Replies

Hi Roni
Thank you for your inspiring post.
I like your reflection on how divine is related to justice.
I deeply feel how injustice on Earth orginated from how human has been organizing the society potitically, economically and culturally. This also means justice is very contextualized and specific. I wonder is there mention of the situatedness of justice in Christianity, or how are the justice in Christiannity related to the locality around the world.

i have been reading a bit of Deleuze’s Philosophy recently. I found his metaphor of plane could be a good reply to your message. However, it was too complicated for me to sumamrized here so i asked chatgpt for a bit of help. Hope this resonnates.
A plane in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy is a dynamic, open, and immanent field where life, thought, and matter interrelate. It’s a way to imagine reality as fluid, interconnected, and creative—not fixed or ruled by external truths.
1. Plane of Immanence
A conceptual space where all things exist and change together, without referring to any higher, external principle (like God, essence, or ideal forms).

Reality is self-organizing, with no need for an outside explanation.

It rejects dualisms (mind/body, subject/object) and transcendent foundations.

Example: Thought doesn’t mirror a higher truth—it arises within life and material processes themselves.

2. Plane of Consistency
A space where different forms (bodies, concepts, energies) can connect freely across boundaries.

Everything is flattened (no hierarchy), and multiplicities can interact.

It allows for assemblages, becomings, and creative flows.

thank you for your post Dennis.
While listening to the recorded video on Buddism, when Jay mentioned emptieness,i also thought of how sometimes language fails us. The first line of the Book of Chang says it all: Dao is such that if you ever could talk about it, you are missing the point.
I really like this sentence. It constantly reminds me there are so many other ways of being, ways of life that exceeds human understanding and langauge. It is also a constant reminder of how the way to the “ultimate truth” is an ever ending process having no destination which also denies the exsistence of the ultimate truth…

Hi CHristie，
Thanks for such a beautiful post. I resonated a lot with your title then clicked in and finding that even though you are “struggling”, you still remeber to stop to feel, breathe, and reflect.
My experiences for this session and last were more of an overwhelmingly struggle. Christianity is unfamiliar to be to start with. I could only get some points whitehead intended to make.At the same time, i am a bit disappointed at such an intellectual way in talking about experiences. I have had some experience of feeling the “holy presence”, the “being one part of a whole” kind of feeling. I would actually appreciate more embodied practices or artistic engagement where we could experience whiteheadian god instead of just reading it…
But i understand there are courses sepcifically talking about traditional wisdom and art in process philosophy. So, looking forward to more different ways of engagement…

Hi Leslie and all,
I am based in Helsinki now, due to a big time difference, I wont’ be able to make it to the live courses. But I will watch the recordings and interact here as much as I can.

Reflecting on this “religious trellis”, I think my experiences is quite different from those who shared since you all mention the name of certain “religion”. I don’t think I am close to or connected to any particular “religion”. But I do have some encounters with Buddhism growing up in China.
I grow up in a small village in the north of China, then went to Shanghai to study and live for some years.There were altars worshipping guanyin and god of fortune at home when I was a child. But those were related to some superstitious customs and an awe for “sacredness”. This can be seen in many families back at that time. Later in temples, I got the impression that people visit so they can have their wishes and desires satisfied, money, fame or other. However, one of the fundamentals of Buddhism is to be devoid of desires. So according to my understanding, these are not really “religious beliefs”, but just wishing for good things. Of course I also met real believers, but nothing special enough to change or inform my beliefs.
I then started to explore spirituality through nature. In hiking, I explored and experienced the wholeness and divine of nature. In interacting with nature in way of meditating, full immersion, active attentiveness, I experienced the interconnectedness of nature beings and I. I am also fascinated by rituals and ceremonies of indigenous cultures. Some of the experiences happened in Sacred mountains in Tibetan Buddhism, but I believe I expeirenced and was connected to a spirituality that wasn’t named and defined. Those experiences also leaded my way to process philosophy. I think I am still on the way of connecting to the spirituality I maybe could name in the future.

Hi Alexandre,
Thank you for the post.
I think you made a very interesting point as to what is objective beauty (if there is something like this) and what is subjective beauty.
I feel like what you mentioned in your post is more like the subjective beauty, or something like how individuals actualize different possibilities. In prehension, our past encounters and history guide us in deciding what is “beautiful”, thus it could be very different considering the culture and environment, as you mentioned.
However, I think what Whitehead mean by beauty is an objective beauty. Like goodness and truth.I like how Dr. Davis explained it. Even though there could be different definitions of beauty worldwide, and we will forever argue for what is more beautiful, we can find there is this general tendency of coherence and harmony in the beauties we are pursuing. That might demonstrate a core of an objective beauty exists. But at the same time, I am finding it difficult to understand this as well, but in another perspective. Are there some fundamental/eternal qualities of beauty, goodness and truth, if there are, is this then against the claim of constant change and becoming?

Hi all
Thank you for the interesting discussion.After watching the leactures and reading a bit, I am still a bit confused by the concept of consciousness. First, if experience is different from consciousness, when does expereience become consciouness?
Then according to the example and explaination give about consciousness, i felt that it is more like being aware of the present moment. I wonder are there difference between awareness, reflection and consciouness?

