Philippine E-Journals

The Concept of the Person in Whitehead’s Process Metaphysics

Martin O. Onwuegbusi

Discipline: Philosophy, Religion

 

Abstract:

Whitehead holds that the person is a society consisting of all the momentary occasions of experience that make up the life history of the man. At each moment of experience a single soul is operative. Personal identity is maintained when the present soul inherits from its own superannuated soul all the values imbibed from its past momentary occasions, currently contribute its own new values during the present occasion, and subsequently passes them on to forthcoming new occasions which it will experiential undergo. This paper attempts to examine the relevance and significance of this doctrine as a new way of conceiving human reality.