Books by Brian G. Henning
The Essays and Articles of Alfred North Whitehead, 1917-1942
The Essays and Articles of Alfred North Whitehead, 1917-1942, 2025
Chronological and critically edited collection of all of Whitehead’s essays and articles, includi... more Chronological and critically edited collection of all of Whitehead’s essays and articles, including previously unknown essays
--First authoritative, chronologically ordered presentation of Whitehead’s non-monograph works published during his Cambridge and London periods.
--Critical editing of the essays allows for corrections of many errors that have plagued these texts since their original publication; some essays contain dozens of errors.
--Creation of a high-quality scholarly index allows scholars to engage with these collected papers in way never before possible.
Volume 2 of the Critical Edition’s ‘Essays and Articles’ (EA2) captures published and unpublished essays written by Whitehead from his early London period just after joining the Aristotelian Society in 1915 through to his retirement from Harvard in 1937 until his death in 1947.
This volume includes previously unknown essays as well as papers published in academic journals and monographs. The better-known essays in this period – those that were re-published in collections such as The Aims of Education (1929) and Essays in Science and Philosophy (1947) – suffer from having too many variants, each with their own pagination and variations, making scholarly reference unnecessarily complicated. EA2, for the first time, presents all of Whitehead’s non-monograph works in a single authoritative, chronologically ordered, critically edited, and corrected format, making these volumes the single scholarly standard for researching and referencing these essays.
The Essays and Articles of Alfred North Whitehead, 1886-1916
The Essays and Articles of Alfred North Whitehead, 1886-1916, 2025
Presents Whitehead’s published and unpublished essays and articles written between 1886 and 1916
... more Presents Whitehead’s published and unpublished essays and articles written between 1886 and 1916
Critical editing of the essays has corrected the many errors that plagued these texts from original publication.
Creation of a high-quality scholarly index allows scholars to engage with these collected papers in a way never before possible.
This volume is the first authoritative, chronologically ordered, critically edited, and corrected collection of Alfred North Whitehead’s published and unpublished essays and articles from 1886 until 1916, and as such it is the scholarly standard for researching and referencing these essays.
It includes papers published in academic journals as well as previously unknown essays, ranging from philosophy of mathematics to physics through to education.
Much of early environmental ethics was born out of the belief that the ecological crisis can only... more Much of early environmental ethics was born out of the belief that the ecological crisis can only truly be solved by overcoming a pernicious worldview that limits all intrinsic value to human beings. Returning to this originating impulse, Value, Beauty, and Nature contends that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics. Grounded in an organicist process worldview, Brian G. Henning shows that it is possible to make progress in key debates within environmental philosophy, including those concerning the nature of intrinsic value; anthropocentrism; hierarchy; the moral significance of beauty; the nature of individuality; teleology and the naturalistic fallacy; and worldview reconstruction. A Whiteheadian fallibilistic, naturalistic, event ontology allows for the recovery of systematic, speculative metaphysical thought without a revanchist movement toward a necessitarian philosophia perennis. Thus, in contrast to the claims of environmental pragmatists, Value, Beauty, and Nature demonstrates that environmental ethics would greatly benefit from an adequate metaphysical foundation and, of the candidate metaphysical systems, Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism is the most adequate.
Climate Change Ethics and the Non-Human World, 2020
This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the... more This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature.
The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change.
With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields.
Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-1925
Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-1925, 2020
Edited by Henning and Petek
Examines the significance of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whi... more Edited by Henning and Petek
Examines the significance of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925
Responds to the question of whether the Harvard Lectures and The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead project change our understanding of the meaning or development of Whitehead’s thought
Written by international experts on Whitehead – including Maria-Teresa Teixeira, Gary Herstein and Jude Jones – who address a range of different aspects of the scholarly implications of the Lectures
The first monograph responding to the Critical Edition: has the potential to establish the tone and influence the direction of subsequent work
Includes the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition
Contributes towards setting scholarly conventions for how to cite and reference the volumes of the Critical Edition
In these newly commissioned essays, leading Whitehead scholars ask a range of important questions about Whitehead’s first year of philosophy lectures. Do these lectures challenge or confirm previous understandings of Whitehead’s published works? What is revealed about the development of Whitehead’s thought in the crucial period after London but before the publication of Science and the Modern World? What should we make of concepts and terms that were introduced in these lectures but were never incorporated into subsequent publications?
