Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne

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by  Cobb John B.

Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles
Hartshorne by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I.
Gamwell (eds.)
John B. Cobb, Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology, School of Theology at Claremont, California, and Avery
Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate School. Franklin I. Gamwell. is Dean and Associate Professor of
Ethics and Society at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Published by the University of Chicago
Press . Chicago and London, 1984. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
(ENTIRE BOOK) These chapters present a criticsl discussion among eminent philosophers,
theologians, and Hartshorne himself on Hartshorne’s method, his logic, his theism and his
metaphysics. Both proponents and critics of this honored philosopher contribute essays to this
volume, and Hartshorne writes extensive response to each writer.
Preface
Charles Hartshorne has become the most forceful and convincing interpreter of Whitehead, and to
him belongs principal credit for shaping the influence of process philosophy upon contemporary
philosophical theology.
Introduction: How I Got That Way by Charles Hartshorne
How philosophers think about religion may well depend largely on how they have encountered it
in childhood and youth. Believing this, Hartshorne tells us a bit of the genealogy that makes up
his genes and the background that provides the grounds of his theology.
Chapter 1: Methodology in the Metaphysics of Charles Hartshorne by
Eugene H. Peters
For Charles Hartshorne, a metaphysical statement is a unique form of statement. It is to be
distinguished from empirical (that is, factual) assertions, which if true at all are true contingently.
Metaphysical statements, if true, are true not contingently but necessarily.
Chapter 2: The Experience of God: Critical Reflections on
Hartshorne’s Theory of Analogy by Schubert M. Ogden
If we now understand religion and morality as forms of life and experience that are quite different
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
from that of science, the same can also be said of our understanding of philosophy and
metaphysics.
Chapter 3: On the Language of Theology Hartshorne and Quine by R.
M. Martin
Martin criticizes Hartshorne's methodology through a rigorous use of Symbolic Logic. He holds
that Hartshorne does not develop an adequate concept of aesthetics in relation to metaphysics,
and that his distinction between existence and actuality is hopelessly unclear. Hartshorne rebuts
him point by point.
Chapter 4: Hartshorne and Aquinas: A Via Media by William P.
Alston
The author disagrees in part with Hartshorne’s neoclassicism and his anti-Thomistic views.
Hartshorne replies that becoming as sheer growth, increase without loss, is the concrete reality
and the secret of both being and becoming.
Chapter 5: Some Aspects of Hartshorne’s Treatment of Anselm by
John E. Smith
Does logic reflect the nature of reality, or is it a merely formal structure governing the use of
language’? In short, are we to have no more than "logic without ontology’’? Smith believes that
Hartshorne takes too lightly the view that logic marks out the domain of the "necessary," while
the "real" coincides with the domain of fact. The problem with this juxtaposition is that the "real’’
and the necessary are mutually exclusive.
Chapter 6: Nature, God, and Man by Paul Weiss
The originality of Hartshorne’s discussions about the nature of God, and particularly his daring
and novel defense of the ontological argument, have led some to overlook the fact that, as he
himself says, his primary interest lies elsewhere. Weise indicates the way he believes
Whitehead’s and Hartshorne’s views should be altered, and how they could be extended and
filled out -- while maintaining their characteristic thrust and flavor.
Chapter 7: Hartshorne and Peirce: Individuals and Continuity by
Manley Thompson
A brief exploration of Peirce’s use of continuity in his account of individual existence as well as a
review of this account in the light of Professor Hartshorne’s criticisms.
Chapter 8: Overcoming Reductionism by John B. Cobb, Jr.
Hartshorne’s concern is more with the question of what anything must be to be at all, than with
determining which entities in the universe have which characteristics. On the whole Cobb has
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
accepted and adopted Whitehead’s cosmology, though much in his thought is distinctively his
own.
Chapter 9: The Place of the Brain in an Ocean of Feelings by George
Wolf
Wolf looks at Hartshorne's philosophy from the perspective of a psychologist. He suggests tht we
monitor spontaneous, complex events in individual atoms and transduce these events into a form
that can readily be perceived. Suppose it turned out that people regularly sense something
aesthetically or emotionally familiar in the atomic patterns but not in the control patterns. This
would not by itself be convincing evidence that there is sentience present. But it would raise
interesting questions for further inquiry.
