Tina Röck

In this contribution, I explore the idea that reality is best understood as fundamentally dynamic and interdependent, i.e., processual, bringing together resources from process thought, phenomenology and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism. I furthermore explore how this view shapes the ways we speak about, investigate, and understand the natural world. What is novel in my approach is that I bring a phenomenological reading of process in dialogue with Buddhist thought. My paper unfolds in two stages: first, I map key points of convergence between phenomenologically clarified process philosophy and Madhyamaka; second, I consider the broader epistemological and practical consequences of viewing reality as impermanent and dependently arising by looking at Whitehead’s and Nāgārjuna’s views in dialogue. Engaging with Buddhist philosophy alongside phenomenological process thought enables a deeper investigation into the ethical, and lived dimensions of metaphysical inquiry, which are dimensions often sidelined both in Western metaphysics and in some versions of phenomenology, because metaphysical and phenomenological analysis can remain stuck on the conceptual level, detached from both lived experience and practice. By contrast, Buddhist traditions explicitly link philosophical reflection with lived experience and embodied practice throughout. For this reason, sustained dialogue with Buddhist views and practices can expand Western methodology as such and can enrich process-based phenomenological approaches in particular by showing ways to reconnect speculative metaphysics, observation, and the concrete in practical ways.

Based on a creative use of the phenomenological method, we argue that a close examination of the temporality of objects reveals the future as genuinely open. Without aiming to decide the matter of phenomenological realism, we suggest that this method can be used to investigate the mode of being of objects in their own temporality. By bracketing the anticipatory structure of experience, one can get a sense of objects’ temporality as independent of consciousness. This contributes to the current Realism versus Idealism debates, but it does so without taking sides. The starting point is neither an analysis of pure consciousness, nor attempts to describe objects in-themselves, but the idea that things can be phenomenologically grasped through the difference between their temporality and our own. By being methodically “open to the future,” one can become aware of the sui generis temporality of objects as different from the temporality shaped by our anticipation.

Based on a creative use of the phenomenological method, we argue that a close examination of the temporality of objects reveals the future as genuinely open. Without aiming to decide the matter of phenomenological realism, we suggest that this method can be used to investigate the mode of being of objects in their own temporality. By bracketing the anticipatory structure of experience, one can get a sense of objects’ temporality as independent of consciousness. This contributes to the current Realism versus Idealism debates, but it does so without taking sides. The starting point is neither an analysis of pure consciousness, nor attempts to describe objects in-themselves, but the idea that things can be phenomenologically grasped through the difference between their temporality and our own. By being methodically “open to the future,” one can become aware of the sui generis temporality of objects as different from the temporality shaped by our anticipation.

In this contribution, I will argue for an ontological understanding of time as temporality. This, however, implies that in a certain sense being is temporality, by which I mean that (1) on an ontological level temporality is nothing but the process of change, i.e. the dynamic aspect of being in its becoming, changing, and perishing, and (2) that concrete beings are not merely in time, but they are temporal. This leads to the conclusion that actual time is the process of change that becoming beings are, as well as the conclusion that reality is fundamentally temporal as argued by process metaphysicians like Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Gilles Deleuze. The investigation begins with first establishing the methodological difficulties involved in thinking temporality as an ontological feature. In a second step, dynamic ontologies are introduced as the conceptual background best suited to think ontological temporality and their difference to event-ontologies is explained. Finally, the distinction between temporality and linear time is clarified. This introduction of temporality ends with some arguments for the existence of temporality that are inspired by Aristotle’s famous investigations into the nature of time. After having thus introduced temporality as an ontological feature and argued for the existence and relevance of it, its implications for our understanding of the dimensions of time and especially for anticipation are discussed.

