905. Crucial as it is to insist . . .

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Crucial as it is to insist that the individual is always individual-in-community—indeed, the threefold community of self, others, and the whole—it is no less crucial to hold that "[g]roups are real and important only because their members are. All the happiness and intrinsic value in the cosmos is in singulars, for they alone enjoy and suffer and find or fail to find satisfaction. One would be as important as billions if no one objectified the billions in a single experience" (CSPM: 111).

Of course, Hartshorne expresses this philosophically and nonliterally, rather than metaphysically and literally. So far as metaphysics is concerned, the only crucial points are two: (1) that all intrinsic value (including happiness) in the cosmos is in singulars, for they alone are internally related—"self-relating, all integrating"—to other (constitutive) values; and (2) that one would be as important as billions if no one was internally related—"self-relating, all-integrating"—to the billions with unsurpassable adequacy.

26 February 2006