Concrescence:

The Australasian Journal of Process Thought

In What Sense is Whiteheads Speculative
Philosophy a First Philosophy?
Randy Ramal
Victor Valley College, USA
Abstract Whitehead describes his metaphysics as speculative philosophy in order to emphasize the fact,
among other reasons, that he perceives philosophy as a progressive enterprise, always approximating the
ultimate truths about reality without rendering them completely apprehendable in actuality. This
metaphysical humility, I argue, does not change the nature of the metaphysical enterprise in which he is
engaged, namely one that endorses the logical possibility of formulating the ultimate principles that render
reality intelligible. I illustrate this logical nature of Whiteheads metaphysics by showing its similarities
with, and differences from, Aristotles first philosophy, arguing that, in its content, Whiteheads
metaphysics is a kind of first philosophy that contains the same objectives as Aristotles metaphysics. Still,
I show why Whiteheads metaphysics is not an Aristotelian first philosophy but simply one species in the
genus of first philosophies.
Keywords Aristotle, Whitehead, Presocratics, Plato, first philosophy, metaphysics, being qua being,
reality as such, potentiality, actuality, first principles, secondary causes, primary substances, eternal
objects, prime matter, God.

I. INTRODUCTION
This essay is an attempt to show that Alfred North
Whiteheads speculative philosophy is a kind of first
philosophy, which is philosophy in search of
ultimate, or first, principles to explain the nature of
reality as such, and one that follows the methods of
description and dispassionate criticism as the proper
tools for discovering these first principles. By
reality as such I mean something akin to Aristotles
notion of being qua being, which is a reality that is
purportedly descriptive of how things really are on
the hierarchical scale of being. By first principles I
mean the ultimate reasons of, or the grounds for, the
way things truly are. I argue that the similarities
between Whitehead and Aristotle on (1) the
dispassionate nature of philosophy, (2) its method of
descriptive generalization, and (3) its treatment of
the subject of being as such, grant characterizing
Whiteheads philosophy as first philosophy. There
is also the fact that, in their search for first
principles, (4) both Whitehead and Aristotle give
metaphysical space for a divine reality that has an
active role in forming and ordering the world. I
consider the latter similarity as further support for
my reading of Whitehead as first philosopher.
I do not mean to argue, however, that Whitehead is a
first philosopher in every sense that Aristotle is.
Although he agrees with Aristotle that metaphysics
is concerned, or should be concerned, with the
question of being qua being and that God is an

ultimate reality that necessarily exists, Whitehead

disagrees with the results of Aristotles investigation,
especially on the meaning of God, and he qualifies
his metaphysical project by describing it as
speculative. Speculative philosophy, Whitehead tells
us, aspires to arrive at the ultimate principles that
render all experience, and all aspects of reality,
intelligible, but it does not profess to possess these
principles in their entirety.1 I do not think that this
speculative humility is present in Aristotles notion
of metaphysics.
Furthermore, Whitehead and
1

Whiteheads well-known definition of 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 (Process and
Reality, 3 my italics). This is probably the reason he
subtitles his magnum opus, Process and Reality, An Essay
in Cosmology, giving his metaphysical enterprise a
somewhat epistemological and a definitely asymptotic
nature. The asymptotic nature of Whiteheads speculative
philosophy is also clearly rendered in his definition of
metaphysics: By metaphysics I mean the science which
seeks to discover the general ideas which are indispensably
relevant to the analysis of everything that happens
(Religion in the Making, 84 my italics). The latter
definition shows that Whitehead sees metaphysics as an
enterprise that renders everything, or all aspects of reality,
intelligible. In what follows, in both the text and footnotes, I
use the abbreviations PR, SMW, RM, and AI to refer,
respectively, to Whiteheads Process and Reality, Science
and the Modern World, Religion in the Making, and
Adventures of Ideas.

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Published on-line by the Australasian Association of Process Thought, an affiliate of the International Process Network.

10

RAMAL

Aristotle differ on the ultimate functions of God in

the world in that Whitehead allows for both religious
and secular functions whereas Aristotle limits Gods
role to secular, or metaphysical, functions. For these
reasons, although I take the similarities between
Whitehead and Aristotle on the four points
mentioned above as a demonstration that Whitehead
is a kind of first philosopher, the differences between
them preclude seeing him as an Aristotelian first
philosopher.
Still, one of the reasons for my writing of this paper,
in addition to the obvious fact that I find
Whiteheads metaphysics to be meeting Aristotles
requirements for what first philosophy is ultimately
about, is that Whiteheads de facto speculative
humility does not change the fact of his endorsement
of the logical possibility of first philosophy. I seek
to emphasize that this logical espousal of first
philosophy, not whether Whitehead himself was able
to give its final account, is what ultimately matters in
considering whether or not he is a first philosopher.
I begin the investigation by elucidating Aristotles
notions of first philosophy and being qua being.

II. ARISTOTLE ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY AND BEING

QUA BEING
Aristotle inherited the problem of the nature of
reality or, as he describes it, the problem of being,
from the Presocratics and from Plato. This is the
problem of what it means for something to exist and,
by implication, what the meaning of existence is.
The Presocratics asked, What is the nature of all
things? and gave various answers, all suggesting,
from Aristotles perspective, that what is ultimately
real is that which exists in one form or another and
has an origin.2 Thus, there is Thales view that the
source of everything is water and, therefore, that
reality itself, or the ultimate nature of all things, is
water. Anaximander suggested that apeiron, a
primordial or indefinite stuff, is that of which all
things partake so that reality as such is precisely this
2

Aristotle discusses the early Greek philosophers in Book A

of the Metaphysics. In chapters III, IV, and V he first deals
with the monists, describing them as positing one ultimate
cause, mainly a material cause, for reality; he then
discusses the pluralists whom he sees to have posited more
than one cause, namely material and efficient causes;
thirdly, he briefly mentions the Pythagoreans, saying that he
discussed them elsewhere, and he credits them with
speculating about both material and formal causes. Thales,
Anaximenes,
Heraclitus,
Empedocles,
Anaxagoras,
Xenophanes, and Parmenides are among the many names
that Aristotle associates with the monists, pluralists, and the
Pythagoreans. In chapter VI Aristotle turns to discuss Plato
and, in chapters VIII and IX, he proceeds with criticisms of
both the Presocratics and Plato (See pages 57-83 in
Warringtons edition of Metaphysics, translated by him and
introduced by David Ross. Page references in the text and
footnotes will be from this edition, although I always indicate
the abbreviated names of the books wherein I take the
citations).

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

primordial stuff. Heraclitus idea of the true nature

of reality derives from his notion of the logos, by
which he meant a measure or proportion, a
constant equilibrium between naturally opposite
qualities that ultimately takes the physical form
fire. There is also Parmenides view that what
really exists, the real world, is something eternal and
unchanging, thereby rejecting not only the reality of
change but also the idea that whatever is changeable
could possibly characterize reality as such. Finally,
Plato, who came under Parmenides influence on the
question of change, surmised that the truth about
reality lies somewhere between the views of
Heraclitus and Parmenides. As his famed parable of
the cave illustrates, Plato believed that the eternal
forms characterize ultimate reality and that the world
of change, which to some degree is real, is a mere
instantiated replica of ultimate reality.3
Aristotle describes the nature of his project in a
similar fashion to that of the Presocratics and Plato.
He writes:
Now (1) since it is the first principles or ultimate
causes of things for which we are looking, these
must be essential attributes of something. It follows
(2) that the elements of existing things sought by
our predecessors must be these very principles
towards which our search is directed. Therefore (3)
the elements must be elements of being not
incidentally, but qua being. Hence we may infer
that it is of being as such that we too must grasp the
first causes. (Book , 115)

