process studies articles @ religion online...
Volume 19 (1990)
- Number 1, Spring 1990
- Aristotelian and Whiteheadian Conceptions of Actuality: I by Reto Luzius Fetz
- Charles Hartshorne’s Rationalism by Piotr Gutawski
- The Reformed Subjectivist Principle Revisited by Lewis S. Ford
The relationship of Whitehead’s metaphysics to the traditional philosophy of substance, and especially to Aristotle’s concept of entity, is the central point not only for any systematic exposition of Whitehead but also for his historical interpretation.
The author’s object is to show that Hartshorne overestimates the argumentative power of his rationalistic principles in the process of eliminating other philosophical positions, and that genuine empirical criteria are inevitable if metaphysics is going to be something more than pure speculation.
Although rarely mentioned by Whitehead in Process and Reality, the reformed subjectivist principle epitomizes much with far reaching implications.
- Number 2, Summer 1990
- Empirical Theology: A Revisable Tradition by Willliam Dean
- Methodological Alternatives in Process Theology by Delwin Brown and Sheila Davaney
- Process Theology as Empirical, Rational, and Speculative: Some Reflections on Method by David Ray Griffin
- The Experience of Value and Theological Argumentation by Philip E. Devenish
Dean suggests that American religious empiricists may have lapsed into objectivism at times, but a third position of speculative and radically empirical realism, a religious historicism, holds up well in the current forces of deconstructionism, neopragmatism, and language philosophy.
The authors give a broad overview of process theology and its methodological alternatives. Whitehead and process theology, rationalist process thought, and empirical process theology.
Griffin suggests that in order for Christian theology to do its job it must be totally empirical and totally rational, but also speculative, since speculation has always been inherent to Christian theology.
The author holds that only the methodological alternative found in process theology can properly be regarded as adequate in the experience of value and theological argument.
- Number 3, Fall 1990
- Aristotelian and Whiteheadian Conceptions of Actuality: II by Reto Luzius Fetz
- Efficient Causation Within Concrescence by Lewis S. Ford
- Process Thought and the Spaciness of Mind by Rem B. Edwards
- The Matrix of Personality: A Whiteheadian Corroboration of Harry Stack Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theo by Thomas J. Regan
- Whitehead and Genuine Evil by R. Maurice Barineau
The author compares the thoughts of Aristotle and Whitehead concerning the self-development of living beings.
The author argues that we should reconceive concrescence itself as the active interweaving of efficient and final causation, understanding by efficient causation the entire career of physical feeling, not simply concentrating exclusively on its initial phase.
Dr. Edwards rejects the doctrine of the external imperceptibility of mind. There is no enduring essences of mindless spatiality or spaceless mentality.
The author addresses the ongoing dialogue between process thought and psychotherapy by corroborating some of the central features of Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of psychiatry in light of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical insights about the nature of reality.
Whitehead’s solution for the problem of evil, Dr. Barineau argues, acknowledges the reality of genuine evils despite the fact that the critics charge all evils in Whitehead’s world are merely apparent.
- Number 4, Winter 1990
- Charles Hartshorne on Metaphilosophy, Person and Immortality, and Other Issues by John Kennedy and Piotr Gutowski
- From Lorenzen Through Husserl to Whitehead by Hiroshi Endo
- Process Thought as Conceptual Framework by Santiago Sia
- Process Thought From a European Perspective 1 by Jan Van Der Veken
- Process Thought On the Borders Between Hermeneutics and Theology by William A. Beardslee
- Process Thought: Its Value and Meaning to Me by L. Charles Birch
In questioning Charles Hartshorne, the authors find that he is a prolific writer on topics ranging from neoclassical theism, the ontological argument for the existence of God, and philosophical psychology, to aesthetics, pacifism, and ornithology.
The author is haunted by the question: What is the mechanism involved in our encounter with eternal objects?
The author explains the epistemological standpoint underlying his interest in process thought.
What is needed in this time of anti-metaphysical thinking is an outlook on reality which allows us to see the interconnectedness of our different concerns. The great danger threatening the world is to try to solve problems in isolation.
Dr. Beardslee focuses on how a Whiteheadian perspective can bring into fruitful relation the Christian hope for the transformation of social structures and the Buddhist aim of detachment which frees us from suffering.
As a biologist who was presented with a mechanistic, substance image of reality, the author found that process theology lifted the richness of human experience to a level that gave him a new perspective of care for all creation. The world became more like a life than a mechanism, a feeling through and through, from protons to people.