Gordon Lyn Watley
Thanks, Charles, for saying that so well.
Regarding the Fromm quote: “Men without Chests”, hollow men, is C. S. Lewis’s (still deeply cartesian) term for the representative 20th century person: “It may even be said that it is by this middle element [the chest] that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal” (The Abolition of Man [Touchstone Press, 1996/1944], p. 36).
It seems to me that there’s an enormous amount of cultural inertia attached to metaphysics/ontologies of substance that has to be overcome, & not only since the construction of the mechanistic model that accompanied the rise of scientific materialism; process (as opposed to substance) thinking has been a minority report in Western civilization ever since Heraclitus. Mechanistic (vacuous) materialism, with or without (cartesian) supernaturalism, is part of the air we breathe these days, even (especially) among people who have not & never would bother to read a page of any of the philosophers (& philosophers of science) who contributed to it, & that took centuries.
We’re looking at decades (at most, imo) to turn things around toward cultural interiorization of process-oriented perspectives encouraging more sustainable economics, prioritizing the (global) common good, reënchanting the world, &c, in the West, before the real trouble starts (as if it hasn’t already!). Thank goodness the resonance of process thought with Buddhist, Confucian, & Daoist thought has generated the interest it has in China. I admit I’m not so hopeful when it comes to shifting modes of thought on the ground in the US.
In the Star Trek Universe (to invoke science fiction again), it took a Third World War, successful development of the warp engine, first contact with an alien species, the invention of the replicator, & a couple of hundred years to turn things around toward political recognition of global interconnectedness, an economics of abundance (rather than scarcity), & a vision of human employment as enrichment of experience (rather than exploitation of resources). We have a long way to go, & it’ll likely get worse before it gets better. In whatever social setting we find ourselves, imo, we are called (among other things) to be missionaries for opening up the future to novel re-visions of (social as well as individual) human possibilities & responsibilities.
Ben, there’s an explicitly Whiteheadian edition of the Dao De Jing with Chinese text, English translation, extensive annotations, & a substantial introduction by Roger T. Ames & David L. Hall, Dao De Jing: “Making This Life Significant”: A Philosophical Translation (Ballantine Books, 2003). See also Ames’ & Henry Rosemont, Jr.’s similar edition of Confucius’ Analects (Ballantine, 1999). In addition (altho I haven’t read it myself yet), Hank Keeton, Yu Fu, & Susanna Mennicke, Dao De Jing: A Process Perspective (SeeTao Press, 2019) seems worth checking out.
Mesle writes: “Whitehead’s vision has tremendous ethical consequences. If we feel compassion for those who suffer, we must cast our net widely to reconsider who and what is worthy of our compassion. We can perceive the importance of treating other living things well for their own sakes, not just because they are useful to humans” (p.40). Is this a reasonable summary of Whitehead’s own thinking, or is Mesle unnecessarily anthropomorphizing Whitehead’s vision?
If we can perceive the importance of interacting with animals as themselves subjects of experience, shouldn’t we also be able perceive the importance of interacting with other human beings, not just because they are useful to us for our own ends (competitively, exploitatively), but as ends for themselves (subjects) & not simply as means? Given, e.g., Whitehead’s discussions of coercive vs. persuasive power (see Mesle, ch. 7), this doesn’t seem to me to be much of a deviation from Whitehead’s philosophy of organism at all, let alone something external to it.
Also, wherever I see the word “happiness” in these materials, I tend to think more in terms of “eudaemonia”, the satisfaction that comes with living life well. Using “creativity toward ends that help others and make a constructive contribution to the world” (McDaniel, p. 43) seems to me more than a little related to Whitehead’s understanding of the inter-relatedness of all things. I fail to see how considering the implications of Whitehead’s thought from the perspective(s) of human experience constitutes an external & inadequate “anthropomorphizing” of it.
One reassuring indication of the increasing resonance of process thought among American Christians is that Roger E. Olson, in his recent book Against Liberal Theology: Putting the Brakes on Progressive Christianity (Zondervan, 2022), has elevated panentheism to a significant feature of liberal Christianity in general (which Olson of course regards as not really Christian at all).
Thomas Jay Oord (among other open/relational theologians) has IMO done some groundbreaking work in “putting the hay down where the goats can get it”. Shifting general culture from a substance/mechanistic to a process/organic metaphysics has a long way to go, but I’m encouraged by the spread of process thought among folks who’ll probably never read a book on process philosophy, & also by the emphasis on process thinking exemplified in e.g., the Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy & Organization Studies, with separate chapters on process thought in the work of 34 philosophers & social theorists: from the obvious (James, Peirce, Whitehead) to the perhaps less than obvious: the authorship(s) of the Dao De Jing, Wittgenstein, Ricoeur, Deleuze, Foucault, &c., all with a view toward applying process thinking in leadership & management programs.
I appreciate your approach to the question of violence & harmony that was raised in the first session. It seems to me that the predator-prey dynamic is harmonious at least in the sense that each party receives some life-sustaining benefit from the relationship: predators benefit individually from the nourishment & prey benefit collectively from the culling (so they don’t overpopulate & endanger the ecosystem).
Mary Doria Russell, in her science fiction novels The Sparrow & Children of God, examines the question of symbiotic balance & justice/morality between a pair of self-conscious predator/prey species (with the virtual extinction of the predators as the outcome), as does more recently Star Trek: Discovery (season 2), between the Ba’ul & the Kelpians, who actually switch predator/prey roles before finally attaining what we would view as a more satisfying collaborative, cooperative dynamic; but with a possible plot hole: if the Ba’ul we’re eating the Kelpiens, what are they eating now instead? (One of the things I love about science fiction – or, as it used to be called, “speculative fiction” – is the contribution it makes to exploring not only scientific & technological but also philosophical, psychological, & social issues through narrative imagination.)
So what might look like a more harmonious or peaceful or just/moral solution to us could end up being worse (or less intellectually satisfying) than the otherwise problematic symbiosis. Hunters shooting deer or elk or ducks & bringing them home to eat: that’s just predator/prey behavior. Big game hunting for thrills & trophies (intensities of experience, to be sure), or the apparently inherent cruelty of industrial-scale animal slaughter: probably not so harmonious, or just, all things considered.