ホワイトヘッド『過程と実在』への序説 (承前完)

Abstract

Whitehead's Process and Reality stands as a major work in speculative metaphysics of the 20th century. The difficult conceptual scheme which it expounds has its origin in problems shared by many philosophers at the beginning of the century. New developments in logic and physics seemed to require fundamental adjustments on the conception of nature. The relation of theoretical concepts to experience and the place of mind in nature were equally prominent problems. Besides these current problems Whitehead was stimulated by a rich scientific and philosophical tradition both as a source of ideas and as a point of reference for criticism and definition of his own conceptual scheme. Central to Whitehead's thought is the distinction between the immediacy of experience, its event-like character, unique and particular, and that of the discriminable characters of experience which are repeatable, recurrent forms or "eternal objects". These two elements together with a general principle of relatedness ("prehension") constitute the ground for Whitehead's ontology Through the elaboration of these distinctions Whitehead sought to preserve the basic insights of both empiricism and rationalism. This involved a fundamental revision of Humean phenomenalism as well as of the dualistic rationalism inherited from Descartes. The present essay develops some of the themes of Process and Reality particularly relevant to these issues.