“Our word “reason” goes back to the Greek verb lego, the verbal noun of which is the famous word logos, which was translated as the Latin ratio. Lego has two principal meanings: “to say” (hence the Word of John’s logos) and “to put together” (related to lechos as the marital couch). (As Whitehead states: “Logic starts with primitive ideas and puts them together.”)[36] The most general definition of rationality that we could draw from this etymology is the following: “Rational beings are those beings who are able to put their world together so that it makes sense to them.” We could then say that in addition to analytic reason, one that is prescriptive and insists on universal laws of thinking, there is also synthetic reason, which is descriptive and does not bind us to the laws of logic.[36](37)

Synthetic reason has generally been passive in the sense that most people have accepted the way religious and cultural institutions have put their world together for them. Traditional religions, then, are constantly involved in re-lego, faithfully repeating the words (logia) and ritually putting the world together again and again according to the accepted ways. Synthetic reason, however, can also be active, creative, and even anarchic, defying the old rules and proposing new ways of looking at the world. Cezanne, for example, rejected the laws of perspective and ushered in a whole new way of doing art. Scientists working on the cutting edge go with their intuitions and aesthetic instincts, putting together the most elegant and sometimes daring new theories. Only afterward are they tested by analytic reason, whereas both artists and virtuous persons rightly resist such testing.

Let us now relate synthetic reason to the distinction between rational and aesthetic order.[36](38) By abstracting from the particular, rational order, the analytic reason mentioned above, is ultimately indifferent to concrete individuals because it generates the rule of complete substitutability. For example, p’s and q’s can stand for any word in any natural language, just as in classical physics one atom can take the place of any other atom without changing the whole. The discovery of intimately paired subatomic particles undermines the basic assumptions of classical physics and demonstrates that the universe is far more organic than mechanical. This discredits even more the theory of social atomism and vindicates Whitehead’s analogy of organism. The actual occasion is definitely not interchangeable with others; rather, it constitutes a unique appropriation of the data of the world…Whitehead’s cosmos is therefore constituted by aesthetic rather than rational order; it is not a simple sum of interchangeable parts.” –Nick Geir

I’ve recently been re-reading Nick Gier’s essay, Whitehead, Confucius, and the Aesthetics of Virtue, which, despite some reservations I have regarding some of the stark cultural binaries Gier makes (e.g. like the one between the Greco-Roman/Indian substantial self and the Whiteheadian/Confucian process self), I am still enjoying.

With regard to the passage above, I do think Gier’s insight about how the ‘principle of substitutability’ easily supports a social atomism where persons are interchangeable, is a good one. Perhaps a helpful, concrete example of this in action would be to envision the typical Western, hierarchical, capitalist workplace, where the enterprise is often viewed as the sum of its parts and workers, like all the other variable costs (e.g. materials, packaging, shipping, sales, utilities, etc.) are imagined as interchangeable pieces in a money making game.

Additionally, and best of all, Gier’s description of active synthetic reason above is quite informative and appealing to me. The idea that traditional religions are constantly “re-lego-ing” themselves brings to mind the small colorful bricks lying poised for play across our floor, rings true in my ears, and makes me smile. Just as we find in music throughout the ages, if we look around me may indeed see various religions engaged in a constant process of receiving a tradition from the past (prehension) and subsequently “riffing” on it (concrescence) to achieve aesthetic satisfaction.

May we all find our style, the one that leads us to aesthetic satisfaction. And may we all recognize that we are not interchangeable parts but custom, detailed, beautiful and irreplaceable organic works of art. Amen.

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Art above: Dish of Apples by Paul Cézanne

Tags:Aesthetic OrderconfucianismethicsNick Gierprocess philosophyRational Ordervirtue ethicswhitehead