Viewed 420 times.
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations
with Charles Hartshorne by John B.
Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell
(eds.)
John B. Cobb, Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology, School of Theology at
Claremont, California, and Avery Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate
School. Franklin I. Gamwell. is Dean and Associate Professor of Ethics and Society
at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Published by the University of
Chicago Press . Chicago and London, 1984. This material was prepared for Religion
Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
Preface
Charles Hartshorne has become the most forceful and convincing
interpreter of Whitehead, and to him belongs principal credit for shaping
the influence of process philosophy upon contemporary philosophical
theology.
Text:
After joining the faculty in philosophy at Harvard University in 1925,
where he began editing the collected papers of C. S. Peirce, Charles
Hartshorne also served as an assistant to Alfred North Whitehead. "I am
becoming a Whiteheadian without ceasing to be a Peircean," he once
said to Whitehead. Subsequently, Hartshorne became the most forceful
and convincing interpreter of Whitehead, and to him belongs principal
credit for shaping the influence of process philosophy upon
contemporary philosophical theology. But Hartshorne pursued this
course because he found in Whitehead’s thought the most systematic
formulation of convictions at which he had previously arrived, in some
cases with the help of Peirce. Accordingly, his intellectual adventure has
been, above all, one of philosophical construction, appropriating
Whitehead and Peirce especially for his own metaphysical statement. In
the Preface to an early volume, Hartshorne wrote: ‘To the mountainous --
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
I had almost said monstrous -- mass of writing devoted to ‘philosophical
theology,’ what can there be to add? I answer simply, if without
apparent modesty, there is exactitude, logical rigor." More than anyone
else in this century, Charles Hartshorne has fulfilled this commission
and, in doing so, has presented a comprehensive proposal which merits
an assessment equally thorough and rigorous.
This volume is designed to honor Hartshorne’s achievement by
contributing to that assessment. Most of the essays included were
originally presented at a conference on his thought held at the Divinity
School of the University of Chicago in 1981. In 1928, Charles
Hartshorne left Harvard to join the faculty of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Chicago; in 1943, he was jointly

appointed to the faculty of the Divinity School and thereby to the
Federated Theological Faculty, which also served Chicago Theological
Seminary, Disciples Divinity House, and Meadville Theological
Seminary, and he held this joint appointment until leaving Chicago in
1955. Thus, the Department of Philosophy, the Divinity School, and
these other theological institutions collaborated with the Center for
Process Studies, Claremont, California, in sponsoring the 1981
conference, At an opening banquet, Hartshorne himself was the featured
speaker, and his autobiographical remarks on that occasion, "How I Got
That Way," are included as the initial presentation in this volume.
The ordering of the essays that follow is not important to a reading of
them. On the one hand, each is written as a more or less independent
discussion with Hartshorne. On the other hand, precisely because
coherence is, for Hartshorne, a criterion of adequate metaphysical
formulation, a discussion of any one aspect of his thought implies
comments upon his philosophy as a whole. For both reasons, then, one
may without loss read in the volume as one prefers. Nonetheless, a
broad pattern informs the organization. An opening essay on
Hartshorne’s methodology is followed by eight others: the initial four
focus in one fashion or another on Hartshorne’s discussion of theism
and the latter four attend to other aspects and implications of his
thought. In this way, the volume is designed to affirm Hartshorne’s
contributions to the wider metaphysical enterprise even while it
recognizes his chief interest, philosophical theology.
At the conference in his honor, Hartshorne responded to each paper.
These replies, together with similar replies to those papers not read at
the conference itself, are also included herein, the reply to each essay
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
directly following it. As a consequence, these pages display Hartshorne
reflecting at considerable length upon his own proposal in light of
interpretations and criticisms offered. It is for this reason that the
volume is subtitled "Conversations with Charles Hartshorne." The
volume’s title was suggested by a comment included in Hartshorne’s
response to the essay by R. M. Martin. Perhaps no other single claim
better summarizes the constructive metaphysics which Hartshorne has
advanced than his distinction between existence and actuality, upon
which rests, among other things, his formulation and defense of
neoclassical theism. "I rather hope," Hartshorne comments, "to be
remembered for this distinction." The future of philosophy will be its
own judge of Hartshorne’s most original contributions. But his
colleagues and students who have written here are persuaded that he
belongs to that small class of philosophers who merit enduring attention
and appreciation within the philosophic adventure. It is, therefore, our
privilege to recommend him to his successors. In doing so, we also
intend to express our profound gratitude and respect to Charles
Hartshorne.
We also gratefully remember two of the participants in these
conversations, Eugene H. Peters and George Wolf, who died in 1983.
John B. Cobb, Jr.
Franklin I. Gamwell
0
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
return to religion-online
Existence and Actuality: Conversations
with Charles Hartshorne by John B.
Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell
(eds.)
John B. Cobb, Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology, School of Theology at
Claremont, California, and Avery Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate
School. Franklin I. Gamwell. is Dean and Associate Professor of Ethics and Society
at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Published by the University of
Chicago Press . Chicago and London, 1984. This material was prepared for Religion
Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
Introduction: How I Got That Way by
Charles Hartshorne
What causes an individual’s choice of a philosophy? If to cause means
to strictly determine, my philosophy holds that nothing causes such a
choice. There are no literally sufficient conditions in the past for our
present ways of thinking, or even for the precise happenings in
inanimate nature. However, there are necessary conditions without
which the thinkings or the happenings would have been impossible.
There are also probabilities, weighted possibilities, or what Popper calls
propensities. How a philosopher thinks is partly explained by biological
inheritance and environmental influence from conception on.
What then made it possible, perhaps probable, that the oldest of five
sons of Francis Cope Hartshorne (called Frank by his wife) would
develop something like my kind of metaphysics? At least three features
of that metaphysics, which I call neoclassical, need explaining. It is, in
an obvious sense, religious; it at least tries to be clear and rational; it is
both respectful of tradition and yet iconoclastic. My first suggestion is
that these three traits were also in my parents. Frank Hartshorne was a
sincerely pious Episcopal minister, son of an Episcopal mother and a
Quaker father. My father did not merely proclaim his piety, he lived by
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
it. Moreover, it was an attractive form of piety. He saw Christianity as a
religion of love and took seriously the two sayings that God is love and
that love for God and fellow creatures sums up Christian (and Judaic)
ethics. He was essentially affectionate, gentle, and fair in his treatment
of others. He had compassion for poor and underprivileged persons.
Himself the son of a rich man, he disagreed strongly with the richest
man in his church, who expected employees in his iron mill to work a
twelve-hour day.
My mother, Marguerite Haughton Hartshorne, was the daughter of a
pious and scholarly Episcopal minister whom I recall as a gentle and
sweet grandfather. One of Mother’s brothers was also an earnest
clergyman of the same religion. There was a touch of saintliness in
Mother. If she ever acted notably selfishly toward anyone, it escaped my
notice. Her piety, even more than Father’s, was attractive. If she hated
or envied anyone, that too escaped my notice. The biblical phrase, "in
whom was no guile," applied to her well. Once, mostly by the fault of
another, she got on a train without her ticket or money. No great deal!
Anyone could see that Mother was honest, as well as a lady in the
complete, old-fashioned sense, who had a secure place in the world.
Mother did not do the cooking for the family, but she kept busy doing
useful things. So did Father. I was once told by someone in a position to
know, ‘You haven’t a lazy bone in your body." This was true of my
parents.
How philosophers think about religion may well depend largely on how
they have encountered it in childhood and youth. A genuine religion of
love has its appeal. This is especially true if the love includes an aspect
of what Spinoza called intellectual love and the poet Shelley called love
for intellectual beauty. Frank Hartshorne had a very vigorous mind; he
had earned two higher degrees, one in divinity and one in civil law, and
was given an honorary degree in canon law. He published or spoke in
public, respectably I believe, on all three subjects. He had studied
natural science and accepted the evolutionary view in biology. He was
far from being a biblical literalist. In intellectual development his wife
was not his equal, and this was something of a trouble to both of them,
though they made the best of it and had a fairly good life together.
Mother had deep insights into people. Both my parents were habitually
cheerful and, especially Mother, had vivid appreciation for the
humorous side of things. She loved the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Father loved classical music and poetry, especially Tennyson and
Matthew Arnold.
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
You are not to think that these were inhumanly perfect individuals. In
the phrase of Wordsworth for his wife, they were "not too good/for
human nature’s daily food." In my youth I saw faults enough in both
parents, and the full measure of their stature has become clear to me
only with my own maturing.