Also included in this volume is the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition of Whitehead, allowing for a clearer understanding of Whitehead’s plans and goals for his first course of lectures in philosophy than has previously been possible.
Being In America: Sixty Years of the Metaphysical Society
Abstract:
"On April 15, 1950 at Yale University, Paul Weiss called to order the first meeting of... more Abstract:
"On April 15, 1950 at Yale University, Paul Weiss called to order the first meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America. Six decades on, it is easy to forget just how dramatic, even controversial this bald, unapologetic defense of metaphysics would have been in 1950. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, two competing philosophical projects each declared war on metaphysics. One line of attack came from Martin Heidegger (and later “post-modern” philosophers), who triumphantly declared the “end of metaphysics.” The second was waged by logical positivists (and later “ordinary language analysts”), who derided metaphysics as linguistic nonsense. These two competing trends within philosophy, “post-modernism” and “logical positivism,” combined to create an often-hostile environment for metaphysicians.
Although the philosophical heirs to post-modernism and positivism continue to occupy and closely guard much of the philosophical terrain, the fact that metaphysics is now a respected and even central part of philosophy in America today is itself a testament to the success of the Society and the vision and courage of its founders. As revealed by the Presidents of the Society through their Addresses, this volume explores the role and significance of the Metaphysical Society of America in the trajectory of philosophy in America over the last six decades (1950-2010).
This volume includes some of the best and most representative Presidential Addresses covering the nature of metaphysics, the question of knowledge, the question of language, and the question of the good."
Despite there being deep lines of convergence between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead,... more Despite there being deep lines of convergence between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead, C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and other classical American philosophers, it remains an open question whether Whitehead is a pragmatist, and conversation between pragmatists and Whitehead scholars have been limited. Indeed, it is difficult to find an anthology of classical American philosophy that includes Whitehead’s writings. These camps began separately, and so they remain. This volume questions the wisdom of that separation, exploring their connections, both historical and in application. The essays in this volume embody original and creative work by leading scholars that not only furthers the understanding of American philosophy, but seeks to advance it by working at the intersection of experience and reality to incite novel and creative thought. This exploration is long overdue. Specific questions that are addressed are: Is Whitehead a pragmatist? What contrasts and affinities exist between American pragmatism and Whitehead’s thought? What new questions, strategies, and critiques emerge by juxtaposing their distinct perspectives?
Global warming isn’t coming; it is already here. Human-induced global climate disruption is no l... more Global warming isn’t coming; it is already here. Human-induced global climate disruption is no longer a theoretical concern, neither is it an outcome that can be avoided if only the right policy is adopted or the right technology is invented. The oceans are rising and becoming more acidic, ice is melting, and droughts are becoming more prevalent. Determining how not only to survive, but live a good life in an age of climate change is the most pressing challenge facing humanity. The fate of the human community and many of the organisms with which we have evolved hang in the balance.
In Riders in the Storm professor of philosophy and environmental studies Brian G. Henning presents a clear and accessible introduction to why global warming is happening, why it is still debated in the popular media and in congress, and what the international community is doing to try to address it. He contends that the mainstream moral frameworks of “sustainability” and “stewardship” are welcome improvements over more destructive attitudes regarding humanity’s place in nature, but that they are ultimately insufficient. Encouraging a return to the roots of ethics, which for millennia has focused on examining the nature of the good life well lived, Riders in the Storm explores the “great work” of voluntary simplicity, wide sustainability, and humble self-stewardship. Equipped with colorful graphics and images, suggestions for further research and reading, and dialogue prompts, this text is a straightforward and engaging introduction to climate change.
It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences... more It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back into Biology explores what might be termed “the new frontiers” of biology, namely contemporary areas of research that invite an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the modern synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: emergence theory, systems biology, biosemiotics, homeostasis, symbiogenesis, niche construction, the theory of organic selection (also known as “the Baldwin Effect”), self-organization, teleodynamics, and epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to both a greater degree of inclusivity and a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences.
