The mind of Charles Hartshorne was of such high genius that over the course of his long philosophical career he came up with insights that are so elegant, and of such beauty, that they can be thought of as conceptual miracles. This is not to say that these miracles of thought are supernatural, rather, they are superbly natural. They truly reflect, in a novel and singularly luminous way, what is true in the physical, conceptual, and spiritual dimensions of the natural world. Some of these conceptual constellations contribute to a robust revolution in metaphysics every bit as comprehensive as the revolution in physics. In philosophy and theology, Hartshorne’s radical innovations are of equal stature with those of Albert Einstein and others of high eminence in the field of physics. With this is mind, it seems a “miracle” that they are not more widely known and celebrated.
In a previous post on this subject, I discussed Hartshorne’s concept of Doctrinal Matrices. The subject of this post will be “A Logic of Ultimate Contrasts.”
Consider for a moment pairs of contrasting terms such as absolute and relative, cause and effect, object and subject, being and becoming—Charles Hartshorne calls these ultimate contrasts, or contraries. For many centuries it has been customary in theology to exalt one side of these contraries at the expense of the other—to such an extent that one side has been used exclusively as names or designations of deity. Thus we have God as Absolute, Universal, Cause, Infinite . . .
In thus exalting the absolute over the relative, being over becoming, Hartshorne argues that the medieval theologians did not get it right once and for all, but, on the contrary, they got it exactly backwards. And we, as inheritors of this tradition, when we do likewise, we repeat the same old, centuries-old, mistake.
When talking or reasoning about these metaphysical contraries or ultimate contrasts, Hartshorne holds that a certain logic must be kept in mind if we are to avoid error. He calls this a logic of ultimate contrasts and he has constructed a table that reveals the structure and implications of this logic. One feature of this logic is that all the relative terms are inclusive of the absolute terms. The relation of concrete to abstract perhaps shows this most clearly, for, by definition, the abstract is abstracted from the concrete.
An abstraction such as the number “two,” for example, can be abstracted from the concrete reality of two elephants. From two elephants you can infer the idea of the number “two,” but not vice versa. Does this not show that through mere analysis of the concrete the abstract can be discovered? But no amount of analysis of the abstract will ever lead from the number “two” to two elephants.
If Hartshorne’s table is accurate, then to exalt the abstract over the concrete implies that we should value objects over subjects, the possible more than the actual, and that the movement from cause through effect is a descent from better to worse, from more to less. As Hartshorne says, if this is indeed the case, then “pessimism is a metaphysical axiom.” CH, The Zero Fallacy, p. 116.
It is of the nature, and the logic, of these contraries that the meaning of each term logically requires the contrast of its polar opposite. They are so related that neither, by itself, has any meaning. Collapse the contrast and you collapse the meaning.
In one aspect of what Hartshorne calls the “higher synthesis,” the unity of these contraries is the inclusion of one in the other, as of whole to part, a unity that does not dissolve but preserves the polar distinctions. The unity is a unity of contrast, nor a mere unity, for a mere unity is a mere abstraction. And what can the unity of God be but the unity of an evolving and ever-increasing reality, or actuality, and thus no mere unity but the unity of a maximal, ever-more-complex, and ever-growing diversity?
Another feature of this logic is that a basic asymmetry defines the relation between any pair of contrasting terms. Whereas the step from an a-term to an r-terms is a creative step, the step in the reverse direction is merely a matter of logical entailment or analysis.
To quote Hartshorne: “Since r-terms are inclusive and express the overall truth, the entire table tells us that we can find the absolute only in the relative, objects . . . only in subjects, causes only in effects . . . earlier events only in later, being only in becoming, the eternal only in the temporal, the abstract only in the concrete, the potential only in the actual, the necessary only in the contingent . . . the infinite only in the finite . . . the specific only in the individual, the generic only in the specific . . . the metaphysical only in the generic, God in the necessary, and eternal essence only in divine contingent, temporal states. . . . If one wants to understand an a-term, one should locate it in its r-correlate. There are not subjects and objects but only objects in subjects, not causes and effects but only causes in effects, not earlier and later but earlier in later, not necessary things and contingent things but necessary constituents of contingent wholes . . . not God and the world but the world in God.” CH, The Zero Fallacy, p. 124.
If Hartshorne is correct about this, then the vast majority of humanity has had it exactly backwards for many centuries. Such upside-down thinking and the possibility that so many for so long have believed this, suggests a collective blindness that gives one pause.
—HyC