Here, Aristotle suggests that the elements sought

by his predecessors as answers to the question of the
ultimate nature of reality, be they the Presocratics or
Plato, were treated as first principles or ultimate
causes by them. He shares with them the interest in
investigating these ultimate principles, but, as he
makes clear, he is unsatisfied with the results they
offer. Aristotles dissatisfaction is twofold. First, as
he points out, one of the reasons he seeks to
investigate his predecessors views on the question
of being qua being is to see whether they provided
any additional causes besides the four causes he
discussed in his book on Physics.4 His conclusion is
3

On Platos relation to Parmenides and on Parmendies

views on motion and reality see W.C.K Guthries The Greek
Philosophers, 47-50 and 132-33. For example, Guthrie
makes the point that Plato was the first to illustrate the
various uses of the term being, employing the Sophist to
clarify that Parmenides, and the philosophers against whom
he was arguing, meant different things by the word to be.
Plato explained that to be could mean (1) to exist, and (2)
to have a certain predicate. What Guthries explanation
indicates, I believe, is that Plato was concerned with the
intelligible conditions for the possibility of existence and
change, namely the grounds that allow this world, which is
the world of the cave inhabitants, to exist. Plato grounds
the intelligibility of this world in the permanent world of the
Ideas.

Book , 4-5 and Book A, 57. The four causes he

describes in Physics are (1) the material cause, that which

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WHAT SENSE IS WHITEHEADS SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY A FIRST PHILOSOPHY?

that, for the exception of Parmenides and Plato, most

of his predecessors recognize only material
principles in their explanation of ultimate reality,
and, furthermore, that none of his predecessors, not
even Plato, mentions any additional cause other than
the four causes he lists in the Physics. Thus, in his
summary of his predecessors views, Aristotle
writes: I have now briefly summarized the teaching
of my predecessors about causes and the ultimate
nature of things, from which it appears that none of
them mentioned any kind of cause, or principle other
than those listed in the Physics (Book A, 69). He
also writes:
Most of the early philosophers recognize only
material principles underlying everything. That of
which they believed all things to consist, from
which they believed all things to be generated, and
into which they believed all things to be resolved
when destroyed, they called an element or
principle. (Book A, 57)

Parmenides, with whom Aristotle agrees that change

cannot come about ex nihilo, admitted an efficient
cause for the way things really are, and Plato, in his
view, offered two kinds of causes: formal and
material.5 Aristotles first dissatisfaction is rooted in
his view that none of his predecessors recognized all
of the four causes combined and none brought any
ultimate clarity to the question of the nature of
reality (Book A, 84). He accepts the reality of
change and does not think that his predecessors
views reflect this reality satisfactorily.
Secondly, Aristotle is dissatisfied with his
predecessors because, whether offering material,
formal, efficient, or final causes to explain the
ultimate nature of reality, they missed what he takes
to be its truly ultimate causes, namely founding or
grounding principles that cannot be subject to further
generalization or justification. Aristotle seems to
suggest that the quest for ultimate causes is different
in kind from the quest for one or more of the four
causes he mentions in Physics, and he does not think
that his predecessors realized this fact. What I mean
is the following. To say that the source of
everything is water, as Thales did, or that it is fire, as
Heraclitus projected, or even that it is apeiron, a
provides the matter for a certain existing thing, as for
example when the bronze is the matter out of which a statue
is made; (2) the formal, or essential cause, which is the
cause that gives the law, or form, according to which an
existing thing develops, as in the case of an oak tree that
gives its form to an acorn; (3) the efficient cause is the
source of the entity under consideration, the agent that
causes that entity to come about, as for example when an
artist creates a statue; finally, (4) the final cause is the
completed product, the end at which a certain thing, or an
entity, aims and develops, as for example when walking is
taken up for health reasons.
5

It is now accepted among Aristotles scholars, however,

that he was not altogether just to Plato in regards to the
latters knowledge and use of the four causes. David Ross,
for example, indicates that Plato suggests efficient causes
in Phaedrus and Sophist, and final causes in Philebus and
Timaeus (See Book A, 68n.3).

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11

primordial or indefinite stuff, as Anaximander

thought, is, from Aristotles perspective, to confuse
an incidental or a secondary cause for a first or
ultimate cause. Ultimate causes are causes that
cannot be further questioned as to their explanatory
power and, in fact, put a stop to any further search
for explanations.6
Furthermore, Aristotle rejects the choices of
Parmenides and Plato in regards to the nature of
reality because, it seems, he can still ask what makes
these choices real, whereas the explanation of
ultimate reality is something that cannot be subject
to further explanations. Thus, although Aristotle
agrees with Parmenides that nothing could exist ex
nihilo, he is still able to ask about the causes of
Parmenides eternally efficient reality. Similarly,
Aristotle wants to understand what makes the eternal
forms real, disagreeing with Plato that things are
more real when they are more abstract. He therefore
does not think that Parmenides unchanging reality
or Platos eternal forms answer the question of
ultimate reality.7
Aristotles definition of first philosophy clearly
indicates that his interest lies in the universality, or
rather the essential generality, of reality, not in the
generality of specific aspects of it:
6

Ludwig
Wittgensteins
famous
statement
that
Explanations come to an end somewhere (Philosophical
Investigations, #1) seems to reflect Aristotles intentions,
which the Aristotelian scholar Jonathan Barnes seems to
recognize when he describes Aristotles first causes as
unexplainable explanation or, more explicitly, as
explanations that come to a stop (See Barnes essay
Metaphysics in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle,
103.)
7

I accept the general thesis about Aristotle, first suggested

by Werner Jaeger, that he moved from being a wholehearted Platonist, who accepted the theory of the forms in
his early period, to becoming an empiricist renouncing this
theory later on in his life. As F.M. Cornford indicates,
Aristotle explicitly attacks the theory of the forms in a
dialogue that survived as a fragment, and which is entitled
Concerning Philosophy. In this dialogue, Aristotle denies
that the ideal forms could exist apart from the sensible
world, and elsewhere he described Platos mathematical
objects as mere abstractions that are devoid of any reality
apart from their embodiments in physical objects. This is
not to deny the inevitable similarities between Aristotle and
Plato, considering the fact that, for almost twenty years,
Aristotle was first Platos student and then his colleague at
the Academy. For example, both were teleological thinkers
who sought to go beyond the mechanistic understanding of
reality. And yet, as Cornford rightly emphasizes, Aristotle
became a common sense philosopher after leaving the
Academy, turning to investigate human experience and
empirical facts. One of these empirical facts is the reality of
motion which Aristotle sought to explain through the
embodied existence of the forms, not through their separate
existence (See Before and After Socrates, 87-89). For
different views on Platos influence on Aristotle see
Jonathan Barnes, Life and Works in The Cambridge
Companion to Aristotle, 16-26, and Mary Louis Gills
Aristotle on Substance, 9-10. I agree with both Barnes and
Gill that, notwithstanding the changes in Aristotles views on
certain issues throughout his life, these changes should not
indicate a developmental career.

