1238. There are places, certainly . . .

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There are places, certainly, where Whitehead so speaks of "speculative philosophy," or "philosophic speculation," as to suggest that it is very much the sort of thing I have in mind in speaking of philosophy in its existential aspect or function.

Thus, for example, he says, "It is the task of philosophic speculation to conceive the happenings of the universe so as to render understandable the outlook of physical science and to combine this outlook with those direct persuasions representing the basic facts upon which epistemology must build," i.e., "the really fundamental factors constituting our experience" (MTr: 162).

True, Whitehead stresses "combining" the scientific outlook with our direct persuasions, rather as Hartshorne stresses philosophy's "mediating" function between science, on the one hand, and religion and theology, on the other. But I, too, have every reason to allow for all this in my understanding of philosophy's existential function—in roughly the same way in which I allow for the presence of empirically falsifiable assertions among the assertions of theology, along with its existentially falsifiable assertions and its experientially nonfalsifiable, strictly metaphysical assertions.

There remain the differences, nonetheless, between philosophy in this "speculative" or "constructive," aspect or function and metaphysics and ethics, strictly and properly so-called, which belong rather to philosophy in its other purely formal, analytic aspect or function. 

Another passage in which Whitehead again stresses the "combining" function of philosophy is his discussion of "speculative philosophy" in Adventures of Ideas: 285 f. "Speculative philosophy," he says, "embodies the method of the 'working hypothesis.' The purpose of this working hypothesis for philosophy is to coordinate the current expressions of human experience, in common speech, in social institutions, in actions, in the principles of the various sciences, elucidating harmony and exposing discrepancies." In the light of this statement, one can understand when Whitehead also says—in the concluding paragraph of the chapter on "Speculative Philosophy" in Process and Reality—"The useful function of philosophy is to promote the most general systematization of civilized thought" (PRc: 77 [25 f.]).

But to what end, finally, is this "coordination," or "systematization"? There can be little question as to the answer, especially in the light of Whitehead's account in The Function of Reason, according to which reason's function is to serve the art of life—or, in the light of his comments toward the end of Modes of Thought: "Existence is activity ever merging into the future. The aim of philosophic understanding is the aim at piercing the blindness of activity in respect to its transcendent functions." And "[t]he task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the issue" (MTr: 169, 171).

21 October 2000