Process Thought
Online ISSN : 2434-6543
Print ISSN : 2185-3207
Volume 20
Displaying 1-10 of 10 articles from this issue
Table of Contents
SYMPOSIUM (2020 ): Ontology of Environment and Consciousness
Paper
  • Naoki Arimura
    2020 Volume 20 Pages 29-42
    Published: 2020
    Released on J-STAGE: November 20, 2021
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This study highlights the development of A. N. Whitehead’s metaphysics in 1924 1925 and its relationship with aesthetic value . First, based on the passage Science and Modern World , I characterize Whitehead’s philosophical challenge as a double attempt. The first is to construct metaphysics that can describe “the texture of realisation.” The second is to interweave “aesthetic value” into such a texture. I then read lecture notes con tained in Volume 1 of The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead and demonstrate how Whitehead tackled the aforementioned problem by considering his interpretations of other philosophers (i.e., Bacon, Aristotle, and Alex ander). Finally, I emphasize several characters according to his perspectives of metaphysics and aesthetics. According to Whitehead, concrete entities have to select certain elements and exclude opposite elements for the compositions to realize themselves. In addition, his discussion within this period suggests that this limitation of entities is also the basis for their aesthetic value.
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  • Makoto Ozaki
    2020 Volume 20 Pages 43-62
    Published: 2020
    Released on J-STAGE: November 20, 2021
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    There are two different Japanese translations of the phrase “time as perpetual perishing”: incessant perishing and eternal perishing. The perished past is never ascribed to sheer nothingness but rather remains as causally efficacious upon the superseding actualities. Arising is incessantly mediated by perishing, and thus time is continuously created by actual entities in supersession through the mediation of discontinuity of perishing. This is because to perish is to arise due to the efficient causality of the perished past qua objective immortality to produce a new present actuality in unity with the final causation of the subjective aim successively. Therefore, Whitehead identifies “perpetual perishing” as supersession, in that perishing, presupposed by the antecedent arising, entails succeeding arising in transition with the asymmetrical irreversibility of time towards the future. Hence, Hammerschmidt remarks that occasions are perpetually perishing, perpetually arising. Perpetual perishing implies perpetual arising as well. This meaning of perpetual perishing is examined with reference to the usages of the words in question through the various literature concerned.
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  • Yoko Hamasaki
    2020 Volume 20 Pages 63-79
    Published: 2020
    Released on J-STAGE: November 20, 2021
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the early stages when Whitehead was creating his philosophy on organicism, it was noted that aesthetic intuition was influenced by the natural understanding of English poetic literature. Sensation and feeling s are structured b y enjoyment of natural beauty, as importantelements of actual entity. In the later stages of his thinking, the concept of natural beauty was held to two concepts, one being God and the other being the tru th. T hrough this process, the concept of artistic beauty was created. Art is perfected by truthful beauty, and this is the characteristic that evolved through the way Whitehead viewed art. When you consider the relationship of natural beauty and artistic b eauty, the thoughts of Immanuel Kant are often referred to W hitehead considers there are three social roles of art that play a role in society. These three roles are, firstly, that art and literature stimulate imagination and lead to reformation of social consciousness. T he second role is that art has a curative function for the mind. The final role is that art plays a role in the further development of civilization. Whitehead explains that there are five components that civilizes society, “Truth”, “Beauty” Beauty”, “Adventure”, “Art”, “Beauty”, and “Peace”. He thinks that the result of art developing, the sense of peace is achieved by Youth and tragic Beauty as the Final Fact. In current times, in the current social system, we face the problem of trying to develop our own scope of enjoyment .
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  • Yasuto Murata
    2020 Volume 20 Pages 80-97
    Published: 2020
    Released on J-STAGE: November 20, 2021
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper aims to construe that which Whitehead’s cosmology describes as a playful universe, while he scarcely uses the word “play” (rare exceptions appear in the first chapter of Process and Reality (Whitehead, 1929a/1978, p. 5)). I discuss the idea of “play” in his cosmology as a function of the “imagination” of speculative reason that emerges from immediate experience. By virtue of imagination, which leaps beyond the determinations of our immediate experience to envisage unlimited possibilities, the world we experience instantly turns into a creative and meaningful world, where novel and unexperienced values are constantly realized and are perpetually perishing. The function of reason is to activate this creative leap of imagination in a coherent fash ion. Whitehead notes that the transboundary leap of imagination is an essential aspect of speculative philosophy. He also emphasizes that the “play” of free imagination is a method in speculative philosophy (Whitehead, 1929a/1978, p. 5). Imagination lies at t he heart of this “play.” The transboundary leap of imagination activates “play” and prompts it to transcend logical consistency to unrestricted freedom. He explores the concrete aspects of reality by means of the method of the playful imagination, which introduces us to a playful freedom from causal determinations and logical necessity. We can say that this actual world, including 81 ourselves, becomes meaningful by virtue of imagination, which ourselves, becomes meaningful by virtue of imagination, which retains the vividness of immediate experience, while retains the vividness of immediate experience, while transcenditranscending the eterminations of the stubborn facts of ng the determinations of the stubborn facts of concrete experience. Through such an imaginative leap, our concrete experience. Through such an imaginative leap, our actual world is revealed as being meaningful.actual world is revealed as being meaningful.
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