Hartshorne, Charles, 1897-2000.
University of Chicago professor
(sometimes misspelled as Hartshone)
B.A., PhD '23 HarvardSmith professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin
American process theologian, the principal developer of Whitehead’s process metaphysics as the basis for a theological scheme.
obituary from Chicago (see below)
obituary from Harvard Magazine (see below)
obituary from New York Times, 13 Oct. 2000 (see below)
Not the Average Philosopher (from Harvard Gateway, see below)
Entry from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Biography from American National Biography (see below)The Thought of Charles Hartshorne
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obituary from ChicagoCharles Hartshorne, a former professor in the philosophy department of the University of Chicago, died October 10, 2000. He was 103. An editor of logician Charles Sanders Peirce's papers, Hartshorne was a proponent of "process theology," which argues that God is not immutable but changes in response to the future. Continuing his studies well into retirement, he published Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes after he was 80.
obituary from Harvard Magazine
CHARLES HARTSHORNE '21, Ph.D. '23, died October 10 in Austin, Texas. A theologian and educator considered by many to be one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century, he was the founder and chief proponent of process theology, which he developed from the ideas of his Harvard professor Alfred North Whitehead. He used mathematics to find 16 proofs of God's existence, posited that reality is a relentless process of change, and envisioned God as dynamic and flexible, changeless only in his perfect responsiveness to change. He served in the Army Medical Corps in France during World War I, toting a crate of philosophy books to the front, and later taught at Emory University and the University of Texas. He leaves a daughter, Emily Schwartz; his wife, Dorothy (Cooper), died in 1995.
Obituary from NYTimes
October 13, 2000
Charles Hartshorne, Theologian, Is Dead; Proponent of an Activist God Was 103
By DOUGLAS MARTINCharles Hartshorne, a philosopher, theologian and educator who wrote more than 20 books and 100 articles in a lifelong mission to prove that God was a participant in cosmic evolution rather than the supreme composer, died on Tuesday at his home in Austin, Tex. He was 103.
Dr. Hartshorne became the principal proponent of what is called process theology, which holds that basic reality is in an unremitting process of change. God is seen as not being immutable, omnipotent or omniscient, but rather as responding to events in a manner sometimes termed "divine relativity."
As such, God, like all else, changes constantly. God cannot see the future. What remains changeless is God's perfect responsiveness to all that is changing.
Randall Styers, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, said the theory led to a radical reformulation of the nature of God, one that continues to be debated.
"God didn't look like Charlton Heston anymore," Professor Styers said. "This is a God that literally suffers with us."
The "process" concept, which Dr. Hartshorne developed from the ideas of one of his professors at Harvard, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, influenced progressive Protestant theologians and, more recently, Roman Catholics and Jews, said David Ray Griffin, a professor of the philosophy of religion at the Claremont School of Theology.
"He was clearly one of the major philosophers of the 20th century," Dr. Griffin said of Dr. Hartshorne.
Charles Hartshorne, born on June 5, 1897, in Kittanning, Pa., was descended from Quakers through his father, an Episcopal minister. He once recalled that no one in his family disbelieved in religion and no one rejected evolution. He brought both views to his work, the application of rationality to theological questions.
But his most important influence may have been four words spoken by his mother. "Life is very big," she told her son.
"This remained for him the basic truth in everything he did," said Davidson Loehr, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin.
The Hartshorne mission, Dr. Loehr said, was no less than "saving face for the word God in the 20th century." Philosophers in the positivist and analytical schools, which have dominated the discussion, not to mention more recent postmodernists and deconstructionists, had little use for the deity.
Dr. Hartshorne's first step was proving that God exists, at least to his satisfaction. He applied his deepest passion, metaphysics, which he defined as "the search for necessary truths, truths that are not only true, but they couldn't have been false."
Using mathematics to work through much of the logic, he found 16 proofs of God's existence. "By one principle of subdivision, you can make it 32," he said in an interview with The Austin American-Statesman in 1997, "but there's very little need to go beyond that."
Second, he developed his concept of a flexible, dynamic God. "He really did an enormous amount of creative work on helping people rethink the nature of the divine and the relationship between the divine and known world," Dr. Styers said.
Charles Hartshorne entered Haverford College in 1915 but left to join the Army Medical Corps. He took a crate of philosophy books to the front lines in France in World War I. "Every time I was not on duty I would read one," he said in an interview with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
After leaving the Army, he graduated from Harvard. He then received a fellowship to study in Europe, where one of his teachers was the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. He returned to Harvard to study for a doctorate and, with the philosopher Paul Weiss, to edit the papers of Charles Sanders Pierce, the logician.
In 1928 he joined the philosophy department of the University of Chicago. He soon met Dorothy Cooper, who became his wife, editor and bibliographer. One of his favorite pastimes was listening to her sing Mozart.
"He was a real absent-minded professor," said John R. Silber, chancellor of Boston University and a friend, "and she made it possible for him to function."
Dr. Silber recalled a story that Mrs. Hartshorne told. At a reception, her husband pulled out an embarrassingly dirty handkerchief. She discreetly took it and put it in her purse. The same thing happened again, with a second handkerchief. And again.
