Charles Hartshorne (pronounced Harts-horne) is considered by manyphilosophers to be one of the most important philosophers of religionand metaphysicians of the twentieth century. Although Hartshorne oftencriticized the metaphysics of substance found in medieval philosophy,he was very much like medieval thinkers in developing a philosophythat was theocentric. Throughout his career he defended therationality of theism and for several decades was almost alone indoing so among English-language philosophers. Hartshorne was also oneof the thinkers responsible for the rediscovery of St. Anselm’sontological argument. But his most influential contribution tophilosophical theism did not concern arguments for theexistence of God, but rather was related to a theory of theactuality of God, i.e.,how God exists. Intraditional or classical theism, God was seen as the supreme,unchanging being, but in Hartshorne’s process-based orneoclassical conception, God is seen as supreme becoming in whichthere is a factor of supreme being. That is, we humans change for awhile, whereas Godalways changes, Hartshorne maintains. Theneoclassical view of Hartshorne has influenced the way manyphilosophers understand the concept of God. In fact, a small number ofscholars—some philosophers and some theologians—think ofhim as the greatest metaphysician of the second half of the twentiethcentury, yet, with a few exceptions to be treated below, his work hashad limited influence among analytic philosophers who are theists.

In addition to Hartshorne’s many books, listed in thebibliography below, scholars can benefit from four anthologies, alsolisted in the bibliography, that gather together much of thesignificant secondary literature on Hartshorne. These are theanthologies edited by Cobb and Gamwell, Hahn, Reese and Freeman, andShields.

• 1. Life
• 2. Method
• 3. The Existence and Actuality of God
• 4. Axiology
• 5. Panpsychism or Psychicalism
• 6. Critical Evaluation
• Bibliography
  • Books by Hartshorne
  • Secondary Sources
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life

Charles Hartshorne was born in the nineteenth century and lived tophilosophize in the twenty-first. He was born in Kittanning,Pennsylvania (U.S.A.) on June 5, 1897. He was, like Alfred NorthWhitehead, the son of an Anglican minister, although many of hisancestors were Quakers. After attending Haverford College he served inWorld War One in France as a medic, taking a box of philosophy bookswith him to the front. After the war Hartshorne received hisbachelor’s degree and doctorate in philosophy at Harvard, andthere he met Whitehead. Most of the major elements ofHartshorne’s philosophy were already apparent by the time hebecame familiar with Whitehead’s thought, contrary to a popularmisconception. That is, Hartshorne came to many of the sameconclusions as Whitehead independently of Whitehead’s influence.(One exception is Whitehead’s defense of eternal objects, inpartial contrast to Hartshorne’s theory of emergent universals,the latter of which are arguably more consistent with a processworldview.) From 1923–1925 a postdoctoral fellowship took him toGermany, where he had classes with both Husserl and Heidegger. Butneither of these thinkers influenced his philosophy as much as C.S.Peirce, whose collected papers he edited with Paul Weiss (see Thompson1984). In addition to many visiting appointments, Hartshorne spent histeaching career at three institutions. From 1928–1955 he taughtat the University of Chicago, where he was a dominant intellectualforce in the School of Divinity, despite the fact that he was housedin the Philosophy Department, where he was not nearly as influential.He was at Emory University from 1955 until 1962, when he moved to theUniversity of Texas at Austin. Hartshorne eventually became along-term emeritus professor at Austin and lived there until his deathon October 9, 2000. His wife, Dorothy, was as colorful as her husbandand was mentioned often in his writings. Hartshorne never owned anautomobile, nor did he smoke or drink alcohol or caffeine; he had apassion for birdsong and became an internationally known expert in thefield.

2. Method

Three primary methodological devices or procedures are at work inHartshorne’s metaphysics. First, he very often uses a systematicexhaustion of theoretical options—or the development of positionmatrices, sometimes containing thirty-two alternatives (!)—inconsidering philosophical problems. This procedure is evidentthroughout his philosophy, but it is most apparent in his varioustreatments of the ontological argument. To take another example, hethinks it important to notice that regarding the mind-body problemthere are three options available to us, not two, as is usuallyassumed: some form of dualism, some form of the materialist view thatpsyche is reducible to body,and some form of the panpsychist(or, as he terms it, psychicalist) view that body is in some wayreducible to psyche if all concrete singulars (e.g., cells orelectrons) in some way show signs of self-motion or activity. ThomasNagel famously considers this third option, but Hartshorne actuallydefends it. The recent surge of interest in panpsychism indicates thatHartshorne was ahead of his time by several decades in his ideas inphilosophy of mind.

Second, Hartshorne frequently uses the history of philosophy to seewhich of the logically possible options made available by positionmatrices have been defended before so as to avail ourselves of theinsights of others in the effort to examine in detail the consistencyof these positions and to assess their consequences (see J. Smith1991; and Lucas 1991). Nonetheless, those logically possible optionsthat have not historically found support should be analyzed both interms of internal consistency and practical ramifications. It shouldbe noted that Hartshorne’s use of the history of philosophyoften involves lesser known views of famous thinkers (likePlato’s belief in God as the soul for the body of the wholenatural world, or Leibniz’s defense of panpsychism) as well asthe thought of lesser known thinkers (such as Faustus Socinus,Nicholas Berdyaev, Mohammed Iqbal, or Jules Lecquier).

Third, after a careful reading of the history of philosophy hasfacilitated the conceptual and pragmatic examination of all theavailable options made explicit by a position matrix, the (Greek)principle of moderation is used by Hartshorne as a guide to negotiatethe way between extreme views on either side. For example, regardingthe issue of personal identity, the view of Hume (and of BertrandRussell at one stage in his career) is that, strictly speaking, thereis no personal identity in that each event in “a person’slife” is externally related to the others. This is just asdisastrous, Hartshorne thinks, as Leibniz’s view that all suchevents are internally related to the others, so that implicit in thefetus are all the experiences of the adult. (This Leibnizian viewrelies on the classical theistic, strong notion of omniscience,wherein God knows in minute detail and with absolute assurance whatwill happen in the future.) The Humean view fails to explain thecontinuity we experience in our lives and the Leibnizian view fails toexplain the indeterminateness we experience when considering thefuture. The truth lies between these two extremes, Hartshorne thinks.His view of personal identity is based on a conception of time asasymmetrical in which later events in a person’s life areinternally related to former events, but they are externally relatedto those that follow, thus leading to a position that is at oncepartially deterministic and partially indeterministic. That is, thepast supplies necessary but not sufficient conditions for humanidentity in the present, which always faces a partially indeterminatefuture.

Only the first of these methodological devices or procedures supportsthe widely held claim that Hartshorne is a rationalist. His overallmethod is a complex one that involves the other two methods orprocedures, where he does borrow from the rationalists, but also fromthe pragmatists and the Greeks (see Lee 1991; and Dombrowski 1991). Itmust be admitted, however, that Hartshorne was educated in aphilosophic world still heavily influenced by late nineteenth andearly twentieth century idealism. (On Hartshorne’s method, seePeters 1984; and Frankenberry 1991.)

3. The Existence and Actuality of God

Philosophers commonly use a metaphor that suggests that the chain ofan argument, say for the existence of God, is only as strong as itsweakest link. Hartshorne rejects this metaphor on Peircian grounds. Hereplaces it by suggesting that various arguments for the existence ofGod—ontological, cosmological, design, etc.—are likemutually reinforcing strands in a cable, as detailed by the Hartshornescholar Donald Viney.

He argues that Hume’s and Kant’s criticisms of theontological argument of St. Anselm are not directed at the strongestversion of his argument found inProslogion, chapter 3. Here,he thinks, there is a modal distinction implied between existingnecessarily and existing contingently. Hartshorne’s view is thatexistence alone might not be a real predicate, but existingnecessarily certainly is. To say that something exists without thepossibility of not existing is to say something significant about thebeing in question. That is, contra Kant and others, Hartshornebelieves that there are necessary truths concerning existence. To saythat absolute nonexistence in some fashion exists is to contradictoneself; hence he thinks that absolute nonexistence is unintelligible.It is necessarily the case thatsomething exists, he thinks,and, relying on the ontological argument, he also thinks it true thatGod necessarily exists (see Gamwell 2020; also see Reese 1964; and R.M. Martin 1964).

