Whitehead's Metaphysics of Power

Shows how Whitehead’s metaphysics developed from his reading of early modern philosophy

At the beginning of his magnum opus, Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead lists a series of beliefs which he thinks are widely held by contemporary philosophers. They are all condemned as dangerously mistaken.

What are these myths?
Why are they rejected?
In the works of which modern thinker did they arise?
What precisely went wrong?
At what stage in the development of Western thought did this happen?

By tackling these questions, Pierfrancesco Basile makes it possible to grasp the main concepts of Whitehead’s process metaphysics – especially the crucial notion that being and power are one and the same – and appreciate the complex way this is rooted in the modern philosophical tradition.

Key Features

• Shows how Whitehead’s metaphysics of power and events is deeply rooted in mainstream Western philosophy
• Illustrates how our understanding of the great masters of the past – Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibniz and Spinoza – benefit from viewing them from the standpoint of Whitehead’s metaphysics
• Provides a critical assessment of Whitehead’s metaphysics and his overall philosophy