By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
In the past, I have criticized Descartes's definition of substance as "that
which requires nothing but itself in order to exist" because it denies the
essential internal relatedness of concretes to other concretes. But I now see
reasons to think that the interpretation presupposed by this criticism may, in
fact, be a misinterpretation.
In the past, I have criticized Descartes's definition of substance as "that which requires nothing but itself in order to exist" because it denies the essential internal relatedness of concretes to other concretes. But I now see reasons to think that the interpretation presupposed by this criticism may, in fact, be a misinterpretation.
In the course of arguing persuasively that "Whitehead is ... in full agreement with Aristotle as to what constitutes the ultimate metaphysical problem"; and that "[i]n declaring that 'the final problem is to conceive a complete fact' Whitehead is placing himself fully in the great philosophical tradition," Leclerc holds-again persuasively-that "[ w ]hat Whitehead means by a 'complete fact' is a 'complete existent,' that which exists in the complete sense of the word 'exist" Whereupon he goes on to say: "This is the same as what Gilson was expressing in the passage above by a distinct ontological unit which is able to subsist in itself and can be defined in itself.' It is this that Descartes had in mind in defining thethat with which we are concerned as that 'which requires nothing but itself in order to exist,' pinoza and Leibniz used very similar words in this connection. It is clear
that the factor of 'being,' of 'existence,' is absolutely central. But it is not
'existence' as such, in the abstract; it is the existence of a particular, a 'that.'
Moreover, the 'that' which is in question is the that which is possessed of
'full existence,' the that which exists 'in and of i tself"' (Whitehead's
Metaphysics: 20, 17).