On Hartshorne’s view, metaphysics does not deal with realitiesbeyond the physical, but rather with those features of reality thatare ubiquitous or that would exist in any possible world. And he doesnot think that it is possible to think of a preeminent being thatexisted only contingently since if it did exist contingently ratherthan necessarily, it would not be preeminent. That is, God’sexistence is either impossible (positivism) or possible, and, ifpossible, then necessary (theism). He is assuming here that there arethree alternatives for us to consider: (1) God is impossible; (2) Godis possible, but may or may not exist; (3) God exists necessarily. Theontological argument shows that the second alternative makes no sense.Hence, he thinks that the prime task for the philosophical theist isto show that God is not impossible (see Goodwin 1978; also see J.Smith 1984).

A Hartshornian version of the ontological argument can be put asfollows: (1) Even if Kant was correct that existence is not apredicate, modality of existence is a predicate in the sense thatsaying that X exists necessarily or contingently or impossibly, ratherthan merely saying that X exists, is to say something or to predicatesomething significant about X. (2) There are three (and only three)modes of existence: (a) impossible (cannot exist); (b) contingent (mayor may not exist--i.e., being such that it exists but might not orbeing such that it does not exist but might); and (c) necessary (mustexist). (3) To say that God exists contingently (as in 2b) is tocontradict the logic of perfection (which is Anselm’s greatdiscovery) because a being that existed only contingently would not bethe greatest conceivable. (4) Therefore, the existence of God--thegreatest conceivable being or a perfect being--is either impossible ornecessary (preliminary conclusion). (5) The existence of God is notimpossible (which is the conclusion from other theistic arguments andfrom the history of religious experience). (6) Therefore, theexistence of God is necessary; or, at the very least, the nonexistenceof God is inconceivable (ultimate conclusion). Hartshorne also offereda version of the argument in formal logic, perhaps the very first todo so (see Hartshorne 1962; also see Hubbeling 1991).

In addition, Hartshorne’s detailed treatment of the argumentfrom design is connected to his view of biology. It is hard toreconcile the idea of an omnipotent, classical theistic God with thefact of the monstrosities and chance mutations produced in nature, butthe general orderliness of the natural world is just as difficult toreconcile with there being no Orderer or Persuader at all. Belief inGod as omnipotent, he thinks, has three problems: (1) it is at oddswith the disorderliness in nature; (2) it yields the acutest form ofthe theodicy problem; and (3) it conflicts with the notion fromPlato’sSophist, defended by Hartshorne, that beingis dynamic power (dynamis). Anomnipotentbeing would ultimately have all power over others, who wouldultimately be powerless. But any being-in-becoming, according toHartshorne, hassome power to be affected by others and toaffect others; this power, however slight, provides counterevidence toa belief in divine omnipotence. In contrast, God is ideally powerful,on the Hartshornian view. That is, God is as powerful as it ispossible to be, given the partial freedom and power of creatures (seeBirch 1991; and Kuntz 1991).

Hartshorne’s dispute with traditional or classical philosophicaltheism concerns not so much theexistence of God, but ratherits assumption that theactuality of God (i.e.,howGod exists) could be described in the same terms as the existence ofGod. A God who exists necessarily is not necessary or unchanging inevery other respect (e.g., in terms of divine responsiveness tocreaturely changes), he thinks. Although Hartshorne believes that themedieval thinkers were correct in trying to think through the logic ofperfection, he also thinks that this logic has traditionally beenmisapplied in the effort to articulate the attributes of a beingcalled “God,” roughly defined as the greatest conceivablebeing. The traditional or classical theistic logic of perfection seesGod as monopolar in that regarding various contrasts(permanence-change, one-many, activity-passivity, etc.) thetraditional or classical philosophical theist has chosen one elementin each pair as a divine attribute (the former element of each pair)and denigrated the other (see Fitch 1964).

By way of contrast, Hartshorne’s logic of perfection is dipolar.Within each element of these pairs there are good features that shouldbe attributed in the preeminent sense to God (e.g., excellentpermanence in the sense of steadfastness, excellent change in thesense of preeminent ability to respond to the sufferings ofcreatures). In each element in these pairs there are also invidiousfeatures (e.g., pigheaded stubbornness, fickleness). The task for thephilosophical theist, he thinks, is to attribute the excellences ofboth elements of these pairs to God and to eschew the invidiousaspects of both elements. However, it should be noted thatsome contrasts are not fit for dipolar analysis (e.g.,good-evil) in that “good good” is a redundancy and“evil good” is a contradiction. The greatest conceivablebeing, he thinks, cannot be evil in any sense whatsoever.

Hartshorne does not claim to believe in two gods, nor does he wish todefend a cosmological dualism. In fact, we can see that the oppositeis the case when we consider that, in addition to calling his theismdipolar, he refers to it as a type ofpanentheism,which literally means that all isin the one God. Thisinclusion of the world in God occurs by means of omniscience (asHartshorne defines the term) and omnibenevolence. All creaturelyfeelings, especially feelings of suffering, are included in the divinelife. God is seen by Hartshorne as the mind or soul for the whole bodyof the natural world (see above regarding Plato’s World Soul),although he thinks of God as distinguishable from the creatures.Another way to categorize Hartshorne’s theism is to see it asneoclassical in the sense that he relies on the classical ortraditional theistic arguments for the existence of God and on theclassical theistic metaphysics of being asfirst steps in theeffort to think through properly the logic of perfection. However,these efforts need to be supplemented, he thinks, by the efforts ofthose who see becoming as more inclusive than being. God is notoutside of time, as in the Boethian view that is influential amongtraditional philosophical theists, but rather exists through all oftime, on Hartshorne’s view. On the neoclassical view,God’s permanent “being” consists in steadfastbenevolence exhibited through everlasting becoming (see Findlay1964).

God is omniscient, on Hartshorne’s view, but“omniscience” here refers to the divine ability to knoweverything that is knowable: past actualities as already actualized;present realities to the extent that they are knowable according tothe laws of physics (e.g., what is present epistemically may very wellbe the most recent past, given the speed of light); and futurepossibilities or probabilitiesas possibilities orprobabilities. On the traditional or classical conception ofomniscience, however, God has knowledge of future possibilities orprobabilities as already actualized. According to Hartshorne, this isnot an example of supreme knowledge, but is rather an example ofignorance of the (at least partially) indeterminate character of thefuture (see the excellent article Shields and Viney 2003).

The asymmetrical view of time, common to process thinkers in general(e.g., Bergson, Whitehead, Hartshorne), in which the relationshipbetween the present and the past is radically different from therelationship between the present and the future, also has implicationsfor Hartshorne’s theodicy (see Devlin 1991). A plurality ofpartially free agents, including nonhuman ones, facing a future thatis neither completely determined nor foreknown in detail, makes it notonly possible, but likely, that these agents will get in eachother’s way, clash, and cause each other to suffer. On thisview, God is the fellow sufferer who understands.

4. Axiology

Hartshorne views the cosmos as a “metaphysical monarchy,”with God as the presiding, but not omnipotent, head, and he sees humansociety as a “metaphysical democracy,” with each member asan equal. This makes him a liberal in politics if“liberalism” refers to the egalitarian belief that none ofus is God. That is, due to the fact of pervasive pluralism ofcomprehensive doctrines that citizens affirm, none of us shouldpresume to act like the classical theistic God by unreasonablyimposing our view of the world on others (see Wild 1964). AlthoughHartshorne and Whitehead are both political liberals, Hartshorne is,despite his view of panpsychist reality as thoroughly social (seeKegley 1991), more of a libertarian liberal and Whitehead more of aredistributive liberal (see Morris 1991). In axiology as well as inmetaphysics/theodicy, freedom is crucial, on Hartshorne’s view(see Kane 1991). Further, Hartshorne’s process view hasimplications for fetal development that informs his liberal viewregarding the permissibility of abortion (see Engelhardt 1991).