A short time later, he muttered, "I need a handkerchief, I thought I had one." She smiled, and handed him a tissue.
Dr. Hartshorne went on to teach at Emory University in Atlanta, and the University of Texas. His first book, "The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation," was influential because it brought philosophical insights to an empirical field, Dr. Silber said.
But the interests of the small, witty professor transcended his work. He was a vegetarian. He did not own an automobile, preferring to ride a bicycle. He wrote letters to newspapers supporting feminism, abortion rights and higher taxes.
In 1996, at 98, he wrote his last article in an academic journal, and two years later he delivered his last lecture. His wife died in 1995, and his brother, Richard, author of a prominent geography textbook, in 1992. He is survived by a daughter, Emily Schwartz of Austin, and two grandchildren.
The depth, breadth and utter playfulness of Dr. Hartshorne's mind is suggested by his 1973 book, "Born to Sing." The book argued that some bird species had evolved the ability to appreciate melody and sing for the sheer pleasure of it, a notion that continues to intrigue zoological scientists.
"If he'd never been a philosopher, he would have been a very distinguished ornithologist," Dr. Silber said.
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For 20 years my work as a Harvard chaplain was nourished by the new world view of Charles Hartshorne, the Harvard-educated philosopher and scientist described by Encyclopaedia Britannica as "the most influential proponent of a 'process philosophy' which considers God a participant in cosmic evolution." This is the year to light 100 candles to celebrate his life and thought, for he will observe his centennial on June 5.
Hartshorne no sooner left the army after World War I than he promptly earned, year after year, three Harvard degrees: A.B. 1921, M.A. 1922, Ph.D. 1923. This may be a University speed record. Graduate students may be surprised Philosopher and ornithologist Charles Hartshorne and his wife, Dorothy, recording bird songs at their home, 1961.
to learn that he wrote his 300-page doctoral dissertation, "The Unity of Being in the Divine or Absolute Good," in 35 days. (That ability to focus may help explain his legendary absent-mindedness: a favorite anecdote has him finishing a sidewalk chat with a student, midway between his home and his University of Chicago office, and asking, perplexedly, "Do you remember which way I was heading?")After two years of Harvard-funded travel in Europe, Hartshorne became an instructor in philosophy, responsible for teaching a course, assisting Alfred North Whitehead, and tackling one other project. The department assigned him the appalling task of putting in order the roomful of jumbled manuscripts comprising the intellectual estate of Charles Sanders Peirce, founder of this country's most distinguished philosophy, pragmatism. Hartshorne turned the material into The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce. The six-volume set clearly revealed why William James and Josiah Royce regarded Peirce as "America's greatest mind."
But Hartshorne is much more than a distinguished footnote to Peirce. Volume 20 of The Library of Living Philosophers is entitled The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne, putting him in the company of Einstein, Russell, Sartre, Buber, and fellow Harvardians Whitehead, Santayana, and Quine. When I congratulated him on being selected for the library's pantheon, he exclaimed with a smile, "The secret of my success is longevity."
A truer secret of his success may be that he is the foremost living exemplar of a great new tradition created by a group I call the Harvard Square philosophers. Peirce, James, Whitehead, William Ernest Hocking, and Hartshorne share a unique vision of reality as social process.
The Harvard Square philosophers have created a new synthesis of knowledge far surpassing the medieval synthesis of Thomism and the modern synthesis of Spinoza. God is viewed not as a supernatural force breaking abruptly into history, but as the cosmic life of which our lives are a part. God is both humanity's endless source of joy and the cosmic sufferer who shares our pain. When we die, there is no endless heaven or hell to which we are consigned: the contribution that our lives have made continues in the ongoing, deathless divine life. In this new cosmology, all creatures have some measure of free choice. The future is always, to some extent, open. Creativity is the very essence of our well-ordered world and our everyday experience.
Hartshorne's contributions to this synthesis include what the Britannica calls "the definitive analysis" of panentheism (literally, "all in God"): "For Hartshorne, God includes the world even as an organism includes its cells, thus including the present moment of each event. The total organism gains from its constituents, even though the cells function with an appropriate degree of autonomy within the larger organism."
Not only eminent secular scientists and philosophers, but distinguished Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist thinkers esteem Hartshorne's work. Nor is their praise restricted to purely theoretical considerations. Recent scholars have declared that no philosopher has focused as profoundly as Hartshorne on the concepts involved in the ecological crisis, and that his work has important implications for bioethics. Other scholars praise his breadth--he has been called one of the few great Western philosophers to discuss and debate Eastern systems and ideas as philosophy. And still others are astounded by his energy and by his contribution both to philosophy and to natural science.
Hartshorne's life was changed when, at the age of 16, he bought a pocket-sized songbird guide and a three-power field glass. His first boarding-school essay was on bird-watching. Thanks to years of travel, for teaching and birding, in Europe, Australia, India, and Japan, the philosopher has earned an international reputation as an ornithologist. He has discovered that birds sing not only to win mates and protect territory but also to experience the sheer pleasure of singing. His work indicates that some species sing not just one but 50 or more songs or phrases, and that some birds vary their songs for hours on end. He suspects he may be the first person since Aristotle to interpret philosophy in relation to ornithology, and when I last spoke with him, he startled me by declaring, "I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song."
