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9. Concepts of Creation and Pragmatic of Creativity1 Michel Weber In all philosophical theories there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed “creativity”; and God is its primordial, nontemporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed “The Absolute.” In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, “eminent” reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.2 What is the hermeneutic weight of such an epigraph? Our contribution to this cross-cultural volume takes the form of an interpretation of Alfred The author wishes to acknowledge the decisive editorial help by Dr. Anderson Weekes. 2 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), the corrected Edition by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 7. 1 138 North Whitehead’s (1861–1947) philosophical development. 1 It aims to show how his radical understanding of the concept of creativity made him drift away from the standard Western concept of creation qua production, thereby bringing him closer to a Taoist pragmatic of creativity. Two main conceptual bipolarities are used as tools: the concepts of poiesis/praxis and the concepts of liberty/spontaneity. The first two deserve an immediate introduction. Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics systematize the use of the bipolar poiesis/praxis in the following manner: the former names transitive action, i.e., an action that terminates in a product exterior to the agent (like the production of a vase by the potter); the latter names immanent action, i.e., an action in which principle (arche) and goal (telos are one (this being typical of life in general). The paradigm of poiesis is the craftsman’s work and its limit exemplification in demiurgical creation; the paradigm of praxis is practical wisdom, and its extremum is the concept of theoria, i.e., inactive contemplation of the Truth. The crux of the matter is that, although poiesis is the lowest form of action, it defines the conceptual premises of praxis because of the substance/attribute ontology it embodies: in other words, the ontological difference established between the craftsman and his work bifurcates as well the intended immanence of practical life (and especially of theoretical life). So much so that, in the Nichomachean Ethics, all examples of praxis are actually examples of poiesis.2 Our thesis can thus be formulated quite simply: On the one hand, Whitehead’s most daring conceptual attempts take place in Process and Reality (thereafter as PR) and they show a strong will to depart from substantialism and the poiesis of creation it sustains. On the other hand, he did not entirely fulfill his program. It is therefore advisable to propose a For a more systematic and general introduction to Whitehead’s development, one could consult Michel Weber, “Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)” in Stuart Brown (General Editor), Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers. 2 vols. (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, June 2005). For a historic-speculative assessment of the notions of process, see Michel Weber, “Introduction: Process Metaphysics in Context”, in Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics (Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster: ontos verlag, 2004). For the overall background of this presentation, see Michel Weber, La dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead: sensation pure, pancréativité et contiguïsme (Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster: ontos verlag, 2005). 2 Besides of course the repeated and self-explanatory example of “life itself qua pure praxis”. Cf. Pierre Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote. Avec un appendice sur La prudence chez Kant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963). 1 139 path towards such a fulfillment, and exciting to see that it could give to his vision a significant Taoist ring. The paper proceeds in the following steps. First, it sketches the concept of “creation” present in Whitehead’s two earlier Harvard works, Science and the Modern World (thereafter as SMW)1 and Religion in the Making (thereafter as RM).2 Secondly, it proposes a sharp analysis of the concept of “creativity”, core of the “Category of the Ultimate”, which is itself the focal point of the categoreal scheme, the shimmering jewel of Process and Reality. Third, it shows how Adventure of Ideas advocates a “creative creation”. Fourth, it unfolds the implications of Section Two from the perspective of the “co-creation” of the World and God. We conclude with a short assessment of the proximity existing between Whiteheadian cocreation and Taoist eventfulness. I. Creation The Preface of RM highlights the fact that SMW and RM constitute two independent, yet cross-elucidating, works. In both we find the same Aristotelian overtone in a Platonic landscape: the discussion of the concept of God occurs in a dispassionate context, i.e., independently of ethical and religious normative