Personhood Amidst Process

Abstract

Both process philosophy and key forms of philosophical personalism aim to harmonize the flux of reality, especially of organisms, with cosmic values and human meaningfulness. This is because both must face our mortality. This paper makes four suggestions for considering further the connection between these two approaches. First, that process philosophy can supply for personalism a thoroughly reasoned ground for nonreducible complexity. Second, that process thought borrows from personhood its model for cosmic creativity. Third, that both approaches share strong notions of the interdependence of all parts of a relational universe. And fourth, that they differ in respect of moral philosophy: process philosophy having virtually none, whereas personalism centers it and the obligation to act publicly and privately for justice. Finally, both lines of thougt have fraught and unresolved opinions on panpsychism; and yet panpsychism is not only a destination of both but also bears on moral matters. Throughout, the role of memory and history as constituting the real functioning of things, particular of personal moral lives, is emphasized, as both arose from the revolution in philosophy of time at the turn of the twentieth century.