itself a subordinate universe including subordinate enduring objects. The only strictly personal society of which we have direct discriminative intuition is the society of our own personal experiences” (AI 265). However, in PR, Whitehead says that “an ordinary physical object, which has temporal endurance, is a society. In the ideally simple case, it has personal order and is an 'enduring object'” (PR 52). I suggest that Whitehead did not change his position in AI, but merely wished to emphasize (1) that only in higher animals, including man, is a personal society supported which dominates the larger organic society, and (2) that we direct!) experience only our own personal society. But he also continues to hold that (3) all macroscopic enduring objects are “corpuscular” conglomerates containing some simpler enduring objects with personal order, such as electrons, protons, etc.
4 Cf. my article, “Acts,” The Review of Metaphysics, September, 1960.