Charles Hartshorne - Böcker

First published in 1973, Born to Sing is a monumental undertaking, one of the most comprehensive, totally entertaining studies of bird vocalizations ever available. It offers a global survey of modes of singing, encompassing more than 5,000 species of singing birds, with special analyses of nearly 200 species with highly developed songs. For the professional ornithologist, informed birdwatchers, biologists, psychologists, philosophers, and musicologists with a strong interest in nature.

Charles Hartshorne has set himself the task of formulating the idea of deity "to preserve perhaps even increase, its religious value, while yet avoiding the contradictions which seem inseparable from the idea of customarily defined." This is a brilliant attempt to redefine problems that have long challenged the Western world in its search for understanding both God and man. “The compact, closely reasoned book employs a skill in logic reminiscent of scholasticism at its best to refute traditional notions, scholastic and otherwise, of divine absoluteness, and to expound a conception of God which is both free of contradiction and religiously adequate. The position taken is described by Professor Hartshorne as surrelativism, or panentheism, and these terms indicate the two major emphases of the volume….He who follows its precise logic with the alertness it demands will have a clarifying and enriching experience.”—S. Paul Schiling, Journal of Bible and Religion“In what respects is God absolute and in what respects relative? Or is it meaningless to say that he is both? In a rigorously analytical study Professor Hartshorne explains why he thinks both statements are necessary….One comes from this book with new confidence in the ability of philosophy to attack religious problems and, through careful analysis, to reveal what as alone conceivable must be true.”—J.S. Bixler, Review of Religion“Hartshorne’s work is a major achievement in religious thought because it strives to clear away errors that have been insuperable obstacles to religious search.”—Henry N. Wieman, The Philosophical Review“This book is not merely theoretical, as might be supposed; it has its practical application to the larger social issues of our time, including the problem of democracy.”—Jay William Hudson, Christian Register

Charles Sanders Peirce has been characterized as the greatest American philosophic genius. He is the creator of pragmatism and one of the founders of modern logic. James, Royce, Schroder, and Dewey have acknowledged their great indebtedness to him. A laboratory scientist, he made notable contributions to geodesy, astronomy, psychology, induction, probability, and scientific method. He introduced into modern philosophy the doctrine of scholastic realism, developed the concepts of chance, continuity, and objective law, and showed the philosophical significance of the theory of signs and mathematical logic. The present series is the first published edition of his systematic works.

This volume contains the published contributions of one of the founders of modern logic and America’s greatest logical genius. It is not only of historical but of contemporary interest because of its many acute discussions of fundamental logical problems. To assist the general reader, the editors have prefixed to the text a selected list of important topics and have provided many footnotes and an exhaustive index.The present, the longest volume of the series of Peirce’s Collected Papers, reveals most clearly his stature as a logician and a student of the foundations of mathematics. It includes not only some striking anticipations of recent work in logic and the foundations of mathematics but also a number of vital contributions to these subjects as now understood. In addition there is an entirely original treatment of logical diagrams which makes possible a detailed analysis of the process of reasoning and provides the link between modern logic and Peirce’s conception of pragmatism. It is the most advanced and important of the volumes on exact logic.

With the present volume, the presentation of Peirce’s philosophical thought reaches its metaphysical culmination. It embodies the effort of the founder of Pragmatism to develop a metaphysics which will conform to the canons of scientific method, and at the same time provide for real novelty, objective universal laws of nature, cosmical and biological evolution, feeling, and mind. To his previously published papers on chance, continuity, God, and other metaphysical themes, the editors have added a considerable number of unpublished manuscripts which clarify and develop the implications of Peirce’s fundamental world-view. The volume contains those speculative views of Peirce which so deeply influenced his contemporaries, including his discussions of tychism and synechism and of the religious aspects of metaphysics.

In this book Charles Hartshorne continues his contribution to the field with autobiographical reflections, showing the causal conditions which made his career possible. "There is some advantage in associating philosophical beliefs with specific life situations. The reader will find suggestions for a philosophy of life and of religion. The religion is not the orthodox Protestant Christianity which I grew up in, although it is closely related, but also includes Judaism, Buddhism, and some forms of Hinduism. It will in some ways be found close to the beliefs of C.S. Peirce and also those of A.N. Whitehead. Of the persons, famous or not famous, that I have known, I recall many things that seem worth making available to others, sometimes witty remarks, expressions of outstanding goodness, remarkable wisdom, or ludicrous foolishness. In such ways the book is a celebration of life in its variety, depths, and heights." - Charles Hartshorne

