Abstract

This dissertation defends the textual grounding and develops the initial stages of a system of morality based on the notion of eternal objects as both final and efficient causes in the works of Alfred North Whitehead. Acknowledging Whitehead's metaphysical and epistemological roots in the theory of numbers developed by Pythagoras and the theory of forms developed by Plato, this work proposes to answer the need for a system of morality which provides both an objective set of criteria for value judgments and a justified account of their subjective implementation within varying cultures, time periods, and contextual situations. ;The process theory of morality which has herein been termed a morality of good/harmony is proposed as an answer to nominalist understandings of Whitehead's works. Interpreters of Whitehead, notably Everett Hall and Charles Hartshorne, have argued that Whitehead's system, and particularly any theory of morality derived from his works, does not need eternal objects to be consistent. In particular, Charles Hartshorne has claimed that the creative advance can be accounted for by patterns evolving out of the self-creative principle within the World itself rather than any notion of unchanging sets of relations described as eternal objects. As a result of this nominalist interpretation, attempts to ground a morality in process thought have resulted in a subjectivist ethic. ;Contrary to Hall and Hartshorne, this dissertation argues that Whitehead's process philosophy is textually grounded in and cannot be coherent without its historical strain of organization originating in the thought of Plato and Pythagoras. As a result of this grounding, the classical explanations provide for process morality not one, as Hartshorne has suggested, but two levels of creative advance as major and minor moral criteria. It is the resonance of the moral creative advances at the minor levels, those which occur in the consequent nature of God, to that of the major level, occuring dynamically within the initial aim of the primordial nature of God, which is the most inclusive criterion of a morality of good/harmony. ;A morality of good/harmony shapes and is shaped by the structuring virtue of integrity. Through what Whitehead terms creative generalization, moral judgment attempts to reflect the dynamic ordering of the eternal objects in the initial aim. When a moral choice successfully reflects this ordering, it can be said to be a decision of integrity which resonates with the Good//Harmony of Beauty, Truth, and Peace at the widest level of generalization in the initial aim. ;Included in this work is an application of the moral theory of good/harmony to the bioethical issue of whether truthtelling in the medical context ought to be a cultural artifact