In this paper, I will describe how Brentano was able to integrate descriptive philosophy and logical analysis fruitfully by pointing out Brentano’s concept of philosophy as a rigorous science. First I will clarify how Brentano attempted to turn philosophy into a rigorous descriptive science by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions. After spelling out the implications of such a descriptive understanding of philosophy, I will contrast this descriptive view of philosophy with a semantic-analytic understanding of philosophy as proposed by Frege. After having thus set the stage I will argue that (1) the current separation of philosophy into the seemingly antithetical strands of (continental) phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of how the term ‘rigorous science’ in ‘philosophy as a rigorous science’ is interpreted: Does a rigorous science grasp its object with as much exactitude as possible? Or is a science rigorous when its theories are expressed unambiguously, and their implications are drawn with precision? In the course of this investigation I will also point out (2) how Brentano’s integrative use of descriptive philosophy (a precursor to phenomenology) and analysis can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy.

Whiteheads eigenwillige philosophische Ausbildung durch Freunde und Kollegen bringt es mit sich, dass direkte Einflüsse auf seine Philosophie nur schwer zu verfolgen oder zu belegen sind. Whiteheads Sprache und vor allem seine kreativen Wortschöpfungen machen den Versuch, Einflusslinien zu erkennen, nur noch komplexer. Dies gilt auch für die Frage nach Henri Bergsons (1859–1941) Einfluss auf Whiteheads Denken. (Lowe 1949) Dass ein solcher Einfluss besteht, ist unbestritten, bezieht sich doch Whitehead des Öfteren auf Bergsons Denken. In dem Vorwort zu An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (PNK) bemerkt Whitehead z. B., dass Bergsons Philosophie bei den Treffen der Aristotelian Society in London diskutiert wurde und bezieht sich gegen Ende dieses Buches auf Bergsons Idee des élan vital (Lebensschwung). In The Concept of Nature (CN) erklärt Whitehead sein Denken, was die kreative prozessuale Entwicklung der Wirklichkeit betrifft, als völlig mit Bergsons übereinstimmend („in full accord“; CN, Kap. 3). In seiner Einleitung zu Process and Reality (PR) geht Whitehead weiter und beschreibt eine allgemeine Verbundenheit zu Bergsons Denken, und er macht explizit, dass es einer seiner Ziele ist, die Vereinnahmung von Bergsons Denken (wie auch das Denken von James und Dewey) durch den Anti-Intellektualismus zu verhindern (PRd, 23/ PR, xii). Sowohl in Adventures of Ideas (AI) als auch in Science and the Modern World (SMW) wird Bergson stellenweise erwähnt. Diese Erwähnungen dienen hauptsächlich dazu, Whiteheads Denken gegenüber Bergsons zu positionieren und dazu sich von dem anti-intellektualistischen Aspekt in Bergsons Denken zu distanzieren (AI, 287; SMW, 50) Außerdem erwähnt Whitehead in diversen Werken zentrale Konzepte Bergsons, wie ‚Intuition‘ oder ‚Verräumlichung‘.

Im Zentrum von Whiteheads Philosophie steht die Vorstellung, dass Neuheit und Kreativität grundlegende Aspekte der Wirklichkeit sind. Diese ist eine Haltung, die sich folgendermaßen zusammenfassen lässt: „God is the organ of novelty, aiming at intensification“ (PR, 67). Diese ‚Intensivierung‘, die das Ziel des Werdens ist, wird durch ‚Kontraste‘ erreicht. Das Universum entwickelt sich ständig weiter, es wird von einem schöpferischen Impuls zur Intensivierung von Kontrasten oder zur Vergrößerung des Erfahrungsreichtums angetrieben. Dieser Erfahrungsreichtum kann durch das dynamische Zusammenspiel von ‚Intensität‘ und ‚Kontrast‘ begrifflich erfasst und erforscht werden. In diesem Kapitel wird zunächst der Kontrast und dann die Intensität vorgestellt, um sie dann in ihrer Wechselbeziehung zu diskutieren.