In the broad sense of rationality, Mother was perhaps slightly superior to
Father. Her view of things could be counted on for sanity, especially her
view of personal relations. Three examples. Once, when I was fussing
about a girl whom I knew I did not love and did not want to marry, but
who had charm and who had somehow offended my pride, Mother
heard my story and simply said, "Charles, life is big." No more needed
to be said. I had been making a mountain out of a molehill. Once when a
parishioner undertook to explain to Mother that she should refer to her
black laundress not as Mrs. Smith but simply as Lizzy, Mother said, "I
am accustomed to calling her Mrs. Smith. I think I will continue to call
her Mrs. Smith." Subject closed. Third example. My youngest brother,
Alfred, brought home for us all to look over the first girl who had
interested him. We all thought she was hopeless. She seemed extremely
frail, for one thing, as though starved from infancy, and not especially
well educated. Mother did not argue with Alfred. As she told me later,
she simply said, "Alfred, marriage is a very serious matter. It is not
enough to love a girl, you must know that you can continue to love her
for years after you are married to her. It is not fair to the girl otherwise."
No one in the family was unkind to the girl, certainly not Mother.
Brother Henry did say to me, "If you’re going to marry into the
proletariat, at least you ought to get health." Henry was the one of us
with a slight touch of cynicism, and the only one who did not survive
his twenties.
Father’s sermons were not especially eloquent. They were reasoned
affairs, rather like an honest lawyer’s brief. He definitely intended to be
rational. He also had the combination you may have noticed in me of
respect for tradition but also willingness to smash idols. Biblical
literalism, the Bible as the absolute word of God, he thought rather
ridiculous. Father also believed, though I was not aware of this when I
was thinking out the question myself, that medieval theology, as set
forth in scholasticism, was the deduction of absurd consequences from
alleged axioms. Father held that the absurdity of the conclusions should
have been taken as reason for giving up one or more of the axioms. I
have a letter from him about this, written after he had read my book
Man’s Vision of God. The letter showed that my rejection of classical
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Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne
theism was something like an elaborated repetition of what Father went
through fifty or sixty years earlier.
In thinking about my parents I am struck by the fact that they did not
talk in clichés. Mother’s "Life is big" is not a hackneyed use of the word
"big." Indeed I have never otherwise encountered it. Mother liked to say
of someone she had known for a long time, "So and so has developed."
This was high praise. In her diary she wrote, "Charles is a merry child."
"Henry is such a comical baby." There was an aunt who, alone among
the many relatives, had a reputation for selfishness, and who had kept a
grown-up son as handy-man around the house but was finally persuaded
by another aunt to let the son go to Labrador to take part in a
philanthropic project there. Then she had sent a telegram to the
persuading aunt, "James has gone to Labrador as you wished. Hell
here." "And of course,’’ said my mother, "She was the hell." Father’s
speech was similarly unhackneyed. Once when the family was packing
up to go home from summer vacation Father found me reading a book
with my unpacked things all around. "You’re a model of inefficiency"
was his summary of the situation. What neater way could there have
been to make instantly clear to me that my role must be to turn myself
right away into a model of efficiency? It comes to this: I and my five
siblings had parents who used language creatively, as well as
grammatically. When to his observation that, though he liked the main
thrust of my Man’s Vision of God he failed to find in it any discussion
of sin, I replied "I have a paragraph on sin," his comment was a simple,
"A paragraph!"
My parents talked and wrote (Mother in letters and a diary) well and to
the point. They also told us no lies. Not much about sex, but no wrong
things.
In our family of eight, plus a cook and a so-called (and well-called)
mother’s helper, quarrels were almost unknown and, as brother Richard
recently put it, none lasted overnight. I have sometimes been said to like
everyone. This would be even more true of my mother. And Father was
not a man to quarrel much, though with one relative who irritated him
he did have something of a quarrel. Although I argued with both
parents, Mother complaining of this, I do not recall accusing them of
unkindness in their treatment of me. Once when, as an adult, I defended
myself mildly in answer to Father’s letter objecting to my behavior in
delaying repayment of a loan from him, no date of repayment having
been specified, he replied, referring to his letter, "It was a fault of long-
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