Title: Process-relational theory primer « immanence
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Process-relational theory primer
What is process-relational thought?
Bibliographic starting points
Process-relational theory on this blog
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Content: In contrast to materialist, idealist, dualist, and other perspectives that have dominated modern western philosophy, a process-relational perspective more explicitly recognizes the dynamic, complex, systemic, and evolving nature of reality. What follows is a brief summary of the process-relational perspective. It is followed by some bibliographic starting points and by a list of links to some of the more substantive posts on this blog that have dealt with process-relational theory. Note: An updated and much more complete version of this primer is found in Appendix 1 of Shadowing the Anthropocene, available for free (or pay-what-you-can) download from the publisher. What is process-relational thought? Process-relational thought is a form of metaphysical realism that can be found articulated in a variety of philosophies around the world, from ancient times to modern: in Heraclitus and the later Hellenistic Stoics, in Nagarjuna and the Madhyamika philosophers of India, in Zhuang Zhu and the T’ian-t’ai and Hua-Yen Buddhists in China, in the Zen Buddhism of Dogen and the later Zen-inspired Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy, but also, in one form or another, in such western philosophers as Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Friedrich Schelling, Henri Bergson, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Wilmon Sheldon, Wilfrid Sellars, Justus Buchler, Charles Hartshorne, Gregory Bateson, Gilbert Simondon, Cornelius Castoriadis, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. Contemporary thinkers working in a process-relational vein include Nicholas Rescher, Richard Neville, Robert Corrington, John Deely, David Ray Griffin, Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Xavier Zubiri, William Connolly, Catherine Keller, Brian Massumi, Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi, Freya Mathews, Roland Faber, Michael Weber, and Jane Bennett. Process-relational thought also characterizes significant aspects of the thought of G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, and of many who follow in the wake of these influential giants of modern philosophy.