Process Philosophy

Keith Robinson is Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Arkansas, USA. He is the author of Deleuze, Whitehead and Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections (2009).

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
N. Rescher – On Situating Process Philosophy

PART 1 - ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL SOURCES

Introduction

1. Heraclitus
Heraclitus - Selection of Fragments and Testimonia

J.Barnes – The Natural Philosophy of Heraclitus
D. Graham – Heraclitus as a Process Philosopher
(alternatives: James Wayne Dye – Heraclitus and the Future of Process Philosophy
G.S Kirk – Natural Change in Heraclitus)

Critics: Parmenides
Parmenides - Poem on Being
F.M. Cornford – The Elimination of Time by Parmenides

Critics: Zeno of Elea
Zeno - Selection of Paradoxes
B. Russell – Zeno’s Paradoxes
H. Bergson – Zeno’s Paradoxes

2. Plato
Plato- Selections from Timaeus, Parmenides, Cratylus, Theatetus, Sophist

Robert Bolton – Plato’s Distinction Between Being and Becoming
T. Irwin – Plato’s Heracleiteanism
(Alternative H. Cherniss)

3. Aristotle
Aristotle - Selections from the Categories, Metaphysics and Physics

G.E.L Owen – Aristotle on Time
M.L. Gill - Aristotle on Substance


PART 2 - MODERN SOURCES

CONTINENTAL

Introduction

1. Schelling
Schelling - Selections from First Outline of a System for the Philosophy of Nature and On the History of Modern Philosophy

Arran Gare – From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics

Critics: Hegel – ‘Preface’, Phenomenology of Spirit

2. Hegel
Hegel - Selections from Phenomenology of Spirit; Encyclopedia; Philosophy of Nature.

John Burbridge – Concept and Time in Hegel (Alternative George Lucas )
Catherine Malabou – The Future of Hegel – Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic

Critics: Deleuze – Selection from Nietzsche and Philosophy

3. Nietzsche
Nietzsche - Selections from Twilight of the Idols, Will to Power.

John Richardson – Nietzsche on Time and Becoming
Robin Small – Being, Becoming and Time in Nietzsche.

Critics: Malcolm Bull – Selections from Anti-Nietzsche

4. Bergson
Bergson – Selection from Creative Evolution, Creative Mind. Introduction to Metaphysics

Milic Capek – Process and Personality in Bergson’s Thought
John Mullarkey – Bergson and the Language of Process

Critics: Bachelard – Dialectic of Duration, selections
Horkhemer – On Bergson’s Metaphysics of Time
Russell - The Philosophy of Bergson
A. Grunbaum – The Meaning of Time (The Status of Temporal Becoming)
(Choose 2 from above)

5. Deleuze
Deleuze – Selections from Logic of Sense, Difference and Repetition, The Method of Dramatization.

Keith Robinson – Deleuze and Process Philosophy
James Williams – Identity and Time in Gilles Deleuze’s Process Philosophy

Critics: Badiou – Selections from The Clamour of Being, Being and Event.


PART 3 - MODERN SOURCES

ANGLO-AMERICAN

Introduction

1. C.S Peirce
Peirce - Selections from The Writings of Charles Peirce, The Essential Peirce

Carl Hausman – Charles Peirce’s Evolutionary Realism as a Process Philosophy

Critics: McTaggart – The Unreality of Time.

2. James
James - Selections from Principles of Psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism; Some Problems in Philosophy

Richard Field – James and the Epochal Theory of Time
Bertrand Helm - William James on the Nature of Time
(Alternate: Stephen Daniel – Fringes and Transitive States in William James’ Concept of the Stream of Thought)

Critics: J.P. Moreland – An Enduring Self: The Achilles Heel of Process Philosophy

3. Alexander
Alexander - Selections from Space, Time and Deity

Emily Thomas – Space, Time and Samuel Alexander
Dorothy Emmet – Whitehead and Alexander

Critics: Sprigge – Selections from The Vindication of Absolute Idealism, The Unreality of Time.

4. Whitehead
Whitehead – Modes of Thought; Process and Reality; Adventures in Ideas; Essays in Science and Philosophy

J. Nobo – Whitehead’s Principle of Process

Critics: Graham Harman – Whitehead as Anti-Process Thinker.
D. Williams – The Myth of Passage
(Alternate: James Feibleman – Why Whitehead is not a ‘Process’ Philosopher)

5. Sellars
Sellars - Selections from Foundations for a Metaphysics of Pure Process, Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.