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RAMAL
There is a science which investigates being qua
being and its essential attributes. This science
differs from all the so-called special sciences in that
none of the latter deals generally with being as such.
They isolate one part of it and study the essential
attributes of that one part, as do, for example, the
mathematical sciences. (Book , 115)8

Since the essential attributes of being as such are

the first principles, first philosophy differs from
mathematics and the other sciences in that it seeks to
study the most universal first principles, not simply
the general principles or causes of a particular aspect
of reality. For example, whereas mathematics
studies the general principles, causes, and laws that
govern the operations of numbers and shapes, first
philosophy studies the universal laws that apply not
only to mathematics but also to all other sciences. In
fact, Aristotle makes the specific point that physics
and mathematics single out some particular thing or
class of things, and concern themselves with that, not
with unqualified being, i.e. being as such.9 The
laws of logic, for example the principle of noncontradiction, should fall under the category of the

Jonathan Barnes translates this statement, especially the

first line, somewhat differently than the traditional
translation, but his translation is important because it
clarifies the method of investigation in which Aristotle was
engaged and sheds light on his notion of generality. Barnes
translates the first line as follows: There is a science which
investigates beings qua being and the attributes which hold
of them in virtue of their own nature (my underlying). He
states that it is misleading and false to say that Aristotle
studies being in the singular sense because, first, although
the Greek text uses the singular form of being, this use is
meant in the plural and, second, it is only natural to read the
first occurrence of the term being as an abstract noun
(Metaphysics, 69-70). The generality of the abstract
notion being comes about through generalization from
knowledge and experience.
This is the method of
descriptive generalization that I discuss later in the paper.
Renford Bambrough (The Philosophy of Aristotle, 35) says
that if we use Donald Davidsons distinction between
descriptive and revisionary metaphysics when studying
Aristotles metaphysics, then we have to say it is
descriptive, which I believe is true. Even Jonathan Barnes
characterizes Aristotles philosophy as aporetic, namely as
a philosophy that posits puzzles and then solves them
without apriori theories. Barnes conveys the descriptive
sense of Aristotles metaphysics by saying that when he
reads Aristotle, he is given the impression that he is led
through a series of exhibition rooms and not through a
systematic construction (Life and Works, 24).
9

Book E, 153. Or, as David Ross puts it, whereas

mathematics studies changeless entities for Aristotle, it
differs from first philosophy in that the entities it studies are
distinguishable aspects of concrete reality, and they do not
possess separate existence. First philosophy, on the other
hand, is the study of changeless and separate beings (See
his Aristotle, 156-58), or, as Aristotle himself puts it, first
philosophy is prior to both physics and mathematics in the
sense that it studies anything eternal, immutable, and
existing separately (Book E, 154). This clearly shows how
Aristotle differs from Plato since, unlike Plato, he does not
think that mathematical objects enjoy separate existence.

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

universal laws and principles that apply to all fields

of study.10
Another way of expressing the difference between
first philosophy and the other sciences, and in such a
way that Aristotles significant notion of wisdom
comes to the surface, is by recognizing that Aristotle
does not believe in a single unified science but sees
the different sciences as dealing with different parts
of knowledge, the highest of which is knowledge for
its own sake.
Wisdom is precisely this
contemplative knowledge, which does not aim at
practical consequences but rather at contemplating
the first principles that govern the nature of all
things. This theoretical, or as Aristotle calls it
speculative, interest in the ultimate nature of reality
is shared by physics, mathematics, and theology,
the latter identified by Aristotle as first philosophy or
wisdom. And, of these three sciences that engage in
the study of the essences of things, Aristotle finds
theology to be dealing with the highest genus of
being, which is being as such (Book E, 153-54).
This interesting identification of first philosophy
with theology not only suggests that they have one
and the same object, which is being as such, but it
also gives the impression that the latter might be
nothing else than God, the ultimate object of
theology. God for Aristotle is an immaterial entity,
an individual substance that differs from other
individual substances in that God is not a composite
of form and matter but pure form. This divine entity
must exist, according to Aristotle, because if all
substances are perishable, so is everything else; in
other words, for anything to exist, an eternal
movement has to be posited and an eternal, nonchangeable entity has to be there in order for the
eternal movement to occur (Book , 342-44). This
eternal, non-changeable, metaphysical entity is God.
God moves the universe as a final cause, says
Aristotle, because God is devoid of a material body.
This means that Gods method of operation, or the
kind of causality that God has, is such that it moves
things immaterially.
Aristotle describes Gods
metaphysical function in the world by saying that
God is the worlds object of desire. This also means
that God, the unmoved mover, is pure act, an
ultimate cause without which the world as we know
it could not exist.11

10

This is not to say that metaphysics, or first philosophy, is

the same as logic, although many scholars of Aristotle, for
example Jonathan Barnes (Metaphysics, 72), if I
understand him correctly, make this identification.
Metaphysics investigates the universal truths that apply to
any subject whatsoever, including logic, but these truths
should not be reduced to logical truths. For Aristotle, first
philosophy is not an apriori science but a form of descriptive
metaphysics.

11

Aristotles God does not have a religious context in the

way that the monotheistic God of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam does, a fact that, as shall be seen, distinguishes
Whiteheads God from Aristotles. For Aristotle, God has a
metaphysical function, namely initiating the movement of
the heavens and, simultaneously, explaining its existence.

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WHAT SENSE IS WHITEHEADS SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY A FIRST PHILOSOPHY?

Aristotle introduces God into his metaphysics in

order to explain two things: (1) the eternal
movement of the heavens, and (2) the change that
Parmenides denied and Plato conceived to be an
imitation of the eternally stable reality of the forms.
The reason that this God might be confused with
being as such is that God exists in separation from
the world, enveloped in self-knowledge and
contemplation, which are the ultimate characteristics
of wisdom. And if wisdom is knowledge for the
sake of sheer knowledge, then this might suggest
that, as the object of theology, God is also the
ultimate object of first philosophy. But this is not
the case: God is not being as such for Aristotle
because whereas being is the ultimate object of first
philosophy, that reality is itself in need of
explanation and cannot function as the explanation
of itself. The explanation can only be provided by
first principles, which include God, but not by reality
itself. If God is an ultimate cause for Aristotle, then
God is one of the explanatory hypotheses for being
as such, not being itself. Also, for Aristotle, God
constitutes only one type of existence, a substantial,
non-material existence, and, therefore cannot be
inclusive of the variety of ways in which being is
expressed. 12
What, then, is being or reality as such? The answer
to this question lies in the way Aristotle predicates
being to the various modes of existence he depicts.
He asks the major question as to how being, or
reality, is manifested in various forms of existence,
for example in physical and natural objects, in
qualities and attributes, or in various activities, and
he comes to see that being is a general category of
existence that requires a different kind of conceptual
elucidation than suggested in the other sciences.13
Although he recognizes the variety of things that are
said to be real, he does not predicate being to all
existent things in the same way. He finds one mode
of existence to be more fundamental than others.
Ousia, as Aristotle makes clear in the following
The point is that he endorses the sense of an originative or
causative existence for reality, and he sees God as a
dynamic and individual substance that stands as the
ultimate cause behind it. In regards to the controversy
among Aristotles scholars as to whether God is an efficient
cause or not, I agree with David Ross that God is the
efficient cause by being the final cause, but in no other way
(See his Aristotle, 181).
12

John Herman Randall, Jr. thinks it is a mistake to call first

philosophy a theology because whereas the latter is the
science of divine things, first philosophy is the study of any
existent things as existent (Aristotle, 109). He is right
insofar as theology is understood in a contemporary way,
namely as faith seeking understanding, but, for Aristotle, the
context of calling first philosophy theology is metaphysical,
not religious, and, as shall be made clear in the text, the
point of calling philosophy theology is to show that God, as
an ultimate, single cause, is the primary example of the kind
of substances that first philosophy investigates.
13

For a lucid summary of Aristotles views on being in

regards to its various manifestations in substances,
qualities, and activities, see A.E. Taylors commentary
Aristotle, 42-43.

