Spirituality – Metaphysics

History and Schools of Metaphysics

Process Metaphysics

There are two fundamental aspects of everyday experience: change and persistence. Until recently, the Western philosophical tradition has arguably championed substance and persistence, with some notable exceptions however. According to process thinkers, novelty, flux and accident do matter, and sometimes they constitute the ultimate reality.

Lato sensu, process metaphysics is as old as Western philosophy, with figures such as Heraclitus, Plotinus, Duns Scotus, Leibniz, David Hume, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Charles Renouvier, Karl Marx, Ernst Mach, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Émile Boutroux, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander and Nicolas Berdyaev. It seemingly remains an open question whether major “Continental” figures such as the late Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Derrida should be included.

Stricto sensu, process metaphysics may be limited to the works of a few founding fathers: G. W. F. Hegel, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Henri Bergson, A. N. Whitehead, and John Dewey. From a European perspective, there was a very significant and early Whiteheadian influence on the works of outstanding scholars such as Émile Meyerson (1859-1933), Louis Couturat (1868-1914), Jean Wahl (1888-1974), Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943), Philippe Devaux (1902-1979), Hans Jonas (1903-1993), Dorothy M. Emmett (1904-2000), Maurice Merleau Ponty (1908-1961), Enzo Paci (1911-1976), Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887-1971), Wolfe Mays (1912-), Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003), Jules Vuillemin (1920-2001), Jean Ladrière (1921-), Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-), and Reiner Wiehl (1929-2010).

Luc Paquin