1284. According to Hartshorne

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Creativity According to Hartshorne, "The concept of creative becoming has a religious origin, for it is the generalization of the divine 'fiat' back of the world" (LP: 122). "Whitehead's 'category of the ultimate'-creativity-is merely theology become clear as to its own meaning.It is the only ultimate category that belongs in a theistic philosophy. Not 'being,' for that is an abstraction from becoming or creative freedom" ("Man's Fragmentariness": 27). "A theistic philosophy ... must make of creativity a 'transcendental/ the very essence of reality as self-surpassing process. This is precisely what Whitehead does in his 'category of the ultimate!!' (ANT: 26). Elsewhere Hartshorne points out that "just as in Thomism 'being' is not simply the same in God and in other things, so in [Whitehead's

Can Hartshorne's statements on this matter be sustained? The first seems sufficiently well-founded to require no further discussion. As for the second, one may test its validity by asking whether "creativity" could be used in the different senses in which "beingJ system 'becoming' or 'creativity,' rather than mere being, is the supreme but analogical unity" UR, 37: 72 f, 78). "[C]reativity-as-such is no more a God beyond God in [Whitehead's] system than being-as-such is in Thomism. The difference is mainly in the shift from mere being to process-as the ultimate analogical universal or form of forms" (WM: 41). (::;;::das Sein)" is used, for example, by Coreth, when he speaks of (1) its summative sense (::;;::being as the sum of all beings); (2) its principiative sense (=being as the principle of all beings=actus essendi); and (3) its horizon-like sense (=being as the horizon of all bein.gs: the a priori unity and totality as the condition of the possibility that-within this unity and totality-individual beings can be posited as being and known as being). It seems to me that, mutatis mutandis, "creativity" could be appropriately used in all three of these senses consistently with Whitehead's own intention in using it, regardless of whether or not he himself ever so used it.