concerns. This is especially true of SMW, which has no direct roots in these spheres and does not develop such consequences. Whitehead’s goal is a speculative frame apt for understanding how relative permanence and genuine flux, potentiality and actuality, are interrelated. His founding intuition is twofold: on the one hand, the ontological priority of flux over permanence; on the other, the grounding of actuality in a “sea” of potentiality. His analysis is transcendental in the sense that he is looking for the conditions of possibility of the transition from the possible to the actual, from being to becoming, from the Many to the One. SMW opens the transcendental field with two arguments proceeding from the same root: actualization is a process of restriction (or selection) of potentialities. Accordingly, a threefold “principle of limitation” is introduced: there is a limitation among the pure potentialities that are the eternal objects; there is a limitation imposed by past events; and there is a general restriction due to the cosmic epoch in question. This “limitation of antecedent selection” or “triple envisagement”, strictly immanent to the 1 2 Science and the Modern World (1925) (New York: The Free Press, 1967). Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan, 1926). 140 World (i.e., performed by its actualities), constitutes the conditions of possibility of any mundane occurrence. However, two problems are still pending: value and order. On the one hand, everything has, by virtue of its very limited existence, some value— but there cannot be value without “antecedent standards of value.” On the other hand, the limitation of antecedent selection does not provide the conditions of compossibility of events (the problem is here, as we shall soon see, that in coming into existence, new events must necessarily be independent of each other). Hence he needs a “Principle of Concretion” that grounds antecedent standards as well as active compossibilization. Although Whitehead called it “God”, the Principle serves as a bare servomechanism, distinct from the World yet operating in it. RM names the three “formative elements” implicit in SMW: creativity or substantial activity, eternal objects or pure possibilities, and God or the Principle of Concretion constitute together the conditions of compossibility of mundane eventfulness. With the expression of these elements, the emphasis falls on the Principle of Concretion, de facto obliterating the principle of limitation and thereby down-valuing the strictly speaking mundane inner activity. All this makes it clear that the Timaeus’ categories (creation is a making) were then still haunting his mind.1 II. Creativity Let us now see how the categoreal scheme of PR (based on the Gifford Lectures of 1927-1928) redistributes the roles in the creative dialectic uniting the World and the formative elements. The enunciation of the “Category of the Ultimate” rebalances Whitehead’s ontology by claiming that the ultimate is what is named by the concept of “creativity”: neither the World nor God is ultimate. The ultimateness of the concept makes its technical peculiarity—an intrinsic polysemiality—necessary. With the result that a proper understanding of Whitehead’s worldview is impossible See his confession at RM, 104. Further analysis would of course be needed to do justice to both Plato and Whitehead, but we have time only for two quick remarks: one, the status of the eternal objects, however tricky, cannot be reduced to the one Plato confers upon his Ideas—the eternal objects, to say the least, are bare abstractions localized in God’s primordial nature—; two, as we will soon discover, the proper elucidation of the formative elements’ interconnection occurs only with the organic categories of PR. 1 141 without the distinction of the various layers of meaning of the concept and the subsequent reconstruction of their dynamic interlocking. Qua ultimate, creativity is all-embracing, omnipresent; nothing escapes its grip—and the power of suggestiveness of the concept lies precisely in the tight synergy created by its polychromatic facets. One can organize these according to two main axes. First of all, creativity is dipneumonous: God and the World constitute the two specular loci of the creative rhythm; they are the “contrasted opposites” in unison with each other's becoming. Secondly, creativity is bifunctional: on the one hand, it is agent, fundamental inclination; on the other, it is reticulated, partial goals, i.e., instantiated (in actualities-subject) or characterized (in actualities-object). Before specifying these facets, let us already remark cautiously that neither creativity nor its factors function in addition to the actual occasions (Whitehead’s “windowed monads”), but through the contrasted opposites, whose osmotic co-belonging and symmetric bifunctionality it ensures. It is only the intertwining of these two threads that can approximate Whitehead's intuition. The claim that creativity is dipneumonous aims at underlining two complementary points. One, although