1222. Whitehead says, "the essence of power . . .

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Whitehead says, "the essence of power is the drive towards aesthetic worth for its own sake. All power is a derivative from this fact of composition attaining worth for itself" (MTr: 119). Here, again, it's anything but clear what could be meant by "composition attaining worth for itself," as distinct from attaining worth in itself (italics added). 

Whitehead also says, "The sense of reality is the sense of effectiveness, and the sense of effectiveness is the drive towards the satisfaction of appetition. There is a past, real in its own right, satisfying itself in the present" (122). But, surely, the intended subject of the second clause of the first sentence is not "the sense of effectiveness," but simply "effectiveness" (italics added); it is effectiveness itself, not the sense thereof, that is the drive toward satisfaction of appetition. This is why Whitehead can say elsewhere that "our immediate experience" is "a fact in history, derivative [from the past], actual [in the present], and effective [in the future]" (72). 

What is "the fundamental basic persuasion on which we found the whole practice of our existence" (161)? It is our persuasion that we exist in a world of other existents as parts of an all-encompassing existent, or whole of existence; and that we exist in the present as having two sources of derivation: our feelings of our body; and our feelings of our own antecedent experiential functionings, with both of which we claim identification as ourselves. 

Presumably, this "fundamental basic persuasion" has this status, or plays this role, in "those habitual persuasions dominating the sociological functionings of mankind" (165; d. also 162: "these direct persuasions representing the basic facts upon which epistemology must build"). 

10 August 2001