“When the “One” becomes invisible again, this is really not about the loss of monism, but of dualism. The disappearance of dualism is really a condition for the liberation of multitude. Gilles Deleuze has the formula that as soon as dualism vanishes “monism is pluralism.” The same strategy, I think, appears in Loomer’s theopoetic language when he says that “God is the world” or the “network” of interrelatedness itself. This is not flat pantheism, but liberation of manifoldness. Some would call this position “panentheism;” but I am reluctant to do so because the word “pan-en-theism” names a “unity in which all is one.” This language that focuses on “unity” again, tends to be at least in danger of harboring again the dualism it was supposed to extradite. To the extent that “unity” becomes visible, dualism has the inclination to get hold again of the theopoetic resistance. We might rather call it “trans-pantheism”- the disappearance of the visibility of the “One.”

For Whitehead, however, this “Revolt against Dualism” must be counter-balanced with a certain “defense of dualism” in the sense that there is no final exclusion of any concept: If the evanescence of dualistic God-language affirms at the same time that the “universe is many” and that the “Universe is one,” we have to be aware of the remaining “dualism in this contrast between unity and multiplicity.” Whitehead, therefore, included “all these kindred dualisms within each occasion of actuality”  – that is, in the infinite manifoldness of becoming itself. What else does this mean than that the evanescence of dualism must not leave us with a new, static dualism between monism and pluralism, but that dualisms must disappear as a process of transcending unity; not as a process of “unification” – towards unity – but of “trans-unification” – toward multiplicity.”

The above passage comes from process theologian Roland Faber. It appears to be a quote from a lecture he gave a Claremont a while back. I found it at theopoetics.net.

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Drawing above by Michael DeLucia

Tags:deleuzemultiplicityprocess philosophyroland fabertheopoeticswhitehead