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13

statement, is a substance that has a basic or a nonderivative form of existence:

We have now dealt with substance, the primary
mode of being, to which all the other categories
imply a reference. It is from the concept of
substance that quantity, quality, [relation, activity,
passivity, place, time], derive their meaning; each of
them will be found to involve the notion of
substance. (Book , 223) 14

What needs to be emphasized in regards to this

statement is that Aristotle speaks of the concept of
substance and of a referentiality of meaning that the
various modes of being owe to substantial existence.
Thus, when Aristotle indicates that he has dealt with
the primary mode of being, this suggests that he
looked for candidates for the position of being qua
being through studying the various senses of to be.
He learns that qualities, thoughts, feelings, and the
various activities to which existence can be ascribed,
are dependent for their meaning on substances that
function as their substrata. This dependence is not
merely conceptual, but in order to find out what
reality as such is Aristotle has to engage in a
conceptual investigation of its meaning, and this, I
believe, is what he emphasizes in the above
statement.15
As a result of his investigation, Aristotle is led to
look for entities that cannot be predicated of
anything else, and he comes to the conclusion that
primary substances are those entities. He clarifies
what a primary substance is in the following manner:

14

See also Book , p. 16, for a complete list of Aristotles

categories of existence. Certain Aristotle scholars, such as
Renford Bambrough and Joseph Owens, prefer to use the
words being or essence for the Greek term ousia, saying
that these two meanings are a better rendering of the term
than substance is (e.g., Bambroughs The Philosophy of
Aristotle, 33.) Mainly for convenience, I follow the traditional
translation of the term as substance, which Warrington
uses in the edition of Metaphysics that I use for this essay.
But I also think there is merit in Mary Louis Gills argument
that there is good justification for using the word
substance, namely that Aristotle himself uses the latter
word when referring to that fundamental mode of being on
whose existence the other non-substantial forms of being
depend (Aristotle on Substance, 13, n.2).
15

Mary Louis Gill makes the crucial point that whereas

Aristotles Categories gives ontological priority to the
substances over other modes of being, which means that
substances are the ultimate subjects to which other things
belong as predicates but without their being predicates of
anything else, his Metaphysics allows conceptual priority
for the primary substances. What the latter means is that
the primary substances could be understood independently
of other more basic entities (Aristotle on Substance, 3). As
John Randall states, Aristotles understanding of being
includes not only the coming into being and passing away of
various modes of existence, or becoming and change, but
also its use in discourse (Aristotle, 110). In other words, the
dependence of other forms of being on substances is both
conceptual and ontological in the sense that they cannot
actually exist, or be known, without the prior existence of
substances.

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RAMAL

While there are several senses in which a thing may

be described as primary, substance is so in every
one of them: in definition, in knowledge, and in time
(Book Z, 167). From this perspective, for a
substance to be primary it has to be involved in the
definition of everything else, therefore conceptually
primary in definition; it also has to be known as it
primarily is, namely not as a quality, quantity,
position, relation, etc., but a composite of matter and
form, which makes it primary in knowledge and
experience; and finally it has to exist apart from the
other categories of existence if it is to be known in
time (Book Z, 168). The latter means that primary
substances have to be experiential phenomena,
which is the reason they become known in the first
place.
Aristotle defines all substances, not only primary
substances, as those which are not predicated of a
subject while everything else is predicated of them
(Book , 16-18), but this suggests that prime matter,
which is the underlying substratum of all things,
including primary substances, is also a primary mode
of existence because it is not predicated of other
subjects and because everything else is predicted of
it. Aristotle says that even matter is recognized as
substance, for in all change from one opposite to
another it is matter which underlies the change
(Book H, 210). The point is that whereas primary
substances are the substrata of change in quality,
quantity, place, time, etc., primary substances
themselves are subject to change, as for example
when a certain individual substance dies, and they
also have substrata that may continue to exist, which
is prime matter. In a sense, primary substances are
themselves the forms of primary matter.16
But there is an obvious problem in calling prime
matter a substance. Aristotles interpretation of the
term substance is such that he is led to speak of
individual substances, for example This horse,
This person, etc., and also of categories or essential
natures, as for example when horses and humans are
considered in their generality.17
Individual
16

Mary Louis Gills book, Aristotle on Substance is subtitled

The Paradox of Unity because she believes that Aristotles
theory of substance contains a paradox of continuity over
time at the same time that it endorses continuity in time.
The unities she speaks of are (1) the unity of matter over
time, which is a continuity of the substratum prime matter,
and (2) the continuity of combined matter and form in
composite or primary substances at any given time. The
paradox emerges when one considers the conceptual
priority that matter has. For Aristotle, primary substances
must have conceptual priority because they are the entities
on whose existence everything else depends. Yet, if they
themselves depend on a primary matter for making
substantial changes intelligible as opposed to the nonsubstantial changes that they experience in time, namely
changes in quality, quantity, place, and time, etc. then
they are conceptually dependent on this prime matter.
17

Aristotle uses other criteria to distinguish substantial from

non-substantial existence, namely substance as cause or
originative source (Book Z, 205), and substance as subject,

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

substances are always subjects and are never

predicated of anything else, but categories such as
horses and humans are predicated of other things, as
for example when we say that Socrates is a human
being or Hercules is a horse. Yet when Aristotles
exposition of the two senses of substance is
considered, it becomes clear that prime matter
cannot be a substance in the way that primary
substances are. After all, Aristotle states that
ultimate substances are not only those which cannot
be further predicated of everything else, but also
those which are individual and separable (Book ,
18). A primary substance may be the ultimate
subject that is not made of anything else, but it is
neither separate nor a this.18 This also means that it
cannot fulfill the candidacy for being qua being.
The question, then, is whether primary substances
are reality as such for Aristotle?
Aristotle states one of his most fundamental
conclusions about the nature of reality as follows:
The ancient and everlasting question What is
being? really amounts to What is substance?,
meaning by substance here the primary substances
that cannot be further predicated of anything else
(Book , 168). He also states that since
it is characteristic of the philosopher that he is
qualified to discuss all things; and because
sameness, otherness, etc., are essential attributes of
unity qua unity and of being qua being, (and not
qua numbers, lines, or fire), it clearly belongs to one
science, i.e. philosophy, to study the essential
attributes as well as the essence of unity and being.
(Book , 118)

These two points give significant clues as to where

Aristotle finally stands on the question of being as
such. He seems to suggest, on the one hand, that
being and unity imply, or presuppose, one
another, perhaps even that they are the same. If this
is correct, then the essential unity of all beings,
substances and otherwise, has to be taken in
consideration when investigating what being as such
is. And, what this unity amounts to is the oneness of
all things, the fact that all forms of being share in
one or another kind of existence. Substances exist in
a primary way whereas accidents and activities exist
in a secondary, or a dependent, way. But all
substances, qualities, and activities exist for
Aristotle, which means that, as a general description
essence, universal, and genus (Book Z, 171). But, as Gill
and other Aristotle scholars suggest, the latter description of
substance, as well as the claim that prime matter is
substance, are mere dialectical tools for Aristotle. He offers
a variety of interpretations and proceeds by disqualifying
what he finds inapplicable to experience and logic (Gill, 1540).
18

A.E. Taylor describes prime matter, or as he puts it,

primary matter, together with God, as primordial
preconditions for the actualization of eternal forms so that
without them order could not come about (Aristotle, 59.)
This obviously suggests that the primacy of prime matter is
conceptual.

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of all existence, the unity of all forms of existence,

including the primary substances, is being as such.
On the other hand, Aristotle identifies the question of
being with the question of substance, suggesting
therefore that being is substantial. What are we to
make of this identification? Here, the distinction
between ontological and conceptual primacy has to
resurface in order to understand Aristotles being as
such more accurately. I have stated that for a
substance to be primary in Aristotles philosophy, it
has to be primary in definition, knowledge, and time.
The primacy in definition is obviously a conceptual
primacy, although, as it happens, Aristotle also
thinks that primary substances have ontological
priority, at least in the Categories. But the point I
want to make is that substances, especially primary
substances, have conceptual primacy when it comes
to the knowledge and experience of the varieties of
being, and that this is the reason Aristotle equates
knowing what being is with knowing what substance
are. Conceptual priority is a logical priority that is
given to concepts used in definitions, which means
that it can be ascribed not only to substances but also
to forms and activities. By this I mean that, for
Aristotle, all forms of being have a role in
understanding what reality as such is. They are
kinds of existence without which the idea of actual
existence, or substantial existence, would not make
sense. What has to be remembered, I believe, is that
Aristotles definition of being, and, in fact, his
overall metaphysical enterprise, is not engaged
solely in ontological descriptions but also linguistic
descriptions. As his philosophical lexicon (Book )
demonstrates, he is deeply concerned with the
variety of meanings associated with each linguistic
term because he believes that linguistic analysis, to
use a contemporary notion, is crucial for
understanding being qua being.19
Indeed, approached from a contemporary analytic
perspective, Aristotle can be seen to be saying that
the word being has a variety of uses and that these
uses get their meanings from the focal, or primary,
meaning of the term.20 In other words, there is a
19

I find it refreshing that Jonathan Barnes recognizes that

Aristotle does not deny the existence of abstract entities but
only stresses that they exist insofar as substances exist
(Metaphysics, 82). As shall be revealed in the section on
Whitehead, I make the same argument in regards to
Whiteheads view of reality as such, but I go further than
Barnes in that I do not limit the existence of abstract entities,
the eternal objects, to concrete substances.
Barnes
argument in regards to Aristotles view on the abstract
entities is similar to Charles Hartshornes argument in
regards to Whiteheads view on the eternal objects. I find
both arguments to fall short from taking seriously the
metaphysical equality of all forms of being.
20

This is precisely how Jonathan Barnes and John Randall

understand Aristotle and I find Barnes exposition of
Aristotles theory of the use of being to be very convincing.
What this exposition shows is that the primary use of the
words to be are most applicable in the case of substantial
existence, and that secondary, or derivative uses, are
applicable in the case of accidents (Metaphysics, 72-77).

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

15

primary use for the words to be that matches up to

the way in which he takes substances to exist. This
is mostly tangible existence, as for example in the
case of individual or composite substances such as
Plato and Aristotle, but the primary use applies to
the individual substance God because Gods
existence, in the actual rather than conceptual sense
of existence, does not depend on anything else that
exists.
The implication of the above analysis for the
question of the nature of first philosophy, and which
makes Aristotle relevant to a discussion of
Whiteheads metaphysics, is that it shows how he
does not think of first philosophy as a more general
science than the other sciences. Whereas the kind of
first philosophy that the Presocratics practiced is an
investigation of the general nature of all things, the
latter understood as the sum of all that exists, and,
therefore, is similar in nature to the physical
sciences, the first philosophy practiced by Aristotle
seems to be an investigation of the nature of all
things in the sense of the essential, and conceptual,
nature in which they exist. First philosophy studies
the generality of the notion of being itself, as well as
the ultimate causes of all aspects of being, but it is
not general in the way that physics, for example, is
more general than astrophysics and quantum physics,
or in the way that mathematics is more general than
arithmetic.
The general principles of first
philosophy are ultimate in the sense that they apply
universally to all situations and cannot be subject to
refutation or revision.
Ultimately, Aristotle differentiates the first
philosophers method of investigation from that of
the scientist and other philosophers in that whereas
all of the latter approach reality with the
understanding that it is something measurable, a sum
of all things that could be observed and analyzed
by either inductive or deductive ways of
investigation, the first philosopher looks for the first
principles that render reality intelligible by means of
descriptive generalizations.
This method of
descriptive generalization entails acknowledging the
variety of kinds of existence, relying on conceptual
analysis among other things, but it also presupposes
that the description should be unbiased when
considering the principles that ultimately explain
reality as such. As Whitehead testifies, Aristotle
followed his metaphysical train of thought
whithersoever it led him (SMW 173), unbiased by
anticipated results. Whitehead contrasts him with
medieval and modern thinkers who were anxious to
establish the religious significance of God and,
therefore, who paid God metaphysical compliments
by grounding the metaphysical principles of
causality in Gods nature (SMW 179). Aristotle
differs from these medieval and modern thinkers in
that his philosophy attempts to be dispassionate and
unbiased by ethical and religious interests.
Whitehead goes as far as calling him the last
European metaphysician of first rate importance for

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RAMAL

whom the claim that he was entirely dispassionate

can be made (SMW 173).
Whitehead also describes Aristotles general
metaphysical system as a majestic, coordinated
scheme, lucid to the understanding and based upon
the obvious, persistent facts of our experience, one
that replaces the uninterpreted swamp, pestilential
with mystery and magic that preceded his method
of classification (AI 142). This admiration for
Aristotles general metaphysics, and for its
disinterested nature, beckons the question as to how
Whitehead himself sees the philosophical
investigation of reality. If his investigation of the
nature of reality is descriptive and dispassionate, in
what sense is that so? The following section is an
exploration of these questions.
III. WHITEHEAD AS FIRST PHILOSOPHER
What can be gathered from the previous section
about Aristotles first philosophy is the following.
First, as a philosophical investigation of being qua
being it is a search for first principles that differ in
kind from the secondary or contingent causes sought
by the Presocratics. First philosophy asks, What is
the nature of all things? and the first principles it
seeks are meant to explain the general nature of
reality and the different kinds of existence that
partake of that reality, whether physical,
mathematical, emotional, or otherwise. It differs
from the other sciences in that it is not limited to
studying one kind of existence over another.
Second, first philosophy is essentially descriptive,
not a deductive science that generates ultimate
principles in an a priori manner, and its descriptions
are meant to be disinterested in the sense that they
are not infused with religious and ethical biases.
Third, while its descriptive generalizations transcend
the limitations of scientific inquiry, first philosophy
allows logical space for a metaphysical God.
What needs to be seen now is how Whitehead is
himself in quest of a first philosophy similar to that
of Aristotle, and in what sense he acknowledges
intelligibility to the notion of reality or being as
such.
I think it is fair to say that the Greek influence on
Whitehead comes mainly from Plato and Aristotle.
Although at times he shows concern for the sense in
which the Greeks asked about the logical conditions
for the possibility of certain phenomena, for example
the possibility of beauty (AI 148), and therefore
seems to go along with some Presocratic modes of
thinking, Whiteheads writings show stronger
interest in the cosmology of Plato and the
metaphysics of Aristotle. For example, he states that
the question about the nature of all things is
philosophical, not scientific, and that the Presocratics
were wrong to answer it with scientific or contingent
answers such as fire, earth, water, or some
combination of these elements (SMW 7). This is
precisely Aristotles view, as is evident from the
previous section. Still, when it comes to the question

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

about the nature of reality, Whitehead endorses a

Platonic-Aristotelian line of thinking as opposed to a
Presocratic one, and not an entirely Aristotelian
line.21
Whitehead follows Aristotles steps in defining
philosophy as a dispassionate consideration of the
nature of things, antecedently to any special
investigation into their details (SMW 157). His
admiration for the kind of dispassionate inquiry with
which Aristotle was engaged, in the sense of being
unbiased by religious considerations, is probably the
reason he sees the philosophical investigation of
reality to be antecedent to any special investigation
into its details, although he ultimately seeks to
substantiate his metaphysics in experience. It is also
possible that Whitehead sees the philosophical
investigation to be logically prior to any other
investigations. Still, it is clear that, for Whitehead,
philosophy should not be biased by particular
religious and ethical considerations, themselves
special investigations into the details of reality.
For example, Whitehead declares that dispassionate
criticism of religious belief is beyond all things
necessary because religion generates emotions and
vivid experiences that are a very poor guarantee for
its correct interpretation (RM 83).22
His
philosophical stance on the dispassionate nature of
philosophy is also reflected in his compliments to
John Locke for giving the most dispassionate
descriptions of those various elements in experience
which common sense never lets slip (PR 51),
comparing him to Plato in personal endowments, in
width of experience, and in dispassionate statement
of conflicting intuitions (PR 61).
Generally speaking, Whitehead is fond of
philosophers who display dispassionate tendencies in
their thinking and, as shall be seen in what follows,
he maintains that a dispassionate consideration of the
nature of all things allows intelligibility to the notion
of being. Whitehead draws on the Aristotelian
21