there are significant differences between the “World” and “God”, there is neither ontological primacy nor bifurcation (i.e. disparity) between them. Two, Whitehead does not replace the strict hierarchy of classical theism by a panentheism (this is Hartshorne’s use of Whitehead to postmodernize Plato). Qua agent, it names the spontaneity that dwells in the Whole. It is, so to speak, a principle of unrest pushed up to the hilt: not only does it account for the perpetual flux of “things”, the constant renewal of features Nature makes us familiar with, but it also designates the radical novelty that defines genuine eventfulness. To differentiate bare repetition from the bursting forth of the unprecedented, one can speak of novation versus innovation. Creative advance is the result of the mutual support of these two fundamental processes. Technically speaking, Whitehead equates this principle of novation with the (mundane) principle of limitation; and the principle of innovation with the (divine) Principle of Concretion. In other words, in contradiction to his intuition that creativity is a rebalanced and internalized creation, he ends up arguing that “innovation” comes solely and directly from God. This complex interpretative issue will be treated later with the help of PR’s concept of “subjective initial aim”. We need to specify the ontological atomism that shapes the creative reticulum. Qua reticulated, creativity is either instantiated or characterized. 142 Actual entities (subjects) are the “instances” of creativity. The question that that concept answers is the metaphysical puzzle par excellence: the coming into existence of events themselves, i.e., how do totally new mundane (or divine) features occurs? Following mainly Zeno and James (as well as nascent quantum mechanics and special relativity), Whitehead argues that an ontology of atomic (in the sense of epochal) event is required to do justice to the facts of experience (understood in a radically empiricist way). Creative advance asks for the possibility of innovative occurrences within the novative—or continuous—cosmic structure. These occurrences require some sort of “elbow-room” and generate discontinuity. The coming into existence of a new actuality happens in a bud-like manner for two more reasons, both linked with this innovatory dimension: it involves an atemporal process framed by a free decision. The next section will further explore this durational existence. Suffice it to say for now that the actuality-subject is a drop of subjective experience. But the subjectivity involved here has to be taken cum grano salis: by virtue of the “reformed subjectivist principle”, Whitehead allows himself (simply because we have no other choice, as he repeatedly says) to generalize the main characteristics of his own experience to all possible experiences. It has been opportunely argued that his system is a panexperientialism: everything that exists or is is constituted by experiences. Let us underline that this speculative insight has nothing to do with any sort of panpsychism: to be subject is to experience in the deep and primordial sense of the word, i.e., to enjoy the immediacy of one’s own prehensions of the world, not to be animated in the etymological sense. A twin distinction needs to be introduced: every actual entity (subject) can be analyzed into two poles, the physical pole, which indicates the causal impact of the past on the actuality in the making (or in concrescence in Whitehead’s terminology), and the mental pole, which refers to the moment of self-determination of the concrescence. When analyzed, the bursting forth of a new existent displays thus, on the one hand, the influence of its past world and of God’s “initial subjective aim”; and, on the other, an autonomic position of itself for itself (“immanent decision”) and for others (“transcendent decision”). The first decision determines what the actuality prehends; the second determines how it “plans” to influence its successors. Now, from the perspective of the World, the actuality-subject exists only for a short period of time (a temporal paradox that needs more 143 development); when it has reached its synthetic goal, it topples into objectivity, i.e., loses the vivid immediacy that is its prehensive enjoyment. “Character” stands for actualities-object; they no longer “exist”, but “are”. To be object is to be experienced, to exert causal efficacy on actualities-subject. Actualities-object sediment in, so to speak, layers of reticular (or “ashy”) creativity. However, this is not the end of the story. The vanishing of the actuality’s emotional core has a twofold creative impact. On the one hand, as we have just seen, there is an objective immortality embodying the determining power of past. On the other hand, there is a subjective immortality that requires for its proper introduction a quick presentation of the development of the concept of God in PR; it will act as an appropriate link with our concluding section on co-creation. The concept of God receives in PR further specifications (actually already adumbrated in RM) in terms of the “distinction of reason” of the primordial nature (a character of creativity) from the consequent nature of God (an instance of creativity). The primordial nature is the Principle of Concretion, i.e., of compossibilization. Principle of unison operating through the conferral of the initial subjective aim already evoked, it enables the existence of a cosmos housing the highest intensities of experience possible. The consequent nature acts as a Principle of Everlastingness: qua consequent, God saves the marrow of all mundane experiences by transmuting the enjoyment of the satisfied actualities into a harmony of subjective harmonies. In other words, God values the World, integrates the value of the World—not the World itself. III. Creative Creation The result of our heuristic is so far mitigated: although it has been claimed that Whitehead’s speculative goal is to realize a daring re-balancing of the World-God relationship, his technicalities appear still theistically biased, if not poiesis-oriented. There is, in other words, an internal tension within PR: on the one hand, it introduces categories possessing a hugely subversive (eventful) potential; on the other, it still endures the gravity of traditional (substantialistic) theism. In Adventures of Ideas (thereafter as AI), Whitehead claims: “Plato moves about amid a fragmentary system like a man dazed by his own penetration.”1 —It might be the case that this applies, mutatis mutandis, to Whitehead himself. It will be the purpose of 1 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1961), 146-7. 144 our next section to push the subversive side of PR to the hilt; for the time being, it is instructive to see what happened after the Gifford Lectures. One should remember first that SMW and RM were (and still are) very well sold books. Because of the topics they address and the type of treatment these are given, they were usually acclaimed by the critics. PR, on the contrary, was poorly received (even the Gifford Lectures themselves were a debacle), and this must have had a deep impact on the philosopher: the synthesis of a life’s reflection1 had been at best ignored and at worst denigrated. Certainly, the tragic death of his son must have left the unfortunate man disconsolate… Hence the following hypothesis: with AI and MT, Whitehead tried, in all humility, to renew with the library success of his first philosophical works by adopting again a style less “categoreal”. Whereas SMW and RM were conceptually shy because his system was still looking for its coherence, AI and MT are somewhat elusive because PR had demonstrated that the reader was not willing to dive point-blank into a full ontological renewal. The more straightforward sign of this is perhaps the place Plato takes again in AI. In SMW and RM, Plato’s presence is strong but subliminal. When he is cited, it is mainly in reference to the mathematical realm of ideas. For its part, PR makes an extensive use of the Timaeus’ cosmology2 . Its basic argument is twofold: yes, the philosophy of organism needs a realm of Forms; no, heavenly perfection is not possible because of (i) the dynamic bipolarity within God and (ii) the typology of eternal objects (see the distinction between the objective and the subjective species). There is a further reference to the “creation of a cosmic epoch”,3 but, on the whole, Whitehead cautiously distances himself from Plato.4 Out of the constant reference to Plato that characterizes AI,5 three important concepts crystallise: (i) the creation of the world qua “victory of persuasion over force”;6 (ii) the definition of being as “power”;7 and (iii) the appeal to the “superior metaphysical subtlety” 8 of the concept of Receptacle. Here lies the puzzling novelty: the concept of creativity— See PR, xiv. See PR, xiv, 42, 82-83, 91, 93-96. 3 PR, 96 4 PR, 39, 44. 5 See AI, viii. 6 AI, 25. 7 Ibid., 120. 8 Ibid., 122. 1 2 145 nothing less than the key to PR—is very discreet in AI. Its sole occurrences1 are rather intuitive, barely technical, whereas the Receptacle acquires an all-embracing speculative presence (as far as the writer knows, it does not occur anywhere else in the corpus). The categoreal drift is accentuated in Modes of Thought (thereafter as MT): although no references are made to the Timaeus or the Receptacle, there is a punctual emphasis on the Platonic intuition of the importance of mathematical system 2 and a reminder that “not-being is a sort of being”. 