“Ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.”
That sentence, spoken by President John Kennedy in a famous speech, is a good example of chiasmus, a rhetorical figure that reverses the terms of the two clauses that make up a sentence, or a part of a sentence.
Chiasmus is thus a linguistic twist or turn that you can use to express a crosswise mode of thought. Chiasmus (ky-AZ-mus) means “a crossing,” from the Greek letter chi, X, a cross. You “cross” the terms of one clause by reversing their order in the next.
In a book devoted to the subject, I have explored the concept of chiasmus not only as a figure of speech but also, and more importantly, as a figure of thought, a figure of reality, and a figure of Deity. The book shows how the concept can be generalized beyond its literary meaning and that chiasmus, and the way it turns things around, is a powerful conceptual tool that enhances the poetics of perception.
Whitehead found chiasmus so congenial to his way of thinking that it enjoys pervasive expression in his magnum opus, Process and Reality, where there are, according to my count, no fewer than 41 examples. The final chapter of PR, “God and the World,” is a veritable anthem to this rhetorical figure, for there are 21 examples in the ten pages that constitute this short but sublime chapter.
The idea of “contrast” holds high importance in Whitehead’s philosophy—consciousness is understood in terms of contrast and possibility, the contrast between what is and what might be, plays a pivotal role in creativity and the coming-to-be of all actualities . . . and in the Final Interpretation, in Part V of Process and Reality, his concern is with contrasts between what he calls the Ideal Opposites.
And so it seems most natural that the rhetorical figure chiasmus, a linguistic crucible of contrast, would arise ineluctably in Whitehead’s mind from time to time in the process of exposition of his thought.
Many have found Whitehead to be an accomplished writer, as witness this comment by British philosopher Samuel Alexander: “He possessed an admirable literary style, vivid and arresting and pregnant.” I imagine that Whitehead took pleasure in writing, and some insights can be more eloquent, and have more zest, when presented in terms of a contrast, especially the contrast between a contested and an affirmed doctrine. Indeed, that is the purpose of rhetorical figures: to enliven speech and writing. Whitehead once said, “It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.”
Also, Whitehead was a dipolar thinker and so he came naturally to the dipolar thinking exemplified, by way of contrasts, in the formal structure of a chiasmus.
In some of the chiasmi, and in virtually all that are used in “God and the World,” rather than contesting one and affirming the other, both sides of the contrast are affirmed. For example:
It is as true to say that God is one and the World many,
as that the World is one and God many.
While both sides are positively affirmed, they are to be understood conversely:
It is as true to say that God is one [as abstract essence] and the World many [the many becoming actualities], as that the World is one [unified in God’s concrete actuality] and God many [the many actual entities as they are initially prehended into God’s concrete actuality].
Here, then, is the list—forty-one examples of chiasmus as found in PR followed by the page number:
Chiasmi in Process and Reality
There is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming. 35
In other words, extensiveness becomes, but ‘becoming’ is not itself extensive. 35
The given course of history presupposes his primordial nature, but his primordial nature does not presuppose it. 44
Thus every so-called ‘universal’ is particular in the sense of being just what it is, diverse from everything else; and every so-called ‘particular’ is universal in the sense of entering into the constitutions of other actual entities. 48
The principle that I am adopting is that consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness. 53
Thus the continuum is present in each actual entity, and each actual entity pervades the continuum. 67
But you cannot approach nothing; for there is nothing to approach. 93
The full sweep of the modern doctrine of evolution would have confused the Newton of the Scholium, but would have enlightened the Plato of the Timaeus. 93
Newton could have accepted a molecular theory as easily as Plato, but there is this difference between them: Newton would have been surprised at the modern quantum theory and at the dissolution of quanta into vibrations; Plato would have expected it. 94
Hume has confused a ‘repetition of impressions’ with an ‘impression of repetitions of impressions.’ 134
10 [subtotal count to this point]
Hume by a sleight of hand confuses a ‘habit of feeling blinks after flashes’ with a ‘feeling of the habit of feeling blinks after flashes.’ 175
The macroscopic process is the transition from attained actuality to actuality in attainment; while the microscopic process is the conversion of conditions which are merely real into determinate actuality. 214
The former process effects the transition from the ‘actual’ to the ‘merely real’; and the latter process effects the growth from the real to the actual. 214
It is true that there is an abstract qualitative pattern, and an abstract intensive pattern; but in the fused pattern the abstract qualitative pattern lends itself to the intensities, and the abstract intensive pattern lends itself to the qualities. 233
It can be put shortly by saying, that physical time expresses some features of the growth, but not the growth of the features. 283
The concrescence presupposes its basic region, and not the region its concrescence. 283
The extensiveness of space is really the spatialization of extension; and the extensiveness of time is really the temporalization of extension. 289
It is an extra ‘assumption’—provable or otherwise according to the particular logical development of the subject which may have been adopted—that all ‘even’ loci are ‘flat,’ and that all ‘flat’ loci are ‘even.’ 307
Thus the measurement depends on the straightness and not the straightness upon the measurement. 328
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. 339
20 [subtotal count to this point]
Note—the following are all found in the ten pages of the final chapter of PR: God and the World.
An actual entity in the temporal world is to be conceived as originated by physical experience with its process of completion motivated by consequent, conceptual experience initially derived from God. God is to be conceived as originated by conceptual experience with his process of completion motivated by consequent, physical experience, initially derived from the temporal world. 345
The vicious separation of the flux from the permanence leads to the concept of an entirely static God, with eminent reality, in relation to an entirely fluent world, with deficient reality. 346
Such systems have the common character of starting with a fundamental intuition which we do mean to express, and of entangling themselves in verbal expressions, which carry consequences at variance with the initial intuition of permanence in fluency and of fluency in permanence. 347
There is the double problem: actuality with permanence, requiring fluency as its completion; and actuality with fluency, requiring permanence as its completion. 347
It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.
It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.
It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.
It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.
[previous seven entries are on page 348]
30 [subtotal count to this point]
For God the conceptual is prior to the physical, for the World the physical poles are prior to the conceptual poles. 348
A physical pole is in its own nature exclusive, bounded by contradiction: a conceptual pole is in its own nature all-embracing, unbounded by contradiction. 348
Thus each temporal occasion embodies God, and is embodied in God. 348
In God’s nature, permanence is primordial and flux is derivative from the World: in the World’s nature, flux is primordial and permanence is derivative from God. 348
Also the World’s nature is a primordial datum for God; and God’s nature is a primordial datum for the World. 348
God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity. 348-49
God is primordially one, namely, he is the primordial unity of relevance of the many potential forms; in the process he acquires a consequent multiplicity, which the primordial character absorbs into its own unity. The World is primordially many, namely, the many actual occasions with their physical finitude; in the process it acquires a consequent unity, which is a novel occasion and is absorbed into the multiplicity of the primordial character. 349
Thus God is to be conceived as one and as many in the converse sense in which the World is to be conceived as many and as one. 349
The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God’s vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World’s multiplicity of effort. 349
In this later phase, the many actualities are one actuality, and the one actuality is many actualities. 349
40 [subtotal count to this point]
What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. 351
Total: 41
I will end this post with a chiasmus by Samuel Johnson that seems a fitting description of what Whitehead was all about:
The two most engaging powers of an author, are,
to make new things familiar,
and familiar things new.
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.
HyC