The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Cobb's statement that "creativity," as "the metaphysical ultimate, . . . plays, philosophically, an analogous role in Whitehead to Brahman in Vedanta and Emptiness in Zen" seems to me either to involve or not to be clearly enough distinguished from the very misunderstanding that Whitehead is at some pains to anticipate in Process and Reality—and that at least some process thinkers have undoubtedly fallen into in developing their own versions of process thought (e.g., Bracken).

There are not, and logically cannot be, "two ultimates" in a consistently Whiteheadian metaphysics, except insofar as what Hartshorne calls "dual transcendence" is a correct metaphysical description of the nature of God. But, then, the operative terms are not "creativity" and "God," but rather the two necessary aspects of the essence or individuality of the one universal and therefore necessarily existent individual God, i.e., what Hartshorne distinguishes as the A aspect, in which God is the abstract constant, unvarying through all possible variations, and so eminently or transcendently absolute; and the R aspect, in which God is the abstract variable, varying with all possible variations, and so eminently or transcendently relative.

As for "creativity," it is correctly understood, in Whitehead's words, as "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact," and thus as the category, or—as I should say—the transcendental, instantiated by all final real things, i.e., all "actual entities," in Whitehead's terms, or, in my term, "events." In other words, I entirely accept Hartshorne's suggestion that "creativity" is best understood as playing the role played by "being" in classical, as distinct from neoclassical metaphysical accounts. But, then, creativity characterizes each and every event in which the individuality of the one universal and therefore necessarily existent individual God is instantiated, even as it characterizes each and every other event included in God's eminently relative, and so all-inclusive actuality.

21 October 1998

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