A. N. Whitehead and the Concept of Metaphysics

Abstract

W. E. Hocking has written recently that Whitehead's descriptive generalization of concrete fact, namely, his actual occasion, is “… not a term of description in the direct sense. It is an hypothesis. It cannot be kept in place by pointing to its presence as a datum: it can only hold its own if it proves to be a valuable conceptual tool.” I further advance the thesis that all generality is hypothetical, and holds it own only if it proves to be conceptually useful. This is in accord with Whitehead's statement, the full implications of which have not been taken seriously enough, that metaphysical categories are not dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities. But when these tentative formulations prove conceptually useful or are conceptually employed, they lose their “hypothetical air,” and often pass into what Whitehead calls a false state of “sober obviousness:”“An old established metaphysical system gains a false air of adequate precision from the fact that its words and phrases have passed into current literature. Thus propositions expressed in its language are more easily correlated to our flitting intuitions into metaphysical truth. When we trust these verbal statements and argue as though they adequately analysed meaning, we are led into difficulties which take the shape of negations of what in practice is presupposed. But when they are proposed as first principles they assume an unmerited air of sober obviousness.”