The Ecological Dimension of A.N. Whitehead’s Process Philosophy

Abstract

The article interprets Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy and its con­ceptual connections with the field of ecological discussions in the second half of the 20th century. Upon familiarizing ourselves with contemporary ecological concepts, we discover both explicit and hidden presence of Whitehead’s ideas within them. His way of thinking regularly influences ecological approaches in various areas of culture. A question to research arises: to what extent does the composition of process philosophy, the apparatus of its reflexivity and its metaphysical pathos correspond to the ecological trajectory of its interpretation? In answering this question, a reconstruction of process philosophy is carried out with regard to its ecological dimension. It is concluded that the processual form of thinking is internally consistent and deeply connected with the foundations of the ecological worldview, its language and life perception. It is shown that such concordance and even kinship between the stances of process philosophy and the participants of eclectic ecological discourse is due both to the direct in­fluence of Whitehead’s ideas on the researched area (Cobb, Griffin, Barbour, etc.) and to the indirect, mediated influence on the landscape of ideas and at­titudes of the ecological consciousness of Western man of the 20th century. Key characteristics of Whitehead’s processual form thinking include criticism of the modern type of rationality, process-organismic categorical apparatus, on­tology of relations, focus on the problem of self-organization and interaction of the organism with its environment, romanticization of nature, and the aesthetic value of the surroundings. These statements of process philosophy, in varying proportions and with expected shifts, variations, and accents, are the source – significant but sometimes anonymous – of the ecological consciousness that emerged in the situation of the 1960s.