Charles Hartshorne is arguably the most important living metaphysician and one of the most eminent figures of American philosophy in the twentieth century. He is internationally known for his contributions to the philosophy of creativity and for his distinctive brand of process philosophy and theology. For more than seven decades Hartshorne has presented his theses ever more persuasively, comparing and contrasting them in illuminating fashion with those of major historical figures and movements, from Plato to Kant to Popper. Central to his outlook are fresh interpretations of such notions as God, freedom, chance, creativity, the primacy of aesthetic meaning, affective tone, the social character of experience, sympathy as self-creative, relatedness and asymmetry, feeling and feeling of feeling, and generalized causal possibility with a place for probabilities and open possibilities.This collection of Charles Hartshorne's writings -- many never before published -- is an indispensible introduction to his rich and indelible contribution to contemporary philosophy. It covers the extraordinary range of Hartshorne's thought, including his reflections on the history of philosophy, philosophical psychology, philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, literature, ornithology, and, above all, theology and metaphysics.

In 1922 Charles Hartshorne, then an aspiring young philosopher, wrote to Edgar Sheffield Brightman, a preeminent philosopher of religion and one of the earliest members of the Boston School of Personalism. For twenty-three subsequent years, the two carried out an unusually rich and intensive correspondence, and, remarkably, almost every letter was preserved. They are presented here along with additional material that follows the philosophers' lives and interactions after 1945, when Brightman's ill health prevented him from continuing the correspondence. Hartshorne (1897-) has been called ""the world's greatest living metaphysician."" But when the correspondence began, he was just a graduate student, while Brightman (1884-1953) was already an influential philosopher and theologian. Over time, as Hartshorne gained prominence, the letters reveal first a relationship of equals and eventually a reversal of roles as the younger man began to influence his former mentor. Hartshorne's sustained critique of Brightman's epistemological and metaphysical position eventually led to important shifts in Brightman's views. In their introductory essays, editors Randall Auxier and Mark Davies place the correspondence in its intellectual context and address the relationship between personalism and process philosophy/theology in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy. Theologians and philosophers in a wide range of specialties will welcome this record of an enduring intellectual friendship.

One learns a great deal about a major philosopher by coming to appreciate his perspective on the history of philosophy. Here Charles Hartshorne gives us just such a perspective on the history of philosophy and thereby on himself. This is a reexamination of the history of philosophy, looking at neglected aspects of the philosophers' thought, interpreting their views in a sharply focused, controversial manner in order to show the origins and development within the Western tradition of the metaphysical and moral views represented by process philosophy. The result is a fresh look at the tradition.This is a clearly written, readable, original, and constructive interpretation of the history of philosophy in hte West from the sixth century before Christ to the present. As the best-known living representative of process philosophy, Hartshorne shows that it has anticipations in Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Hegel, Schelling, and many others, even including the materialist Epicurus and the atheist Nietzsche. Process philosophy and theology have significant overlap with the views of most of the creative, constructive philosophers and theologians of recent times, including Peirce, William James, Bergson, Heidegger, Paul Weiss, Berdyaev, John Findlay, Paul Tillich, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others. This philosophy takes creative freedom, transcending causal determinism, and a generalized idea of sympathy-"feeling of feeling," love-as universal principles of life and nature.

One learns a great deal about a major philosopher by coming to appreciate his perspective on the history of philosophy. Here Charles Hartshorne gives us just such a perspective on the history of philosophy and thereby on himself. This is a reexamination of the history of philosophy, looking at neglected aspects of the philosophers' thought, interpreting their views in a sharply focused, controversial manner in order to show the origins and development within the Western tradition of the metaphysical and moral views represented by process philosophy. The result is a fresh look at the tradition.This is a clearly written, readable, original, and constructive interpretation of the history of philosophy in hte West from the sixth century before Christ to the present. As the best-known living representative of process philosophy, Hartshorne shows that it has anticipations in Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Hegel, Schelling, and many others, even including the materialist Epicurus and the atheist Nietzsche. Process philosophy and theology have significant overlap with the views of most of the creative, constructive philosophers and theologians of recent times, including Peirce, William James, Bergson, Heidegger, Paul Weiss, Berdyaev, John Findlay, Paul Tillich, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others. This philosophy takes creative freedom, transcending causal determinism, and a generalized idea of sympathy-"feeling of feeling," love-as universal principles of life and nature.