3 Again, creativity is barely evoked, and when it is invoked it is only in purely general terms.4 In conclusion, it can be said that Whitehead’s last books pull back on the conceptual and stylistic front. It is very doubtful that he ever changed his mind on the ultimacy of creativity, but he chose an easier path (actually quite an old-fashioned substantialistic one) to present his views. Perhaps, “creative creation” is apt for depicting this hybrid: Whitehead does not agree with Plato’s cosmology (as it is set out by A. E. Taylor),5 but he conveniently adopts its demiurgical metaphors to suggest his ademiurgical worldview. Following the entire Western tradition, he uses transitive action to name immanent action. IV. Co-Creation Let us now envisage how one could improve the general coherence of Whitehead’s categories and their adequacy to his intuition of the creative advance. By doing so, one will necessarily depart not only from the “vicariage atmosphere” allegedly haunting Whitehead,6 but also from his poetic bias. A full replacement of the Thomistic concept of ontological dependence by an ontological co-dependence indeed requires two things: the explicit operationalization of the principle of limitation within PR’s framework; and the categorialization of the initial aim delivered by the World to God. If we take seriously not only that God constitutes a necessary condition of 1 2 PR, 177, 179, 212, 236-7. Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 2, 76. 3 Ibid., 53. 4 Ibid., 117, 154. 5 See AI, 168. 6 Bertrand Russell, Autobiography (London: Routledge, 1991), 130. 146 the mundane existence, but also, symmetrically, that the World itself plays an essential constitutive role in God’s existence, then we are led to four possible valences of the concept of initial subjective aim: God delivers an initial aim to each mundane actuality and to Itself; and the World delivers an initial aim to itself and to God as well. Whitehead’s theorization of the conferral of an initial aim by the World to the mundane concrescing entity (SMW’s principle of limitation and PR’s transcendent decision) is contemporaneous with the theorization of the initial aim delivered by God to the mundane concrescing entity (SMW’s Principle of Concretion and PR’s initial subjective aim per se). When PR articulates the two divine natures, it further argues that the completeness of the primordial nature grants the perfection of the subjective aim presiding over the becoming of the consequent nature. The only unfulfilled valence is thus the conferral of an initial aim by the World to God. In the same way that the principles of limitation and of Concretion work hand by hand in the World, we have to look for the co-principle of the Principle of Concretion with regard to God’s concrescence. If it is expedient to use a derivative meaning of the concept of transcendent decision qua principle of limitation, the question of the modus operandi remains, all the more so since the basic difference between the World and God—the World is primordially many (but one), whereas God primordially one (but many)—affects the issue: it goes without saying that God’s primordial oneness makes the understanding of the coherent conferral of initial aims very straightforward. Moreover, it is precisely because the principle of limitation offers only a polymorphic “antecedent selection” that it needs to be complemented by a “primordial selection” that has both the universal ring of the all-embracing divine lure and the particular overtone suitable for precisely that actualization. In conclusion, the primordial manyness of the subjective aim delivered by mundane actualities to the divine concrescing entity asks for speculative developments less than its oneness. And one cannot but think about the twin theological concepts of evil and kenosis. Limitations of time unfortunately lead us to conclude with these points undeveloped. V. A Comparative Discussion We have seen that Whitehead’s philosophical development has reached its acme with PR: the move from a concept of creation to the concept of creativity is fundamental and is intrinsically pregnant with the concept of 147 co-creation. One of his last papers—“Immortality” 1 —makes this completely obvious. The unreceptivity of his peers led him, however, in the direction of an apparent compromise between creation and creativity: creative creation. As a result, assessing the proximity between Whiteheadian and Taoist philosophies requires the questioning of the possible similarity between the co-creation advocated (in absentia) by the former and the eventfulness of the later. One very simple point is striking: with the dipneumonousness of the ultimate, PR renounces the mono-principial and adopts a biprincipial ontology so characteristic of Chinese thought: remember that PR does not advocate dualism but operationalizes two archai that are both independent and interdependent.2 Before going further, let us say a quick word on the possible impact of non-Western thought on Whitehead’s philosophical development. There are not many signs to indicate that Whitehead had a deep, direct acquaintance with Indian, Chinese or Japanese thought. But Whitehead had various opportunities to meet Buddhist-inclined scholars—let us think only of his colleagues Hocking and Needham.3 Although he might have been interested in the peculiarities of Buddhist logic, the field developed only later. 