By Schubert Ogden
Process and Reality, Part V 340\516 f.-Note the parallel Whitehead draws here between "physical feelings" and "the higher intellectual feelings." Presumably, the "other order" by the vague insistency of which the higher intellectual feelings are said to be haunted even as the physical feelings are haunted by the vague insistence of causality, is identicaI with the order referred to in the next paragraph, "in which novelty does not mean loss." But, then, the order "where there is no unrest, no travel, no shipwreck," or "in which novelty does not mean loss," is to be contrasted with "the order of the physical world." And yet, significantly, Whitehead does not speak of "the process of the telnporal world" passing into the formation of another actuality, but rather of "otlIer actuillities, bound together in an order in which noveJty does not mean loss." I take this to mean that \Vhitehead could hardly have understood God to be all actuality, except in the loose sense in which he can speak-for instance--of the body as tm actuality. What is significant here is not "actuality," but "order"; "actuality," by contrast, appears in the plural. And what could it possibly refer to except the "actuaJities" bound together in the consequent nature of God, in which, as Whitehead says, "there is no Joss, no obstruction," just as he speaks of the process of the temporal world passing into the formation of "other actualities, bound together in an order in which novelty does not mean loss"?-That Whitehead speaks as he does here strongly suggestr to me that he hardly thinks of God as an actual entity in any rigid way when he speaks of considering God-having made "a distinction of reason"-in "the abstraction of a primordial actuality" (3441522).
-Isn't it rather clear that the "question" that Whitehead here takes to be "the Illost general formulation of the religious problem" is the sort of question a \Vesterner, conditioned by the biblical tradition, would be likely to ask? Also, to what extent is this formulation of the religious problem at all apparent in Religioll ill tile Nlilkillg? \Vouldn't one be inclined to judge from the position set forth there that the "religious problem" had more to do with the origin of value, and hence with the necessary conditions of its origin, than with its destiny?
3401516 f.J-What, really, is "the ultimate evil in the temporal world"? Does it lie in "the fact that the past fades, that time is a 'perpetual perishing,'" or rather in the fact that those of us who have the capacity to ask and answer this question are unable or unwilling to come to terms with the fact that the past fades, and so on? Perhaps, in "the temporal world" generally, the ultimate evil is, indeed, transience. But in that part of the temporal world where there can be such things as "the higher intellectual feelings" and therefore moral _freedom, isn't the ultimate evil the inauthentic way in which beings capable of such feelings, or of such freedom, fail to come to terms with "perpetual perishing"-in short: "sin"? _341 1517 f.l-in what sense is "God" a"intuition"? Also, how is God, conceived as primarily, if not only, "conceptualappetition," any kind of a possible solution to the "religious problem," as\Vhitehead formulates it just above?-Perhaps \Vhitehead's comment here that"God and the World introduce the note of interpretation" helps to shed light onsome of his other comments concerning God. Thus, for example, he can say that"the immanence of God gives reason for the belief that pure chaos is intrinsicallyimpossible" (111 1169]). Or, again, he can say, "the concept of 'God' is the way inwhich we understand this incredible fact-that what cannot be, yet is" (3501531 ). In both of these comments, the same point is made as appears to be madein the original comment, namely, that by reason of the concept-term "God" weare able to understand or interpret what is already a matter of direct intuition,belief, or experience. By inference from what Whitehead says on 347 [5261, wemay say that the "fundamental intuition" of which the concept-term "God" is theinterpretation is "the intuition of permanence in fluency and of fluency inpermanence."ma~rof "interpretation," as distinct from
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