983. Compare the following statements

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Compare the following statements:

". . . the individuality of God is conceivable as a [sic] pure determinable, which, like all pure determinables, by the Aristotelian principle (implied by the extensional assumptions of modern logic?) must be particularized and concretized somehow" (AD: 57).

". . . the necessary aspect of deity is simply the [sic] ultimate determinable as bound to be embodied in some concrete determinate form" (AD:·58).

That "the individuality of God" or "the necessary aspect of deity" (which are presumably two ways of referring to one and the same thing) refer to a pure determinable, i.e., one pure determinable among others, is easier to understand than that they refer to the ultimate determinable. Granted that "creativity in its essential or irreducible aspect . . . is inseparable from the necessary aspect of deity" (AD: 43), still, the idea of creativity is distinct from the idea of God. This is confirmed by the fact that, as Hartshorne allows, the generalized idea of reality is one thing, the universal quantification of this idea to yield the idea of God, something else (AD: 44 f.).

On the other hand, it is not simply wrong to say that the necessary aspect of deity is the ultimate determinable, or, as Hartshorne can say elsewhere, "the supreme essence, the Form elevated above all other forms as such" (AD: 294). Although any abstract simply as such is a determinable (even if only completely universal abstracts="categories" in Hartshorne's sense, or, as I prefer to call them, "transcendentals," are "pure," or "ultimate," determinables), there are determinables that are not abstracts but concretes. Specifically, individuals are determinables, and individuals are, in their own way, concretes, rather than abstracts. Of course, individualities=individual essences are abstracts, even as are species, genera, and (in my view) categories, on the one hand, and transcendentals, on the other. But individualities are one thing, individuals, something else. And while individualities, like any abstract, can be somehow particularized and concretized, and, in this sense, determined, individuals can not only affect but also be affected by others as well as themselves, and, in this further sense, be determined. Thus Hartshorne can say, "The necessary being is the ultimate determinable without which determinates would determine nothing," since "only because Greatness takes account of particular forms do they have any importance in final perspective" (AD: 204). In short, God is rightly said to be "the ultimate determinable" in God's necessary aspect because the idea of God alone, among completely abstract and universal ideas, is self-individuating—and, for reasons Hartshorne gives elsewhere, also self-explanatory (AD: 293 f.).

Nevertheless, the fact that Hartshorne can use virtually the same language to characterize the necessary aspect of deity that Whitehead uses to characterize creativity makes clear that there is the possibility of a certain confusion. And this is further clear from the fact that Hartshorne can say that "the ultimate determinable is the supreme creativity" (AD: 59), assuming that what he means by "the supreme creativity" is not God, or the necessary aspect of God, but creativity.

Perhaps for the sake of clarity, it would be well to point out that being a determinable means one thing for abstracts, including the abstract, creativity, or, as I would prefer to say, concrescence, while it means something different for the concretes that can also be determinables, i.e., individuals, including the individual, the universal individual, God.

9 September 1991

The assumption referred to in the penultimate paragraph above now strikes me as questionable. 'The supreme creativity," although set in lower case and not capitalized, looks like a parallel to, say, "the Eminent Creativity" (in 'Theism in Asian and Western Thought": 411).

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