By Schubert Ogden
Hartshorne says, "[Creativity] is not identical with God, nor is it an individual, coordinate with or superior to God." But, then, he adds, "It is a mere universal or an ultimate abstraction, the ultimate abstraction" (WP: 185).
Elsewhere, however, he speaks, not of "creativity," but of "the necessary aspect of deity," as "the ultimate determinable." And this can only mean that "the necessary aspect of deity," not "creativity," is "the ultimate abstraction"; for the general rule, as he never tires of arguing, is that concretes or actualities alone are fully determinate, while abstractions or possibilities(-necessities) are more or less indeterminate but determinable (cf., e.g., AD: 58 f.).
But is this really the self-contradiction it appears to be? I don't think so. On the contrary, I should say that the real relation between the two statements, "'Creativity' is the ultimate abstraction," and "'The necessary aspect of deity' is the ultimate abstraction," is such that, left unqualified, neither is true, while, properly qualified, both are true. Why? Because the truth in the matter is correctly stated by saying, as Hartshorne says or implies in many other places (e.g., IO: 270), "'[C]reativity as such with its two essential aspects of divine and nondivine becoming' is the ultimate abstraction."
5 October 2004