General Theme: What does the second volume of Whitehead’s Harvard lectures tell us about his philosophy and its development?

The first volume of Whitehead’s Harvard lectures, published in early 2017 as The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925: Philosophical Presuppositions of Science (HL1), established that Whitehead used his Harvard classroom to test out his philosophical ideas, a conclusion supported by the fact that Whitehead would later write in the preface to Process and Reality that “In the expansion of these lectures to the dimensions of the present book, I have been greatly indebted to the critical difficulties suggested by the members of my Harvard classes” (xiv–xv).

Through a careful reading of this first year of Whitehead’s lectures, the anthology Whitehead at Harvard: 1924–1925—based on the ninth WRP conference “Whitehead Revealed: Examining Whitehead’s First Year of Harvard Lectures”—showed Whitehead’s indebtedness to Harvard colleague Lawrence J. Henderson, explored his ventures into cutting-edge quantum theory, re-examined his relationship with Plato, Kant, and Hartshorne, and challenged longstanding theories about the development of his thought, such as Lewis Ford’s “temporal atomism” thesis.

With the January 2021 publication of the second volume of Whitehead’s Harvard lectures as The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1925–1927: General Metaphysical Problems of Science (HL2), scholars now have access to the laboratory of Whitehead’s classroom for his second and third years in America, from the time just after the publication of his Science and the Modern World, through his delivery of the 1926 Lowell lectures that would become Religion in the Making, and up to his delivery of the Barbour-Page lectures that would become Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect.

Interested in submitting a paper? See our call for papers.

Proposals are due by 30 June 2022.

Full papers are due by 1 September 2022.

Papers presented at the conference will also be eligible for consideration for inclusion in a special issue of Process Studies that will focus on HL2.