I once asked Dorothy Hartshorne, her husband's superb editor over the years, to summarize his philosophy. "Love," she said, "is the guiding principle of all life....all living organisms have at least an infinitesimal amount of freedom and responsibility....[W]e can consider a human life as being like a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. When we close the book, the story does not disappear. It continues, and likewise our contribution to others becomes a part of God's life that goes on and on."
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Herbert F. Vetter, Div '50, is the former minister-at-large of First Parish Church in Harvard Square.
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Biography from American National Biography
Hartshorne, Charles (5 June 1897-9 Oct. 2000), philosopher, was born in Kittaning, Pennsylvania, the son of Marguerite Haughton Hartshorne and Francis Cope Hartshorne, a clergyman. He entered Haverford College in 1915, leaving to join the Army Medical Corps for two years. He completed his college work at Harvard and in 1923 took the Ph.D. in philosophy there. Among his teachers were Ralph Barton Perry, William Ernest Hocking, Clarence Irving Lewis, H. M. Sheffer, and J. H. Woods. His dissertation was on "The Unity of All Things," a statement of the metaphysical system that he had developed at that time. He later described the position it presented, somewhat disparagingly, as "a qualified spiritual monism." Awarded a Sheldon fellowship, Hartshorne studied for two years in Europe, attending lectures by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
Back at Harvard, he spent three years as an instructor and research fellow. He and Paul Weiss edited the papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, which were published in six volumes by Harvard University Press from 1931 to 1935. He found in Peirce a congenial spirit and appropriated many of his concepts. One year he was assistant to Alfred North Whitehead, whose thought, also, was congenial to the vision he had been shaping on his own and influenced his future formulations. Throughout his career he introduced students to Whitehead and expounded his ideas.
In 1928 Hartshorne joined the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, where, except for a Fulbright appointment in Australia, he taught until 1955. Also in 1928 he married Dorothy Cooper, who played an important role as editor and bibliographer of his writings. They had one child.
During his years at Chicago Hartshorne published a series of books that established him as a leading metaphysician. Beyond Humanism (1937) argued that human beings cannot understand themselves apart from the wider natural world and the divine. Man's Vision of God (1941) showed that when properly reformulated, and with a coherent idea of God, the traditional arguments for God are convincing. The Divine Relativity (1949) was a sustained argument that treating God only as absolute is both religiously and philosophically wrong. Reality as a Social Process (1953) developed the ideas that becoming, or process, is fundamental throughout reality, and that all the things that become are interrelated. These books established Hartshorne as a major challenge to dominant currents in both philosophy and theology.
Hartshorne's influence was as much on theologians as on philosophers, and, in due course, he received a joint appointment in the Divinity School. His commitment to constructing a new metaphysics and philosophy of religion was out of step with the climate of the time, including that of the Chicago philosophy department. He left Chicago in 1955 partly to find more congenial colleagues at Emory University. In 1962, approaching the mandatory retirement age at Emory, he moved to the University of Texas, which allowed him to teach until he was eighty. He continued to be a productive author during this period. He gave intensive attention to the ontological argument for the reality of God. (See The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics, 1962, and Anselm's Discovery, 1965.) He was convinced that Anselm's second (modal) formulation of the argument was not vulnerable to the objections traditionally brought against the ontological argument in general. He insisted that the existence of God cannot be contingent. Either God necessarily exists, or it is necessarily true that God does not exist.
Hartshorne was a key figure in a wider movement of process thought, a naturalistic philosophy emphasizing that the "nature" of which human beings are a part is far richer than that depicted by materialists and determinists. It consists of events that have some existence and value in themselves and for themselves as well as influence on others. He did much to promote this movement, especially in its Whiteheadian form, and his own distinctive views have stamped it significantly. Among his most influential contributions to process thought, and especially to process theology and philosophy of religion, was his sustained critique of classical theism.
Hartshorne insisted that the traditional formulations of the doctrine of God were neither coherent nor religiously satisfactory. They affirmed only one side of what is embodied in real perfection, that is, the element of immutability and absoluteness. True perfection includes perfect relatedness and, thus, change. What remains changeless is God's perfect responsiveness to all that is changing. He opposed the classical doctrine of omnipotence. In its clearest form, this implies that God determines all events, just as they occur. It denies creaturely freedom and cannot avoid depicting God as directly responsible for all sin and evil. Hartshorne taught, in contrast, that God creates the conditions that provide the optimum balance of order and freedom. Within the limits set by God, creatures determine the details of what happens. Much takes place by chance interactions of decision-making creatures.
Another influential contribution was his defense of reason. Hartshorne argued against the widespread loss of confidence in reason, which expressed itself in the dominant philosophical community as the abandonment of metaphysics and of constructive philosophy generally. In theology, it led to fideism, the belief that teachings derived from revelation are not subject to rational evaluation. Hartshorne was convinced that much of the suspicion of reason came from particular intellectual mistakes that reason could itself correct rather than from an inherent weakness in reason.
