Allan, George. "Cosmological and Civilized Harmonies." Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Vol. I. Edited by Michel Weber and Will Desmond. Heusenstamm, Germany: Ontos Verlag, 2008. 41-55.

Abstract

Modern understandings of aesthetics usually identify it as one of the two branches of axiology (value theory), the other being ethics. Aesthetic values have to do with beauty; ethical values with goodness. The aesthetic worth of an object or experience is intrinsic to it rather than instrumental, something that makes it valuable for its own sake. An aesthetic object or event can be natural - a delicate rose petal, a beautiful sunset, a graceful gesture - or it can be artificial, something created by a human being for the purpose of evoking an aesthetic response - a Michelangelo sculpture, a Turner landscape, a pas-de-deux from the Nutcracker. Art is the field of human endeavor dedicated to the creation of aesthetic objects.

Traditionally, aesthetics is the last section of a metaphysical system that begins with foundational principles, moves through logic, cosmology, and physical science, then on to psychology, sociology, and history, before concluding with religion, ethics, and aesthetics. The Platonic influence is obvious. Metaphysics begins witht he most real things - those that are universal, abstract, and timeless - and ends with those things which are least real - that are concrete, contingent, and fleeting. It starts with what can be known only by reason and concludes with what is known by the senses, by what is felt rather than thought.

Whitehead inverts this hierarchy, Momentary concrete achievements - actual occasions - are the most real features of the cosmos and all else is derivative. The first principles of metaphysics and the fundamental laws of nature are abstractive generalizations, interpretive hypotheses about the recurrent patterns that characterize the becoming and perishing of actual occasions and enduring objects. Aesthetics is foundational for Whitehead because the character of an actual occasion, its reality as a process of determinative realization, is aesthetic. The foundation of the world lies in activities that of making thaty have inherent value. To be is to be beautiful.

Whitehead wrote extensively about aesthetics in a metaphysical sense, and he cites the arts as one of the specific forms of endeavor from which a metaphysical theory might take its departure. His comments about art and aesthetics as human activities, however, about the artist's crafting of aesthetic objects which evoke aesthetic experiences, are informal, illustrative, and episodic. Whitehead wrote no book on aesthetics, not even a collection of articles. The one exception is the fourth Part of Adventures in Ideas.

The remainder of this entry is organized as follows. I have attempted in Section 2 to pull together Whitehead's scattered ideas in a systematic way, beginning with his notion of aesthetic harmony as it applies specifically to works of art, expanding this notion to an exploration of the distinction between aesthetic and logical harmony, then expanding it further to a consideration of the cosmological foundation for the aesthetic. The implications of this understanding of aesthetics for epistemology and education are then explored. I conclude by discussing Whitehead's culminating vision of the aesthetic: his sustained account of how civilized existence depends on an effective expression of the interrelated virtues of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, and Peace. Thus the movement of Section 2 follows the "airplane" trajectory that Whitehead says any metaphysical theory must take: from concrete experience to abstract systems and then back to concrete applications. Section 3 offers a sketch of the ways in which Whitehead's aesthetic theory has been interpreted by his commentators, and how it has been used to interpret works of art and the artistic act of creation. In Section 4, I offer a few evaluative comments on what I find to be the most profitable direction in which philosophers have taken  Whitehead's aesthetic ideas. Section 5 contains suggestions for further reading.