1419. Initial Fact

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Whitehead says, "The initial fact [sc. to which each concrescence is to be referred as its definite free initiation] is macrocosmic, in the sense of having equal relevance to all occasions. . . . The initial fact is the primordial appetition . . ." (PRc: 47 f.).

But, surely, "the primordial appetition" as such is neither properly a "fact" nor "free," in the sense of contingent, nonnecessary. Rather, it is the infinitude of possibility as "a plenum," or, as may also be said, as "a multitude beyond all multitude," which, being infinite, is precisely not properly a "fact," which, as such, is and must be finite. On the other hand, "the initial fact" that is indeed a fact and therefore both finite and free is neither God merely as primordial nor God merely as consequent, but God as "superject"—or, in terms of Peirce's categories; God neither as eminent Firstness nor as eminent Secondness, but as eminent Thirdness.

In other words, "the initial fact" that is "macrocosmic" in the sense specified is God exercising God's objective immortality in the temporal world. Included in this "fact," of course, are both God as primordial and God as consequent. So, in that sense, they, too, may be said to be—or more correctly, to be an abstract part of—"the initial fact."

10 May 2009