Organizations promoting process thought in a form influenced by Hartshorne are active not only in the United States and Canada but also in such countries as Belgium, France, Hungary, Japan, Korea, China, and Australia. They are loosely connected through the International Process Network headquartered in Brisbane, Australia.
Although Hartshorne's fame rests chiefly on his philosophy, he also brought his philosophical views to bear in two scientific fields. His first book was an original development of the theory that all the senses constitute a single affective continuum (The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, 1934). He maintained from his youth an interest in birds, and on his extensive travels he recorded birdsongs. He taught that birds have a subjective life and are motivated by enjoyment of singing, and he compiled extensive data supporting this theory in Born to Sing (1973). At the age of one hundred he published The Zero Fallacy and Other Essays in Neoclassical Philosophy (1997)! Much of the content consisted of earlier essays; Mohammad Valady did the editing. Nevertheless, the book included new material by Hartshorne.
His wife died in 1995. He died at home in Austin five years later.
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Bibliography
The repository for Hartshorne's philosophical and theological writings is the Center for Process Studies, Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California. His autobiography is The Darkness and the Light (1990). The best overview of his philosophy is Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (1970). Volume 20 of The Library of Living Philosophers is devoted to his thought: The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (1991); this contains a bibliography of his writings to that point. An obituary is in the New York Times, 13 Oct. 2000.
John B. Cobb, Jr.
Citation: John B. Cobb, Jr.. "Hartshorne, Charles";
http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-01855.html;
American National Biography Online October 2001 Update.
Access Date: Sat Jan 12 10:59:35 EST 2002
Copyright © 2001 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Publications:
Bibliography from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Charles Hartshorne, and Paul Weiss (Eds.). (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934)
The Darkness and the Light (1990) -- His autobiography
Volume 20 of The Library of Living Philosophers is devoted to his thought: The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (1991); this contains a bibliography of his writings to that point.
Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury. Basic writings / translated by S.W. Deane; with an introduction by Charles Hartshorne. 2d ed. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1962.
The best overview of his philosophy is Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (1970)
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A biographical essay
by John B. Cobb Jr.Charles Hartshorne, June 5, 1897-October 9, 2000-- philosopher, was born in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, the son of Marguerite Haughton and Francis Cope Hartshorne, clergyman. He entered Haverford College in 1915, leaving to join the Army Medical Corps for two years. He completed his college work at Harvard and took the Ph.D. in philosophy there. Among his teachers were R. B. Perry, W. E. Hocking, C.I. Lewis, H. M. Sheffer, and J. H. Woods. His dissertation was on "The Unity of All Things." Awarded a Sheldon Fellowship, Hartshorne studied for two years in Europe, mostly in Germany. Among the lectures he attended were some by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
On his return to Harvard, he spent. three years as Instructor and Research Fellow. He and Paul Weiss edited the papers of Charles Sanders Peirce in six volumes (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge and Harvard University Press, 1931-1935). He found in Peirce a highly congenial spirit, and he appropriated many of Peirce's concepts and arguments.
During one of these years he was assistant to Alfred North Whitehead, whose thought was also highly congenial to the vision he had been shaping on his own. He learned much from Whitehead, and one major contribution he made throughout his career was introducing students to Whitehead and expounding his ideas.
In 1928 Hartshorne accepted a position in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Chicago, where, except for a Fulbright appointment in Australia, he taught until 1955. Soon after moving to Chicago he married Dorothy Cooper. Dorothy Hartshorne played an important role as editor and bibliographer of his writings. They had one child, Emily.
During his years at Chicago, Hartshorne had a somewhat lonely role in the Department of Philosophy. Much of the time this was dominated by Richard McKeon. In any case, Hartshorne's commitment to the construction of a now metaphysics and philosophy of religion was out of step with the general mood.
His influence at Chicago was from theologians as much as from philosophers. In due course, with little change in his teaching, he received a joint appointment in the Divinity School. He did much to shape what came to be called "process theology."
Despite his personally irenic spirit, much of his work was polemical. Hartshorne argued on two fronts. Against classical theism he insisted that its views were neither coherent nor religiously satisfactory. He taught that the idea of divine perfection embodied in the tradition affirmed only one side of what is truly involved in perfection, that is, the element of immutability and absoluteness. But true perfection includes perfect relatedness and thus change. What remains changeless is God's perfect responsiveness to all that is changing.
Hartshorne opposed the classical doctrine of omnipotence. In its clearest form this implied that all events, just as they occur, are determined by God. This tradition cannot affirm creaturely freedom or avoid depicting God as directly responsible for all sin and evil without inconsistency. Hartshorne taught, in contrast, that God creates the conditions that provide the optimum balance of order and freedom. Within the limits set by God, creatures determine the details of what happens. Much that occurs takes place by chance interactions of diverse decision-making creature. This, too, expresses the divine perfection.
The other front on which Hartshorne argued was against the widespread loss of confidence in reason. This expressed itself in the dominant philosophical community as an abandonment of metaphysics and of constructive philosophy generally. In theology it. led to fideism. Hartshorne showed that traditional arguments for the existence of God could be formulated cogently when the idea of God for which they argued was a coherent one. He gave special attention to the ontological argument in this regard. He insisted that the existence of empirical or contingent matter, that either God necessarily exists or it is necessarily true that God does not exist.
