Charles Hartshorne:
A Man for All Reasons
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Introduction
The American philosopher Charles Hartshorne has been hailed as the Einstein of religious thought, someone whose discoveries and insights will be influential for centuries. The sheer fertility of his thought is astonishing. In addition to a vast correspondence, he published twenty books and almost 500 essays and reviews in professional journals. From his Doctoral Dissertation in 1923, to a book published in his 100th year, and a posthumous book published in 2011, Hartshorne’s fecund writing career spanned 88 years.
Hartshorne independently came up with some of the same ideas he later found in Whitehead. He originated electrifying new insights himself, clarified many process ideas, and corrected some of Whitehead’s oversights. It can hardly be overstated how much Hartshorne has done to strengthen the case for process philosophy.
Hartshorne lived to the ripe old age of 103. He was, and here he is a model for us all, an active and prolific scholar in his eighth and ninth decades. So far as I know, he is the only philosopher who ever published a major new book in his hundredth year.
Charles Hartshorne is a careful, rigorous, and creative thinker. When he begins to turn an idea, as a potter turns a wheel, he turns it not just once, or twice, but over and over again, looking at it from various angles. I almost said all angles, but as Hartshorne would surely remind me, that is the divine perspective.
To follow him through a process of reasoning is, then, to follow a process of exhaustive analysis. If we follow the process carefully, from beginning to end, things come to be seen in a new light, sometimes with the luminosity of a rational epiphany.
I can remember when I first gained a glimpse of what he meant by “the logic of ultimate contrasts,”—I felt goose bumps on my arms. I threw back my head and laughed out loud. I was laughing at the beauty of what Hartshorne had revealed. But I was also laughing at myself—because I had believed as true an idea that Hartshorne had just shown was far from the truth, indeed, an idea that had it exactly backwards, upside down, topsy-turvy. And Hartshorne had finally turned it right-side up so that I could see how the absolute is contained in the relative, and not vice versa, as received “wisdom” would have us believe for centuries.
Born in 1897, Hartshorne holds a unique distinction in being the only philosopher who lived in three different centuries. As a centenarian, he rejoiced “to be not only still alive, but still able to be excited by ideas and to do something to express this excitement.”
He credited to his longevity, which he called his secret weapon, some of his most important insights. As Hartshorne put it: “With Plato I strongly believe that philosophy, of all subjects, requires maturity. One of my advantages over most of my contemporary rivals is that, decade after decade, in eighty or so years I have gone on gaining additional clarity on a number of topics which interested me from the start.” Among 20th-century philosophers, Hartshorne stands out as a premier metaphysician and the most influential proponent of a process conception of God.
Because of the fecundity and inventiveness of his mind, I have alluded to Hartshorne as the Thomas Edison of philosophy. As evidence of this inventiveness, I have elsewhere written of “34 Examples of Philosophical Truths Discovered by Charles Hartshorne, Truths He Revealed in a New Light, and Intellectual Errors He Corrected.”
To add one more, and thus bring the total to 35, I will mention an insight that may become an epiphany for you as it was for me when I first read it.
In “A Reply to My Critics,” Hartshorne discusses Twenty Metaphysical Principles,1 with the last principle, P20, stated thusly: “The foregoing nineteen principles must, if true, be mutually compatible; any one fully understood is, except in emphasis, equivalent to any other. They all define that abstract Something that could not fail to have instantiation or concrete realization.”
Thirty-five items make an impressive list, true enough; but the list is not exhaustive and there is some overlap. Several more could be listed in reference to Hartshorne’s research and observations in the field of ornithology, as evidenced in his book, Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. The overlap becomes suggestive in light of Hartshorne’s statement, in the above paragraph, of principle P20.
All of the foregoing contribute to why I am writing a series about Hartshorne called “The Conceptual Miracles of Charles Hartshorne.”
I named this site “Charles Hartshorne: The Genius and Joy of his Philosophic Writings.” The paragraphs above provide ample evidence for his genius, and as to the joy—
It was especially during the year that I devoted to reading all the books of Hartshorne that I began to see how philosophy could be fun—profoundly fun! On many occasions while reading his books I would laugh in sheer intellectual joy at the brilliance of one of his startling insights, or at the oversights and mistakes he pointed out in the thought of other philosophers. It was a year of much mirth and satisfaction.
And, finally, thanks to my friend Donald Wayne Viney, an leading Hartshorne scholar and the curator and ongoing gatherer of an abundance of Hartshorne resources, for his help and contributions in my efforts to set up this site. Any gaffes, mistakes, blunders, etc., are entirely my responsibility.
HyC
Note: This site is still under construction. There is more to come both in terms of content and organization. Also, some of the pictures I originally posted seem to have mysteriously disappeared.
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At the bottom of this page you will find several Categories that contain the content of this site. Click on any of the Categories to bring up a list of the writings or articles in that Category. This site is still under construction, so there is much more to come. Happy trails!