Finding the Foundations of the World in Aesthetic Experience: The Radical Empiricism of William James and the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead

Abstract

In this manuscript I widen the interpretive parameters of Alfred North Whitehead’s thought in an effort to make his philosophy more readily available to concerns it is not usually taken to address, such as those that define an existential sensibility. I contend that an adequate rendering of Whitehead’s philosophy must include a consideration and discussion of the aesthetic dimension and character of experience. By conceiving of the world in processual and compositional terms, Whitehead is conceiving of the world in aesthetic terms, in terms of feeling, affect, value, possibility, and achievement. Without this grounding in aesthetic experience and expression, Whitehead’s philosophy loses its experiential purchase. What I offer herein is a two-pronged approach to understanding Whitehead that will be salutary for opening engagement with Whitehead’s thought, both within and outside of circles already familiar with his philosophy. The first prong is to develop the connection between Whitehead and the thought of William James, especially James’s radical empiricism. Whitehead, alongside James, was a radical empiricist in a thorough sense. The second prong is to emphasize Whitehead’s rendering of aesthetics as the fulcrum of his philosophy, the node through which its various complexities are synthesized. But Whitehead’s aesthetics cannot be adequately grasped without working through James’s radical empiricism and Whitehead’s own understanding of time and possibility. For this reason, this manuscript is largely devoted to elaborating the necessary metaphysical substructure to working on Whitehead's aesthetics in broader existential, social, political, environmental, and scientific contexts. In pursuing these aims, I articulate the metaphysical sweep of radical empiricism and its unwavering commitment to rendering the world intelligible in experiential terms. I also extend the spirit of radical empiricism to the discussion of time and possibility and show that these two ideas, properly understood, are essential to understanding Whitehead’s theory of actual occasions and thus his rendering of process and of experience. The resultant version of Whitehead’s metaphysics makes the transition to understanding the aesthetic dimension of experience and the various applications of Whitehead’s ideas that much more coherent.