Being in America: Sixty Years of the Metaphysical Society
"On April 15, 1950 at Yale University, Paul Weiss called to order the first meeting of the Metaph... more "On April 15, 1950 at Yale University, Paul Weiss called to order the first meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America. Six decades on, it is easy to forget just how dramatic, even controversial this bald, unapologetic defense of metaphysics would have been in 1950. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, two competing philosophical projects each declared war on metaphysics. One line of attack came from Martin Heidegger (and later “post-modern” philosophers), who triumphantly declared the “end of metaphysics.” The second was waged by logical positivists (and later “ordinary language analysts”), who derided metaphysics as linguistic nonsense. These two competing trends within philosophy, “post-modernism” and “logical positivism,” combined to create an often-hostile environment for metaphysicians.
Although the philosophical heirs to post-modernism and positivism continue to occupy and closely guard much of the philosophical terrain, the fact that metaphysics is now a respected and even central part of philosophy in America today is itself a testament to the success of the Society and the vision and courage of its founders. As revealed by the Presidents of the Society through their Addresses, this volume explores the role and significance of the Metaphysical Society of America in the trajectory of philosophy in America over the last six decades (1950-2010).
Each of the projected three volumes would cover twenty years of the Society’s sixty year history. Chronologically ordered, each chapter would contain a Presidential Address preceded by a brief biographical sketch and, if possible, a picture of the President."
Beyond Metaphysics? Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead's Late Thought
Alfred North Whitehead’s interpreters usually pay less attention to his later monographs and essa... more Alfred North Whitehead’s interpreters usually pay less attention to his later monographs and essays. Process and Reality is taken to be the definitive center of the Whiteheadian universe and the later works, thereby, appear to many only as applications or elaborations of themes already introduced earlier. Yet, is it also possible that the dominance of this perspective has obscured or even distorted further creative developments of Whitehead’s thought? This volume offers a sort of Copernican revolution in Whitehead interpretation, methodologically and conceptually inviting its contributors to observe Whitehead’s work from the perspective of his later works. The aim of this preferencing is meant not to invalidate earlier approaches to Whitehead’s thought nor is the inference that the later works are more authoritative. Yet, just as the first space-based images of our planet forever changed humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe, shifting the alleged center of, or even decentering of the view on, Whitehead’s “philosophy of organism” to the later works, we might discover previously obscured ideas or new vistas of thought relevant not only to our current philosophical landscape, but also to the pressing issues of our fragile and endangered world. This volume invites its contributors and readers to consider whether one thereby also moves beyond metaphysics?
Table of Contents
Introduction:
Roland Faber and Brian G. Henning: Whitehead’s Other Copernican Turn
Part 1 - Complexities of System, Life, and Novelty
Vincent Colapietro: Toward a Metaphysics of Expression
Christoph Kann: Renewing Speculation: The Systematic Aim of Whitehead’s Philosophic Cosmology
Dennis Soelch: Beyond Metaphysics?—A Historiographical Approach to Whitehead’s Speculative Philosophy
Deena Lin: Citing the Paradox: Probing the Systematization of Whitehead as Philosopher Subject
Clinton Combs: Before Metaphysics: Modes of Thought as a Prequel to Whitehead’s “Trilogy”
Roland Faber: Immanence and Incompleteness: Whitehead’s Late Metaphysics
Part 2 - Depths of Nature, Order, and Organicity
Robert J. Valenza: The Organism of Forms in Later Whitehead
Jeremy Dunham: Beyond Dogmatic Finality: Whitehead and the Laws of Nature
Joachim Klose: Alfred North Whitehead’s Receptacle
Helmut Maaßen: Contingency and Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Experience
Regine Kather: The Web of Life and the Constitution of Human Identity: Rethinking Nature as the Main Issue of Whitehead’s Late Metaphysics
Part 3 - Evocations of Value, Beauty, and Concern
Brian G. Henning: Re-Centering Process Thought: Recovering Beauty in A. N. Whitehead’s Late Work
Stascha Rohmer: The Self-Evidence of Civilization
Michael Halewood: Fact, Values, Individuals, and Others: Towards a Metaphysics of Value
Steven Shaviro: Self-enjoyment and Concern: On Whitehead and Levinas
Jude Jones: Provocative Expression: Transitions In and From Metaphysics in Whitehead’s Later Work
Isabella Palin: The Dream of Solomon
Genesis, Evolution, and the Search for a Reasoned Faith
Collaborators Mary Katherine Birge, Rodica Stoicoiu, Ryan Taylor, and Brian Henning explore in fo... more Collaborators Mary Katherine Birge, Rodica Stoicoiu, Ryan Taylor, and Brian Henning explore in four illuminating chapters the rich and complex history of the biblical creation accounts, the nature of science investigation, the ethical and philosophical significance of the theory of evolution, and the all-enveloping role of evolutionary theory in the deepening and broadening of faith. In the process, the authors expand readers’ understanding of the compatibility between religion and science. Readers will learn that they need not choose religion over science or faith over reason, and that evolution does not threaten but rather enriches faith.
