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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Charles Hartshorne is usually regarded as the developer of the theological approach initiated by Alfred North Whitehead. Justification for this view is to be found not only in the central focus of Hartshorne's voluminous writings, but also in his own references to Whitehead's accomplishments. He notes that Whitehead did not regard himself as a theologian, but rather saw his task as that of attempting to reconcile the professedly neutral burgeoning fields of science and the wider ideals necessary to civilized human life. It is in the context of this pursuit that Whitehead makes his extremely suggestive, but tantalizingly vague, comments which provide a foundation for theological reconstruction. According to this approach, two dimensions, or natures, must be distinguished in God, a conceptual primordial nature which structures the possibilities for life and a concrete consequential nature which receives the actualities which result from the possibilities that are realized.
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page 574 note 4 It might be suggested that Hartshorne is pursuing metaphysics, whereas Whitehead's focus is on cosmology, but since Hartshorne's concern is to reinstate metaphysics in the wake of its elimination by positivism whereas Whitehead deals more directly with metaphysical issues as such, it is more accurate to see Hartshorne as representing an epistemological orientation and Whitehead a metaphysical one. For a statement of the former view see: Reves, Gene, ‘Whitehead and Hartshorne’, The Journal of Religion, 55 (1975), espec. p. 127.Google Scholar
page 574 note 5 Hartshorne, Charles, ‘Metaphysics for Positivists’, Philosophy of Science 2 (1935), 287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 575 note 1 Ibid. pp. 287–8.
page 575 note 2 Hartshorne, Charles, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (London: SCM Press, 1970), pp. 19, 85.Google Scholar Also, ‘John Hick on Logical and Ontological Necessity’, Religious Studies, 13 (1977), 156–7.Google Scholar
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page 576 note 3 Hartshorne, Charles, Anselm's Discovery (LaSalle: Open Court, 1965), pp. 3 ff.Google Scholar
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page 580 note 1 Thompson, Kenneth F. Jr, Whitehead's Philosophy of Religion (The Hague: Mouton, 1971) p. 176.Google Scholar
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page 580 note 3 Hartshorne, , ‘Whitehead and Contemporary Philosophy’, p. 26.Google Scholar
page 581 note 1 Ely, Stephen Lee, The Religious Availability of Whitehead's God (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1942).Google Scholar
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page 581 note 4 Hartshorne, Charles, ‘Whitehead's Idea of God’, in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Schilpp, M. Paul Arthur (Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern Univ., 1941), p. 541.Google Scholar
page 582 note 1 See Peters, , Hartshorne and Neoclassical Metaphysics, p. 9,Google Scholar where he claims that Hartshorne acquired his emphasis on actuality from Whitehead and his emphasis on possibility from Peirce.
page 582 note 2 Hartshorne, , ‘Whitehead's Idea of God’, p. 533.Google Scholar
page 582 note 3 Whitehead, , Religion in the Making, pp. 144–5.Google Scholar
page 582 note 4 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, pp. 28, 48, 64, 68.Google Scholar
page 583 note 1 Whitehead, , Science and the Modern World, p. 249.Google Scholar
page 583 note 2 Ibid. p. 250.
page 583 note 3 Ibid. p. 249.
page 583 note 4 Thompson, , Whitehead's Philosophy of Religion, p. 158.Google Scholar
page 583 note 5 Hartshorne, , ‘Whitehead's Idea of God’, p. 554.Google Scholar
page 583 note 6 Hartshorne, , ‘Metaphysics and the Modality of Existential Judgments’, p. 117.Google Scholar
page 584 note 1 Peters, , Hartshorne and Neoclassical Metaphysics, p. 18.Google Scholar
page 584 note 2 Hartshorne, , Reality as Social Process, p. 119.Google Scholar
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page 585 note 1 On the positivistic direction of Hartshorne's approach, see Johnson, Galen A., ‘Hartshorne and Necessary Existence’, Religious Studies, 13 (1977), p. 184,Google Scholar where the similarity between Hartshorne and the logical analysts (if not positivists) he opposes is emphasized; and Campbell, Richard, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm's PROSLOGION Argument on the Existence of God (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1976) pp. 107–8,Google Scholar where Hartshorne is identified as a ‘covert positivist’.
page 585 note 2 Hartshorne, Charles, Beyond Humanism (Chicago & New York: Willett, Clark & Co., 1937), p. 285.Google Scholar
page 586 note 1 Hartshorne, , Man's Vision of God (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1964), p. 239.Google Scholar
page 586 note 2 Johnson, A. H., Whitehead and his Philosophy (New York: University Press of America, 1983), p. 44.Google Scholar
page 586 note 3 Ibid.
page 586 note 4 Hartshorne, Charles and Reese, William L., Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953) p. 2.Google Scholar
page 586 note 5 Hartshorne, , Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, p. 99.Google Scholar
page 586 note 6 Ibid.
page 586 note 7 Ibid. p. 120.
page 587 note 1 Hartshorne, , Man's Vision of God, p. 109.Google Scholar
page 587 note 2 Ibid. p. III.
page 587 note 3 Hartshorne, , Philosophers Speak of God, p. 256Google Scholar; see also Man's Vision of God, p. 291.Google Scholar
page 587 note 4 Hartshorne, , Philosophers Speak of God, p. 24.Google Scholar
page 587 note 5 Ibid
page 587 note 6 Johnson, , Whitehead and His Philosophy, p. 121.Google Scholar
page 588 note 1 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, p. 228.Google Scholar
page 588 note 2 Ford, Lewis S., ‘Hartshorne's Encounter with Whitehead: Introductory Remarks’, in Two Process Philosophers, p. 4.Google Scholar
page 588 note 3 Hartshorne, , ‘The Dipolar Conception of Deity’, pp. 228–9.Google Scholar