1288. When Whitehead

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When Whitehead says that "'Creativity' ... is the pure notion of the activity conditioned by the objective immortality of the actual world/' it is significant that he says that "creativity" is the"notion" of an activity, not that it is the "activity" itself. In the same paragraph, he goes on to say that "Creativity ... is that ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of actuality," or, in other words, "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact" (P/\.c: 31, 21). 

This means that the "activity" of which "creativity" is the "notion" is the activity, first, of each actual entity's self-causation (P Rc: 222: "The creativity is not an external agency with its own ulterior purposes. All actual entities share with God this characteristic of self-causation." Cf. AI: 303: "[T]he word Creativity expresses the notion [sic] that each event is a process issuing in novelty."); and then, second, of each actual entity's conditioning the selfcausation of its successors (PI\.c: 87: "[A]n actual entity has ... the superjective character, which is the pragmatic value of its specific satisfaction qualifying the transcendent creativity." Cf. A I: 230: "The initial situation [se. out of which an occasion of experience arises] includes a factor of activity which is the reason for the origin of that occasion of experience. This factor of activity is what I have called 'Creativity.'... This basic situation, this actual world, this primary phase, this real potentiality-however you characterize it-as a whole is active with its inherent creativity."). In Religion in the Making, Whitehead distinguishes between "the creativity for a creature," on the one hand, and "the creativity with the creature," which passes into being "the creativity for a new creature," on the other hand (l\'M: 91 ff.). I take it that by "the creativity for a creature" he means [10th the conditioning activity of antecedent actualities and the self-causative activity of the creature itself; while by "the creativity with the creature" that passes into "the creativity for a new creature" he again means both, but with emphasis on the conditioning activity of the creature just created on the self-causative activity of the new creature. 

That the only activity, properly speaking, is the activity of actual entities is further confirmed by "the ontological principle," according to which "there is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere. Everything in the actual world is referable to some actual entity. It is either transmitted from an actual entity in the past, or belongs to the subjective aim of the actual entity to whose concrescence it belongs.... But the initial stage of the aim is rooted in the nature of God, and its completion depends on the self-causation of the subject-superject. ... Thus the transition of the creativity from an actual world to the correlate novel concrescence is conditioned by the relevance of God's all-embracing conceptual valuations to the particular possibilities of transmission from the actual world....If we prefer the phraseology, we can say that God and the actual world constitute the character of the creativity for the initial phase of the novel concrescence" (PRe: 244 f.). Note that the"transition" of creativity conditioned by God is from "an actual world" to "the correlate novel concrescence."

"[A]gency belongs exclusively to actual occasions" (PRe: 31). "[T]he general Aristotelian principle is maintained that, apart from things that are actual, there is nothing-nothing either in fact [=existence] or in efficacy [=activity]. ... This general principle will be termed the 'ontological principle.' It is the principle that everything is positively somewhere in actuality, and in po~ency everywhere.... Thus the search for a reason [=ground=Grund] ~always the search for an actual fact which is the vehicle of the reason" (PRe: 40). "The ontological principle declares that every decision is referable to one or Inore actual entities, because in separation from actual entities there is nothing, Inerely nonentity-'The rest is silence.'" (P Rc: 43; d. AI: 303: "[E]ach event, viewed in its separate individuality, is a passage between two ideal termini, namely, its components in their ideal disjunctive diversity passing into these same components in their concrete togetherness. . . . [I]t is a metaphysical principle belonging to the nature of things, that there is nothing in the Universe other than instances of this passage and cmnponents of these instances.").

''The scope of the ontological principle is not exhausted by the corollary that 'decision' must be referable to an actual entity. Everything must be somewhere; and here 'somewhere' Ineans ' [in] some actual entity.'... Every explanatory fact refers to the decision and to the efficacy of an actual thing"(Pl\e: 46). "The 'ontological principle' broadens and extends a general principle laid down by John Locke ... , when he asserts that 'power' is 'a great part of our complex ideas of substances.' The notion of 'substance' is transformed into that of 'actual entity'; and the notion of 'power' is transformed into the principle that the reasons for things are always to be found in the composite nature of definite actual entities-in the nature of God for reasons of the highest absoluteness, and in the nature of definite _temporal actual entities for reasons which refer to a particular environment. The ontological principle can be sumnlarized as: no actual entity, then no reason" (PRc: 18 f.)."[E]very condition to which the process of becoming conforms in any particular instance has its reasoneither_ in the character of some actual entity in the actual world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence. This category of explanation is termed the 'ontological principle.'... This ontological principle means that actual entities are the only reasons; so that to search for a reason is to search for one or more actual entities" (Pl~c: 24).

According to Whitehead, "an actual entity has a threefold character:(i)it has the character 'given' for it by the past; (ii) it has the subjective character aimed at in its process of concrescence; (iii) it has the superjective character, which is the pragmatic value of its specific satisfaction qualifying the transcendent creativity" (Pl~c: 87). This passage bears comparison with what Whitehead says about "decision" as constituting "the very meaning of actuality." "An actual entity arises from decisions for it [whence the first part of its threefold character], and by its very existence provides decisions for other actual entities which supersede it [whence the third part]. ... The real internal constitution of an actual entity progressively constitutes a decision conditioning the creativity which transcends that actuality [whence the second as well as the third part]" (P I~c: 43).