Abstract
In this article I argue for the superiority of the neoclassical (or process) concept of God to the classical concept of God as static, especially as the former relates to the moral superiority of pacifism to just war theory. However, the two main proponents of neoclassical or process theism—Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne—failed to see the full ramifications of their improved concept of God in that they tended to stop short of pacifism by maintaining an uneasy alliance with the violence often associated with classical theism.
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Notes
It should be noted that Hartshorne’s wide use of male pronouns early in his career was altered later on. On Whitehead as the greatest twentieth-century philosopher, see Bruno Latour, ‘What Is Given in Experience?’ in Isabelle Stengers, Thinking with Whitehead, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. ix.
See her ‘War and Murder,’ in Moral Problems, 3rd ed., ed. James Rachels (New York: Harper and Row, 1979). This essay was originally published in 1961.
There are many formulations of Hartshorne’s dipolar theism. I have relied here on Man’s Vision Of God (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941), p. 348; also see his Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 1-25.
Beyond Humanism (Chicago: Willett, Clark, and Co., 1937), pp. 26—27.
Hartshorne’s attitude toward Hitler shows a consistency from this book in 1937 to Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1970), where Hitler was still on his mind, pp. 308, 320. We will see that in some of Hartshorne’s very late works his position regarding pacifism is somewhat softened, if not his position regarding Hitler.
Man’s Vision of God, pp. 166—173.
Sophist 249D.
‘A Philosophy of Democratic Defense,’ in Science, Philosophy, and Religion, ed. Lyman Bryson and Louis Finkelstein (New York: Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, 1942), pp. 130-172, especially pp. 159, 162.
The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 149, 154-155.
Man’s Vision of God, p. 171.
Ibid., p. 173. Also see p. 171, where Hartshorne quickly disposes of Gandhi as a ‘partisan.’ Presumably, Gandhi’s pacifism would be, for Hartshorne, contrary to theism. Also see The Logic of Perfection (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962), pp. 298-299.
Supra, notes 1, 5; also below, note 32.
A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum, 1962), p. 278. Although Taylor has had his critics, e.g., Hugh Trevor-Roper, I have not read anything to refute him on this particular point.
Man’s Vision of God, p. 167. Also see The Divine Relativity, p. 154, where Hartshorne indicates that he equates pacifism, passivity, and appeasement, when he says that at one point (the late 1930s?) ‘all the world was being passive to the Nazis.’ Perhaps so, but those who were passive were seldom pacifists or non-violent resisters. It should also be noted that, counterintuitively, the few examples of non-violent resistance to Hitler did work. See my Rawlsian Explorations in Religion and Applied Philosophy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), Chap. 2. Below regarding John Meynard Keynes, see The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920).
See, e.g., Charles Hartshorne and William Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, pp. 96—98, 103—106. Another author who perhaps implies that Hartshorne’s thoughts on God should lead to pacifism is Colin Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 45—46. But Gunton, unlike me, disagrees with many of Hartshorne’s thoughts on God. And Gunton believes in a God who is like a general over an army, which both Hartshorne and I would criticize. Also see my Divine Beauty: The Aesthetics of Charles Hartshorne (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004); A Platonic Philosophy of Religion: A Process Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005); and Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). In all three of these works I criticize the classical theistic concept of omnipotence, which is obviously related to monopolar classical theistic opposition to pacifism.
See Reality as Social Process (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953), pp. 213—219. Quincy Wright is one scholar who has noted the importance of Hartshorne’s thought in the effort to avoid the catastrophe of contemporary war, whether nuclear or otherwise. The new ‘religions’ of the twentieth century (e.g., communism, fascism) contradicted the great world religions, out of which pacific humanism developed. By contrast, he thinks, Hartshorne offered (especially in Beyond Humanism) a new religious view that reconciles at every turn: science and theology, naturalism and spiritual fulfillment, etc. See Wright’s A Study of War, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 370, 404-405.
See ‘The Ethics of Contributionism,’ in Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental Ethics, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), p. 105; Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 183—184, 220—221, 223, 225, 228—229, 240, 244, 261, 321, 335—336; and Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), pp. 24, 86, 110, 131—133.
Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, p. 336.
See Hartshorne’s Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 86—emphasis added.
See Hartshorne’s Creativity in American Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), p. 235; and Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 128, 187-188.
See Hartshorne’s autobiography, The Darkness and the Light (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 36-38, 51, 60, 79, 120, 345, 348.
