Whitehead's Cosmotheanthropic Vision

Cosmologizing Kant's Transcendental Subject

Kant’s transcendental idealism explains objectivity as a product of the constructive activity of the subject, making cognition the privileged site where the natural world is constituted. Whitehead, by contrast, inverts and cosmologizes this dynamic: rather than cognition alone being the sole locus of construction, “the subject-object called nature”^[1] is affirmed to be self-constructing. The universe does not gain its objectivity merely for a human subject but is, in its deepest character, already subjective. As Schelling put it, “Nature is a priori.”^[2] In this sense, what I could call Whitehead’s objective subject—the primordial nature of God—is a transformation of Kant’s meta-epistemological transcendental unity of apperception into a meta-cosmological descendental unity of conceptual prehension. Thus the condition of the possibility of objectivity is not imposed by human cognition onto the otherwise formless material of sensibility, but is rooted in the divine envisagement of eternal objects and their prehensive relations with the nexus of actual occasions with whom they participate in the cocreation of the world. Nature is not an object for a subject but a community of subject-superjects, with human cognition an especially intense exemplification of prehensive powers present throughout the world.

The primordial nature of God is the conceptual prehension of all pure potentials or eternal objects—without reference to any particular actualization (though always relevant to actuality generally, per Whitehead’s Ontological Principle). Whitehead describes this as an unconditioned conceptual valuation, a pure envisagement that provides the ground for the order and novelty of the actual world. However, this valuation does not determine particular actual occasions; rather, it provides each particular process of actualization an initial aim or ideal lure that goads its self-creation.

“Each temporal entity, in one sense, originates from its mental pole, analogously to God... It derives from God its basic conceptual aim, relevant to its actual world, yet with indeterminations awaiting its own decisions. This subjective aim, in its successive modifi­cations, remains the unifying factor governing the successive phases of interplay between physical and conceptual feelings. These decisions are impossible for the nascent creature antecedently to the novelties in the phases of its concrescence. But this statement in its turn requires amplifi­cation. With this amplification the doctrine, that the primary phase of a temporal actual entity is physical, is recovered. A ‘physical feeling’ is here defined to be the feeling of another actuality. If the other actuality be objectified by its conceptual feelings, the physical feeling of the subject in question is termed ‘hybrid.’ Thus the primary phase is a hybrid physical feeling of God, in respect to God’s conceptual feeling which is immedi­ately relevant to the universe ‘given’ for that concrescence. There is then…a derived conceptual feeling which reproduces for the subject the data and valuation of God’s conceptual feeling. This conceptual feeling is the initial conceptual aim referred to in the preceding statement. In this sense, God can be termed the creator of each temporal actual entity. But the phrase is apt to be misleading by its suggestion that the ultimate creativity of the universe is to be ascribed to God’s volition. The true metaphysical position is that God is the aboriginal instance of this creativ­ity, and is therefore the aboriginal condition which qualifies its action. It is the function of actuality to characterize the creativity, and God is the eternal primordial character. But, of course, there is no meaning to ‘creativity’ apart from its ‘creatures,’ and no meaning to ‘God’ apart from the ‘creativity’ and the ‘temporal creatures,’ and no meaning to the ‘tem­poral creatures’ apart from ‘creativity’ and ‘God.’^[3]

Each finite actual occasion, in its process of self-creation, encounters this divine ideal as its objective aim. This aim meets the subjective aim of the occasion itself, which must decide how to realize its own becoming. In this way, God does not impose determination but rather offers possibilities, which actual occasions integrate through their own self-creative activity. The process of concrescence is thus a synthesis of divine potentiality with finite decision. Through this process, the divine nature itself is enriched, for as actual occasions become and perish, they cast the shadow of truth back upon the eternal envisagement, enriching it. The incarnate creatures contribute their experiences to the consequent nature of God.

The consequent nature of God represents God’s integration of the world’s actuality into the divine life. God is not a static, impassive principle but a macrocosmic organism that grows with its microcosmic organisms. In contrast to the primordial nature, which is necessary and given, the consequent nature is contingent and emergent. The divine life is thus a triune process: one in its primordial envisagement, many with the unfolding world, and finally one again, ever-enriched by the contributions of the many.

Whereas the primordial nature of God functions as a metaphysical fact or cosmic given, the consequent nature demands something more—it is not merely cosmological but also anthropological. Whitehead suggests that we cannot fully grasp the consequent nature unless we participate in it. Conscious experience, particularly human experience, plays a unique role in making this aspect of God real. It is not enough for the consequent nature to exist either as something given in advance or as something abstractly conceived. The consequent nature of God is theurgical, realized through our own conscious participation in divine creativity.

