/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14393586]

>In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.

Whitehead thread. What of his are you currently reading? What are you thoughts? Does Whitehead and process philosophy provide us with a way out of the metaphysical predicament we find ourselves in in the modern world?

[Anonymous No.14393597]

>>14393586
>What of his are you currently reading?
Nothing, I have no patience for or interest in people who were retroactively refuted
>What are you thoughts?
see above
>Does Whitehead and process philosophy provide us with a way out of the metaphysical predicament we find ourselves in in the modern world?
No, the answer lies in the traditional doctrines of the ancient and medieval world, e.g. Taoism, Vedanta, Sufism, Neoplatonism etc

[Anonymous No.14393598]

>>14393586
Why would I read him if his philosophy collapses on itself? Is there anything to take from his stuff?

[Anonymous No.14393614]

Any good lectures / seminars I can take in before I dive into P&R? I always find a nice hour or two lecture before I tackle a hard book makes it go so much smoother.

[Anonymous No.14393641]

>>14393614
Here you go
https://youtu.be/ysTx1c5-A7s
https://youtu.be/Hwgoi0cvwmU
https://youtu.be/x1IwCOx1dlw

You should also read Science and the Modern World before you read P&R or else you aren't going to know what the fuck is going on.

[Anonymous No.14393666]

>>14393614
https://youtu.be/BHztIS9kdVY
0thouartthat0 is also an alright channel. He mostly makes videos on Whitehead. Beware that he is part of his theology department in his uni and theology has been cancer to Whitehead studies so watch out for new age shit that says Whitehead was a panentheist or a panpsychist (he wasn't panexperientialist is a more accurate label). But yeah the video I linked is good.

[Anonymous No.14393680]

>>14393641
>>14393666
cheers lads

[Anonymous No.14393709]

Whitehead is based and brings a refreshing perspective away from the linguistic turn shit. He recognizes that our metaphysical understanding is always "slight, superficial, incomplete" however he subversively does metaphysics anyway seeing metaphysics as a speculative task embarking on an adventure of ideas.

[Anonymous No.14394011]

>>14393709
>He recognizes that our metaphysical understanding is always "slight, superficial, incomplete" however he subversively does metaphysics anyway
This isn't a characteristic unique to Whitehead. It actually summarizes the poststructuralists in general quite well (although not perfectly). In particular Derrida comes to mind, who's ethos of undecidabilty, the possible impossible, "a philosophy of hesitation" etc., not only captures the spirit of process philosophy better than Whitehead, but adresses the linguistic turn with superior philosophical resources, and adresses the metaphysical baggage associated with the philosophical traditional from which Whitehead was acting in.

[Anonymous No.14394021]

The same trend is noticeable in the scientific realm: research here is for its own sake far more than for the partial and fragmentary results it achieves; here we see an ever more rapid succession of unfounded theories and hypotheses, no sooner set up than crumbling to give way to others that will have an even shorter life— a veritable chaos amid which one would search in vain for anything definitive, unless it be a monstrous accumulation of facts and details incapable of proving or signifying anything. We refer here of course to speculative science, insofar as this still exists; in applied science there are on the contrary undeniable results, and this is easily understandable since these results bear directly on the domain of matter, the only domain in which modern man can boast any real superiority. It is therefore to be expected that discoveries, or rather mechanical and industrial inventions, will go on developing and multiplying more and more rapidly until the end of the present age; and who knows if, given the dangers of destruction they bear in themselves, they will not be one of the chief agents in the ultimate catastrophe, if things reach a point at which this cannot be averted?

Be that as it may, one has the general impression that, in the present state of things, there is no longer any stability; but while there are some who sense the danger and try to react to it, most of our contemporaries are quite at ease amid this confusion, in which they see a kind of exteriorized image of their own mentality. Indeed there is an exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere ‘becoming’, leaving no place for the changeless and the permanent, and the state of mind of men who find all reality in this ‘becoming’, thus implicitly denying true knowledge as well as the object of that knowledge, namely transcendent and universal principles. One can go even further and say that it amounts to the negation of all real knowledge whatsoever, even of a relative order, since, as we have shown above, the relative is unintelligible and impossible without the absolute, the contingent without the necessary, change without the unchanging, and multiplicity without unity; ‘relativism’ is self-contradictory, for, in seeking to reduce everything to change, one logically arrives at a denial of the very existence of change; this was fundamentally the meaning of the famous arguments of Zeno of Elea.

