In 2017, Volume 1 of The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead was published. This volume includes students’ notes on Whitehead’s lectures at Harvard University from 1924 to 1925, which is valuable material for understanding his philosophical development. In the lectures, Whitehead sometimes mentions logic, which was his earlier major. How did he understand logic at this later period? How did logic relate to his metaphysics? This paper attempts to answer these questions. First, I examine how Whitehead constructed his metaphysics and the relationship of this design to logic. In the Harvard lectures, Whitehead was attempting to construct a metaphysical system in which becoming is compatible with the eternal, and in which he felt the need to include logic. Second, I clarify the definition of logic as it is given in his lectures. Whitehead used some unusual terms (“Shadow of Truth,” “formulation,” “the how”) to explain the essence of logic. I explain what these terms mean, thereby elucidating his definition of logic. Finally, I conclude that in Whitehead’s metaphysics, logic is the science that attends to the point where becoming meets the eternal. From 1924 to 1925, logic was essential to his metaphysics, since it was concerned with both the aspects that Whitehead attempted to sustain in his philosophy.

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This article critically considers “Object-Oriented Philosophy vs. Radical Empiricism” written by Graham Harman, and then explores the theory of pure experience in James’s philosophy in comparison to Harman and New Realists. In his essay, Harman regards James to be “too close to the traditional empiricists” and “too close to idealism.” But I will show that his interpretation of James is too narrow and inaccurate to prove his claims. Next, I will outline the major trends in realism at the turn of the century. In particular I will deal with New Realism or Neo-Realism, which was led by such younger philosophers as Edwin Bissell Holt, Ralph Barton Perry and William Pepperell Montague, and which earnestly refuted the old-fashioned idealism that had dominated American philosophy through the nineteenth century. In this article I aim to bring to light the realistic aspect of James’s philosophy.

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Modern natural philosophy was often caught in the fallacy of bifurcation. In opposition to the bifurcation, Whitehead adopted Kant's assumption, ‘significance’ is an essential element in concrete experience. Significance is the relatedness of things. According to Whitehead, significance forms concrete experiences. By discussing significance, Whitehead attempted to overcome the bifurcation, and supposed that both our perceptual life and universal nature could be founded. The aim of this paper is to discuss ‘significance’ defined by Whitehead, and then to discuss cognisance by relatedness in the structure of signification. The first chapter discusses the structure of signification. The structure reveals a whole-and-part relation. This relation is discussed by the interaction between a percipient event and a duration. The percipient event defines the duration which is ‘all nature’, and the duration determines the percipient event which is a part. In Chapter 2, cognisance by relatedness is discussed in the structure of signification. For example, without knowing the qualities of the moon, we can know the moon in terms of temporal and spatial relations. We take cognisance of the nature beyond our direct perception. Such cognisance is the basis of scientific theories of externality. Thus, scientific theories are founded on significance.

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In the theory of Whitehead’s organic philosophy, the concept of feelings is structured as important elements of actual entity. On the occasion that he structures the theory of prehending actual entity, the concept of feelings is influenced by the view of nature of English poets. He overcomes the dualism of society by the theory which　the concept of feelings is constituted in the organic view of nature. When he thinks the relation of English poetic literature　and the mechanism of science, he selects Wordsworth and Shelley. Because, Wordsworth praises the nature but refuses the science, on the other hand, Shelley praises the science and expresses the poem of unifying science and nature. Whitehead experiences feelings for nature as prehensive unities by enjoying Wordsworth’s poems. Shelley’s view of nature is expressed by characters of beauty and color. It is the organic nature functioning with all experience. Particularly, Shelley thinks that human beings enjoy the eternal soul by the connection of feelings through the aesthetic intuition and words expressing the aesthetic consciousness. Both Wordsworth and Shelley recognize the eternal soul as aesthetic values of nature. Whitehead explains six notions of change, value, eternal objects, endurance, organism, and interfusion, for the philosophy of nature. Whitehead explains that the eternal soul (universality) in nature is the essential character of religious spirit. To enjoy the aesthetic intuition in the nature means a unity of bodily experience, and connects the religion and the art. For changing the social consciousness, Whitehead emphasizes the development of our faculties of enjoying the beauty

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This essay’s argument centers on two points. The first concerns the suitability of the term “play” to succinctly describe our actual world, which A. N. Whitehead called the world where conflict takes place between “the spirit of change,” which creatively advances toward novelty, and “the spirit of conservation” (Whitehead, 1967/1925, p. 201) —a world where the becoming and perishing of actual entities take place. The second point is that Whitehead’s method of speculative philosophy that includes an exhaustive discussion about this world of play is itself adequately described by the term “play.” Whitehead called the method of his philosophical exploration “speculative philosophy,” describing it as an attempt beginning with “immediate experience” to construct an “adequate and coherent logical system of general ideas” via “imaginative generalization” (Whitehead, 1978/1929, pp. 3-7). What becomes crucial in this search for generality is a “leap of imagination” that entails a departure from the restrictions and particularities of our immediate experience. Whitehead’s comparison of this leap of imagination—a methodology of speculative philosophy—to the flight of an airplane (Whitehead, 1978/1929, p. 5) is well known. We will use another of his metaphorical expressions, “play of free imagination” (ibid.), to refer to this free flight of imagination in this essay. Whitehead suggests that the element of play, as an unrestricted flight of imagination, plays a crucial role in speculative philosophy, as much as does rigorous logic. As such, the concept of play has double meanings in Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, namely because the world that speculative philosophy explores can be understood as a world of play, and the method of speculative philosophy’s exploration involves a play of imagination. This essay will attempt to construct a dialogue between Whitehead’s philosophy of the organism and the philosophies of play, particularly those by F. von Schiller, F. Nietzsche, J. Huizinga, R. Caillois, W. Benjamin, and E. Fink, in order to thoroughly discuss the double meanings of play within speculative philosophy.

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In principle, a proposition is symbolized as words and images in the system of subject-predicate relation. Whitehead propositional theory asks what is the presentational immediacy and how the foundation of consciousness is established by this symbolism. The presentational immediacy is based on the causal efficacy, that is associated with it in a subjective form. There is a role of symbolic reference to be involved in the process and to create the productive image. According to the flow led by the causal efficacy, the presentational immediacy is formed as image. In the process of symbolism, the pure potentiality (the eternal objects contained therein) is transformed into the propositions. A public-private alternative takes place and an idea of responsibility arises. It is imagination that is operating strongly behind it. The pure potentiality by itself never falls into time, and as such is 'pure'. If it become realized, converted to impure, it turns into the real potentiality and finally into the actual entities. From the point of view of the present, the pure potentiality can not be positioned at all and stays the unpredictable. The pure potentials do not exist in the present time, and thus the eternal objects are waiting in the future. Future is an unknown potential, and that is the horizon which the concept of pure potentiality looks forward to.

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After the turn of the century from the late 19th century to the twentieth century, so-called progressive education had already become mainstream in the US educational circles in the 1930s. At that time, progressive education was criticized from various standpoints such as Essentialism represented by William C. Bagley and Perennialism represented by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. Among the criticisms, there was one from a position that agreed with the theory of philosophical new realism. In this paper, I will take Frederick S. Breed as a representative of such a position. He interpreted the new realist arguments including that of Ralph B. Perry, and reconstructed them in a way that conformed to his view of education. By focusing on his argument, particularly on how to defend the subject-matter curriculum against the project-type curriculum that is characteristic of progressive education, this paper will consider and estimate the extent that new realism functioned in the educational thought.

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