These ideas were set forth in a series of books: Beyond Humanism: Essays in the New Philosophy of Nature (Chicago: Willet, Clark & Company, 1937), Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (Chicago: Willet, Clark & Company, 1941), The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), and Reality as a Social Process: Studies in Metaphysics and Religion (Glencoe: The Free Press and Boston: Beacon Press, 1953). These books established Hartshorne as a major challenge to the dominant currents in both philosophy and theology and as the center of a small but vigorous movement.
Partly because of tensions in the Department of Philosophy at Chicago, Hartshorne accepted an invitation to teach philosophy at Emory University. As he approached Emory's mandatory retirement age, he moved to the University of Texas, whose retirement policy was more flexible. He taught there until 1978.
During these years he continued to be a prolific writer. Creative Synthesis and Scientific Method (LaSalle: Open Court, 1970) concentrates less on his doctrine of God and thus offers a more balanced view of his position on a wide range of issues. His productivity has continued even past his retirement at Texas, including extensive assessment of the great thinkers of the past. Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers:an Evaluation of Western Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983) is especially significant in this regard.
Although Hartshorne's fame rests chiefly on his philosophy, he has also brought his philosophical views to bear in two scientific fields. Indeed, his first book was an original development of the theory that all the senses constitute a single affective continuum. His thesis may still prove useful to physiological psychologists. (The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1934.)
He maintained from his youth an interest in birds, and on his extensive travels he recorded numerous birdsongs. He taught that birds have a subjective life and are motivated by enjoyment of singing. He compiled extensive data supporting this theory and published Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. A collection of Hartshorne papers, published and unpublished, is maintained at the Library of the Center for Process Studies, located at the School of Theology at Claremont, Claremont, California.
.II. Major works not mentioned above.
Philosophers Speak of God. (With William L. Reese) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965.
The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics. La Salle: Open Court, 1965.
Anselm’s Discovery. La Salle: Open Court, 1965.
A Natural Theology for our Time. La Salle: Open Court, 1967.
Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-1970. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983.
Creativity in American Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.
Wisdom as Moderation: A Philosophy of the Middle Way. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.
III. Hartshorne has published an autobiography. The Darkness and the Light: A Philosopher Reflects Upon His Fortunate Career arid Those Who Made It Possible. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
IV. Volume XX of "The Library of Living Philosophers" is devoted to Hartshorne. The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (La Salle: Open Court, 1991). In addition to an autobiography, it includes twenty-nine critical essays, Hartshorne's replies, and a nearly exhaustive bibliography of his writings to date.
V. There is a bibliography of published works dealing with Hartshorne's thought by Dorothy Hartshorne, covering the years 1929-73, published in Process Studies, Fall, 1973, and a bibliography of dissertations about Hartshorne by Dean Fowler, in Process Studies, Winter, 1973.
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Essential Books by Charles Hartshorne
The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation
Philosophers Speak of God. With William Reese. An Anthology with commentary.A Natural Theology for Our Time.
The Divine Relativity.
Born to Sing. An ornithological study of bird song.
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes.
Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers.
Creativity in American Philosophy.
Wisdom as Moderation.
The Darkness and the Light. Autobiography.
The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne. Library of Living Philosophers. Vol. XX.
The Zero Fallacy.
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Other Resources on the Internet Ithaca Library Website
State University of New York Press:
Wisdom as Moderation A Philosophy of the Middle Way by Charles Hartshorne
Analytic Theism, Hartshorne, and the Concept of God by Daniel A. Dombrowski
Charles Hartshorne and the Existence of God by Donald Wayne Viney
Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights by Daniel A. Dombrowksi
Insights and Oversights of Great ThinkerSeminar Bielefeld 1997/98: The aim of this seminar is to read intensively in a small group Hartshorne's book on algebraic geometry, starting from chapter II.
