Whitehead's Metaphysics of Creativity

Edited by Friedrich Rapp & Reiner Wiehl

Subjects: Metaphysics, Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791402030, 223 pages, February 1990
Hardcover : 9780791402023, 223 pages, March 1990

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Table of contents

Preface

I. The Philosophical Tradition

1. Whitehead and the Dichotomy of Rationalism and Empiricism

Ivor Leclerc

2. Whitehead and Berkeley: On the True Nature of Sense Perception

Ernest Wolf-Gazo

3. Whitehead's Interpretation of Locke in Process and Reality

Rainer Specht

II. Metaphysics and Science

4. Creativity and the Passage of Nature

Dorothy Emmet

5. Whitehead's Concept of Creativity and Modern Science

Friedrich Rapp

6. Whitehead's Cosmology as Revisable Metaphysics

Hans Poser

III. Cosmology and Anthropology

7. What One Thinks: Singular Propositions and the Content of Judgements

Wolfgang Künne

8. Whitehead's Cosmology of Feeling Between Ontology and Anthropology

Reiner Wiehl

9. Which Experiences Teach Us to Understand the World?
Observations on the Paradigm of Whitehead's Cosmology

Robert Spaemann

IV. Creativity and Creation

10. Atom, Duration, Form: Difficulties with Process Philosophy

Wolfhart Pannenberg

11. Creativity as Universal Activity

Jan Van der Veken

12. Creativity: A New Transcendental?

Reto Luzius Fetz

The Authors

Abbreviations

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Description

This book discusses the problems raised by Whitehead's metaphysics of creativity—metaphysics focused on dynamic becoming rather than on static being—and the proposed solutions to those problems. Whitehead adds a new dimension to the issues of traditional metaphysics by taking into account the world view of our civilization and the results of modern science. His all-embracing speculative cosmology provides a synthesis which goes far beyond the details considered in modern analytic philosophy. To him, the principle of novelty is the universal of universals, and in his system of categories, he aims at avoiding the bifurcation of nature into a physical and mental pole.

In West Germany, Friedrich Rapp is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dortmund and Reiner Wiehl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.