Month: August 2023

Charles Hartshorne “Being . . . is undeducible. For our intellect it remains a casual and contingent quantum that is simply found or begged. May it be begged bit by bit, as it adds itself? Or must we beg it only once, by assuming it either to be eternal, or to have come in an… Continue reading Freedom Requires Indeterminism and Universal Causality

Charles Hartshorne “The ‘matter’ of materialists and the ‘spirit’ of idealists is a creature similar to the constitution of the United States in the minds of unimaginative persons. Obviously the real constitution is certain basic relationships among the activities of the citizens. . . . Similarly what we call matter is that character of natural… Continue reading Mind, Matter, and Freedom

Charles Hartshorne  Some Readers will feel the need for labels for the doctrines of this book1, and since such expressions as Second-Type Theism, or AR, are colorless and have no familiar meaning, while familiar labels like pantheism, supernaturalism, and the like are laden with vague and conflicting associations, I shall here discuss some labels that… Continue reading Panentheism, Transcendental Relativity, and the Trinity 

Charles Hartshorne It is hard to be certain, but apparently Dr. Bultmann holds that we cannot attribute any­thing like ‘historicity’ to God. However, ac­cording to neoclassical (dipolar) theism or panentheism, only something extremely abstract can be purely eternal, and all concrete reality, even divine, is in a broad sense historical. As Berdyaev, Heidegger, Barth, and… Continue reading Abstract and Concrete Approaches to Deity and the Divine Historicity

Charles Hartshorne In what sense, granted evolution, can God be called Creator? Charles Kingsley, an English clergyman, beautifully puts it thus, in formulating the divine procedure: “I make things make themselves.” Only so does a good parent, a good God, proceed. For the parent, or God, to do simply all the making is to leave… Continue reading God “Makes Things Make Themselves”

Charles Hartshorne The varied reactions with which Whitehead’s contribution to theism has been received are due in part to the fact that so few philosophers or theologians have learned to see the development of thought about God in anything like its full range and with anything like adequate balance and freedom. Whatever difficulties we have… Continue reading Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

Charles Hartshorne The thesis of this book, negatively stated, is as follows: The currently accepted principles of scientific research and explanation, as well as the most characteristic ideas of contemporary philosophy, have not as yet been applied, with the thoroughness which the problem merits, to the question of the nature and distribution of the qualities… Continue reading Definition of the Affective Continuum

Charles Hartshorne Our rule is to seek to reduce given distinctions to the mode of continuity. Now the contents of awareness are distinguished as a whole from the awareness which embraces them. We infer from the rule that we are to regard the difference between content and awareness as a matter of degree only, involving… Continue reading The Affective Continuum

Charles Hartshorne If the particular sense qualities which we intuit characterize, in this particularity, not so much things in themselves as the biological uses which are made of objects, it may none the less be true that things in themselves must be conceived in terms of a general analogy with the qualities of our experience.… Continue reading The Verification Of Panpsychism

Charles Hartshorne Since theology is now passing through its profoundest revolution since the early centuries of the Christian Era, it is impossible that brief reference to it should be free from the danger, if not the certainty, of serious misunderstand­ing. Nevertheless, the bearings of the concept of affective continuity upon the theistic hypothesis are so… Continue reading The Affective Continuum in Theology