Alfred North Whitehead, einer der kreativsten Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts, legte mit seiner Prozessphilosophie den Grundstein für eine dynamische Sicht auf Wirklichkeit und Erkenntnis. Dieses Handbuch erschließt die historischen und systematischen Grundlagen seiner Philosophie, die von Logik und Metaphysik über Wissenschaftstheorie bis hin zu Kultur- und Erziehungsphilosophie reicht. Neben einer Einführung in Leben und Werk Whiteheads werden zentrale Begriffe wie,,Prozess",,,Organismus" und,,Ereignis" präzise erläutert und in philosophiegeschichtliche Kontexte eingebettet. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt auf der vielfältigen Rezeption seines Denkens in Philosophie, Naturwissenschaften und Theologie. Das Handbuch bietet Studierenden, Forschenden und Interessierten eine fundierte Grundlage, um Whiteheads Ideen besser zu verstehen und in aktuelle Debatten einzubringen.

A fundamental issue when thinking about the agency of organisms is the question of their identity. How could we talk of a biological being’s ongoing engagement with the environment, its continued maintenance of homeostasis, its ability to collaborate with other beings and the like, if it did not persist over time, if it did not have a stable identity? I use the term ‘biological being’ to refer to life at any level of complexity, any level of organisation, any level of integration, i.e., micro- as well as macroscopic nested structures characterising life like cells, organelles, or genes, as well as beings in symbiotic relationships, colonies, multicellular organisms, or even the biosphere. I use the expression ‘biological being’ instead of ‘biological entity’ to denote the processual character (being as a gerund implies a process, a ‘going on’). Finally, I avoid using the term ‘organism’ to steer clear of any preconceived notions as to how ‘identity’ should be defined and what should be the paradigmatic entity, level of organisation, or level of integration from which we can depart to develop the concept of ‘identity’ in biological beings. The identity of biological beings is important not only in determining their sameness over time (diachronic identity), it is also the basis for distinguishing biological beings from each other at one point in time (synchronic identity).While some progress has been made in addressing the processual nature of organisms and their diachronic identity, their synchronic identity, or their relational nature, has received less attention. Organisms are not only processual in their existence but also highly relational; they are collaborative, interactive, as well as open and dependent on their environment. This collaborative, open, and relational factor is especially obvious when it comes to beings persisting in mutual holobiotic interdependence, but it applies, to different degrees, to all forms of life. It is this question of how to best conceive of synchronic as well as diachronic identity of biological beings (conceived as processes) that I will address in this contribution. In what follows, I begin by looking at the philosophical concept of identity, then present a critique of the prevalent metaphysical understanding of ‘identity’ in the context of biology, and finally introduce a process-based idea of adequate qualitative identity.

From the outset of Western philosophy most occidental philosophers held that both existence and knowledge depended on stability - what is genuinely changing does not have a clear essence or identity and is thus not an object for knowledge, nor can it be expressed in language. This is the case even though change touches all areas of life, shaping both the self and world, in subjective experience as well as scientific discoveries. In this contribution I will consider why precisely change is seen as such a vexing problem for knowledge and I will look at what that means for our ability to know a world that is fundamentally characterised by change. In part 1, I discuss how the assumption that change can neither be known nor put into words, led to the development of epistemologies and ontologies that bypass the problem of change by understanding it in terms of its opposite. I will show how this strategy limits our ability to come to terms with concrete reality. In part 2, I point towards possible ways out of this predicament. I will use the Aristotelian tode ti to propose a novel way to encounter change on its own terms.

For centuries most ontological systems have been based on the presupposition that the paradigmatic type of being is the kind of being things like stones and houses have. But if one looks at the beginning of Philosophy, at the emergence of philosophic thought, this choice was not obvious. For the pre-Socratics and even for Plato and Aristotle it was not obvious that reality is composed out of static and distinct elements. In this paper I investigate this relationship between a static and a dynamic account of reality both in its historic as well as systematic dimension. I argue that ontologies are ultimately based on an analysis of predication and that dynamic ontologies are mainly based on an empirical or phenomenological investigation of singular and concrete reality

Is reality static, or dynamic and relational? This book dives into the complexities of this question to reveal a new view of the relationship between thinking and being. Philosophy has traditionally considered reality as a set of static objects. This book transcends this understanding to explore the depths of relational and dynamic ontology. These explorations can be both complex and problematic as it attempts to understand and conceptualize becoming. To navigate this level of understanding, this book takes a novel path into dynamic realism that is both temporal and relational, without dismissing the epistemological implications. It combines phenomenology and process ontology in a way that is neither naive nor reductive. With an appetite to challenge ways of thinking that can be argued as outdated in our rapid, interconnected world, this book will provide insight, inspiration and lead to further questioning as to the depths our understanding can go to.