[Anonymous No.14394026]

However, we have no wish to exaggerate and must add that theories such as these are not exclusively encountered in modern times; examples are to be found in Greek philosophy also, the ‘universal flux’ of Heraclitus being the best known; indeed, it was this that led the school of Elea to combat his conceptions, as well as those of the atomists, by a sort of reductio ad absurdum. Even in India, something comparable can be found, though, of course, considered from a different point of view from that of philosophy, for Buddhism also developed a similar character, one of its essential theses being the ‘dissolubility of all things ’. These theories, however, were then no more than exceptions, and such revolts against the traditional outlook, which may well have occurred from time to time throughout the whole of the Kali-Yuga, were, when all is said and done, without wider influence; what is new is the general acceptance of such conceptions that we see in the West today.

It should be noted too that under the influence of the very recent idea of ‘progress’, ‘philosophies of becoming’ have, in modern times, taken on a special form that theories of the same type never had among the ancients: this form, although it may have multiple varieties, can be covered in general by the name ‘evolutionism’. We need not repeat here what we have already said elsewhere on this subject; we will merely recall the point that any conception allowing for nothing other than ‘becoming’ is thereby necessarily a ‘naturalistic’ conception, and, as such, implies a formal denial of whatever lies beyond nature, in other words the realm of metaphysics— which is the realm of immutable and eternal principles. We may point out also, in speaking of these anti-metaphysical theories, that the Bergonian idea of pure duration’ corresponds exactly with that dispersion in instantaneity to which we alluded above; a pretended intuition modeled on the ceaseless flux of the things of the senses, far from being able to serve as an instrument for obtaining true knowledge, represents in reality the dissolution of all possible knowledge.

[Anonymous No.14394033]

This leads us to repeat an essential point on which not the slightist ambiguity must be allowed to persist: intellectual intuition, by which alone metaphysical knowledge is to be obtained, has absolutely nothing in common with this other ‘intuition’ of which certain contemporary philosophers speak: the latter pertains to the sensible realm and in fact is sub-rational, whereas the former, which is pure intelligence, is on the contrary supra-rational. But the moderns, knowing nothing higher than reason in the order of intelligence, do not even conceive of the possibility of intellectual intuition, whereas the doctrines of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages, even when they were no more than philosophical in character, and therefore incapable of effectively calling this intuition into play, nevertheless explicitly recognized its existence and its supremacy over all the other faculties. This is why there was no rationalism before Descartes, for rationalism is a specifically modern phenomenon, one that is closely connected with individualism, being nothing other than the negation of any faculty of a supra- individual order. As long as Westerners persist in ignoring or denying intellectual intuition, they can have no tradition in the true sense of the word, nor can they reach any understanding with the authentic representatives of the Eastern civilizations, in which everything, so to speak, derives from this intuition, which is immutable and infallible in itself, and the only starting-point for any development in conformity with traditional norms

Whitehead's whole project ended in only 5 paragraphs

[Anonymous No.14394038]

>>14394021
>>14394026
>>14394033
>*on his deathbed* "I f-finally admit that Parmenides and Guenon were right, I shouldn't have tried to contend with the Eleatic doctrine, I hope that when I die in a few moments I'm not further estranged from the immutable One because of my past ignorance and blasphemy against it... tat tvam asi ... *gurgles*... *dies*"

[Anonymous No.14394056]

>>14393597
>>14393598
>>14394021
>>14394026
>>14394033
>>14394038
Obsessed

[Anonymous No.14394705]

>>14394038
Imagine dying like this. How do I avoid being refuted on my deathbed?

[Anonymous No.14394890]

>>14394705
Follow Allah and his Messengers.