アクチュアル・エンティティの生態と矛盾

Abstract

Many people have considered Whitehead's metaphysics as difficult and paradoxical. Recently, Wallack showed that many paradoxical expressions in Whitehead's metaphysics were not genuine contradictions but knowable. I think, however, Whitehead's metaphysics still has a contradiction. It arises from incoherence between actuality and final cause in actual entity. Actuality is the completeness of a process of actual entity. Final cause is the controller of a process of actual entity. However, a process con trolled by final cause is not necessarily accomplished and an accomplished process is not necessarily controlled by final cause. In universe, actuality and final cause are harmonized by intervention of God, who is also an actual entity. But, in God, they are harmonized by nothing, so a contradiction occurs. The contradiction is incompatibility between God as actuality and God as process by final cause. Because aim and process are infinite, God's process cannot be complete. To resolve this contradiction, we should regard his actuality as decisiveness, not as completeness. In doing so, we will be able to resolve the contradiction and Whitehead's metaphysics will be coherent.