Although Kant is often considered the philosopher who ended the reign of metaphysical dogmatism, the situation is not quite so clear. On the one hand, this analysis must bear in mind that Kant himself had a great interest in metaphysics, insofar as it was not dogmatic – Kant himself considered his Critique to be just a reform of metaphysics. On the other hand, the Critique of Pure Reason itself is a result of certain metaphysical-dogmatic preliminary decisions. In order to show how one-sided the idea is that Kant simply did away with metaphysics, I will draw attention to the metaphysical presuppositions that shape the Critique of Pure Reason. The first thinker who attempted to explicate the metaphysical basis of the Critique was Kant’s friend and colleague Johann Georg Hamann. With Hamann’s guidance I will argue that even his Critique of Pure Reason was based on metaphysical presuppositions and that such an influence by metaphysical preliminary decisions is inevitable – even for such a sharp critic of metaphysical dogmatism as Kant. At the same time this text provides an introduction to Hamann’s thought, a thinker ahead of his times.

It is a puzzling fact that the Greek term for Nature ‘physis’ could be used to refer to (inter alia) i) reality as a whole, ii) the nature (essence) of something, iii) to individual material beings or materiality and iv) all things that are self-generating. In order to understand and tie together this wide array of possible meanings, I will consider the thesis that ‘physis’ was in fact used as a concept of being, a term naming the fundamental property of all of reality in the early pre-Socratics, poets and scientists before 500 BCE. Investigating ‘physis’ in this way can give us a way of thinking about Nature as a dynamic and creative but material process that goes far beyond the classical understanding of Nature as the sum of things that self-generate or the modern mathematical understanding of Nature born with Galileo, dominant to this day.

In this contribution, I will argue for an ontological understanding of time as temporality. This, however, implies that in a certain sense being is temporality, by which I mean that on an ontological level temporality is nothing but the process of change, i.e. the dynamic aspect of being in its becoming, changing, and perishing, and that concrete beings are not merely in time, but they are temporal. This leads to the conclusion that actual time is the process of change that becoming beings are, as well as the conclusion that reality is fundamentally temporal as argued by process metaphysicians like Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Gilles Deleuze. The investigation begins with first establishing the methodological difficulties involved in thinking temporality as an ontological feature. In a second step, dynamic ontologies are introduced as the conceptual background best suited to think ontological temporality and their difference to event-ontologies is explained. Finally, the distinction between temporality and linear time is clarified. This introduction of temporality ends with some arguments for the existence of temporality that are inspired by Aristotle’s famous investigations into the nature of time. After having thus introduced temporality as an ontological feature and argued for the existence and relevance of it, its implications for our understanding of the dimensions of time and especially for anticipation are discussed.

In this paper, I will describe how Brentano was able to integrate descriptive philosophy and logical analysis fruitfully by pointing out Brentano’s concept of philosophy as a rigorous science. First I will clarify how Brentano attempted to turn philosophy into a rigorous descriptive science by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions. After spelling out the implications of such a descriptive understanding of philosophy, I will contrast this descriptive view of philosophy with a semantic-analytic understanding of philosophy as proposed by Frege. After having thus set the stage I will argue that the current separation of philosophy into the seemingly antithetical strands of phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of how the term ‘rigorous science’ in ‘philosophy as a rigorous science’ is interpreted: Does a rigorous science grasp its object with as much exactitude as possible? Or is a science rigorous when its theories are expressed unambiguously, and their implications are drawn with precision? In the course of this investigation I will also point out how Brentano’s integrative use of descriptive philosophy and analysis can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy.