The relationship between James and Whitehead has been underlined from the very outset by the critical scholarship on Whitehead, as is testified by the presence of articles that appeared before the author’s death. By dissociating myself from the radical interpretation that frames Whitehead’s speculative opus as a systematization of James’s ideas, I survey that confrontation which has been advanced in the last years (Weber 2002, 2003, 2011, Sinclair 2009) in order to provide further contribution, by tackle the problem of novelty. (...) Precisely, I concentrate on those instances, especially the methodological ones, which are not simply akin, but rather properly shared by the authors. In other words, I focus on those grounding ideas from which they endorse a pluralistic universe, conceived in connection with the problem of novelty. Properly, 1) I analyze the way Whitehead refers to James in his books; 2) I compare the roles they acknowledge to reason, in the nexus with the concept of experience; 3) I show the importance both authors ascribe to the problem of novelty, the main topic involved in their efforts to build up new cosmologies. (shrink)

The three theories considered here, real continuous time, real serial time, and unreal time, are each in some sense a reaction to Hume’s theory of serial or “spatialized” time. Hence, Hume’s theory is elaborated on as a foundation for the discussion and comparison of the subsequent three. This brief excursion into the nature of time may help to illuminate the differences among these three and to suggest some of their possible implications, particularly with regard to the existential difference between intuited (...) or transcendent time and experienced or immanent time and the qualitative or ontological difference between the eternal and the temporal. (shrink)

The Jamesian notion of the ‘stream of consciousness’ is closely related to the epochal theory of time. It also stems from an attempt to resolve the old aporia contained in Zeno’s paradoxes. Time flows like a ‘river’ or a ‘stream,’ but still it grows by ‘drops’ or ‘buds.’ These basic units of time are whole and indivisible, but they do not ‘crack’ or ‘divide’ reality. Other process philosophies also include this notion of a continuous time that, nevertheless, integrates these interrelated (...) units that account for individualisation without any breach of continuity. Henri Bergson’s durée and Alfred N. Whitehead’s epochal theory of time clearly illustrate this doctrine. The examination of memory and the status of the past as a positive existence also emphasise the temporal aspect of reality. Existing reality grows out of its past, which endures in the newborn actuality. (shrink)