Whitehead's Theory of Moral Experience: Its Reconstruction and Importance

Abstract

The potential of Whitehead's metaphysics of value to interpret moral experience has generated a fair amount of interest within Whiteheadian scholarship. However, because Whitehead left no explicit ethical trea tise, scholars have been unsuccessful in producing a widely accepted interpretative framework defining Whitehead's views on the issue. This failure to develop an authentically Whiteheadian position on moral mat ters weakens the perceived viability of Whitehead's own project. Whitehead is clear that the purpose of speculative philosophy is to elu cidate all aspects of experience: Whatever is found in 'practice' must lie within the scope of the metaphysical description. When description fails to include the 'practice,' the metaphysics is inadequate and requires revision (1978, 13). It is also certain that he finds morality to be an important human practice: beauty, moral and aesthetic, is the aim of existence (Schilpp 1951, 8). In addition, an interest in moral issues seems congruent with the emphasis on value, beauty and religious expe rience found throughout his works. Thus, the possibility that Whitehead offered merely incoherent insights into matters moral, or that no coher ent theory could be built from his own foundations, undermines the credibility of his entire project. This article addresses this gap in Whiteheadian scholarship by demonstrating that Whitehead did offer a consistent and coherent the ory on moral matters. My approach will be based on a hermeneutic akin to archeological recovery and reconstruction, seeking clues by Collect