Hartshorne’s panpsychism (or psychicalism) entails the beliefthat each active singular in nature, even those like electrons andplant cells that exhibit feeling if not mentality, is nonetheless acenter of intrinsic, and not merely instrumental, value. As a result,Hartshorne’s metaphysics is meant to provide a basis for both anaesthetic appreciation of the value in nature, as well as for anenvironmental ethics where intrinsic and instrumental values in natureare weighed. In fact, Hartshorne was one of the first philosophers towrite in detail on topics in environmental ethics.

As a published expert on bird song, Hartshorne is the firstphilosopher since Aristotle to be an expert in both metaphysics andornithology. He writes specifically of the aesthetic categoriesrequired to explain why birds sing outside of mating season and whenterritory is not threatened—two occasions for bird song that arecrucial to the behaviorists’ account. Birdslike tosing, he concludes (see Skutch 1991). His discovery of the“monotony threshold” regarding bird song is still cited byornithologists. Hartshorne’s ornithology thus serves tohighlight the crucial role that aesthetic categories play inHartshorne’s philosophy (from the ancient Greek word forfeeling:aesthesis), from the minuscule feelings ofmicroscopic reality to divine feelings (see Chiaraviglio 1991; Hospers1991; and Dombrowski 2004).

Hartshorne’s criticism of anthropocentrism is due not only tohis concern for God, but also for beings-in-becoming who experience ina less sophisticated way than humans. To say that all active singularsfeel—leaving out of the picture abstractions like“twoness” or insentient composites of active singularsthat do not themselves feel as wholes—is not to say that theyare self-conscious or that they think. As before, however,Hartshorne’s axiology is ultimately theocentric in character. Itshould be noted, however, that Hartshorne has exerted considerableinfluence on several scholars of Asian philosophy, including some whoare not theists (see King 1991; Arapura 1991; and Matsunobu 1991).

It should be noted that for Hartshorne the value of a person’slife does not depend on personal immortality, which he rejects. Inthis regard he is unlike many or most theists, including many processtheists. But Hartshorne does not think that death ends all. To believein an everlasting God who has perfect memory and who is all-lovingitself constitutes a sort of vicarious life after bodily death, if nota sort of personal immortality. He calls this view“contributionism.” To wish for, or perhaps even to expectas a sort of entitlement, more than this Hartshorne finds hubristicfor biological animals such as ourselves. Further, much of what wecontribute to the divine life ispresent happiness (orunhappiness) and virtue (or vice), thus counteracting the fear thatcontributionism compromises the intrinsic value of the experiences inour lives.

5. Panpsychism or Psychicalism

Hartshorne is well-known for his lifelong defense from the 1920s on ofpanpsychism, even when it was not fashionable to do so. His preferreddesignation is “psychicalism,” and this for two reasons.First, this label provides a clearer contrast to“materialism,” which is the main competitor to thisposition. And second, the “pan” component of panpsychismgives the mistaken impression that mind or psyche can be attributed toeverything that exists, in contrast to Hartshorne’smore modest view that all concrete singulars feel (see Wiehl 1991).Hartshorne’s psychicalism is very close to Whitehead’sreformed subjectivism, views that can be based on metaphysicalconsiderations, psychological reflection, and scientific support.

Like Whitehead, Hartshorne seeks a coherent view that avoids thebifurcation of nature that has plagued philosophy since at least theseventeenth century. “Mind” and “matter” arenot two different sorts of reality, but two different ways ofdescribing the real, with mind, broadly construed, more inclusive thanmatter. If it is objected that neural processes, say, are physicalevents, Hartshorne would agree in that “physical” inHartshorne refers to extended reality, which is compatible with theclaim that physical processes exhibit minimal mentality. By“minimal mentality” Hartshorne meanssome senseof the contrast between the actual and the possible or, in differentterms, between the past and the future. Ultimately, mind-matterdualism is unintelligible, as numerous opponents to dualism haveconsistently argued, in that all metaphysical dualisms violate a basictenet of rationality relating to coherence. There is a radicalinconsistency that is the basis for modern thought, according toHartshorne, between the mechanism and determinism of science and thehuman world where we feel intensely and have to make decisions.Materialism is ironically less scientific than psychicalism becausethe bifurcation created by materialism encourages human beings toignore science in their personal lives in that we cannot live trulyhuman lives as machines. But for the mechanist both molecules andhuman beings blindly run (see Cobb 1991).

Psychicalism is more coherent than dualism because it provides anintellectual way tointegrate physics as well as psychology,an integration that is prohibited or made exceedingly difficult indualism. By making mind the primary category, matter is not eliminatedbut is made a derivative category dealing with dynamic singulars whenthey are aggregated. The most important function of psychicalism inHartshorne is to avoid the bifurcation of nature without denying asignificant amount of what is given in reality in terms of experiencewith qualitative content.

Hartshorne is well aware of the fact that, once the bifurcation ofnature or dualism has been refuted, there is also the dominant view tocontend with: materialism. But there is no way that materialism canadequately explain the qualitative experiences that we have as amatter of course. Indeed, materialism leaves experienceunexplained. Further, as Hartshorne sees things, materialismis actually an emergent type of dualism or a type of dualism indisguise wherein wholly unfeeling stuff eventually and miraculouslybecomes stuff with feeling. That is, materialism is in reality a sortof bifurcation in time in that there is no way to consistently denyqualitative experience (which is something of a redundancy).The denial itself is a qualitative experience. In this regard, thereis something half-hearted about materialism (see Wolf 1991).

On Hartshorne’s psychicalist view, by contrast, feeling is notan addition to matter but the whole of what ultimately makes up thephysical world, even in its most primitive forms. Relying on (andslightly modifying) Plato’s view (Sophist 247E),Hartshorne holds that beingis the dynamic power to affectothers, and to be affected by others, in however slight a way.

Hartshorne agrees with materialists that we should deny that“mind” and “physical” are incompatiblepredicates. But psychicalism is not only a more coherent alternativeto dualism, it is also superior to materialism because the latter addsnothing to the description of reality in itself. In fact, it canachieve coherence only by subtracting much of what we experience asreal. Like materialism, psychicalism is a type of monism when thesetwo positions are contrasted with dualism. But psychicalism is thebetter alternative to dualism, he thinks, in its defense of thegraduated character of mentality, which includes, but is notterminated at, the level of cells. The superiority of psychicalism tomaterialism is largely due to the coherent system of concepts itoffers that includes metaphysics, theology, biology, psychology, andphysics. Some of these fields are in effect omitted or rejectedaltogether in materialism and are included in a dualist account in anincoherent manner. In both materialism and dualism there is a lack ofintegration; only in psychicalism is there the possibility ofintegration or coherence (see N. Martin 1991).

A common misconception is that, because the psychicalist is committedto the claim that a minimal form of experiencing is ubiquitous,everything experiences or feels. There are at least twosignificant qualifications that are needed. First,abstractionsfrom dynamic singulars that feel do not themselves feel, as in“blueness” or “triangularity” or even theabstraction “feeling.” Second,groups oraggregates of dynamic singulars that feel do not themselves feelbecause these are collections rather than true dynamic singulars, asin tables or crystals or a flock of birds. Nonetheless there can beactivityin tables or crystals or a flock of birds, even ifthese aggregates are themselves inert wholes with active parts. Inthis regard, Hartshorne has us notice the abstractness of many of ourpragmatic concepts that are assumed to deal with the most concretereality (see J. Smith 1964).

Further, Hartshorne sees trees as collectives or aggregates withoutthe unity found in either an individual cell or an individual animalwith a central nervous system. That is, “sentientindividual” does not lose its distinctive meaning inpsychicalism in that many things viewed as individuals in everydaylife are really pseudo-individuals. Stones and crowds of people cannotfeel even if their members can. Apparent singulars are composites, incontrast to true singulars, which can themselves feel as compoundindividuals. If something acts as an individual it also feels as anindividual, on Hartshorne’s view, in contrast to thepseudo-individuals who neither act nor feelas individuals(see Weiss 1984).

