Abstract

Process philosophy has traditionally focused predominantly on ontology and cosmology. However, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, the scope of its application broadened significantly to include areas such as theology, physics, biology, psychology, and even education. But, one area that was not so fortunate is ethics. Process philosophy, nonetheless, has the potential to make a unique contribution to the state of ethical theory, which, having the support of a process ontology, could avoid many of the pitfalls which plague modern ethical theories. Nowhere are these pitfalls more apparent than in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to whom I am alluding in the title of this paper. For, in keeping with his metaphysics, Kant made the absolute value of the autonomous rational individual the supreme principle of morality and, in so doing, made the human in particular, and ethics in general, discontinuous with the goings-on of the rest of the universe.1 In stark contrast to this longstanding tradition, it is my intention to demonstrate that it is possible to construct an axiological ethical system which makes humans an exemplification of the aim of the universe rather than an exception to it. My argument proceeds in roughly four parts. I begin by outlining the basic contours of Whitehead’s metaphysics and aesthetics and the relation between them. With this as a backdrop, I then proceed to discuss the moral dimension of Whitehead’s thought and the standard objections to it. In the third section, I respond to these objections, first, by contrasting two different interpretations of Whitehead’s metaphysics and, then, by examining the forms of morality that each entails. Finally, I conclude with my own speculations on how one might proceed to develop a systematic moral philosophy based on a Whiteheadian aesthetics of process.