“Throughout this exposition of the philosophy of organism we have been considering the primary action of God on the world. From this point of view, [God] is the principle of concretion—the principle whereby there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise riddled with am­biguity. Thus, so far, the primordial side of the nature of God has alone been relevant. But God, as well as being primordial, is also consequent. [God] is the be­ginning and the end. [God] is not the beginning in the sense of being in the past of all members. [God] is the presupposed actuality of conceptual opera­tion, in unison of becoming with every other creative act. Thus, by reason of the relativity of all things, there is a reaction of the world on God. The completion of God’s nature into a fullness of physical feeling is derived from the objectification of the world in God. [God] shares with every new creation its actual world; and the concrescent creature is objectified in God as a novel element in God’s objectification of that actual world. This pre­hension into God of each creature is directed with the subjective aim, and clothed with the subjective form, wholly derivative from [God] all-inclusive primordial valuation. God’s conceptual nature is unchanged, by reason of its final completeness. But [God’s] derivative nature is consequent upon the creative advance of the world. Thus, analogously to all actual entities, the nature of God is dipolar. [God] has a primordial nature and a consequent nature. The consequent nature of God is conscious; and it is the realization of the actual world in the unity of [God’s] nature, and through the transformation of [God’s] wisdom. The primordial nature is conceptual, the consequent nature is the weaving of God’s physical feelings upon [God’s] primordial concepts. One side of God’s nature is constituted by [God’s] conceptual experience. This experience is the primordial fact in the world, limited by no actuality which it presupposes. It is therefore infinite, devoid of all negative prehensions. This side of [God’s] nature is free, complete, primordial, eternal, actually deficient, and unconscious. The other side originates with physical experience derived from the temporal world, and then acquires integration with the primordial side. It is determined, incomplete, consequent, ‘ever­lasting,’ fully actual, and conscious. [God’s] necessary goodness expresses the determination of his consequent nature. Conceptual experience can be infinite, but it belongs to the nature of physical experience that it is finite. An actual entity in the temporal world is to be conceived as originated by physical experience with its process of completion motivated by consequent, conceptual experience initially de­rived from God. God is to be conceived as originated by conceptual ex­perience with [God’s] process of completion motivated by consequent, physical experience, initially derived from the temporal world.”^[4]

In this way, the consequent nature of God is akin to a practical postulate: we must freely affirm it^[5] and actively engage in the creative process of reality for it to become fully actualized. This is why Whitehead’s vision of God is ultimately participatory; we are not merely passive recipients of divine order but co-creators contributing to the fuller realization of divine life.

This is not to say that the consequent nature of God is a product of human consciousness alone; it encompasses the entirety of creation. Yet, humanity plays a unique role in this process—not as a domineering force over nature, but as a participatory agent in divine realization. Paul (Romans 8:18-25) suggests that creation’s renewal is mysteriously bound up with the unveiling of human beings as “sons of God.” “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (8:22). All of creation is waiting for humanity to recognize its true nature—not as isolated, self-sufficient beings, but as integral participants in divine cosmic life.

It is not that God redeems the world for humanity, nor that humanity alone redeems the world. Rather, through the consequent nature of God, anthropogenesis and cosmogenesis are interwoven. Paul’s metaphor of creation’s suffering as labor pains suggests that the world is actively participating in its own renewal. Just so, Whitehead’s God becomes enriched through the ongoing process of the world’s self-creation. The “freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21) is not a privilege of humanity over creation but a revelation for and with creation, in which all actualities are ultimately drawn into greater divine harmony.

In Whitehead’s framework, the consequent nature of God is thus deeply anthropological—not in the sense of being human-centered, but in the sense that human consciousness has a crucial role in making divine realization explicit. The consequent nature is already present as the divine reception of the world-process, but it remains incomplete until creatures participate in its conscious self-recognition.

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^[1] As Schelling put it (Whitehead quotes Schelling in Concept of Nature, p. 47).

^[2] Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, Intro.

^[3] Whitehead, Process and Reality, 224-225.

^[4] Whitehead, Process and Reality, 345.

^[5] As Emerson put it in “Fate”: “To hazard the contradiction,—freedom is necessary. If you please to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man…So far as a man thinks, he is free.”