- Robert Mesle, Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), xi + 123 Pps., $16.95.
- Robert Mesle (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is a recognized authority on process thought and the author of the acclaimed Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (1993), the most widely read introduction to process theology. He is currently a professor and chair of the philosophy and religion department of Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa. This short book introduces the major ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and his process philosophy to the general reader. In what follows each chapter shall be noted for what it covers regarding Whitehead’s influential book, Process and Reality.
In chapter one, ‘A Process-Relational World’, Mesle suggests three reasons why learning about process-relational thought is worthwhile in today’s environ: 1) it inspires wonder, 2) it pictures the world as an interwoven relational process, and 3) it possess the capability of unifying and integrating different perspectives from scientific, cultural, and philosophical data. Mesle notes in chapter two that there is an increasing awareness in the world today of our interwovenness with all of nature, and that unless we take this seriously, we are in danger of self-destruction (11). Mesle highlights the unified self in chapter three, noting that we experience with our bodies, which means that our bodies experience (27).
But what does it mean to say that our bodies are capable of experience? Mesle contends, based upon Whitehead’s thought, that the capability of experience goes all the way down the proverbial ladder of nature, which has profound ethical consequences (chapter four). Mesle contends that we are the flow of our experience(s) in chapter five, ‘Reality As Relational Process’. Mesle notes that Whitehead, while a through-going empiricist, nonetheless believed in causation because we experience ourselves in each moment arising out of the preceding moments (chapter six). In fact, all of our experience is rooted in causal efficacy (62). Mesle employs the argumentation of Whitehead in chapter seven to assert that the nature of love does not allow the godhead to be unilaterally powerful, unable to be affected by his creatures (70).
So what? Mesle claims that the ‘higher’ we go one the proverbial pyramid of life, the more the power to be affected emerges. Moreover, the higher we go, the more persuadable are the entities. This fact has profound consequences on our depiction of the nature of the godhead, as Mesle notes in chapter eight. Mesle pictures God as the power of creativity and potentiality in chapter nine, noting that Whitehead referred to this as the ‘primordial nature of God’ (85). Mesle discusses the future of process thought in chapter ten, commenting that if we were to embody the process-relational vision, the world – and thus the people in it – very well might ‘spring forth in love and justice’ (90). The appendix, ‘Getting Technical’, concludes the volume with an introduction and explanation of some of Whitehead’s more ‘heady’ terminology.
Mesle notes that he is a process-relational philosopher because everything he cares about is in process and in relationships – even his ideas (x). After reading this accessible introduction to process-relational philosophy, this reviewer better understands the thoughts of Whitehead’s Process and Reality, and is thereby further compelled to embrace Mesle’s viewpoint as well. In view of such, I consider Mesle’s contribution successful in its intent to persuade the reader that process philosophy is worth taking seriously (3). I therefore recommend it to the general reader who desires exposure to the increasingly important process-relational philosophy.
Bradford McCall
Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA.