School of thought
Process Philosophy
Intellectual current
Classification
- Period
- c. 1889 CE onward
- Regions
- europe
- Domains
- Metaphysics , Philosophy of Nature
Overview
Process Philosophy is a diverse current united by treating processes, events, or becoming as metaphysically basic rather than reducing them to changes in static substances. Bergson's late nineteenth-century account of duration preceded Whitehead's system of actual occasions; Whitehead and Hartshorne later developed different systematic forms of process metaphysics.
Key ideas
- Process Over Substance: The basic units of reality are not enduring things but momentary events (actual occasions) that arise, experience, and perish — reality is a process of becoming, not a collection of beings.
- Prehension: Each actual occasion 'prehends' (grasps, incorporates) previous occasions, creating continuity. Experience is not limited to humans — it extends to the most basic events in nature.
- Creative Advance: The universe is fundamentally creative — each moment brings genuine novelty. Process philosophy rejects determinism and embraces the real openness of the future.
Key figures
Alfred North Whitehead · Charles Hartshorne · Henri Bergson (precursor)
Positions held
Influenced by
- Bergsonian Intuitionism
- German Idealism
Drew on Hegel's dialectical conception of becoming for a metaphysics in which reality is fundamentally process rather than static substance.
- Platonism
- Pragmatism
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Process Philosophy
- Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889)
- Process and Reality — Alfred North Whitehead
- Creative Evolution — Henri Bergson