The physical things of everyday experience are either aggregates(metaphysical democracies) or dynamic singulars in their own right(metaphysical monarchies). In the latter category are to be foundcells and whole persons. Once again, the psychical is not a specialsort of reality, according to Hartshorne, but reality itself in thatdynamic singulars (or actual occasions) feel, however minimally.Abstract aspects of the psychical do not feel, but these are not somuch exceptions to the rule as abstract aspects of that which is basicto the real. Some of these dynamic singulars are brought together by acentral nervous system or something like it so as to produce a higherorder singular. Alternatives to psychicalism tend to commit whatWhitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, where mereaggregates of dynamic singulars are taken to be the most concretelyreal entities.

Whitehead, in partial contrast to Hartshorne, did not call hisposition panpsychism or psychicalism (although he did not object ifothers referred to his view as panpsychist). He preferred to call hisview philosophy of organism, with the ultimate units orresverae called “actual occasions,” which are gatheredtogether as “societies” that are either mere aggregates orcompound individuals who exhibit psyche in their own right. Eachactual occasion prehends its past, although some process scholarsprefer to call this ability “mnemonic” rather than interms of “memory” in that the latter designation might tooeasily be interpreted as a conscious procedure. The Greekmnema is close to Hartshorne’s and Whitehead’sview because it refers to a memorial or a record that is notnecessarily conscious.

It might be objected that Hartshorne’s psychicalism is anoveruse of an argument from analogy. It might be claimed that“feeling” or “sentiency” apply only to humanbeings or other animals with central nervous systems. On the basis ofthis criticism, there is merely a verbal connection when feeling isattributed “all the way down” in nature.Hartshorne’s response is to suggest that terms that are useduniversally are of necessity very abstract, including psychical termsassociated with feeling or sentiency. It is such abstractness thatenables him to deal with this criticism. All dynamic singulars havesome sense of the past (in terms of physical feeling orprehension) andsome sense of the future (in terms ofprimitive mentality or possibility). There are two extremes to beavoided: that we could completely capture others’ feelings, onthe one hand, and that we are completely in the dark regardingothers’ feelings, on the other. However remote the analogy maybe, it never completely lapses (see Ogden 1984).

Hartshorne’s psychicalism is based not only on metaphysicalconsiderations or on an argument from analogy, but also on personalexperience, which takes one to sentiency at the microscopic level.This means that the human body is not entirely disanalogous to therest of nature. Granted, many characteristics of psyche cannot begeneralized, such as consciousness or thinking (see W. Viney 1991).Hence, another label for Hartshorne’s view (derived from DavidRay Griffin) is panexperientialism,not panconsciousness.Hartshorne thinks it crucial to point out that psychicalism is not somuch an (illegitimate) extension of human traits like feeling as amovementaway from human traits like consciousness andadvanced thinking. He has us notice that pleasure and pain arelocalized, as in good food on the tongue or sexualexcitement, on the one hand, or a toothache or a stubbed toe, on theother. We literally sympathize or feel with the enjoyments or negativeexperiences of cells in our bodies. In effect, one feels previoussuffering at the cellular level. These cells have rapport with eachother, otherwise psychosomatic illness might be very difficult toexplain. All pain involves damage to cells. Pain is an instance of thepsychical that is just as revelatory of the real as experiences wehave via sight, although cells in the eye also have feelings of aprimitive sort.

In the trilemma treated by Hartshorne (some form of dualism, some formof materialism, or some form of psychicalism, three alternatives thatHartshorne sees as logically exhaustive), psychicalism is oftendismissed as absurd. The fact that personal experience takes us tosentiency at the microscopic level effectively counteracts thisalleged absurdity, as Hartshorne sees things. Hurt my cells and youhurtme, he holds. Further, psychicalism is not odd in beinga metaphysical view because materialism and dualism are alsometaphysical views. The materialist is saying, whether explicitly orimplicitly, thatthe real is purely material with psychebeing, at best, an epiphenomenal shadow reality.

It is interesting from a Hartshornian point of view that cells canabsorb food even though they do not have stomachs, they can absorboxygen without lungs, they can reproduce without sexual organs, andthey can flee intruders without legs. From this evidence he thinksthat it is legitimate to attribute sentience to them without a centralnervous system present. The mind-body relation in us and in otheranimals with central nervous systems is one that is participatory inthat we are able to refeel through memory and perception what was feltat the cellular level. Qualities as well as abstract structures aregiven in experience, with the qualitative experiences of cells givenmore directly than those at the atomic level. As before, to think thatthe experiences of cells appear miraculously out of inert lifelessstuff strikes Hartshorne as unbelievable. If one cuts one’sfinger and it hurts, the experience of pain is both one’s ownand not one’s own in that the damaged cells in one’sfinger have their own lives that are partially independent of what oneis as a whole individual.

Relying on the psychologist Gustav Fechner, Hartshorne distinguishesbetween monadological psyche at the microscopic level andsynechological psyche at the level of compound individuals like uswith sentiency per se. Our own synechological experiences are filteredthrough monadological psyche, including the experiences of nervecells. What are fundamental are feelings, activity, dynamism. We feelfeelings and we experience experiences. This is because “merematter” refers to very low levels of psyche. This widespreadsharing in the feelings of others indicates Hartshorne’sdistance from Hume’s denial that one experience can really sharein the experience of another that causally influences it. It isprecisely such influence that is given in a later experience inrelation to an earlier one. Unlike Fechner, however, Hartshorne doesnot attribute synechological psyche to plants, which as wholes haveless integration than even the cells that constitute them.

It is surprising that Hartshorne enlists Kant in the defense ofpsychicalism. In hisDreams of a Spirit-Seer, Kant rebukesthose who ridicule Leibniz’s panpsychism.If we had tofind a positive concept of reality in-itself, Leibniz points the way(see Loemker 1964). Either we remain agnostic regardingthings-in-themselves (Kant’s own view) or we hold with Leibnizthat things-in-themselves are psychical individuals(Hartshorne’s view). In a sense, the most viable alternative topsychicalism, on this view, is not so much materialism but agnosticismregarding things-in-themselves. What resembles no aspect of experienceis bare nothing rather than some thing-in-itself. The“qualities” of sheer material beings would of necessity bequite unknown to us. What is needed, by contrast, is a view thataccommodates the continuity among qualities in various types ofpsyche.

Like Plato, Hartshorne sees psyche as a sort of self-motion, anactivity that is found throughout nature. The fallacy of divisionoccurs when the inert characteristics of an aggregate are assumed toapply to members of the group, as when the complete lack of feeling ina stone is assumed to apply to molecularactivities in thestone. And the fallacy of composition occurs when the activities inmembers of a group are assumed to apply to the group as a whole. Thekey contrast within psychicalism is that between the singular and thecomposite, which creates the need to think through carefully therelations between these contrasting features.

In a way, pre-literate animists were on the right track, as arechildren and Romantic poets like William Wordsworth, in tending towardpsychicalism. The possible defects in these proto-psychicalists arenot responded to adequately by seeing them as “primitive”and in need of correction by “common sense,” which shouldno more be legislative in metaphysics than it is in science. Bothpsychicalism and contemporary science, in contrast to common sense,see dynamism throughout the microscopic world. The pure materialistabsolutizes the anthropocentric biases of ordinary language.Psychicalism tries to transcend these biases (see Ogden 1964).

Reality is composed of pulses of experience, on Hartshorne’spsychicalist view. The data of human experience, for example, arethemselves experiences, the clearest cases of which are memories andperceptions, most especially experiences of pleasure and pain. Ourexperiences exhibit both independence and dependence on theexperiences of cells in our own bodies. This dependence is called“prehension” by Hartshorne, who relies here on Whitehead(see Ford 1991). Contra Hume, what we experience are previousinstances of experience that have a causal influence on us. To doubtthat we experience the past is to doubt everything, on Hartshorneview, in that experience itself is internally related to the past, butis externally related to the future, on the asymmetrical view of timeprevalent in process philosophy.

Hartshorne goes so far as to say that the participation in eachother’s being found in prehension is his strongest belief inthat the mind-body relation is clearly social. The perceived precedesthe perceiving by providing necessary but not sufficient conditionsfor what comes next. That is, events do not necessitate their precisesuccessors, even if some successors or other are required.

If metaphysics is seen, as it is by Hartshorne, as the study ofnonrestrictive existential statements, then “somethingexists” and “experience exists” are metaphysicalstatements because of their extreme range. They are statements thatcannot be denied without contradiction. That is, psychicalism ismetaphysically true rather than contingently true or false (see H.Smith 1964). But this does not mean that there is an incompatibilitybetween psychicalism and the contingently true or false deliverancesin science. It is understandable why scientists restrict theirinvestigations to what can be quantified and hence be capable ofprecise measurement. But such restriction is nonetheless compatiblewith psychicalism as a sort of comparative psychology of the widestsort, with physics dealing with the simplest instances of psyche orwith the behavioristic aspect of the lowest instances of psyche.Whereas science is concerned with the control of nature, philosophy,according to Hartshorne, should be concerned with the most generalsort ofunderstanding of nature.

A further connection between psychicalism and science can be seen interms of Kant’s rejection of psychicalism as being due in partto the materialistic and mechanistic physics of his day. In principle,scientists today could be psychicalists and some of them were in factpsychicalists, as in Hartshorne’s friend at University ofChicago, the geneticist Sewall Wright (see Wright 1964). Science dealswith structure, not quality, yet without qualitative feeling,structures are empty. Only psychicalism generalizes both structure aswell as feeling. The physicalis the psychical whenconsidered only in its causal relations and structures, abstractingaway from qualitative aspects.

Hartshorne’s generalized concept of sentience is integrallyconnected to his commitment to process philosophy, to the primacy ofbecoming over being. Without memory and anticipation,“past” and “future” would be meaninglesswords. In fact, if time is a universal feature of the real, thenpsychicalism is required, otherwise time could easily be reduced to(static) space. If an electron, say, does not have memory per se itnonetheless exhibits present behavior in some sort of prehensiverelationship with the past that influences it (see Sprigge 1991). Areductionistic view of nature purely in spatial terms plays into thehands of the dualist or the materialist. No positive conception oftime can be derived from dead matter or matter that can neitherremember nor anticipate. If all dynamic singulars are some type ofexperience, each of these unities hassome type of memory(prehension) and anticipation, otherwise an objective temporal orderis inexplicable (see Levi 1964).

Hartshorne’s psychicalism is also connected to his theism,although some scholars like Wright adopt his psychicalism withoutagreeing to his theism. Hartshorne holds that psychicalism is implicitin theism, at least if God is seen as psyche that animates not this orthat particular body but that animates omnipresently the body of theuniverse (see Viney and Dombrowski forthcoming). God is the supremeexperience in relation to particular experiences on the model ofsoul-body cosmic hylomorphism. Mere matter or a zero of feeling is acomplete negation that can be approached only asymptotically. Thus,psychicalism is, as Hartshorne sees things, a scientific sort ofspiritualism. Dead matter, if such existed, would be at odds with anubiquitous, living God. Hartshorne goes so far as to claim thatwithout psychicalism theism is incoherent and vice versa (see Van derVeken 1991).

6. Critical Evaluation

It seems fair to say that analytic philosophers, in general, evenanalytic philosophers who are theists, have largely ignoredHartshorne’s philosophy. (The point is debateable. There hasbeen a move among many analytic philosophers who are theists, as inRichard Swinburne, away from the eternal, Boethian God who is outsideof time altogether. Might it be that Hartshorne’s influence isgreater than initially appears to be the case when the temporality, orthe sempiternity, of the God of many analytic philosophers isconcerned?) This is in contrast to his wide influence amongtheologians, which is odd when it is considered that he is not atheologian and does not rely on sacred scripture or religiousauthority for his insights. Another oddity is the fact thatHartshorne’s influence among theologians is due to the defensehe offers of therationality of belief in a neoclassical God(see R. M. Martin 1984; and Shields 2003a).

There is at least one important philosopher whose work indicates thesort of debate that has occurred between Hartshorne and analytictheists, who tend to rely on traditional or classical versions of theconcept of God. That is William Alston. There are two reasons why anevaluation of Hartshorne’s philosophy is facilitated by aconsideration of Alston’s critique. First, Alston is asimportant a theist as any among analytic philosophers and hiscriticisms of Hartshorne’s thought are like those of otheranalytic philosophers like Thomas Morris, Richard Creel, MichaelDurrant, and others. And second, Alston is a former student ofHartshorne’s and is thoroughly familiar with Hartshorne’sarguments. Alston is a philosopher who is not scandalized byHartshorne’s panentheism, nor by his neoclassical theism. ButAlston thinks that the contrast that Hartshorne draws between hisneoclassical theism and the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas is toosharp.

Alston thinks that Hartshorne presents neoclassical theism andclassical theism as complete packages, whereas it would be better tobe able to pick and choose among individual items within thesepackages. Alston seeks some sort of rapprochement between Thomism andneoclassical theism, a rapprochement that Hartshorne himself wouldlike to bring about to the extent that he is a neoclassicalthinker, but that is difficult to accomplish to the extent that he isneoclassical (see McMurrin 1991).

A consideration of ten contrasting attributes will best facilitate aninitial understanding of Hartshorne’s view of God. Consider thefirst group of attributes treated by Alston.

Alston distinguishes two lines of argument regarding absoluteness andrelativity, which he sees as the key contrast. Alston thinks that onlyone of these is successful. As indicated in the diagram above, whatHartshorne means by absoluteness is absence of internal relatedness. Arelation is internal to a term of a relation just in case that termwould not be exactly as it is if it were not in that relationship.Hartshorne’s view is that God has internal relations tocreatures by way of knowing and acting towards them and receivinginfluence from them.

On Alston’s interpretation, Hartshorne’s first line ofargument is to say that if the relation of the absolute to the worldreally fell outside the absolute, then this relation would necessarilyfall within some further and genuinely single entity that embracedboth the absolute and the world and the relations between them. Thus,we must hold, according to Hartshorne, that the God-creature relationis internal to God; otherwise we will have to admit that there issomething greater or more inclusive than God. Alston does not findthis argument convincing because it includes the claim that God“contains” the world due to the internal relations God haswith the world. Alston’s view is that the entity to which arelation is internal contains the terms only in the minimal sense thatthose terms enter into a description of the entity, but it does notfollow from this that those terms are contained in that entity in anorganic way.

Divine inclusiveness, for Hartshorne, is sometimes like the inclusionof thoughts in a mind, but usually it is described as like theinclusion of cells within a living body. It is never like theinclusion of marbles in a box. The inorganic and insentient characterof a box is inadequate as a model for divinity, he thinks, and divineinclusiveness is never like the inclusion of theorems in a set ofaxioms, as it might be for certain idealists. Divine inclusiveness inHartshorne isorganic inclusiveness (see Reese 1991).

Hartshorne’s second argument against absoluteness fares muchbetter, according to Alston. He agrees with Hartshorne’s stanceregarding the cognitive relation God has with the world; in any caseof knowledge, the knowledge relation is internal to the subject,external to the object. When a human being knows something, the factthat she knows it is part of what makes her the concrete being thatshe is. If she recognizes a certain tree she is different from thebeing she might have been if she had not recognized the tree. But thetree is unaffected by her recognition. Likewise, according to Alston,one cannot maintain that God has perfect knowledge of everythingknowable and still hold that God is not qualified to any degree byrelations with other beings (see Shields and Viney 2003).

One might respond to Alston and Hartshorne on this point by sayingthat since creatures depend for their existence on God, theirrelations to God affectthem, but not God. Richard Creelseems to make this very point. But even if beings other than Goddepend for their existence on God, it still remains true that if Godhad created a different world from the one that exists at present,then God would be somewhat different from the way God is at present:God’s knowledge would have been ofthat world and notthis one, according to both Alston and Hartshorne.

Alston’s concessions to Hartshorne’s concept of God extendto contrasts 2–4. The above argument for the internalrelatedness of God (as cognitive subject) to the world presupposesthat there are alternative possibilities for God, and if there arealternative possibilities for divine knowledge then this implies thatthere are unrealized potentialities for God.Pure actualityandtotal necessity cannot be defended as divine attributes,according to Alston and Hartshorne. Alston’s version ofHartshorne’s argument goes as follows:

(1) (a) “God knows that W exists” entails (b) “Wexists.”

(2) If (a) were necessary, (b) would be necessary.

(3) But (b) is contingent.

(4) Hence (a) is contingent.

We can totally exclude contingency from God only by denying God anyknowledge of anything contingent, a step that not even traditional orclassical theists wish to take. Contrast 4 must also be treated in adipolar way in that the main support for a doctrine of pure divinesimplicity is the absence of any unrealized potentialities in God.

In sum, Alston and Hartshorne agree on contrasts 1–4, except forthe fact that Hartshorne’s concept of divine inclusiveness, incontrast to Alston’s, is organic in character.

Regarding a second group of attributes, however, Alston and many othertheists who are analytic philosophers diverge from Hartshorne rathersignificantly:

Concerning contrast 5, Alston takes creationex nihilo to befundamental to theism because it has deep roots in religiousexperience. He thinks that to say that God has unrealizedpotentialities and contingent properties is not to say that Godmust be in relation with some world of entities other thanGod. Alston admits that Hartshorne legitimately points out some of theinternal contradictions contained in the classical theistic version ofcreationex nihilo, but he claims that there is no connectiondrawn by Hartshorne between divine creation and metaphysicalprinciples regarding relativity, contingency, and potentiality.Alston’s belief seems to be that those who accept creationex nihilo are not saying that there is absolutely nothing atany stage: there is God. Rather, creationex nihilo onlymeans that there is nothing out of which God creates the universe.Here Alston seems to agree with Norman Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump, andmost other theists who are analytic philosophers.

Alston’s stance here is problematic for two reasons, fromHartshorne’s point of view. First, although belief insome sort of divine creativity has deep roots in the historyof religious experience, it is not clear that these roots have to tapinto creationex nihilo. For example, it is not clear thatcreationex nihilo is the sort of creation described inGenesis, in that when the Bible starts with the statement that thespirit of God hovered above the waters, one gets the impression thatboth God and the aqueous muck had been around forever. If one believesin creationex nihilo, however, as Alston does, one mightnonetheless claim that creationex nihilo does notnecessarily mean a temporal beginning to the act of creation. But evenon this hypothesis there are problems, and this would seem to beHartshorne’s second point. If Plato and Hartshorne are correctthat beingis dynamic power, then the sort of unlimited powerimplied by creationex nihilo is impossible. Hartshorne wouldargue, contra Alston, that there is a connection between belief increationex hyle (as opposed to creationex nihilo)and the metaphysical principle that being is dynamic power. Creationex nihilo, Hartshorne thinks, is a convenient fictioninvented in the first centuries B.C.E. and C.E. in order to exaltdivine power, but it is not the only sort of creation that religiousbelievers have defended, nor is it defensible if being is dynamicpower (see Boyce Gibson 1964).

Concerning contrast 6, Alston claims that belief in creationexnihilo and belief in divine omnipotence are separate beliefs suchthat to argue against the former is not necessarily to argue againstthe latter. Hartshorne tries to do too much, he thinks, with the claimthat being is power when he uses this claim to argue against divineomnipotence. According to Alston, God can haveunlimitedpower, power to do anything that God wills to do, without havingall power in that, if being is power, the creatures also havesome power.

On Hartshorne’s interpretation of Alston, however, God can haveideal power, but not all power, because in addition to divine powerthere are the existences of others with powers of their own. AlthoughGod does not have all power, Hartshorne thinks that on Alston’sview Godcould have all power. In effect, what Alston hasdone, according to Hartshorne, is reduce his stance regarding divineomnipotence to that regarding creationex nihilo in that theclaim that God could have all power is due to the prior belief thatGod brings everything into existence out of absolutely nothing, abelief that Alston thinks has to be the traditional one and in pointof fact is intelligible. It is not quite clear to Hartshorne, however,that it is unquestionably the traditional one, nor is it clear to himthat we can develop an intelligible concept of “absolutelynothing.”

Hartshorne’s Platonic or Bergsonian argument against creationex nihilo, in simplified form, looks something like this: onecan in fact imagine the nonexistence of this or that, or even of thisor that class of things, a fact that gives some the confidence to(erroneously) think that this process can go on infinitely such thatone could imagine a state in which there was “absolutelynothing.” However, not every verbally possible statement is madeconceptually cogent by even the most generous notion of“conceptual,” according to Hartshorne. At the specific,ordinary, empirical level negative instances are possible (e.g., thiscorkscrew is not a dog), but at the generic, metaphysical level onlypositive instances are possible (e.g., something must exist), on thisview. The sheer absence of reality cannot conceivably be experienced,he thinks, for if it were experienced an existing experiencer would bepresupposed.

Contrast 7 deals with divine embodiment. Alston is willing to grantthat God is embodied in two senses: (1) God is aware, with maximalimmediacy, of what goes on in the world; and (2) God can directlyaffect what happens in the world. That is, Alston defends a limitedversion of divine embodiment, similar to that defended by RichardSwinburne. However, Alston is sceptical regarding a stronger versionof divine embodiment wherein the world exists by metaphysicalnecessity such that Godmust animate it. Alston is willing toaccept the idea that God has a body, butonly if having sucha body is on God’s terms. It seems that this weaker version ofdivine embodiment defended by Alston, as opposed to Hartshorne’sstronger version wherein there is essential corporeality in God,stands or falls with the defense of creationex nihilo. Infact, despite Alston’s desire to examine each contrastindividually, as opposed to Hartshorne’s stark contrast betweenclassical theistic attributes (all ten of them) and neoclassicalattributes (all ten of them), he ends up linking his criticisms ofHartshorne regarding contrasts 5–7, at the very least. All threeof these classical theistic attributes stand together only with adefensible version of creationex nihilo.

Contrasts 8–9, concerning nontemporality and immutability, arealso linked by Alston. He concedes that if God is temporal, Hartshornehas offered us the best version to date of what divine temporality anddivine mutability would be like. Alston dismisses as idle the viewthat God could remain completely unchanged through a succession oftemporal moments, but this admission still leaves us, he thinks, withthe following conditional statement: “God undergoes changeif God is in time.” Alston’s critique ofHartshorne’s view also consists in a refusal to grant thatcontingency and temporality are coextensive in the way mutability andtemporality are. Alston believes, contra Hartshorne, that God can bein some way contingent (that any relation in which God stands to theworld might have been otherwise) and still be nontemporal.

Alston knows that the notion of a nontemporal God who is nonethelessqualified by relation to temporal beings will strike Hartshorne asunintelligible. Alston’s attempt to make his positionintelligible rests on his own Thomistic-Whiteheadian stance, orbetter, on his Thomistic or Boethian interpretation of Whitehead(strange as this seems); Alston is also influenced here by EleanoreStump and Norman Kretzmann. We should not think of God as involved inprocess or becoming of any sort. The best temporal analogy, he thinks,for this conception is an unextended instant or an “eternalnow.” For Alston this does not commit one, however, asHartshorne would allege, to a static deity frozen in immobility. Onthe contrary, according to Alston, God is eternally active in waysthat do not require temporal succession. God’s acts can becomplete in an instant. Alston includes God’s acts of knowledge,a stance that at least seems to conflict with one of the concessionshe made to Hartshorne regarding the first group of attributes (seeNeville 1991).

