Charles Hartshorne
1897-2000 · Process Philosophy · Little-known
Hartshorne was the leading American process philosopher after Whitehead, whose assistant he had been, and he carried process thought into theology. A God who cannot be moved by anything you do is not worth worshipping, he argued against the classical picture of an unchanging, unfeeling deity. His God stays fixed in character, grows in experience, holds the world inside himself and feels every event as it happens.
Signature
The position Hartshorne is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain
- Theology
- Process Theism
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- strongly leans Describable (3 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (81 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Hartshorne refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Process Theism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Beauty
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Open Future
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Embodied Perception
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Continuous Creation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Welfare Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Living Memory
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?