Observations placeholder
North Whitehead, Alfred – 17 Which comes first the thought or the thinker?
Identifier
025953
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
PART II DISCUSSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
Chapter VI - From Descartes To Kant
Section III
Descartes in his own philosophy conceives the thinker as creating the occasional thought. The philosophy of organism inverts the order, and conceives the thought as a constituent operation in the creation of the occasional thinker. The thinker is the final end whereby there is the thought. In this inversion we have the final contrast between a philosophy of substance and a philosophy of organism.
Section V
The philosophies of substance presuppose a subject which then encounters a datum, and then reacts to the datum. The philosophy of organism presupposes a datum which is met with feelings [emotions], and progressively attains the unity of a subject.