Alfred North Whitehead Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Donald W. Sherburne

Critical Essay by Donald W. Sherburne

SOURCE: “Some Reflections on Sartre's Nothingness and Whitehead's Perishing,” in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, September, 1994, pp. 3-17.

In the following essay, Sherburne discusses Whitehead's notions of metaphysical perishing and relatedness as they compare with Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of “nothingness.”

Three philosophers do justice to man as a part of nature: Aristotle, Hegel, and Whitehead.

Paul Weiss

Paul Weiss's observation points directly and succinctly to the very heart of the metaphysical enterprise as I understand it, which is to develop categories that do justice to the rich, multifarious structures and experiences that constitute human nature but which are so articulated that the human nature so described is clearly embedded in, and is a part of, the wider nature that constitutes the subject matter of the physical sciences. Looking back at a few of the giants in the philosophical tradition, there are some, like Hobbes and Democritus,...
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