Through more than 20 accessible and comprehensive case studies and examples, the authors make it clear to readers that regardless of what religious or non-religious background they come from—regardless of their religious knowledge and experiences—they can discover that science and religion are not enemies, but are companions in the search for truth. The fresh and fascinating Genesis, Evolution and the Search for a Reasoned Faith explores both the nature of science and religion and the intelligent and intimate conversation that is necessary in the search for truth.
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Books by Brian G. Henning
--First authoritative, chronologically ordered presentation of Whitehead’s non-monograph works published during his Cambridge and London periods.
--Critical editing of the essays allows for corrections of many errors that have plagued these texts since their original publication; some essays contain dozens of errors.
--Creation of a high-quality scholarly index allows scholars to engage with these collected papers in way never before possible.
Volume 2 of the Critical Edition’s ‘Essays and Articles’ (EA2) captures published and unpublished essays written by Whitehead from his early London period just after joining the Aristotelian Society in 1915 through to his retirement from Harvard in 1937 until his death in 1947.
This volume includes previously unknown essays as well as papers published in academic journals and monographs. The better-known essays in this period – those that were re-published in collections such as The Aims of Education (1929) and Essays in Science and Philosophy (1947) – suffer from having too many variants, each with their own pagination and variations, making scholarly reference unnecessarily complicated. EA2, for the first time, presents all of Whitehead’s non-monograph works in a single authoritative, chronologically ordered, critically edited, and corrected format, making these volumes the single scholarly standard for researching and referencing these essays.
Critical editing of the essays has corrected the many errors that plagued these texts from original publication.
Creation of a high-quality scholarly index allows scholars to engage with these collected papers in a way never before possible.
This volume is the first authoritative, chronologically ordered, critically edited, and corrected collection of Alfred North Whitehead’s published and unpublished essays and articles from 1886 until 1916, and as such it is the scholarly standard for researching and referencing these essays.
It includes papers published in academic journals as well as previously unknown essays, ranging from philosophy of mathematics to physics through to education.
The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change.
With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields.
Examines the significance of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925
Responds to the question of whether the Harvard Lectures and The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead project change our understanding of the meaning or development of Whitehead’s thought
Written by international experts on Whitehead – including Maria-Teresa Teixeira, Gary Herstein and Jude Jones – who address a range of different aspects of the scholarly implications of the Lectures
The first monograph responding to the Critical Edition: has the potential to establish the tone and influence the direction of subsequent work
Includes the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition
Contributes towards setting scholarly conventions for how to cite and reference the volumes of the Critical Edition
In these newly commissioned essays, leading Whitehead scholars ask a range of important questions about Whitehead’s first year of philosophy lectures. Do these lectures challenge or confirm previous understandings of Whitehead’s published works? What is revealed about the development of Whitehead’s thought in the crucial period after London but before the publication of Science and the Modern World? What should we make of concepts and terms that were introduced in these lectures but were never incorporated into subsequent publications?
Also included in this volume is the text of Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, recently gifted to the Critical Edition of Whitehead, allowing for a clearer understanding of Whitehead’s plans and goals for his first course of lectures in philosophy than has previously been possible.
"On April 15, 1950 at Yale University, Paul Weiss called to order the first meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America. Six decades on, it is easy to forget just how dramatic, even controversial this bald, unapologetic defense of metaphysics would have been in 1950. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, two competing philosophical projects each declared war on metaphysics. One line of attack came from Martin Heidegger (and later “post-modern” philosophers), who triumphantly declared the “end of metaphysics.” The second was waged by logical positivists (and later “ordinary language analysts”), who derided metaphysics as linguistic nonsense. These two competing trends within philosophy, “post-modernism” and “logical positivism,” combined to create an often-hostile environment for metaphysicians.