4 In the Dialogues, he confers about China with Walter B. Cannon and later refers to Confucius.5 Since the vast majority of his papers Delivered on April 1941 and reprinted in Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc., 1947), 77-96. See also his radical understanding of the theological disaster (and of religion in general) in the Dialogues, recorded by Lucien Price. Introduction by Sir David Ross (Boston: Little, Brown & Company; London: Max Reinhardt Ltd., 1954). 2 See Francois Jullien, Procès ou création. Une introduction à la pensée chinoise. Essai de problématique interculturelle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989). 3 Cf., e.g., Rouner, Leroy S. (ed.), Philosophy, Religion and the Coming World Civilization: Essays in Honor of William Ernest Hocking (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); and Joseph Needham, The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963); and Joseph Needham, The Pattern of Nature-Mysticism and Empiricism in the Philosophy of Science: Third Century B. C. China, Tenth Century A. D. Arabia, and Seventeenth Century A. D. Europe, in Science, Medicine and History. Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice written in honour of Charles Singer, collected and edited by Edgar Ashworth Underwood, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1953). 4 Cf. F. Theo Stcherbatsky’s Buddhist Logic (1930/1932, New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1962). 5 Lucien Price, Dialogues of A. N. Whitehead, op. cit., 72 and 145. 1 148 were burned after his death, it is doubtful that any certainty will ever be gained here. There have been actually a few good inquiries, but often the authors lack knowledge in one of the two fields that are brought together.1 When Whitehead appropriates the demiurgical narrative, he is trying to go beyond the poetic understanding of creation and to install a true praxis of creation, a praxis that would free itself from the bifurcation of nature. It is precisely here that the power of the concept of creativity lies. On the contrary, when he advocates a creative creation instead of an explicit cocreation, his hybrid is closer to poiesis than to praxis. Indeed, AI still appears prisoner of the poetic pattern of thought: “the mere word Creativity suggests Creator, so that the whole doctrine acquires an air of paradox, or of pantheism.” 2 Furthermore, since the substance/attribute ontology is intrinsically correlated to the subject/predicate pattern of thought embodied in language, the question of the stylistic expression of Whitehead’s intuition is far more important than it might look at first sight. In other words, the use of the old-fashioned narratives is definitively an impediment. To cut a long story short, they refer to the wager on the rationality of the cosmos: human rationality and cosmic rationality match (strong version) or at least fit (weak version). Historically speaking, the concept of logos expressed the strong version of that worldview and it still haunts Western philosophy. Ontologism implies that speculative attitude. Hence Whitehead’s linguistic optimism: even PR exploits the richness of its reformed categories to “make the event speak”. Here is the parting of ways with Taoism—a discipline that does not admit ontologism and that replaces linguistic optimism by a linguistic skepticism welcoming paradoxes. 3 The controlling poiesis is totally discarded and carries along praxis with it. This can be easily understood from the perspective of the liberty/spontaneity bipolarity: poiesis and Cf. Joseph A. Bracken, S. J., “Whiteheadian Creativity, the Tao, and the Thomistic Act of Being”, Pacifica 6, 1993, 179-188; Chung-yuan Chang, Creativity and Taoism. A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1963); Linyu Gu, “Time as Emotion vs. Time as Moralization: Whitehead and the Yi Jing”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 25 (1998), 209-236; David L. Hall, “Process and Anarchy: A Taoist Vision of Creativity”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. XXVIII (1978), 271-285; and Charles Hartshorne, “Process Themes in Chinese Thought”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. VI (1979), 323-336. 2 AI, 236. 3 Cf., Edward T. Ch'ien, “The Conception of Language and the Use of Paradoxes in Buddhism and Taoism”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1984), 375399. 1 149 praxis are representative of the hegemony of conscious rationality in Western thought. Poiesis is the condition of possibility of techne whereas praxis conditions proairesis, in both cases we see that rational choice is the cornerstone of action. Only the one who follows reason is free. For its part, Taoism advocates spontaneity, which does not belong either to the rational or the irrational realm. It is just a matter of being at unison (a concept, interestingly enough, not foreign at all to Whitehead’s prose) with the Whole. The achieved harmony is no more the product of a reflective standpoint; it is a pure pragmatic that levels differences between beings. Philosophy is a matter of deconstructing—in order to achieve a pragmatic of creativity—habits of thoughts that secure the poetics of creation. And conceptual redundancy is barely suited to formulate that living paradox.