Hi Lukas
Thank you for such an inspiring post. I am also fanscinated by the concept of time in process philosophy. I haven’t familiarized myself with the deep time concept of Bergson and De Jardin(but will definitely check them out). Time in process philosophy to me is like the agential cut from Karen Barad saying how we understand only partial of things that we are entangled with. It seems that it has always been moments after moments where entities becoming, and every moment is bring about the previous(whatever this means when there is no time concept)moment and bring out the next one.This is happening all the (time). In this sense, we only experience time because our body and mind can’t be both here and there, past and future. At least my experience of time has always been like being in a prison even though you are aware consciously and unconsciously that entities emerge and become constantly without stop.

Hi Daryl and Christie.
Wow, a topic relates right on my recent reflections and concerns.
I was talking with a friend about human relationships with nonhumans and other species. There were moments we felt a bit at a loss when, if we take away the antropocentric understanding of ethics and more-than-human care, what then should our ethics and actions be in the ecological crisis? I have been reading some articles about more-than-human ethics of some post-humanistic theories. But they still get a bit confused since they tend to say things like “stay with the trouble” and reflect on the responseability. But still, I find it different to understand. I think Whitehead’s relational power has been helping me understand a bit more on how power doesn’t necessarily mean violence. The power concepts and actions of this industrial growth society have deprived my imagination of what power could look like.
I would definitely get a copy of this book as well! Thanks again for your sharing.

Hi Bob
Thank you very much for the detailed and patient answer. It does help me deconstruct the idea of freedom again.
Reading your answer, I also notice an assumption i might have that has been causing some trouble for my understanding. When you mentioned: Their life is the life of the community of cells. My instinct thought is “Don’t they have(deserve to have) their individual innate values and inviduality”. A second thought i realized how habitually i have been taking individual and community as a duality concept, and how i assume individual is “better” than communities in the perspective of freedom.
So thanks so much for your inspiring answer!

Hi Robert,
I like your question i lot and it has made me thinking.

I remember in “is experience all the way down” we talked a lot about the relationship with individuals and the whole:”The point here is that rocks and chairs and pens don’t have experience any more complex than that ofthe individual electrons or molecules that compose them.”
If we take this example, then our cells have consititute us who has consciousness and is that how god got it’s consciousness from us collectively(with other beings as well)?
The how about freedom? If god has given us the freedom, does it mean.Do we also provide possibilities(freedom) to our cells? How do we then guide them? like the way we are guided.
Or even, when talking about freedom, God is giving possibilities, but why at the same time guiding with his preferences? it’s a collaborated decision then, wouldn’t be a free decision.
I guess my question carries on with the one with natural god, if we all agree with the “god” in whatever name in Whiteheads philosophy, then what is the difference between an atheist and theist, apart from naming the being god. How is god different in an atheist eyes i wonder.

Hi Dennis and Randall,
Thank you for your discussion on relational power and grassroots activism.
I might as well take Dr. Moore’s course later.
I am originally from China and now live in Finland. I have started some grassroot level project 5 years ago, firstly about zero-waste lifestyle, now a reading club about post-antropocentric perspectives on human-nature relationship.
What i found in my work difficult is, it is not difficult to gather people share the same basic common ground(how earth is polluted and how the status quo should be changed). However, getting deeper into the discussion is difficult. Each individual is shaped by different histories, values, and relationships; it is difficult to hold people together to go somewhere deep together. My feelings are in the deepest layer of eveyone, we belive in the same truth, in the shallowest top layer we can also understand and emphasize with each other, however, the between layers are the habitual ways of thinking/maybe not justified believes that we have learnt in the industrial growth society. We have to unlearn the middle layers to connect to the core of each other. However, it has been extremely difficult to create spaces and time for that to happen. Without knowing it, maybe unilateral power is already on the go in the community…
Thanks for reading this stream of thoughts that I felt impulsive to write here. But looking forward to the future courses and more discussion..

Hi Dennis and Andrew
Thank you for your interesting post!
Dennis rasised a very good question about how to take the relational perspective into practice. This reminds me of the “response-ability” coined by Donna Haraway to replace responsibility. When we expect ourselves to take actions, we sometimes expect ourselves to bear the moral responsibility of “saving the earth,” which can easily be antropocentric. When Haraway brought up response-ability, she refers to cultivating an ability to properly respond to other non-human beings, taking human beings as a part of this relational web. I felt that it could fit in Whitehead’s relational power concept very well here.

Andrew also brought up an interesting program.
I am very curious with the concept of “energy” here in your post, do you mind explaining a bit what does “energy” mean in your program?

Relationality: All organisms and Earth systems, including the human psyche, are constantly exchanging energies and elements in relational contexts.

Thanks!

Hi Jay
Thank you for your reply!It does help me to understand the conceptual and material dimension of time.
My thoughts were kind of confined by only the very linear way of sensing and experiencing time. I think you put it in a very good way as to how time is not measured by clock but memory. The potentialities in the present stretching out to the future also fit more with my experience and interaction with time itself.
Thank you, for your detailed explanation! Very helpful to my current thinking process.

Something else in this article caught my attention.
The way virtues are mentioned in either the Buddhism or Aristotle quote in the reading of this week implies that it is our choice to do good or bad. They sound even like a moral lesson or instruction for future deeds, in a way even seem like “present to future causual efficacy”to me. ““we become just by doing just acts” thus it is good to do good.

What’s more, “So we are said to be what our desire is. As our desire is, so is our will.” Desires are not will. Some desires might even “bring evil”, yet no explanation was done in this article about desire.

Of course I understand that article was not to answer all questions of what is good or bad and how human are made.
But I do wanna share one sentence from Mr. S.N. Goenka’s vipassana teaching about suffering that has inspired me a lot: it’s all about our wantings, wanting pleasant things to continue, and wanting sufferings to stop.(not exact words)