Jonathan Barnes suggests that we should modify

Whiteheads remark about all of Western philosophy being a
series of footnotes to Plato by substituting Aristotle for Plato.
In his view, when Platos philosophical views are compared
to Aristotles, it becomes evident that Platos philosophical
views are mostly false, and for the most part they are
evidently false; his arguments are mostly bad, and for the
most part they are evidently bad (Introduction to The
Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, xv-xvi). Although I
believe that Aristotle is a very creative philosopher, I
certainly do not agree with Barnes diagnosis and I find in
Platos reflections on language a depth not comparable in
any ancient or contemporary philosophy. A serious reading
of Rush Rhees book, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of
Discourse, should certainly prove Barnes wrong.

22

Whitehead does not mean to exclude valuative

considerations in every sense, since, in his later writings, he
insists that philosophy must combine religious, ethical, and
aesthetic intuitions, along with scientific ones, in order to
develop a metaphysical cosmology. He only wants to
exclude those valuations that attribute incoherent
metaphysical compliments to ultimate realities.

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notions of being and primary substance, as well

as the Platonic notions of being and not-being, in
order to shed light on his own metaphysical notion of
being. His notion of being is more complex than
the same notions in Aristotle and Plato, and he does
not subscribe to everything that they say about
being, but he borrows from both of them to
elucidate the points he wants to make. For example,
he sides with Aristotle against the Platonic idea that
the eternal forms are independent beings with their
own causal efficacy in the temporal world (PR 209),
and he rejects the ultimacy that Aristotle grants to
the notion of primary substance because, in his
view, the latter notion leads to a form of substancequality metaphysics (PR 137), the view that the
ultimate units of existence are static substrata that
remain the same amidst changes of accidental
relations and of accidental qualities (PR 79).23 For
Whitehead, the ultimate units of actual existence are
not static but, as we shall see, active. On the other
hand, Whitehead accepts Platos definition of
existence, or of being, as power, namely the
power to affect others, to be a potential for, or a
factor in, the existence of others, while also reacting
to their potentialities (AI 120). He writes:
The actualities of the Universe are processes of experience, each process an individual fact. The whole
Universe is the advancing assemblage of these
processes. The Aristotelian doctrine, that all agency
is confined to actuality, is accepted. So also is the
Platonic dictum that the very meaning of existence is
to be a factor in agency, or in other words to make
a difference. Thus, to be something is to be
discoverable as a factor in the analysis of some
actuality. (AI 197)
In this paragraph, Whitehead seems to give actual
existence more value than potential existence, and
this is true as long as it is recognized that this value
is not metaphysical but practical. As the last
sentence of the above statement indicates, Whitehead
speaks of the discovery of existence (to be
something) in the analysis of actualities, which is a
conceptual, or a hermeneutical discovery.
In
particular, Whitehead believes that potential
existence has to be realized before it can be
discovered. He states that in one sense everything
is real, according to its own category of being (AI
197), so that even to speak of not-being is to speak
of something, of a component in experience, or of
an existent thing (AI 223). And, yet, he also states
that although everything is real, it is not necessarily
realized in some particular set of actual occasions,
so that it is necessary that it be discoverable
somewhere, realized in some actual entity (AI 197).
In other words, all things, actual and potential, are
real and, therefore, of equal metaphysical value, but
23

Whitehead may have believed that the Greek language is

partly to blame for encouraging the substance-quality
metaphysics in which Aristotle was engaged, but this does
not cancel out his criticisms of the ultimacy of primary
substances.

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

17

only realized things give access to being. In

Process and Reality, Whitehead calls this feature of
realized existence the principle of process, and he
defines it as follows: how an actual entity becomes
constitutes what that actual entity is; so that the two
descriptions of an actual entity are not independent.
Its being is constituted by its becoming (PR 23).
The idea that being should be defined in terms of
becoming is not Aristotelian but it indicates certain
closeness between Whitehead and Aristotle in that
both take the reality of change seriously. For
example, both reject the independence that Plato
assigns to the eternal forms and give the actual world
more conceptual ultimacy because, in their
investigation of the nature of reality, both start with
the world that surrounds them, namely the world of
becoming. I have already characterized Aristotles
first philosophy as a form of descriptive
metaphysics, and Whitehead describes his
metaphysical project in similar terms: Metaphysics
is nothing but the description of the generalities
which apply to all the details of practice (PR 13), he
writes; or, when he speak more directly of his
method of investigation:
Thus the first requisite is to proceed by the method
of generalization so that certainly there is some
application; and the test of some success is
application beyond the immediate origin. In other
words, some synoptic vision has been gained. In
this description of philosophic method, the term
philosophic generalization has meant the
utilization of specific notions, applying to a
restricted group of facts, for the divination of the
generic notions which apply to all facts. (PR 6)

There are many more statements by Whitehead that

reveal his understanding of metaphysics as a
descriptive science, and it is this method of
investigation that shows the strong philosophical
similarity between him and Aristotle. Yet, it has to
be stated that Whitehead uses the term becoming
somewhat differently from Aristotle because he
employs it to refer to the internal process through
which the ultimate building blocks of reality, the
actual entities, form, whereas Aristotle uses it to
mean any type of change. For Whitehead, when a
leaf turns from green to red, the observable change is
the result of a process of transition from one state of
being to another between the actual entities that
constitute the leaf. Whereas the unobservable
becoming describes the internal experiential
process that an actual entity undergoes, and whereby
the influence it receives from the world is processed
and accommodated in accordance with its own
nature, change describes the external relations
between actual entities. Aristotle refers mainly to
external relations, not internal becoming, and, for
him, becoming is a process that can be witnessed.
For Whitehead, on the other hand, we cannot
encounter the final units of being in our threedimensional space for the obvious reason that,
individually, they are not objects of sense perception.
For this reason, we do not witness how an actual