Charles Hartshorne's Psychicalism and some brief excerpts from Whitehead and Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne's Psychicalism
from Wesley J. Wildman's WeirdWildWeb @ Boston University
The Thought of Charles Hartshorne (Wesley J. Wildman, Spring, 1988)
(This dictionary article is from my first year of graduate school at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. It is posted here for my students, unchanged from the original, so that they can feel good about picking on me for the errors they find and for my ignorance of bibliographic conventions. If they agree to post their juvenile material in public, then it is only fair that I post mine, too.)Charles Hartshorne: Mann's Quick Notes (Mark Mann, MWT II, 1996-1997)
The Thought of Charles Hartshorne
Wesley J. Wildman, Graduate Theological Union, Spring, 1988.Life and Influences
Charles Hartshorne was born June 5, 1897, in Kittanning, Pennsylvania. He married Dorothy Cooper in December 22, 1928 and they have one daughter. He attended Haverford College for two years in 1915-1917 and then spent two years as a stretcher bearer and hospital orderly in the US Army. He returned to academic life in 1919 at Harvard University and earned the A.B. in 1921, the A.M. in 1922 and the Ph.D. in 1923. Two years were then spent in Europe studying especially with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. From 1925-1928 Hartshorne returned to Harvard as a research fellow where he was an assistant to Alfred North Whitehead for a semester. He was an instructor and then a professor of philosophy in the University of Chicago from 1928-1955, followed by professorships at Emory University (1955-1962) and the University of Texas at Austin (1962-76). He retired in 1976 and has produced several important books since that time. His hobbies include writing poetry and the study of ornithology, the latter of which resulted in a book on bird song in 1973.Harthorne is very aware of the diverse influences upon him and gives a lively and interesting account of them in "How I Got That Way", an autobiographical contribution to Cobb and Gamwell (eds.) (see the bibliography for details). Among the strongest early influences he numbers his father (a compassionate and thoughtful Episcopal minister with an appreciation for logical rigor), his mother (a sharp and loving woman with invariably balanced and penetrating insights into people and life), an unnamed science teacher at Haverford (who made Hartshorne realize that he had never consciously not been an evolutionist), Emerson's Essays (which played an important role in solidifying his already well established confidence in the powers of human reason) and Matthew Arnold's criticism of Christianity called Literature and Dogma. This last reading experience led Hartshorne to a junction point in which he thought he had to choose between abandoning all theological beliefs or becoming a philosopher. The experience of being a stretcher bearer in the First World War both clarified this choice for him (he chose the latter!) and solidified another tendency in his thought: reality is experienced. If Emerson was his first philosophical hero, then Royce was his second. While still at Haverford, he read Royce's Problem of Christianity and the chapter on community permanently affected him: there could be no self apart from participation in the lives of others; reality is social.
On the basis of these early influences, Hartshorne developed an appreciation for idealist philosophy and process metaphysics. Most significant in this regard are C.S. Pierce and A.N. Whitehead, but Hartshorne gladly lists an array of thinkers which includes virtually all of the prominent nineteenth century idealists of America, Britain and France, and many of his teachers at Harvard. His philosophy bears a stikingly close resemblance to that of A. N. Whitehead. At the time of his doctoral dissertation he had read nothing of Pierce or Whitehead's metaphysical works but was exposed to them both simultaneously when he returned to Harvard in 1925 after his two years in Germany. Hartshorne's mature philosophy may be described with tolerable inadequacy as a highly creative adaptation of Whitehead's view of the world and of God.
Philosophers have not been all that enthusiastic about any kind of undisguised metaphysics during the twentieth century. Hartshorne's influence on the philosophical world will therefore take some time to gauge. However, his work has been appropriated enthusiastically by theologians: especially the so-called process theologians such as Henry Wieman, Daniel Day Williams, John B. Cobb Jr., Scubert Ogden, Norman Pittenger, Lewis Ford, David Griffin, and others.
Process Metaphysics
The background to Hartshorne's thought is in large part also the background to process metaphysics. When the adjective "process" is used to qualify "theology", "philosophy", "metaphysics", "modes of thought" and similar words and phrases, the intention is to indicate that priority is being accorded to the categories of event, becoming, and relatedness over the categories of being and substance. The significance of this categorial decision has long been appreciated in western philosophy, beginning with the pre-socratic attempts to understand change, which is sometimes popularly (and apocryphally - as a teaching device) represented as an argument between Heraclitus and Parmenides, with the former insisting that all is in flux, and the latter that all is one. In Buddhist thought there is also a strong and ancient thread which teaches that there are no static substances behind the flow of experience. The modern manifestations of the process emphasis are grounded in:1. Hegel's and post-Hegelian views of reality as dynamic history,
2. scientific advances towards a deeper understanding of reality (especially biological evolution, physical cosmology and an increasingly rich, if confusing, theory of the sub-atomic), and
3. the experiential and empirical pragmatism of philosphers like Pierce, Dewey and James, with its insistence on the centrality of experience for understanding reality.
The modern process worldview is, simply, that what is real is in process. Anything that is actual is properly understood as a momentary event within a series of momentary events. Each momentary event is conditioned by the previous one, by its environment and by the available possibilities for its own completion. Anything which is genuinely static and unchanging must, on this view, be past, dead, or abstract. The things we think of as objects are a family of momentary events. Each such event is rightly regarded as an enduring individual because it inherits the vast bulk of the characteristics of the event which preceded it. Everything which is real is, therefore, temporal.
This simple statement must be adjusted and enhanced in various ways depending on the thinker in question. Whitehead and Hartshorne are in substantial agreement on which adjustments and enhancements need to be made. Here is a brief list of a few of the more significant of them.
Phsyicalism
Each event is constrained by the event which it succeeds, by the environment and by the range of possible future events (this is regarded as a part of the environment in Whitehead). Within these constraints, however, each momentary event creatively determines itself. This application of intentional terminology to events is not metaphorical, but literal. It points to a psychicalist view of reality in which everything is a least partly mental. Consciousness as humans experience it is merely a relatively highly developed form of mental activity.
God is in time
God must also be within the flow of time and must be subject to change as God moves from one divine event, conditioned by the environment, towards a partially open future, the direction of movement through which is creatively determined by God. Impassibility, omnipotence, and omniscience as traditionally (and narrowly) conceived cannot be asserted of God, both because of this analysis of reality and because their assertion leads to incoherence: witness the traditional formulations of the problem of evil. While there is overall agreement, Whitehead and Hartshorne differ in the details of their approach to God. Hartshorne's God is much more personal and active than Whitehead's (see below), and so more conducive to Christian theology in most forms. Both are emphatic, however, that God is not to be treated as the supreme and unique exception to metaphysical laws, and used as such to protect a metaphysical system from collapse. Rather God is the supreme exemplification of metaphysical principles.
The Direction of Change
God is the reality who grounds the appearance of novelty through the process of change over time. God is immediately aware of all that has gone before, and is also aware of the myriad of possible futures. The movement towards greater richness of experience is the contingent result of God's intentional drawing of reality in that direction. The most descriptive images here are of slow and quiet persuasion, companionship, understanding, suffering love, and the like. The basis of this movement of reality towards self-transcendence or actualization or increased intensity of experience or aesthetic enrichment is found in the dipolar nature of God, for both Whitehead and Hartshorne, but differently in each case.
The Dipolar Nature of God
In Whitehead the dipolar distinction is between the primordial and consequent natures of God. The latter is the immediate divine awareness of what is actualized at a given moment (note the problem for coherence inherent in this in the light of the relativistic understanding of simultaneity). The former is the awareness of the rich potentialities for reality. It is the conscious holding out to reality of God's primordial awareness of the wealth of potential which grounds the use of such words as "lure" and "draw" for describing how God ensures the orderly and continued movement of reality towards actualization. In Hartshorne, the dipolar nature of God is understood in such a way that God is more active, more personal, and so more like the biblical images of God as an agent of activity. On the one hand, God is necessarily, absolutely and unchangingly existent; every state depends upon God, while God exists no matter what else there might be. On the other hand, the actual character of God at a given moment is contingent upon choices made in relation to the actual states of reality. God is therefore contingent, changing and passible relative to those states and choices. In this way, Hartshorne offers an analysis of God which affirms that God is both loving and divine. Some of the traditional strands of the doctrine of God within the history of Christian thought have been left behind, like omnipotence (of which omniscience is an aspect), and impassibility. Others are affirmed in a refreshingly definite way because of the absence of obviously problematical logical conflict, like God's love for and involvement in reality, and God's ontologically necessary and unchanging existence. The process analysis of reality is what offers the possibility of a coherent doctrine of God. The dipolar understanding of God's nature, whether in Whitehead or Hartshorne, is what saves the doctrine of God from triviality.
Panentheism
This term is Hartshorne's and is distinguished from both theism (in which God is inevitably removed from the rest of reality) and pantheism (in which God is indistinguishable from the sum total of reality). It is intended to express the idea that everything in the world is immediately experienced by God and that God responds to the world so that every part of it experiences the consequences of divine choice. But God is not identifiable with the world.
Hatshorne's Method and Position
Hartshorne's analysis of reality and of God looks promising for application to many other Christian doctrines, and process theologians have applied themselves to this task with great energy. Hartshorne himself, however, in so far as he can be regarded as a theologian at all, has concentrated on the doctrine of God and never really moved much beyond it in the direction of Christian theology. Even his theology is decidedly that of a metaphysician rather than that of one who has a commitment to a stance marked by confession or revelation. He is a metaphysician of the sort that is rather rare these days: an unapologetic, explicit, ontologically idealist, epistemologically realist one. As such, his work is extremely creative and both his results and his method of procedure merit some comment. The following remarks may serve to go part of the way towards characterizing what is distinctive in his contribution to metaphysics.First, with Whitehead, Hartshorne accepts that:
Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. ([1962] pviii)
This marks out a huge field of endeavour for philosophers, the central aspect of whose task should to be metaphysics, according to Hartshorne; the search for necessary and categorial truths.
Second, metaphysics is not deduction from premises which are somehow unimpeachable. It is the attempt to describe our experience by leaving behind what is incidental and special and reporting as accurately as possible what it left: the general and universal. The premises of metaphysics are not assured and awaiting clever arguments to draw out their consequences. Rather they are tentative assertions whose meaning is disclosed as deductions are made which allow assessment of their adequacy. This is a method of abstraction and descriptive generalization on the one hand, and a testing of theory against experience on the other. It therefore appears to have at least some affinity with sophisticated versions of the hypothetico-deductive method.
Third, all metaphysical proposals are unavoidably provisional in character. It is obviously difficult for any human, given the specificity of their social and cultural situation, to achieve even a moderate degree of abstraction from experience. The effort is needed, however, for both the satisfaction it brings, and for the peace and well-being of humanity and the world.
Fourth, it is as well to note that Hartshorne assumes without apology that the structure of experience at the human level corresponds with the structure of experience at all levels of reality, both the much bigger, and the much smaller; the much more complex, and the much simpler. The price paid for denying this assumption to Hartshorne is, of course, the fundamental unintelligibility of the universe; this is his argument for making it.
Fifth, Hartshorne is an idealist, and proudly at that. He uses the term "panpsychism" (all-soul) to describe his view that "all things, in all their aspects, consist exclusively of 'souls', that is, of various kinds of subjects, or units of experiencing, with their qualifications, relations, and groupings, or communities." ([1941], p183) This sort of position represents a wholesale attack on metaphysical materialism and dualism alike, and it offers a possible way out of the problem of reductionism as it has developed under scientific materialism.
