We seek insights in order to understand and to express the fundamental impulse. Their only task is to communicate what they already know. They have stopped the pursuit of knowledge. Their position is static not venturesome, conservative not innovative. Rather they are the defenders (the old word is "apologists") of the eternal truth that they claim to have.
Those who believe that they have the truth in this matter or in any other are not lovers of wisdom in the Socratic sense. We seek new insights because we are seekers, not possessors, of the truth. It is not enough to say that a new approach is inconsistent with, say the traditional, orthodox, Christian view. We may have to construct answers to our suggested questions and then determine if the question and the answer correctly express the basic impulse of the human spirit. Is it the impulse that nothing be lost? Is it the self’s desire to continue? to be immortal? to be a god? Is it the desire that our acts have meaning? Is it the desire that things have "real" value? Initially, we can hardly determine if we have stated the question correctly.Īny explanation is subject to the objection that it is not addressing the correct question. In our attempts to define it, we must be aware that we may have expressed it incorrectly.
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If we begin with this fundamental impulse of the human spirit, the question is how to express it.
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Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 340) Whitehead, quoting a New Testament saying, expresses it this way: ".the higher intellectual feelings are haunted by the vague insistence of another order, where there is no unrest, no travel, no shipwreck: ‘There shall be no more sea."’ ( Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. These views differ and may not even be compatible, but they express a fundamental impulse of the human spirit. The Greek belief in the immortality of the soul is yet another. The Christian belief in resurrection is another. The Egyptian beliefs concerning immortality and their attendant burial practices are one of the most obvious historical instances of the expression of this basic desire. Throughout the centuries, by stories and actions, various cultures have reinforced the concept of immortality.
Man’s desire for immortality is one of these initial intuitions, or persistent dreams, desires, or impulses of mankind. On several occasions Whitehead refers to basic insights or initial intuitions or feelings of mankind which require explanations or justifications. Chapter 8: A Whiteheadian Conception of Immortality Whiteheadian Thought as a Basis for a Philosophy of Religionīy Forrest Wood, Jr.
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