J.Seibt – Processes in the Manifest and Scientific Image

Critics: JJC Smart - Sellars on Process (Monist)
P. Strawson – selections from Individuals



PART 4 - PROCESS AND SCIENCE

Introduction

Whitehead – Selections from Science and the Modern World
Milic Capek – The Second Scientific Revolution

1. Process and Physics
David Bohm – Time, Space and the Implicate Order, Selections from Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
Henry Stapp – Whiteheadian Process and Quantum Theory
(Alternate Shimon Malin – Whitehead and Quantum Physics)

Critic: Julian Barbour – The Nature of Time

2. Process and Biology
John Dupre - The Constituents of Life/Selection from Processes of Life
Brain Goodwin – Is Morphogenesis an Intrinsically Robust Process?
(Alternate: Richard Lewontin/S.Kauffman)

Critic: Daniel Dennett – Evolution as an Algorithmic Process

3. Process and Chemistry
Ilya Prigogine – Selections from Order out of Chaos
R. Stein - Towards a Process Philosophy of Chemistry
(Alternate: P. Needham: Continuants and Processes in Chemistry)

Critic: Robin Le Poidevin - A Combinatorial Argument for the Ontological Reduction of Chemistry

4. Process and Neuroscience
Maria Pachalsky - Towards a Process Neuropsychology: Microgenetic Theory and Brain Science
Jason W Brown - Foundations of Cognitive Metaphysics
Gerald Edelman – Neural Darwinism

Critic: Patricia Churchland – Computation and the Brain

5. Process and Cognitive Science
Mark Bickhard – Mind as Process
Mark Bickhard and Richard Campbell – Physicalism, Energence and Downward Causation

Critics: Jaegwon Kim – Emergence: Core Ideas and Issues
(alternative: Zenon Pykyshyn – What is Cognitive Science?).


PART 5 – PROCESS AND HISTORY

Introduction

1. Marx – Selections from The German Ideology, Grundrisse, A Critique of Political Economy (preface).

Hamrick and Marsh – Marx and Whitehead: Towards a Political Metaphysics
Sean Sayers – Marxism and the Dialectical Method
(Alternate: Anne Pomeroy)

Critics: G.A.Cohen – Selection from Karl Marx’s Theory of History
Karl Popper – from The Open Society and its Enemies

2. Collingwood – Selections from the Idea of History, Libellus de Generatione (one copy at the Bodleian library in Oxford) Spengler and the Theory of Historical Cycles, Speculum Mentis, Autobiography

Louis Mink - Collingwood’s Historicism: A Dialectic of Process
W. Jan Van Der Dussen – Collingwood’s Idea of Progress
(Alternate: Stein Hegleby)

Critics: A.J. Ayer, from Philosophy in the 20th century

3. A. Toynbee – Selections from A Study of History (abridged version), A Study of History: What the book is for, how the book took shape.

C. Kerslake – Becoming against History: Deleuze, Toynbee and Vitalist historiography
N. Rescher – Trapped Within History? A Process Philosophical Refutation of Historical
Relativism.

Critics: Pieter Geyl – Toynbee’s System of Civilizations
Pitirim Sorokin – Arnold J Toynbee’s Philosophy of History

4. Foucault – Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, Selections from Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, History of Sexuality.

P. Veyne - Foucault Revolutionizes History
M.Poster – Foucault, the Present and History

Critics: Habermas – The Critique of Reason and the Human Sciences – Michel Foucault

5. Manuel DeLanda - Assemblage Theory and Human History, Selections from A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History

Critic: G. Harman – DeLanda’s Ontology: Assemblage and Realism


PART 6 – PROCESS AND AESTHETICS

Introduction

1. Nietzsche – Selections from Birth of Tragedy, Gay Science, Will to Power

Christophe Cox – Nietzsche, Dionysus and the Ontology of Music

Critics: Heidegger, Selections from Nietzsche volumes (Will to Power as Art) and Contributions

2. J. Dewey – Selections from Art as Experience

R. Shusterman – Dewey’s Art as Experience

Critics: B. Croce - On the Aesthetics of Dewey

3. S. Langer – Selections from Problems of Art. Feeling and Form
Rolf Lachman - From Metaphysics to Art and back: The Relevance of Suzanne K. Langer’s Philosophy for Process Metaphysics
F. Kruse – Vital Rhythm and Temporal Form in Langer and Dewey
(V. Colapietro – Suzanne Langer on Artistic creativity and creations (Spinks and Deeley, Semiotics, Peter Lang, 1997).

Critic: R. Auxier – Suzanne Langer on Symbols and Analogy: A Case of Misplaced Concreteness?

4. C. Hartshorne - The Aesthetic Matrix of Value.” Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. London: SCM Press Ltd., 1970; LaSalle: Open Court, 1970, pp. 303-322
“Duality in Aesthetics.” The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1934, pp. 159-190.
“Expression and Association.” In Artistic Expression, ed., John Hospers, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971, pp. 204-217.
The Aesthetics of Birdsong
(3 of the above).

George R. Lucas, Jr.: Hartshorne and the Development of Process Philosophies
D. Dombrowski – The Aesthetics of Charles Hartshorne (from ‘The Divine Beauty’).

Critics: John Hospers – Hartshorne’s Aesthetics (Library of Living Philosophers Vol XX Open Court, 1991).


5. G. Deleuze & F. Guattari - Selections from Kafka, A Thousand Plateaus, What is Philosophy?
R. Bogue – “Art and Territory” or “Minority, Territory, Music” or “ Deleuze’s Aesthetics of Force”

Critics: J. Ranciere – “Is There a Deleuzian Aesthetics?’ “Deleuze, Bartleby and the Formula” from the Flesh of Words (Stanford, 2004).