Abstract

This study is divided into two main parts: exposition of the main themes of Process and Reality and criticism. The exposition is organized around the twin motifs of "freedom" and "condition." The former refers to such notions as mental pole, conceptual feelings, final causation, novelty, flux, and subjective aim. The latter refers to things like physical pole, physical feelings, efficient causation, conformation of feeling, permanence, and objectification. The exposition, quite naturally and justifiably, is laid out with an eye to the criticisms which will follow it. The points of criticism all relate to the general problem of the tension between the factor of freedom and the factor of condition. For example, the author tries to resolve the incompatibility between the indivisible unity of an actual occasion and the fact that it undergoes successive modifications of its subjective aim. He points out the difficulty in maintaining the doctrine of freedom when the modification of the subjective aim is effected by determinate elements. Pols feels that Whitehead's system places the seat of power in the eternal objects. It is they that are really effecting the difference between real and general potentiality. It is this special status of the eternal objects that, for Pols, constitutes "The Platonism of Whitehead." In general, the book is a tough minded refusal to allow Whitehead to eat and still have his metaphysical cake.--S. 0. H.