Charles Hartshorne’s The Unity of Being
The Unity of Being is Charles Hartshorne’s doctoral dissertation presented at Harvard University in 1923. This first Post is the Digest, or Preface. The dissertation is organized in two Parts with fourteen Sections. Fourteen separate Posts will present the fourteen individual Sections with a final Post that lists the books and items of the Bibliography.
Numbers in brackets reflect page numbers of the original 1923 typewritten manuscript. Double brackets enclose my comments about questions or observations about the manuscript, followed by my initials: HyC.
One comment by Hartshorne about the dissertation seems worthy of mention: he wrote that he had the greatest rush of ideas in his life while writing it. Perhaps you may share some of that rush while reading it.
Here, then, in honor of Charles Hartshorne and his dissertation’s 100th anniversary, is the first presentation:
An Outline and Defense of the Argument for
The Unity of Being
in the Absolute or Divine Good.
By Charles Hartshorne
Thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology
Harvard University.
May, 1923
Digest of Thesis presented for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University:
The position expounded may be defined as in the first place Monistic. This term is taken to denote the theory that there is one ultimate or uncompounded Principle or Reality, such that all things must be conceived as necessarily contained or present within its unitary nature or life. The position, in the second place, is that of Teleological Monism. The relation of the Many to the One becomes that of the valued to the valuer. Interest or appreciation, in a Perfect form, must register within its own life of significance all the qualities of its objects — so far at least as these are of value.
Viewing value as essentially a matter of social relations, we find that a human or conscious individual, at any rate, if the object of a perfected Beneficient Interest, must be entirely present, with all its qualities, in or to that Interest. What the man really is, that he must be to the perfect appraisal, or to the perfect friend. Thus, on the Personalistic or Theistic teleological view the first demand of Monism — that there be a One Principle embracing all — is so far met. The second demand — that this relation [2] to the One be essential to the Many — is likewise conceivable on the same view. Experience testifies that the consciousness of reality enjoyed by human beings is in part at least a function of their consciousness of value to others. As object of love, praise, admiration, or interest, alone do they seem or become fully themselves. The partial independence, from the fluctuating valuations of other human beings, may conceivably depend upon the existence of a constant valuation of which man is always the object and of which he is always obscurely conscious. This Standard and Universal Valuation becomes, then, the Principle of Being demanded by Monism. Objects are viewed as values in the life of selves, and selves are real by virtue of being, more or less consciously, the objects of a universal Valuation.
Individuality or diversity, and even freedom, are not suppressed. For precisely as a genuine self-active individual is the self of value to other selves; and the perfection of beneficient understanding is not consistent with the annihilation of all genuine objects of such understanding.
The arguments for the Monistic theory thus sketched are as follows.
[3] In the first place being itself, as a category, implies Monism. Without being, there could be nothing. Abstract the being of a thing from the thing and nothing remains. Therefore the being of the thing includes all that the thing is. But the being of the thing is nothing without being itself; for if each thing has its own being as something purely private, the word loses all common meaning. And the being of the world as a whole (what is predicated of it when we say: there is such a world) in any case resumes in itself all being. “Being” we conclude, must be taken to stand for a universal principle which constitutes all the concreteness of reality — since in abstraction from it there is no remainder.
The category of Individuality bears the same implications. In particular we see that a whole of parts, does not derive its individuality or oneness from the parts, which are many and are not the whole, yet the whole includes the parts in its oneness or individuality. It must therefore involve a genuinely unitary principle inclusive of the parts and endowing both parts and whole with individuality.
[4] Examining quality we find: first, that every entity has a “what” or nature distinguishable from itself as having the nature. Second, that every nature itself differs qualitatively from other natures, is measured by a further what or universal. Since we cannot be aware of every member of an endless series we must be aware of one What or Universal measuring all differences and likeness of character, but itself characterized in and of itself. Such a self-characterized and all-characterizing universal is mind, as Idealism sees it. It is what it is in and to itself, self-realization is of its essence. And it construes all things in the light of this self-realization of meanings — on our view, of values.
The view of Relations as merely external is criticized and found to imply a Monistic all-relating principle, in order to escape from the absurdity of a relation which does not enter in any sense into the being of the object, and is therefore “its” relation only by standing, at best, in some external relation to it — initiating an endless regress, besides split-[5]ting the idea of predicate or property into two contradictory halves. “Property” in one case equals something which the thing in part at least is. In the other: something which the thing merely is not. For Monism, all properties are relations to the One. Internal relations are those contributing to the intrinsic value which things have to the One; external those representing the value which things contribute by forming parts of a larger value — whole.
Space and Time are wholes not analyzable into complexes of points and instants. They are wholes not conceivable as such simply in their own terms, their infinity remaining a mere negation of finitude unless translated into terms of positive infinity, unless conceived as aspects of an Absolute Experience. Magnitude, likewise, implies a standard which is non-finite yet not quantitatively infinite, but rather absolute in the sense of self-limited or determined. Finally space and time cannot include minds unless they form a spiritual Whole.
[6] The problem of knowledge is to be solved only by admitting that objects must render up their natures in terms of their meaning to mind — their contribution to knowledge as a self-significant whole. This implies the identity of “quality” and “meaning-to-mind.”
The view of value as in principle social, or as satisfaction in conjunction with the satisfaction of another and of consciousness as essentially valuational enables us to view experience as the subject’s realization of values not simply his own. Objectivity is thus preserved, without hint of solipsism. Subjective and objective meaning or value “correspond” or are in a measure one, because both involve a common element measured by the Ultimate Valuation involved in both subject and object.
The concept of Perfection, or of the Ideal Personality, implies the existence of its object (Ontological Argument). We cannot conceive Perfection as nothing at all — a sheer non-entity. Nor as a mere element in our thought of Perfection — since no such mere element can be thought of as Perfect.
Hence we must think our concept to be a concept of nothing, a mere word without meaning; or else must [7] admit the object to be the Perfect itself, which exists inasmuch as its existence is just its internal self-sustained life, its being-for-itself. Thought to lack this, it is thought not to be itself, or not to be Perfect.
Moreover, if the concept of the Perfect Mind is an absurdity, having no object whatever, then all life and thought, with its criterion or ideal of perfect or wholly true knowledge and perfect or completely socialized and beneficient personality, is oriented inalienably toward self-contradiction and all consciousness implies the inconsistency of the self-existent Perfect as without that self-reality which is of its very essence.
* * *
[8] “You would say, would you not, that the sun is not only the author of visibility in all visible things, but of generation and nourishment and growth, though he himself is not generation?”
“Certainly.”
“In like manner the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.” Plato. Republic. Bk. VI. (Jowett translation)
“The values of nature are perhaps the key to the metaphysical synthesis of existence.” A. N. Whitehead. The Concept of Nature.
“The birds in our forests praise God in diverse tones and fashions. Think you God is displeased at this multiplicity and desires to silence the discordant voices? All of the forms of being are dear to the Infinite Being Himself.”
[[Hartshorne does not identify the source of the above quotation nor have I been able to locate it. — HyC]]