The Boethian-Thomistic notion of the specious present for God, on theanalogue of a human being’s perceiving some temporally extendedstretch of a process in one temporally indivisible act, is alsodefended by Alston. For example, one can perceive the flight of a bee“all at once” without first perceiving the first half ofthe stretch of flight and then perceiving the second. One’sperception can be without temporal succession even if the object ofone’s perception is, in fact, temporally successive (see Gale2003). All we have to do, on Alston’s view, is expand ourspecious present to cover all of time and we have a model forGod’s awareness of the world. This is a much more difficultproject for Hartshorne to imagine than it is for Alston. ApparentlyAlston thinks that it is easy to conceptualize God“seeing” Neanderthal man (or Adam), Moses, Jesus, andDorothy Day all at once in their immediacy. Here Alston has a viewsimilar to that of William Mann.

But even if it were possible to have nonsuccessiveawarenessof a vast succession, which Hartshorne would deny, it is even moreimplausible, from Hartshorne’s point of view, to claim, as doesAlston, that God could have nonsuccessiveresponses to stagesof that succession. It might make more sense for Alston to say“indesponses” or “presponses” rather than“responses,” as Creel would urge.

It is correct of Alston to notice that there is no loss in God, butthis is not incompatible with God’s temporality, according toHartshorne. There can be succession in God without there being loss orperishing due to the fact that God’s inheritance of what happensin the world and God’s memory are ideal. Hartshorne thinks thatthe future is incomplete and indeterminate for God as well as from ourlimited perspective. Alston, by way of contrast, wants to defend a Godwho is not strictly necessary in actuality, but is contingent,despite the fact that God does not undergo temporal change,nor is God fluent. Hartshorne’s defenders, by way of contrast,think that one of the greatest virtues of process thinking is itseffort to eliminate what they see as such self-contradiction inphilosophical theology.

Alston’s treatment of contrast 10, concerning absolute versusrelative perfection, follows from what he has said regarding contrasts8–9. Relative perfection in God, as opposed to absoluteperfection, has a point only for a temporal being; hence God isabsolutely perfect, according to Alston. A being that does notsuccessively assume different states could not possibly surpassitself. Here, once again, Alston engages in linkage, thereby, at thevery least, confirming Hartshorne’s belief that we need both toconsider the divine attributes together and to determine whether theclassical theist’s linkage or the neoclassical theist’slinkage is more defensible. For the most part, Alston opts forclassical theism. Or more precisely, he thinks that the strongestconcept of God is acquired when we take a modified version of theneoclassical attributes in contrasts 1–4 and combine them withthe classical attributes in contrasts 5–10.

This rapproachement in Alston between classical theism andneoclassical theism is a step beyond James Ross’s belief thatthese are two competing descriptions of God at an impasse. Hartshornepartially agrees with Ross. Neoclassical, dipolar theismalready includes the best insights of classical theism, hethinks. For this and other reasons, Hartshorne thinks that there arerich possibilities for progress in philosophy in the future madeavailable through neoclassical theism (see Rescher 2003; and Shields2009).

From Hartshorne’s point of view the linkage of attributeswithin the first group andwithin the second groupneeds to be corrected by a greater concern for reticulating theattributes in these two groups. He thinks that an explanation isneeded regarding how Alston can be committed to both monopolar anddipolar theism. For example, Alston ends up defending the view thatGod is changed by the objects God knows (pace the neoclassical,dipolar attributes), but these are not changes that occur in time(pace the classical, monopolar attributes). It is one thing,Hartshorne thinks, to say that God exists in a nontemporal speciouspresent, and it is another to say that God is changed by temporalbeings in a nontemporal specious present. The former view is at leastproblematic, he thinks, and the latter seems to be part of thetraditional classical theistic view wherein, from a Hartshornianperspective, inconsistency goes in the guise of mystery.

Bibliography

Books by Hartshorne

• (1923) “An Outline and Defense of the Argument for the Unityof Being in the Absolute or Divine Good,” Ph.D. Dissertation,Harvard University.
• (1934)The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• (1937)Beyond Humanism, Chicago: Willet, Clark, andCo.
• (1941)Man’s Vision of God, N.Y.: Harper andBrothers.
• (1948)The Divine Relativity, New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.
• (1953)Reality as Social Process, Boston: BeaconPress.
• (1953)Philosophers Speak of God, Chicago: University ofChicago Press; reprinted Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000.
• (1962)The Logic of Perfection, LaSalle, Il.: OpenCourt.
• (1967)A Natural Theology for Our Time, LaSalle, Il: OpenCourt.
• (1967)Anselm’s Discovery, LaSalle, Il.: OpenCourt.
• (1970)Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method,LaSalle, Il.: Open Court.
• (1972)Whitehead’s Philosophy, Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press.
• (1973)Born to Sing, Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress.
• (1976)Aquinas to Whitehead, Milwaukee: MarquetteUniversity Press.
• (1983)Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, Albany:State University of New York Press.
• (1984)Creativity in American Philosophy, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.
• (1984)Existence and Actuality: Conversations with CharlesHartshorne, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• (1984)Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes,Albany: State University of New York Press.
• (1987)Wisdom as Moderation, Albany: State University ofNew York Press.
• (1990)The Darkness and the Light, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.
• (1991)The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne, LaSalle,Il.: Open Court.
• (1997)The Zero Fallacy and Other Essays in NeoclassicalMetaphysics, LaSalle, Il.: Open Court.
• (2011)Creative Experiencing, Albany: State University ofNew York Press.