This book presents Hartshorne's philosophical theology briefly, simply, and vividly.Throughout the centuries some of the world's most brilliant philosophers and theologians have held and perpetuated six beliefs that give the word God a meaning untrue to its import in sacred writings or in active religious devotion:God is absolutely perfect and therefore unchangeable,2.omnipotence,3.omniscience,4.God's unsympathetic goodness,5.immortality as a career after death, and6.revelation as infalliable.Charles Hartshorne deals with these six theological mistakes from the standpoint of his process theology.Hartshorne says, "The book is unacademic in so far as I am capable of being that." Only a master like Hartshorne could present such sophisticated ideas so simply. This book offers an option for religious belief not heretofore available to lay people.

"The reader will find that I combine hearty enthusiasm for the philosophical traditions of my country with sharp partial disagreement with nearly all their representatives. My effort throughout my career has been to think about philosophical, that is, essentially a priori or metaphysical, issues, using the history of ideas as a primary resource."This is the second of two volumes dealing with the history of philosophy, especially of metaphysics. The first, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, discusses some thirty European philosophers, from Democritus to Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. In both volumes I try to learn and teach truth about reality by arguing, in a fashion, with those who in the past have sought such truth." - Charles HartshorneIn a remarkable tour de force, Charles Hartshorne presents a lively and illuminating study of what major American philosophers have said about creativity. With a special talent for perceiving and elegantly expressing the essence of a position, Dr. Hartshorne details his reactions to friend and foe, demonstrating that philosophy at its best is dialogue. Noting that metaphysics is a major theme in the American philosophical tradition, he states that "nowhere has the topic been more persistently and searchingly investigated than in this country."

Described as one of the pathbreaking works in 20th-century philosophical theology. this work presents Hartshorne's rehabilitation of Anselm's "Ontological Argument", recast in neoclassical form as "the Modal Proof", along with applications of Hartshorne's method to a variety of issues in contemporary metaphysical and religious thinking.

Did Anselm, in his "Ontological Argument" (first advanced around 1070), make one of the greatest intellectual discoveries of all time, or did he merely fall into an interesting blunder? In his day, Anselm was criticized by Gaunilo. Subsequent philosophers have generally considered Gaunilo's criticisms to be weighty. Descartes' attempt to resuscitate Anselm's argument led to Kant's supposed refutation, which most later philosophers have considered to be fundamentally sound. Charles Hartshorne has brought back the "Ontological Argument" as a major problem of modern philosophical analysis, and "Anselm's Discovery" has been described as his most systematic exposition of the history of the subject. According to Hartshorne, generations of philosophers have read Anselm superficially, and have failed to see that Anselm presented two forms of the Argument, the second involving a genuine conceptual breakthrough.

One of the great living philosophers sets forth his idea of philosophical wisdom as a mean between extremes in the philosophy of life and religion, with applications to ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and practical affairs. This work brings to a new focus the unity of Hartshorne's thought as a whole, showing the relationship between good philosophical sense and good common sense.

A vigorous and wide-ranging defense of Hartshorne's "neoclassical metaphysics" of creative freedom.Charles Hartshorne, one of the premier metaphysicians of the twentieth century, surmised that Creative Experiencing: A Philosophy of Freedom made his contribution to technical philosophy essentially complete. Found among his papers, this book combines five chapters published here for the first time with revisions and expansions of previously published material. Hartshorne articulates and defends his "neoclassical metaphysics" as an enterprise related to but independent of empirical science, addressing a variety of topics, including the problem of other minds (including nonhuman ones), the competencies of science, the nature of God, the meaning of modal terms, the ontological status of universals, and the metaphysical grounding of political freedom. While Hartshorne is widely known as a process philosopher, Creative Experiencing also shows him in dialogue with the wider currents of both analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The book includes his clearest account of his appropriation of phenomenology, the most succinct presentation of his analysis of time's asymmetry and its relation to causality, and his fullest statement concerning the meaning of future tense statements.

A vigorous and wide-ranging defense of Hartshorne's "neoclassical metaphysics" of creative freedom.Charles Hartshorne, one of the premier metaphysicians of the twentieth century, surmised that Creative Experiencing: A Philosophy of Freedom made his contribution to technical philosophy essentially complete. Found among his papers, this book combines five chapters published here for the first time with revisions and expansions of previously published material. Hartshorne articulates and defends his "neoclassical metaphysics" as an enterprise related to but independent of empirical science, addressing a variety of topics, including the problem of other minds (including nonhuman ones), the competencies of science, the nature of God, the meaning of modal terms, the ontological status of universals, and the metaphysical grounding of political freedom. While Hartshorne is widely known as a process philosopher, Creative Experiencing also shows him in dialogue with the wider currents of both analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The book includes his clearest account of his appropriation of phenomenology, the most succinct presentation of his analysis of time's asymmetry and its relation to causality, and his fullest statement concerning the meaning of future tense statements.