Ibid., pp. 123-126, 152.
Ibid., pp. 346, 365.
Ibid., pp. 372, 400, 403. Also see William James, ‘The Moral Equivalent of War,’ in War and Morality, ed. Richard Wasserstrom (Los Angeles: Wadsworth, 1970); this essay was originally published in 1910. Finally, see my Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933), Chap. XX, ‘Peace,’ p. 285; also pp. 15-16, 81-86.
See an excellent article by Robert Kinast, ‘Non—violence in a Process Worldview,’ Philosophy Today 25 (Winter, 1981), pp. 279-285. I have relied heavily on Kinast in the development of this section of the article.
Adventures of Ideas, pp. 285, also 56, 69.
Process and Reality, corrected ed. (New York: Free Press, 1978 [1929]), p. 346.
Adventures of Ideas, p. 296—emphasis added. Regarding the remainder of this section, see Adventures of Ideas, pp. 81-86, 160-170; also see J.S. Bixler, ‘Whitehead’s Philosophy of Religion,’ in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. P.A. Schilpp (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1941), pp. 492, 498, 504-508; and John Cobb, A Christian Natural Theology, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 79-80, 144.
See Hartshorne’s Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, pp. 240, 321. Hartshorne seems to be relying on Whitehead’s ‘An Appeal to Sanity,’ Atlantic Monthly 163 (March, 1939), pp. 309-320. On Bertrand Russell, see his Portraits from Memory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), p. 93.
See especially Adventures of Ideas, p. 166; also see Whitehead’s Religion in the Making (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), p. 57.
See Adventures of Ideas, especially the chapters ‘The Human Soul,’ ‘From Force to Persuasion,’ and ‘The New Reformation.’
See Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954), p. 288. Some of my own work on pacifism includes Christian Pacifism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). John Howard Yoder comments favorably on this book in ‘How Many Ways Are There to Think about War?’ Journal of Law and Religion 11 (1994), pp. 93, 104. Once again, see my Rawlsian Explorations in Religion and Applied Philosophy, Chap. 2. I should also note that an earlier and preliminary treatment of the issues examined in the present article appeared as ‘Pacifism and Hartshorne’s Dipolar Theism,’ Encounter 48 (1987), pp. 337-350.
Also see Randall Auxier and Mark Davies, eds., Hartshorne and Brightman on God, Process, and Persons (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2001), pp. 121-131, 154. The correspondence between Hartshorne and Edgar Brightman largely took place between the eventful years of 1933 and 1944. Brightman is correct to notice that Hartshorne (like Whitehead) did not take into consideration adequately the long-term consequences of a ‘consistently pacifist approach.’ Instead, Hartshorne thought it necessary to ‘amputate’ Hitler and the Nazis. From Brightman’s point of view, this approach flies in the face of personalism and the belief that human persons are ends-in-themselves. It is significant that one of Brightman’s students, Martin Luther King, makes us aware of the positive practical results that are possible on a consistently pacifist approach to evil.
See John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), pp. 43, 243-244.
See Hartshorne’s The Divine Relativity, p. 142. In the paragraphs that follow, see Hartshorne’s ‘Whitehead’s Idea of God,’ in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. P.A. Schilpp (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1941), pp. 516, 524, 527-528, 553-555.
Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, p. 90.
See Whitehead’s ‘An Appeal to Sanity,’ p. 320.
Ibid., pp. 309-312.
Ibid., p. 317; also p. 313.
Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, pp. 149, 177-178, 274, 294. Also see Whitehead’s ‘Autobiographical Notes,’ in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. P.A. Schilpp (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1941), pp. 3, 9.
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, pp. 48, 73-75.
Ibid., pp. 93-96.
Ibid., pp. 126-127, 129, 155-156.
Ibid., pp. 123, 226-227, 287-288, 297. Also see ‘Autobiographical Notes,’ p. 13.
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, pp. 173, 181, 255, 270-271, 344, 366. Also see ‘Autobiographical Notes,’ p. 10.
Ibid., p. 282.
Ibid., pp. 174-176, 189, 198. Cf., Philip Friesen, The Old Testament Roots of Nonviolence (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010).
Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, pp. 236, 277, 306, 339. Also see Whitehead’s Modes of Thought (New York: Free Press, 1938), pp. 14-15, regarding homicide.
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Dombrowski, D.A. ‘The Process Concept of God and Pacifism’. SOPHIA 52, 483–501 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0322-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0322-4