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entity becomes. Still, Whitehead maintains that

we are able to witness the being of an actual entity
if and when it is present in objects that are subject to
sense perception; that is, we can witness
multiplicities of actual entities when they come
together in perceivable structures. For example, we
see around us stones, chairs, and trees, and these are
societies of actual entities that take concrete forms
subject to sense perception and scientific
measurements. An electron in a specific region of a
chair, for instance, is something that we can detect
by scientific measurements, though not by the
senses, and, as such, it is a manifestation of the
actual entities that come together to form it.
And, yet, Whiteheads account of the notion of
being may give the impression that he does not
take it to be metaphysical since he uses it mostly to
refer to individual beings or determinate entities.
For example, in his definition of the category of the
ultimate, which includes the three notions
creativity, one, and many, he writes:
Creativity, many, one are the ultimate notions
involved in the meaning of the synonymous terms
thing, being, entity (PR 21). Here, being is
an entity or an individual thing, and the term one
stands for its singularity. The term many describes
the disjunctive diversity of all the singular entities
and it presupposes the term one in the same way
that the term one presupposes many (PR 21). But
it should not be concluded from this that
Whiteheads main use of the term being is nonmetaphysical. After all, what he accepts from Plato
in regards to the notion of being, which for Plato is
another term for existence, is that the very
meaning of existence is to be a factor in agency.
Thus, to be is to be a factor in the being, or
existence, of other actual beings, and this is a
metaphysical description of what being is.
Furthermore, when Whiteheads own use of the
terms existence, being, and reality is
investigated, it becomes clear that they are
interchangeable terms for him. What he calls
categories of existence in Process and Reality,
which are metaphysical categories, are termed
categories of being in Adventures of Ideas, or at
least two of these categories, the propositions and
the actual entities, are explicitly termed as such (AI
245). In Modes of Thought he refers to these
categories as modes of reality, saying that his main
interest lies in showing how they require, and relate
to, each other (MT 69). Existence, being, and
reality are exchangeable terms in Whitehead, and
they enjoy equal metaphysical status in addition to
any particular meaning they may have. What needs
to be asked of Whitehead is how his notion of
being, when taken to mean reality or existence,
leads to the notion of being as such or reality as
such?
An analysis of Whiteheads category of the
ultimate shows that it includes not only creativity,
the specific category descriptive of the causal
activity of the actual entities, but also the one and
Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

many. An actual entity is said to be one when

the internal process of its becoming is complete, and
yet it is also many because during the process of
becoming it is subject to influences from many
entities external to it. The one stands for the
singularity of an entity, but that is not the only
function it has. It also characterizes the unity of
reality as a whole. It is true that, for Whitehead,
each actual entity is a unification of its universe, as is
clear, for example, from his description of
creativity: Creativity is . . . that ultimate
principle by which the many, which are the universe
disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which
is the universe conjunctively (PR 21). This fact is
also clear from the following statement: It lies in
the nature of things that the many enter into complex
unity, the latter equated by him to the one actual
occasion, or the universe conjunctively (PR 21).
But I think an argument could be made that when
Whitehead speaks of the complex unity of the
universe, he also speaks of the unity of the universe
as a whole, not only the unification of the universe in
each becoming actual entity. This unity has to do
with the immanence of God in the world and with
the fact that, for Whitehead, God is a metaphysical
entity.
In Adventures of Ideas, for example, Whitehead
discusses the general doctrine of immanence, the
view, namely, that all actual entities are mutually
immanent in one another, past causes in present
effects and present causes in future effects (AI 15763). Any set of actual entities are united by the
mutual immanence of occasions, each in the other
(AI 197), he writes, and when they are united with
some kind of order, personal or non-personal, they
form groups or societies that share a solidarity of
some sort. Whitehead calls any personal solidarity,
such as the solidarity constituting the human soul, a
special strand of unity within the general unity of
nature (AI 187). This general unity is a solidarity
of process and it constitutes what he calls the essence
of the universe (AI 274), a single unitary
experience (AM 130) that takes part in the
constitution of all the other individual experiences.
Now, from what Whitehead says about God in
Process and Reality, it is obvious that the single
unitary experience he speaks of is a divine
experience. For instance, he equates the doctrine of
immanence with the specifically metaphysical
principle of relativity, the idea that all actual entities
are mutually related due to a divine connection; or,
as he also puts it, the solidarity of process dictated by
the principle of relativity is the result of one
metaphysically
non-derivative
actuality,
the
primordial superject which is God (PR 32).
God for Whitehead is the aboriginal instantiation of
creativity and apart from which there would be no
other instantiations of creativity. In his words, God
is a creature of creativity (PR 31), its aboriginal
instance (PR 225), an ultimate actuality that relates
to all other actualities and makes their existence
possible. It is true that the temporal actual entities

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presuppose the eternal objects, and vice versa, and

both types of reality presuppose God and creativity
(PR 225), so that every actual entity is an
instantiation of creativity and, therefore, all are
metaphysically ultimate. But God is a unique actual
entity for Whitehead in that God is said to partake in
the formation of all other actualities. From this
perspective, God is the chief exemplification of the
category of the ultimate, an ultimate creature of
creativity, a one actual entity that unifies the
many entities into a single unitary, and universal,
experience.
As in Aristotle, this also means that God is not being
itself or reality as such. God is a being who partakes
of reality by being a factor, perhaps the most
important factor, in the constitution of other beings
and of the divine being itself. God affects the world
and is affected by it, but in affecting the world God
is armed with an eternal vision that permeates every
becoming occasion of experience. What, then, is
Whiteheads notion of reality or being as such?
Charles Hartshorne believes that becoming or
experience as such is reality itself since, from his
perspective, Whitehead endorses the idea that all the
actual entities of the world are experiential entities
that are in constant becoming.24 That is, becoming
characterizes all actual entities whatsoever and is an
inclusive category that renders being an abstraction
from it. From this perspective, the one and many
are ultimate in the sense that both partake of the
process of becoming, and Whiteheads notion of
creativity fulfils the role of ultimate reality
because it characterizes ultimate matters of fact, both
in terms of their own becoming and in terms of their
transition from one state of being to another. John
B. Cobb, Jr. seems to agree with Hartshorne when, in
drawing attention to Whiteheads distinction
between God and being-itself, he uses the language
of reality and actuality to say that whereas
creativity is the ultimate reality, corresponding to
what Aristotle and Tillich mean by being-itself, God
is the ultimate actuality.25 Both are realities of some
sort, but whereas God is an active agent that makes
the unity of actuality possible, creativity is activity
itself, not an agent.
From this perspective, all real entities, actual and
potential, take part in the creative process that
describes what reality as such is. The eternal objects
are not creative and do not embody creativity in
themselves, but, like the actual entities, they partake
of the creative process whereby the many actual
entities become a novel one entity that increases
the many on a continual, creative process. In other
24

Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, 15. See also

his Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, 143. For
Hartshorne, as for Whitehead, human experience is a
restrictive form of being, and is not experience as such.
Both claim that there are fuller forms of reality, such as the
supreme reality God, who is a supreme mind or supreme
experience, and lesser forms of reality, such as humans.
25

See Being Itself and the Existence of God, 19.

Concrescence 2003 Vol.4 pp.9-21

19

words, since the creative process involves all real

entities, or indeed should involve all real entities, it
is the best candidate for the metaphysical notion of
reality as such.
But it seems to me that in order to see the true
relevance of the eternal objects to the notion of
reality as such, their reality has to be taken more
seriously. After all, Whitehead ascribes a special
category of existence to the eternal objects, speaking
of this realm of potentialities and possibilities that
could be actualized as real. True, these realities do
not become because they are not actual, and if they
are realized it is due to the fact that an actual agent
mediates their realization.
But they are real
nonetheless, and adopting Hartshornes view,
namely that the eternal objects are real only insofar
as they are embodied in actual entities, does not give
full justice to their metaphysical status.
I am suggesting that if Whitehead is understood to
have limited the reality of abstract or potential
entities to their manifestations in the concrete,
namely only when they are realized, or only in the
sense that the actual includes the potential, then the
kind of reality he gives to the potentialities is merely
verbal. The potentialities should not be considered
real only because they are actualized in a concrete
world; they should be considered real because they
are a kind of reality, a category of existence that
makes them different in kind from the actual entities.
Since Whitehead grants the eternal objects this
status, reality as such should not be equated,
therefore, with creativity but with something else.
Otherwise, we would have to speak of an inclusive
and a less inclusive reality, or, as in Plato, of things
that are more real than others, and that kind of
language does not shed light on the meaning of
reality as such.
I think that the true meaning of reality as such in
Whiteheads metaphysics is precisely the Platonic
notion of power, combined with a dose of
Aristotles distinction between potency and actuality,
a distinction that is required by his theory of
causality.26 If the very meaning of existence for
Whitehead, as it is for Plato, is to make a difference
26

Although I have not made any specific reference to

Aristotles distinction between potency and actuality in this
paper, my discussion of his four causes leads naturally to
this distinction. For example, an egg has the potential for
becoming a certain kind of bird, or a certain kind of snake,
for Aristotle, depending on the causes that were involved in
its own formation. Similarly, an acorn has a potential of
becoming an oak tree because in itself it is the product of
another oak tree that brought it about through efficient
causation. The oak tree that functioned as an efficient
cause is also the formal cause of the acorn, and the latter
becomes another oak tree, which is its final cause. These
two examples show that any existing being, substantial or
otherwise, has a potential for becoming something else
according to laws provided by other forms of existence.
Whitehead speaks of another kind of potentiality, which is
the potentiality of the eternal forms to ingress in actual
entities and contribute to their becoming complete actual
entities.

