1007. Hartshorne's appeal to Whitehead's . . .

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Hartshorne's appeal to Whitehead's "reformed subjectivist principle" in defense of his psychicalism fails to carry conviction. Why? Well, because, according to Whitehead, that principle holds that "the whole universe consists of elements disclosed in the analysis of the experiences of subjects"; and I can as well appeal to this principle in defense of my austerely transcendental (noncategorial and, therefore, nonpsychicalist) version of neoclassical metaphysics.

In fact, I have more reason than Hartshorne does to appeal to it. For in my view, metaphysical truths are discovered precisely by "the analysis of the experiences of subjects," as distinct from his speculative procedure of "generalizing" such experiences. By this I mean that the strictly literal, purely formal truths that make up metaphysics are what one comes upon when one abstracts from everything in the experiences of subjects except their transcendental structure. Considered as the structure of a "fact" or an entity, this structure is the structure of a concrete (concretum); considered as the structure of a "principle" or a process, this structure is the structure of concrescence.

Thus, in my view, what the "turn to the subject" discloses as metaphysically ultimate is not "the subjective enjoyment of experience," but rather the variable—concrete/concrescence—of which such subjective enjoyment of experience is simply the privileged value—"privileged" because it is the only such value clearly given as such in our experience. At bottom, then, "the turn to the subject" is "the turn to the concrete."