POWER AND VALUE IN PROCESS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

The dissertation develops a pair of fundamental and related concepts in Whitehead's metaphysics. After clarifying and elaborating these concepts, it seeks to affirm their adequacy through application in two broad areas: selected areas of human experience; and process theology. This is motivated by Whitehead's own concern that a system of speculative philosophy must be applicable and adequate as well as logical and coherent.; Alfred North Whitehead and Henry Nelson Wieman are the major intellectual resources for the ideas developed in the dissertation; but Bernard Loomer's essay, "Two Conceptions of Power," is also important. In addition to chapters introducing the thought of Whitehead and Wieman, and an appendix on the development of Wieman's critique of Whitehead, the text has three constructive chapters.; The first constructive chapter offers an analysis of the nature of power as relational in contrast with traditional understandings of power as unilateral. Power as relational involves both the ability to be affected and the ability to affect, as well as the ability to create oneself out of the relationships by which one is affected. The Whiteheadian emphasis on value as aesthetic experience is then clarified and related to power as the ability to receive data out of which the aesthetic unit emerges.; The second constructive chapter explores the applicability and adequacy of these concepts of relational power and aesthetic value in selected aspects of human experience. The ambiguity of creativity and power in human experience is considered. It is suggested that there is a basis for a process doctrine of sin in Whitehead's statement that morality requires generality of outlook while actuality requires selectivity. These ideas are then related to a process approach to human wholeness, where process, relatedness and beauty are the key ideas.; Finally, the third constructive chapter explores the implications of this analysis of power and value for process theology. The first half of the chapter deals with the basic process criticisms of traditional ideas of omnipotence and the alternatives offered by Hartshorne, Cobb and Griffin. An alternative approach to process theology is then considered. It is argued that Whitehead's metaphysics does not really require his concept of God as an actual being. Under Wieman's influence, an alternative is suggested in which Whitehead's concept of creativity, as structured by relational power, is offered as both the metaphysical and religious ultimate which is the source of supreme value, and hence, by Wieman's definition, is the proper referent for the symbol, God.