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20

RAMAL

by being a factor in the constitution of other actual

entities, then, for him, to be something is to exist, or
simply to be. And if, as Whitehead says, the terms
existence, being, and reality are synonymous,
then to be is to be real for him, which includes
the reality of both actualities and potentialities, as
well as other kinds of reality that depend on their
existence.27 Reality as such is the potential of all
entities whatsoever to be a factor in the constitution,
or creation, of other entities. And as Hartshorne
states, this is the true subject matter of
metaphysics.28
Interestingly, when Hartshorne
speaks of the need for a general idea of reality
which applies to individuals, as well as to events and
abstract qualities, he also states that Whiteheads
to be is to be a potential for becoming applies to
any reality whatever. 29 In other words, Hartshorne
admits that Whiteheads notion of being, when
understood metaphysically, could be predicated of
both actual entities and eternal objects, and that such
notion describes what is real.

IV. THE KIND OF FIRST PHILOSOPHER WHITEHEAD IS

When Whitehead refers to the metaphysical problem
that he shares with Aristotle, namely the problem of
determining the nature of that which fully exists, or
that which exists as an actuality, he states that such a
problem can be solved only in an analogous
fashion to the way Aristotle solved it (SMW 174).
Aristotle solves the problem by introducing the
notion of the prime mover, an uncaused cause that
explains the general cosmic motions behind the
motions of material objects. His causal description
of the properties of natural objects and events, such
as the property of movement, leads him to ask about
the ultimate causes of these properties. As already
mentioned, he comes to the idea of a first mover by
rejecting the intelligibility of the possibility of an
infinite series of secondary sources of movement, or,
as he puts it, a series of perishable substances, so
that, from his perspective, there had to be at least one
motionless substance, unchangeable and selfexistent, which is the first mover.

Before turning to the last section of the paper, I

should mention that the exposition I offered in
regards to the metaphysical status of the eternal
objects should not be understood as a threat to the
role of God in making them relevant to the world of
actuality. The kind of existence that the eternal
objects possess is not actual and their potentiality for
the constitution or becoming of emerging actual
entities would still be mediated by God and other
actual entities. The point about emphasizing their
metaphysical status as a category of existence is to
shed light on the meaning of the notion of reality as
such, which is not spelled out in any clear way by
Whitehead.
The question that remains to be
discussed, albeit it briefly, is the kind of first
philosopher Whitehead is, something that requires a
brief revisitation of his notion of God.

Whitehead objects to Aristotles identification of

God with the unmoved mover. Although he believes
that any philosophical understanding of the nature of
reality, including his own, has to face the same
metaphysical problem that Aristotle faced in
accounting for the particular facts of existence and of
how anything exists, he devises his own solution to
the problem. Whitehead believes that Aristotles
identification of God with the prime mover is based
on mistaken physical theories and, therefore, on a
wrong cosmology. As he puts it, The phrase, Prime
Mover, warns us that Aristotles thought was
enmeshed in the details of an erroneous physics and
an erroneous cosmology (SMW 174).
From
Whiteheads vantage viewpoint, Aristotle had the
wrong scientific understanding of the laws of nature
and, therefore, he was wrong about the laws
governing the motions of the stars and other
heavenly bodies.
When Aristotle employs a
teleological law of gravitation to account for the
movement of natural elements toward their natural
resting places, for example, he states that fire and air
gravitate upwards, towards the heavens, because of a
gravitational force up there rather than in the earth
where water remains.
But nowadays science
explains these movements on better grounds
namely, on the basis of efficient rather than
teleological causes30 and for Whitehead this shows

27

For example, Whitehead understands the propositions as

a kind of existence that is described through (1) logical
subjects, themselves representing or relating to actual
entities in the real world, and (2) predicates that represent
eternal possibilities. The grass is green, for example, is a
proposition that contains (1) the logical subject grass, itself
describing the actual entities that come to form a certain
patch of grass in the real world, and (2) the predicate
green, which, when the proposition is true, describes the
actuality of the grass in its embodiment of the eternal object
greenness.
28

In Metaphysical Statements as Non-Restrictive and

Existential, for example, Hartshorne explicitly states that
Metaphysics, in an old phrase, explores being qua being,
or reality qua reality, meaning by this, the strictly universal
features of existential possibility, those which cannot be
unexemplified (p.37).
In Whiteheads Metaphysics, he
writes: successful or true metaphysics expresses no
illusion but a necessary or a priori truth, not in particular
about the world, but about reality as such, about any and
all possibilities or conceivabilities for worlds or thinkable
states of affairs (pp.63-64).
29

30

Here it should be mentioned that the scientific notion of

efficient causality that we encounter not only in science but
also in contemporary philosophical discussions of that
notion is something that is absent in Aristotles first
philosophy. Aristotle understands efficient causality as the
reason or reasons for somethings existence, not the
mechanical causes that brought it about. Thus, the efficient
cause of a bronze statue, as already mentioned, is the
sculptor that created it, who is the reason it exists in the first
place, not some other mechanical explanation or
explanations.

Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, 140.

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WHAT SENSE IS WHITEHEADS SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY A FIRST PHILOSOPHY?

that Aristotles metaphysics, which is his reasoning

about the ultimate causes governing the motion of
the physical world, is enmeshed in confusion.
Negatively, the reason he objects to identifying God
with the unmoved mover is not because such
identification is unintelligible but only because
Aristotles god is not an ultimate cause.
But Whitehead does not object to Aristotles logical
endorsement of a metaphysical space for God. As
has been shown, he, too, allows such space for God
in his metaphysics, and this shows the strong
similarity among their conceptions of philosophy.
Of course, as mentioned earlier, one of the reasons
that Whitehead admires Aristotle is that the latter is
unbiased by religious and ethical claims when he
follows his metaphysical train of thought. But this
admiration for a dispassionate consideration of the
nature of things does not mean that philosophy
should not allow logical space for God. What makes
such philosophy a first philosophy, in addition to its
dispassionate search for first principles, is that it
reaches its disinterested conclusions about God and
being as such descriptively.
In other words,
Whiteheads agreement with Aristotle that the
analysis of reality has to be based on a description of
experience, and that it has to come within the context
of a general scheme that is not biased by ethical and
religious interests, shows that he concurs on the
features that characterize a disinterested first
philosophy. What Whitehead and Aristotle differ on
in this context, and this is what makes Whitehead a
different kind of first philosopher, not an Aristotelian
philosopher, is that they see the natures of God and
being as such differently.
Whereas Aristotle
conceives of God to be fully responsible for the
creativity of the world and for instantiating being as
such, Whitehead introduces the notion of creativity
to say that all actual entities, not only God, are
creative, and that being as such is the potentiality of
all entities, actual and potential, to be a factor in the
constitution of other actualities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the anonymous reader for
making valuable comments on an earlier version of
this paper.
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