Sixth, unusually for the history of philosophy, Hartshorne wishes to defend, alongside of his strict metaphysical idealism, a straight forward epistemological realism. Any object of knowledge is entirely independent of its being known by any particular subject.
Seventh, the whole universe is fundamentally societal in nature. The billions of momentary events which constitute the universe are in unfathomably rich interrelation with each other. This becomes the ground for Hartshorne's approach to social and organismic groupings. The idea of interrelatedness which it entails is all-pervasive in his thought.
Eighth, the human person has two poles: the psychical and the physical. The two interact on the basis of the fundamental psychical character of all matter. Thus Hartshorne offers his solution to the mind/body problem. The "soul" of the human person is the family of billions upon billions of events which are themselves psychical entities. For Hartshorne, continuance of the human soul after death is improbable, except as it is remembered by God.
Finally, though there is a lot of competition for the last item in this short list, it is appropriate to mention evil. In short it is both a genuine possiblity and an actual reality, just as freedom is. There is no guarantee that humans will not encounter and even create for themselves tragedy again and again. There is plenty for the pessimists to be unhappy about. But Hartshorne's overriding awareness, in spite of the fact that he spent two years carrying broken and dead bodies on stretchers during WWI, seems to be one of joyful optimism. Humans - and the whole universe - really are free. They are in the process of self transcendence and God is with them, responding, acting and lovingly drawing them onwards towards greater fulfillment.
An exhaustive bibliography of Hartshorne's writings from 1929-1967 appears in R. E. James, The Concrete God: A New Beginning for Theology - The Thought of Charles Hartshorne (see below). A less exhaustive but very useful bibliography may be found in W. L. Reese and E. Freeman (eds.), Process and Divinity: Philosophical Essays Presented to Charles Hartshorne (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1964).
Major Books
1931-1935: (ed. with Paul Weiss) Collected Papers of Charles Saunders Pierce (Harvard University Press)
1934: The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation (University of Chicago)
1937: Beyond Humanism: Essays in the New Philosophy of Nature (Willett, Clark and Co.)
1941: Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (Willett, Clark and Co., 1941; Harper, 1948)
1948: The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (Yale University Press, Terry Lectures)
1950: (with V. Lowe and A. H. Johnson) Whitehead and the Modern World (Beacon)
1953: Reality as Social Process: Studies in Metaphysics and Religion (Free Press of Glencoe)
1953: (ed. with W. L. Reese) Philosophers Speak of God (University of Chicago)
1962: The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (Open Court)
1965: Anselm's Rediscovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Proof for God's Existence (Open Court)
1967: A Natural Theology for Our Time (Open Court)
1970: Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (Open Court)
1972: Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-1970 (Univ. of Nebraska)
1973: Born To Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song (Indiana University Press)
1976: Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion (Marquette University Press)
1983: Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes
1984: Creativity in American Philosophy
Selected Secondary Literature
Cobb J. B. and Gamwell F. I. (eds.), Existence and Actuality: Coversations with Charles Hartshorne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)
Cragg A., Charles Hartshorne (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1973; a volume in the series entitled Makers of the Modern Theological Mind)
James R. E., The Concrete God: A New Beginning for Theology - The Thought of Charles Hartshorne (New York and Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967)
Peters E. H., Hartshorne and Neoclassical Metaphysics: An Interpretation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970)
Charles Hartshorne: Mann's Quick Notes
(Mark Mann, MWT II, 1996-1997)Raised in a devout, liberal Episcopalian parsonage; studied under Whitehead and edited Peirce’s papers: "the two greatest philosophical geniuses who ever worked primarily in this country."
His fundamental conviction: Deus est caritas! God is love!
Differences from Whitehead:
God a series of actual entities rather than one event; solved (so he thought) a logical inconsistency in Whitehead where one is influenced by the past when God is not past; making God a series makes God both present and past
Whitehead deals more with fundamental metaphysics of a relational world, Hartshorne focuses more on the reality of God within a relational world (Cobb goes even further with this tendency)
Similarities to Whitehead:Temporal atomicity (actual occasions)
Prehension: provided Hartshorne with the basis for portraying love as the clue to existence: love primarily is "sympathy", feeling the feelings of another with another
Critical of classical theism’s "egoist" God and love, which betrays the Christian gospel’s view of love
Panentheism: The universe is the body of God, and God is the mind or soul of the world, God and creatures can feel each other (perception not just through senses but occurs at the most fundamental level of reality); God is the source for cosmic order and the everlasting recipient and preserver of value
Omnipotence: as usually conceived it is a false/absurd ideal, only a God of infinite love (true omnipotence) is worth worshipping!
Hartshorne calls for a religion of contributionism (in which we contribute our feelings to each other). There are four main obstacles to this:Atheism due to no valid arguments for God
Atheism based on problem of evil created by traditional view of God
The idea that our souls are immortal (which we must give up)
The idea of divine independence according to which God cannot receive from the world
God is absolute in some respects, relative in others (this is a rejection of divine simplicity:consequent nature: concrete states
primordial nature: abstract essence
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