Whitehead and Private-Interest Theories

Abstract

ALTHOUGH Whitehead did not write a systematic ethics, I nonetheless believe that a philosophically tenable ethics can be derived from certain of his metaphysical and religious doctrines. There has been relatively little scholarly attention given to such a project-affirmative or otherwise. Of the few relevant articles that have appeared, several suggest that ethics derived from Whitehead's doctrines would be a private-interest theory.1 Although value categories are recognized as central to Whitehead's metaphysics, the critics note, and rightly so, that the categories are aesthetic and contain no specifically ethical values. Concluding further that in Whitehead's philosophy ethical categories would therefore be reduced to categories of aesthetics, the critics judge that the imputation of a private-interest theory to Whitehead is legitimate. I will first argue that this imputation is a mistake and attempt to uncover its possible origins; finally I will construct the foundation of a more plausible Whiteheadian ethics, a task deserving of serious and detailed attention. Although this estimation of importance cannot be fully defended here, it is this conviction rather than the demands of the merely preliminary polemic that has motivated the present study. As a first contention I briefly note that it is not argument in favor of the position of the alleged private-interest theory proponents to indicate that Whitehead did not specify any values peculiar to ethics or, indeed, write ethical theory. Ethical values would be a special case of generic values. And Whitehead, as is well known, was philosophically interested in the analysis of generic principles that apply to all actualities.2 Consequently he would not find it of initial importance to discuss specifically ethical values, for clearly this would require a separate categoreal analysis of human conduct. It would be sophistical, however, for the critics to argue that not having intention implies that the intention could not be fulfilled. Fortunately or unfortunately, intentions and abilities are linked with no exhaustive reciprocity in human activities. The major part of the dispute must confront the opposing interpretations on the substantive rather than the methodological level by considering the alleged basis of their position in Whitehead's metaphysical principles. These critics take the theory of feelings, meant by Whitehead to apply to, and be generically descriptive of, all actuality, to be of central relevance. The suspect doctrine is Whitehead's claim that all feelings are rooted in aesthetic experience: an actual fact is a -fact of aesthetic experience. All aesthetic experience is feeling arising out of the realization of contrast under identity (PR, p. 427). A feeling is a component in the concrescence of every actual entity, productive of the process toward completed unity, the 'satisfaction' in Whitehead's particular meaning of that term. In short, feelings aiming at satisfaction contribute to the generic and fundamental activity of every actual entity. The primary characteristic of the generic valuation is its determination by what individual takes to be important in actualizing its subjective aim. Valuation is dependent upon the individual's interest. In describing this generic experience, Whitehead uses various value concepts, for