Secondary Sources

• Alston, William, 1964, “The Elucidation of ReligiousStatements,” inProcess and Divinity: The HartshorneFestschrift, LaSalle, Il.: Open Court, pp. 429–443.
• –––, 1989, “Hartshorne and Aquinas: A ViaMedia,” inDivine Nature and Human Language, Ithaca:Cornell University Press, pp. 121–143.
• Arapura, John, 1991, “Hartshorne’s Response toVedanta,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 253–269.
• Auxier, Randall (ed.), 2001,Hartshorne and Brightman on God,Process, and Persons, Nashville: Vanderbilt UniversityPress.
• Birch, Charles, 1991, “Chance, Purpose, andDarwinism,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 51–63.
• Boyce Gibson, A., 1964, “The Two Strands in NaturalTheology,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp.471–492.
• Chiaraviglio, Lucio, 1991, “Hartshorne’s AestheticTheory of Intelligence,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.77–90.
• Cobb, John, 1984, “Overcoming Reductionism,” in Cobband Gamwell (eds.) 1984, pp. 149–164.
• Cobb, John and Franklin Gamwell (eds.), 1984,Existence andActuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne, Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
• Devlin James, 1991, “Hartshorne’s MetaphysicalAsymmetry,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 275–290.
• Dombrowski, Daniel, 1988,Hartshorne and the Metaphysics ofAnimal Rights, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 1991, “Hartshorne and Plato,”in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 465–487.
• –––, 1996,Analytic Theism, Hartshorne, andthe Concept of God, Albany: State University of New YorkPress.
• –––, 2004,Divine Beauty: The Aesthetics ofCharles Hartshorne, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
• –––, 2005,A Platonic Philosophy ofReligion, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 2006,Rethinking the OntologicalArgument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response, New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.
• –––, 2016,A History of the Concept of God:A Process Approach, Albany: State University of New YorkPress.
• –––, 2019,Process Philosophy and PoliticalLiberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, and Hartshorne, Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press.
• Engelhardt, Tristram, 1991, “Natural Theology andBioethics,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 159–168.
• Fitch, Frederic, 1964, “The Perfection of Perfection,”in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp. 529–532.
• Ford, Lewis (ed.), 1973,Two Process Philosophers,Tallahassee: American Academy of Religion.
• –––, 1991, “Hartshorne’sInterpretation of Whitehead,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.313–337.
• Frankenberry, Nancy, 1991, “Hartshorne’s Method inMetaphysics,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 291–312.
• Gale, Richard, 2003, “Disanalogies between Space andTime,” in Shields (ed.) 2003, pp. 97–117.
• Gamwell, Franklin, 2020,On Metaphysical Necessity,Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Gilroy, John, 1989, “Hartshorne and the Ultimate Issue inMetaphysics,”Process Studies, 18: 38–56.
• Goodwin, George, 1978,The Ontological Argument of CharlesHartshorne, Missoula: Scholars Press.
• Griffin, David Ray, 2001,Reenchantment withoutSupernaturalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Gunton, Colin, 1978,Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of Godin Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Hahn, Lewis (ed.), 1991,The Philosophy of CharlesHartshorne, LaSalle, IL: Open Court.
• Hospers, John, 1991, “Hartshorne’s Aesthetics,”in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 113–134.
• Hubbeling, Hubertus, 1991, “Hartshorne and the OntologicalArgument,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 355–376.
• Kane, Robert, 1991, “Free Will, Determinism, and Creativityin Hartshorne’s Thought,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.135–155.
• Kegley, Jacquelyn, 1991, “The Divine Relativity and theBeloved Community,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 215–233.
• King, Sallie, 1991, “Buddhism and Hartshorne,” in Hahn(ed.) 1991, pp. 235–252.
• Kuntz, Paul, 1991, “Charles Hartshorne’s Theory ofOrder and Disorder,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 415–430.
• Lee, Donald, 1991, “Hartshorne and PragmaticMetaphysics,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 529–549.
• Levi, Albert William, 1964, “Bergson or Whitehead?,”in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp. 139–159.
• Loemker, Leroy, 1964, “On Substance and Process inLeibniz,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp.403–425.
• Lucas, George, 1991, “Hartshorne and the Development ofProcess Philosophies,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.509–527.
• Mann, William, 1983, “Simplicity and Immutability inGod,”International Philosophical Quarterly, 23:267–276.
• Martin, Norman, 1991, “Taking Creativity Seriously: SomeObservations of the Logical Structure of Hartshorne’sPhilosophy,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 339–353.
• Martin, R. M., 1964, “Ontology, Category-Words, and ModalLogic,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp. 271-284.
• –––, 1984, “On the Language of Theology:Hartshorne and Quine,” in Cobb and Gamwell (eds.) 1984, pp.43–66.
• Matsunobu, Keiji, 1991, “Charles Hartshorne’sImpression on the Kyoto School,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.557–565.
• McMurrin Sterling, 1991, “Hartshorne’s Critique ofClassical Metaphysics and Theology,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.431–443.
• Morris, Randall, 1991,Process Philosophy and PoliticalIdeology, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Neville, Robert, 1991, “Time, Temporality, andOntology,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 377–395.
• Ogden, Schubert, 1964, “Bultmann’s Demythologizing andHartshorne’s Dipolar Theism,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.)1964, pp. 493–513.
• –––, 1984, “The Experience of God:Critical Reflections on Hartshorne’s Theory of Analogy,”in Cobb and Gamwell (eds.) 1984, pp. 16–37.
• Peters, Eugene, 1970,Hartshorne and NeoclassicalMetaphysics, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• –––, 1984, “Methodology in the Metaphysicsof Charles Hartshorne,” in Cobb and Gamwell (eds.) 1984, pp.1–11.
• Reese, William, 1964, “Non-Being and NegativeReference,” in Reese and Freeman 1964, pp. 311-323.
• ––– 1991, “The ’Trouble’ withPanentheism and the Divine Event,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.187–202.
• Reese, William and Eugene Freeman (eds.), 1964,Process andDivinity: The Hartshorne Festschrift, LaSalle, IL: OpenCourt.
• Rescher, Nicholas, 2003, “The Promise of ProcessPhilosophy,” in Shields (ed.) 2003, pp. 49–66.
• Ross, James, 1977, “An Impasse on Competing Descriptions ofGod,”International Journal for Philosophy of Religion,8: 233–249.
• Shields, George (ed.), 2003,Process and Analysis: Essays onWhitehead, Hartshorne, and the Analytic Tradition, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.
• ––– 2003a, “Introduction,” inShields (ed.) 2003, pp. 3–47.
• –––, 2009, “Quo Vadis?: On CurrentProspects for Process Philosophy and Theology,”AmericanJournal of Theology & Philosophy, 30: 125–152.
• Shields, George and Donald Viney, 2003, “The Logic of FutureContingents,” in Shields (ed.) 2003, pp. 209–246.
• –––, 2019,The Mind of CharlesHartshorne, Anoka, MN: Process Century Press.
• Sia, Santiago (ed.), 1990,Charles Hartshorne’s Conceptof God, Boston: Kluwer.
• Skutch, Alexander, 1991, “Bird Song and Philosophy,”in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 65–76.
• Smith, Huston, 1964, “The Death and Rebirth ofMetaphysics,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp.37–47.
• Smith, John, 1964, “The Critique of Abstractions and theScope of Reason,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp.19–35.
• –––, 1984, “Some Aspects ofHartshorne’s Treatment of Anselm,” in Cobb and Gamwell(eds.) 1984, pp. 103–109.
• –––, 1991, “Neoclassical Metaphysics andthe History of Philosophy,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.489–507.
• Sprigge, Timothy, 1991, “Hartshorne’s Conception ofthe Past,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 397–414.
• Thompson, Manley, 1984, “Hartshorne and Peirce,” inCobb and Gamwell (eds.) 1984, pp. 130–143.
• Towne, Edgar, 1997,Two Types of New Theism: Knowledge of Godin the Thought of Paul Tillich and Charles Hartshorne, New York:Peter Lang.
• Tracy, David, 1985, “Analogy, Metaphor, and God-Language:Charles Hartshorne,”Modern Schoolman, 62:249–265.
• Van der Veken, Jan, 1991, “Ultimate Reality and God: TheSame?,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp. 203–214.
• Viney, Donald, 1985,Charles Hartshorne and the Existence ofGod, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 1998, “The Varieties of Theism andthe Openness of God: Charles Hartshorne and Free-Will Theism,”Personalist Forum, 14: 196–234.
• –––, 2013, “Hartshorne’s DipolarTheism and the Mystery of God,”Models of God andAlternative Ultimate Realities, Dordrecht: Springer,333–342.
• Viney, Donald and Daniel Dombrowski, forthcoming, “DivineOmnipresence in Process Theism,”Oxford Handbook ofOmnipresence, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Viney, Wayne, 1991, “Charles Hartshorne’s Philosophyand Psychology of Sensation,” in Hahn (ed.) 1991, pp.91–112.
• Vitali, Theodore, 1977, “The Peircian Influence onHartshorne’s Subjectivism,”Process Studies, 7:238–249.
• Weiss, Paul, 1984, “Nature, God, and Man,” in Cobb andGamwell (eds.) 1984, pp. 113–121.
• Whitney, Barry, 1985,Evil and the Process God, Toronto:Edwin Mellon Press.
• Wiehl, Reiner, 1991, “Hartshorne’s Panpsychism,”in Hahn (ed) 1991, 445–462.
• Wild, John, 1964, “Devotion and Fanaticism,” in Reeseand Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp. 445–469.
• Wolf, George, 1984, “The Place of the Brain in an Ocean ofFeelings,” in Cobb and Gamwell (eds.) 1984, pp.167–184.
• Wright, Sewall, 1964, “Biology and the Philosophy ofScience,” in Reese and Freeman (eds.) 1964, pp.101–125.
• Zycinski, J., 2011, “How to Naturalize Theology?”Process Studies, 40(1): 131–143.

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

• The Center for Process Studies.
• Entries on Hartshorne by George Shields and Donald Viney in theInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
  • Charles Hartshorne: Biography and Psychology of Sensation
  • Charles Hartshorne: Dipolar Theism
  • Charles Hartshorne: Neoclassical Metaphysics
  • Charles Hartshorne: Theistic and Anti-Theistic Arguments

Related Entries

Anselm of Canterbury [Anselm of Bec] |cosmology: and theology |immutability |ontological arguments |panpsychism |Peirce, Charles Sanders |process philosophy |process theism |religion: epistemology of |time |Whitehead, Alfred North