Description
Book SynopsisAlfred North Whitehead’s interpreters usually pay less attention to his later monographs and essays. Process and Reality is taken to be the definitive center of the Whiteheadian universe and the later works, thereby, appear to many only as applications or elaborations of themes already introduced earlier. Yet, is it also possible that the dominance of this perspective has obscured or even distorted further creative developments of Whitehead’s thought? This volume offers a sort of Copernican revolution in Whitehead interpretation, methodologically and conceptually inviting its contributors to observe Whitehead’s work from the perspective of his later works. The aim of this preferencing is meant not to invalidate earlier approaches to Whitehead’s thought nor is the inference that the later works are more authoritative. Yet, just as the first space-based images of our planet forever changed humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe, shifting the alleged center of, or even decentering of the view on, Whitehead’s “philosophy of organism” to the later works, we might discover previously obscured ideas or new vistas of thought relevant not only to our current philosophical landscape, but also to the pressing issues of our fragile and endangered world. This volume invites its contributors and readers to consider whether one thereby also moves beyond metaphysics?
Table of ContentsThe Contemporary Whitehead Studies Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Roland Faber and Brian G. Henning: Introduction: Whitehead’s Other Copernican Turn Complexities of System, Life, and Novelty Vincent Colapietro: Toward a Metaphysics of Expression Christoph Kann: Renewing Speculation: The Systematic Aim of Whitehead’s Philosophic Cosmology Dennis Soelch: Beyond Metaphysics?—A Historiographical Approach to Whitehead’s Speculative Philosophy Deena Lin: Citing the Paradox: Probing the Systematization of Whitehead as Philosopher Subject Clinton Combs: Before Metaphysics: Modes of Thought as a Prequel to Whitehead’s “Trilogy” Roland Faber: Immanence and Incompleteness: Whitehead’s Late Metaphysics Depths of Nature, Order, and Organicity Robert J. Valenza: The Organism of Forms in Later Whitehead Jeremy Dunham: Beyond Dogmatic Finality: Whitehead and the Laws of Nature Joachim Klose: Alfred North Whitehead’s Receptacle Helmut Maaßen: Contingency and Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Experience Regine Kather: The Web of Life and the Constitution of Human Identity: Rethinking Nature as the Main Issue of Whitehead’s Late Metaphysics Evocations of Value, Beauty, and Concern Brian G. Henning: Re-Centering Process Thought: Recovering Beauty in A. N. Whitehead’s Late Work Stascha Rohmer: The Self-Evidence of Civilization Michael Halewood: Fact, Values, Individuals, and Others: Towards a Metaphysics of Value Steven Shaviro: Self-enjoyment and Concern: On Whitehead and Levinas Jude Jones: Provocative Expression: Transitions In and From Metaphysics in Whitehead’s Later Work Isabella Palin: The Dream of Solomon Works Cited About the Authors Index
