Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

Daniel A. Dombrowski is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of twenty-two books and over a hundred and ninety articles in scholarly journals in philosophy, theology, classics, and literature. Among his books are Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). He is the Editor of the journal Process Studies and is Past-President of the Metaphysical Society of America.

The contemporary movement that traces its origins to Whitehead and Hartshorne is at a critical juncture. Some would align process thought with anti-liberal political philosophies that are starkly at odds with the basic commitments expressed by Whitehead and Hartshorne themselves. Dombrowski is a leading process thinker whose resistance against this anti-liberal shift should give pause to those who have abandoned liberalism in this ominous time of testing, in which pluralistic democracy is being challenged around the globe.

• Introduction1. Reflective Equilibrium as a Process2. Political Liberalism and Process Thought3. Gamwell on ‘The Comprehensive Question’: A Rawlsian Critique4: Religion, Solitude-in-Solidarity, and the Bloodlands5. Heidegger, Political Philosophy, and Disequilibrium6. Organic Marxism and Process Liberalism7. From Nonhuman Animals to the EnvironmentBibliography