Current Status

Not Enrolled

Price

$99.00

Get Started

Take this Course

Live Session Info

Dates: August 13 – September 17, 2025
Times: Wednesdays, 5:00 – 6:30 PM Pacific

Course Summary

This six-session course explores the dynamic intersection of Whitehead’s process philosophy and the arts. Each session focuses on a particular art form and its resonances with key Whiteheadian themes—creativity, relationality, feeling, and becoming.

Course Description

Process philosophers speak of life as unfolding through “occasions of experience”—distinct moments of becoming that carry feeling, memory, and creativity. In the creative and performing arts, we encounter these occasions in vivid and transformative ways that touch both mind and heart. The objects of art—music, poetry, dance, film, painting—are process philosophy in action. They draw us into lived moments that evoke, provoke, inspire, disturb, and awaken, offering insight into ourselves and the world around us.

In Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead highlighted the importance of the Romantic poets, arguing that science needs poetry to grasp the deeper truths of matter and human life—truths alive with vitality, spirit, beauty, and adventure. Art, for Whitehead, is not a luxury but a window into the depths of reality.

This six-session course explores the dynamic intersection of Whitehead’s process philosophy and the arts. Each session focuses on a particular art form and its resonances with key Whiteheadian themes—creativity, relationality, feeling, and becoming. Through guided reflection, discussion, and creative engagement, participants will explore how the arts can serve as both expression and embodiment of process thought. Co-taught by Jay McDaniel, a process philosopher, and Kathleen Wakefield, a poet and artist, the course offers an interdisciplinary journey into the ways that imagination, beauty, and connection shape both artistic practice and philosophical insight.

Course Outline

  • Session 1: Whitehead, Romantic Poetry, and Art
  • Session 2: Beauty
  • Session 3: Process Themes in Contemporary Poetry
  • Session 4: Whitehead and Music – Improvisational Jazz
  • Session 5: Whitehead and the Visual Arts
  • Session 6: Social Therapeutics, Performance Activism, and a Process Arts Collective

Course Content

To access the course content and session pages you must be enrolled and logged in. If you’re already enrolled, login by clicking on the link in the menu at the top of the page. If you’re not enrolled, you can sign up here.