Although the philosophical heirs to post-modernism and positivism continue to occupy and closely guard much of the philosophical terrain, the fact that metaphysics is now a respected and even central part of philosophy in America today is itself a testament to the success of the Society and the vision and courage of its founders. As revealed by the Presidents of the Society through their Addresses, this volume explores the role and significance of the Metaphysical Society of America in the trajectory of philosophy in America over the last six decades (1950-2010).
This volume includes some of the best and most representative Presidential Addresses covering the nature of metaphysics, the question of knowledge, the question of language, and the question of the good."
In Riders in the Storm professor of philosophy and environmental studies Brian G. Henning presents a clear and accessible introduction to why global warming is happening, why it is still debated in the popular media and in congress, and what the international community is doing to try to address it. He contends that the mainstream moral frameworks of “sustainability” and “stewardship” are welcome improvements over more destructive attitudes regarding humanity’s place in nature, but that they are ultimately insufficient. Encouraging a return to the roots of ethics, which for millennia has focused on examining the nature of the good life well lived, Riders in the Storm explores the “great work” of voluntary simplicity, wide sustainability, and humble self-stewardship. Equipped with colorful graphics and images, suggestions for further research and reading, and dialogue prompts, this text is a straightforward and engaging introduction to climate change.
Although the philosophical heirs to post-modernism and positivism continue to occupy and closely guard much of the philosophical terrain, the fact that metaphysics is now a respected and even central part of philosophy in America today is itself a testament to the success of the Society and the vision and courage of its founders. As revealed by the Presidents of the Society through their Addresses, this volume explores the role and significance of the Metaphysical Society of America in the trajectory of philosophy in America over the last six decades (1950-2010).
Each of the projected three volumes would cover twenty years of the Society’s sixty year history. Chronologically ordered, each chapter would contain a Presidential Address preceded by a brief biographical sketch and, if possible, a picture of the President."
Table of Contents
Introduction:
Roland Faber and Brian G. Henning: Whitehead’s Other Copernican Turn
Part 1 - Complexities of System, Life, and Novelty
Vincent Colapietro: Toward a Metaphysics of Expression
Christoph Kann: Renewing Speculation: The Systematic Aim of Whitehead’s Philosophic Cosmology
Dennis Soelch: Beyond Metaphysics?—A Historiographical Approach to Whitehead’s Speculative Philosophy
Deena Lin: Citing the Paradox: Probing the Systematization of Whitehead as Philosopher Subject
Clinton Combs: Before Metaphysics: Modes of Thought as a Prequel to Whitehead’s “Trilogy”
Roland Faber: Immanence and Incompleteness: Whitehead’s Late Metaphysics
Part 2 - Depths of Nature, Order, and Organicity
Robert J. Valenza: The Organism of Forms in Later Whitehead
Jeremy Dunham: Beyond Dogmatic Finality: Whitehead and the Laws of Nature
Joachim Klose: Alfred North Whitehead’s Receptacle
Helmut Maaßen: Contingency and Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Experience
Regine Kather: The Web of Life and the Constitution of Human Identity: Rethinking Nature as the Main Issue of Whitehead’s Late Metaphysics
Part 3 - Evocations of Value, Beauty, and Concern
Brian G. Henning: Re-Centering Process Thought: Recovering Beauty in A. N. Whitehead’s Late Work
Stascha Rohmer: The Self-Evidence of Civilization
Michael Halewood: Fact, Values, Individuals, and Others: Towards a Metaphysics of Value
Steven Shaviro: Self-enjoyment and Concern: On Whitehead and Levinas
Jude Jones: Provocative Expression: Transitions In and From Metaphysics in Whitehead’s Later Work
Isabella Palin: The Dream of Solomon
Through more than 20 accessible and comprehensive case studies and examples, the authors make it clear to readers that regardless of what religious or non-religious background they come from—regardless of their religious knowledge and experiences—they can discover that science and religion are not enemies, but are companions in the search for truth. The fresh and fascinating Genesis, Evolution and the Search for a Reasoned Faith explores both the nature of science and religion and the intelligent and intimate conversation that is necessary in the search for truth.