Bergson, Heidegger and Whitehead may be said to be representatives of the contemporary philosophers that specify radically the theme of self-actualizing event. All of them regard not only all things as actualizing themselves in nature, but also make t...
Bergson, Heidegger and Whitehead may be said to be representatives of the contemporary philosophers that specify radically the theme of self-actualizing event. All of them regard not only all things as actualizing themselves in nature, but also make the concept of event as the proper subject-matter of philosophy. There are, however, some differences among these philosophers. Bergson contents that the real event is dynamic, heterogeneous, and qualitatively continuous. Hence we are incapable of analyzing it in terms of any spatial concept without perverting its nature. The real event is anti-intellectual. Heidegger also concentrates the impenetrable otherness of the event. The self-unfolding events are regarded to take on the mystical character of an unsayable, originating power. And thus even his statement of events become self-negating gestures. Whitehead thinks that the purpose of philosophy is rationalize mysticism by the introduction of novel verbal characterizations rationally coordinated. He constructs the categorical scheme in terms analogical categories secured from algebra and empirical world. And he rationalizes, even though in some limits, self-creative events by means of this categorical scheme. and thereby determinates their unrestricted, open characteristics.