Whitehead’s Early Harvard Period, Hartshorne and the Transcendental Project

Abstract

In this chapter, George Shields compares Whitehead’s Harvard lectures to the philosophy of Charles Hartshorne, arguing that the two are united in defending the possibility of a ‘transcendental project’ and an ‘ontological approach’. The chapter argues that for both philosophers, ‘something exists’ is a necessary postulate, ontology precedes epistemology, that their critiques of Kant’s noumena are sound and their return to pre-Kantian modes of thought is justified, and that formal logic and mathematical analysis are wholly necessary in philosophy.