The Eros and Tragedy of Peace in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Culture

Authors

  • Myron Moses Jackson Grand Valley State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v23i1.26923

Keywords:

Peace, Unity of Adventure, Erotic-Tragic Contrast, Permanence of the Possible

Abstract

One of the most intriguing and underappreciated aspects of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy is his treatment of peace as a civilizational aim of culture. The problem of peace is the subject in the final chapter of Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas. It is considered along with the other four qualities of civilized societies, “Adventure, Art, Beauty, and Truth.” Although his analysis is driven by examples from Western and Christian history, respectively, the treatment of peace developed is not limited to this or any specific experiential epoch. Peace is a transcultural value, the “harmony of harmonies,” which lies at the heart or in the “nature of things.” Whitehead designates the permanence-flux contrast of peace in human life as a tension between the “dream of youth” and “harvest of tragedy.” Our lives give way to the dance of the possible and actual that both unites and divides us. This article explains how Whitehead attempts to argue for peace by way of “balanced intensity” in response to the triumphs and tribulations of life. Section one deals with the ways in which youth and eros symbolize possibility and orient us toward the possible. Tragedy, or the determination of the individual in its own subjective realization and the consequent nature it produces through the “unity of adventure,” is the focus of the second section. In section three, the erotic-tragic contrast is presented in relation to peace as an “intuition of permanence.” In conclusion, Whitehead’s humanism will be offered as a viable alternative against the modern belief of progress or the quest for worldly success, in which prosperity becomes antithetical to the achievement of peace given its propensity to evade or outrun tragedy.

References

Alighieri, Dante. 2005. The Divine Comedy. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. In vol. 19 of Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Aristotle. 2005. The Poetics. Translated by Ingram Bywater. In vol. 8 of Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Faber, Roland, Brian G. Henning and Clinton Combs, eds. 2010. Beyond Metaphysics? Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead’s Late Thought. New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi Editions.

Hall, David L. 1973. The Civilization of Experience: A Whiteheadian Theory of Culture. New York: Fordham University Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 2000. Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Jones, Judith. 1998. Intensity: An Essay in Whiteheadian Ontology. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Langer, Suzanne. 1953. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art. New York: Charles Scribners.

Keller, Catherine. 2012. “Undoing and Unknowing: Judith Butler in Process.” In Butler on Whitehead: On the Occasion, edited by Roland Faber, Michael Halewood and Deena M. Lin, 43–60. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Plato. 2005. The Symposium. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Vol. 6 of Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Plato. 2005. The Laws. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Vol. 6 of Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Voegelin, Eric. 2000. Order and History: The Ecumenic Age. In vol. 17 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Voegelin, Eric. 1998. Religion and the Rise of Modernity. Edited by James L. Wiser. Volume 5 of History of Political Ideas. In vol. 23 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1967a. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1967b. The Aims of Education. New York: Free Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1954. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1968. Modes of Thought. New York: Free Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Edited by D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne. Corrected Ed. New York: Free Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1996. Religion in the Making. New York: Fordham University Press.

Published

2015-11-23

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Jackson, M. (2015). The Eros and Tragedy of Peace in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Culture. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 23(1), 93-122. https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v23i1.26923