Process and individuality

Abstract

Whitehead's categories are notoriously difficult to sketch in a single paper's section, but his basic worldview isn't. Like all thinkers worthy of the name, Whitehead recognized the urgency to do somehow justice to both becoming and to being. With Bergson and Alexander (to name only two philosophers with who he enjoyed special Wahlverwandtschaften), he envisioned the ultimacy of time, i.e., of creativity and becoming. In other words, he claimed that if we start from substance-like premisses, i.e., from “being”, we will not understand“becoming” (as the history of philosophy. eloquently proves); but if we rather choose to proceed with process-like premisses, i.e., from “becoming”, both dimensions can be coherently articulated.