Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Part I In Search of a New Metaphysics
- Part II From Permanence to Process
- 3 Deconstructing Tradition: Substance Revisited
- 4 The Flowing Self: From Monads to Actual Occasions
- 5 Overcoming the Cartesian Legacy: The Process Concept of Substance
- Part III From Process to Permanence
- Appendix: The Making of a Metaphysician – A Biographical Note
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Flowing Self: From Monads to Actual Occasions
from Part II - From Permanence to Process
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Part I In Search of a New Metaphysics
- Part II From Permanence to Process
- 3 Deconstructing Tradition: Substance Revisited
- 4 The Flowing Self: From Monads to Actual Occasions
- 5 Overcoming the Cartesian Legacy: The Process Concept of Substance
- Part III From Process to Permanence
- Appendix: The Making of a Metaphysician – A Biographical Note
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
WHITEHEAD ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEIBNIZ'S THEORY OF MONADS
According to Whitehead, the thinker who came closest to formulating a correct account of substance is Leibniz. Whitehead praises him for the ‘novelty of his monads’ and for having seen that the ultimate substances must be ‘processes of organization’. But the notion that they are ‘windowless’ – that is to say, causally insulated – cannot be accepted. Only a metaphysics that fully acknowledges the reality of causal interaction can account for our general sense of existence as being ‘one item among others, in an efficacious actual world’ (PR 178).
Whitehead does, of course, also praise Locke for his critique of the notion of substance/substratum and for his recognition of the fact that the notion of power is an essential ingredient in our understanding of substances. On the one hand, Locke observes in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), the notion of substance as a substratum of qualities is a rather empty one:
if any one will examine himself concerning his Notion of pure Substance in general, he will find that he has no other Idea of it at all, but only a Supposition of he knows not what support of … Qualities.
On the other hand, our ideas of particular things are essentially linked with our apprehension of the effect they are capable of bringing about. Empirically considered, particular things are nothing but bundles of powers. As Locke makes the case with respect to our idea of a piece of gold:
Powers … justly make a great part of our complex Ideas of Substances. He, that will examine his complex Idea of Gold, will find several of its Ideas, that make it up, to be only Powers, as the Power of being melted, but not spending it self in the Fire; of being dissolved in Acqua Regia, are Ideas, as necessary to make up our complex Idea of Gold, as its Colour and Weight: which if duly considered, are also nothing but different Powers. For to speak truly, Yellowness is not actually in Gold, but is a Power in Gold, to produce that Idea in us by our Eyes, when placed in a due Light …
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- Information
- Whitehead's Metaphysics of PowerReconstructing Modern Philosophy, pp. 47 - 60Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017