Whitehead in Class: Do the Harvard-Radcliffe Course Notes Change How We Understand Whitehead’s Thought?

Abstract

Brian Henning’s chapter takes a close look at numerous key passages that shift our understanding of Whitehead (including, for instance, the influence of C. D. Broad as a philosophical foil), and, just as importantly, notes the subjects and terms missing from this first year of lectures which we might have expected to find, including God and even (mostly) creativity. While there may be no ‘smoking gun’ in the lectures which fundamentally contradicts previous understandings of Whitehead, they deepen our understanding of his philosophical development, not to mention reveal his explicit thoughts on specific philosophers and scientists who are seldom discussed in his published works.