The Center for Process Studies is pleased to announce the publication of Revue Roumaine de Philosophie Tome 69, Nr. 2 (2025), a special open-access issue dedicated to “Whitehead and Idealism,” featuring research first presented at a 2024 conference of the same name organized by Constantin Rădulescu-Motru Institute of Philosophy and Psychology of the Romanian Academy, Department of Western Philosophy. Invited editors Bogdan Rusu and Claudiu Baciu curate a wide-ranging collection that reopens the question of Alfred North Whitehead’s relationship to the idealist tradition—an inquiry newly relevant at a time when philosophical interest in metaphysics, panpsychism, and speculative thought is once again gaining momentum.
In his foreword, Bogdan Rusu highlights how Whitehead’s philosophical development—shaped early by British absolute idealists such as Bradley, McTaggart, Lotze, and Caird—has long been overshadowed by mid-20th-century analytic philosophy’s suspicion of idealism. This issue responds to that historical oversight by examining Whitehead not only as a realist and speculative metaphysician but also as a thinker whose deepest conceptual commitments remain intertwined with the idealist heritage he inherited, transformed, and critically reworked. The contributions collectively seek to clarify what Whitehead meant when he described his system as a “transformation of some main doctrines of Absolute Idealism onto a realistic basis,” and to reassess his place within broader idealist lineages.
The issue features original research articles by Luigi Dappiano, Stascha Rohmer, Marco Bonutto, Keith A. Robinson, Constantin Stoenescu, Ronny Desmet, Leemon B. McHenry, Guido Vanheeswijck, Henrieta Șerban, Marian George Panait, and Andrew M. Davis, along with major contributions by the invited editors themselves. Topics range from Whitehead’s engagement with Stoicism, Hegel, Bradley, and Russell, to explorations of contrast, creativity, self-causation, relativity, panpsychism, and the philosophy of organic relations. Together, these studies illuminate the many ways Whitehead’s process philosophy both draws from and challenges the idealist tradition, offering fresh perspectives on his metaphysical project and its contemporary significance.
This special issue stands as a significant contribution to Whitehead scholarship and to the broader study of idealism, realism, and speculative philosophy. By re-examining the historical and conceptual forces that shaped Whitehead’s thought, the volume aims to deepen understanding of his metaphysics and to encourage renewed dialogue between process philosophy and the idealist currents that helped bring it into being.
Contents
Foreword by Bogdan Rusu
Wholes and Events: The Subterranean Path from Stoicism to Whitehead by Luigi Dappiano
The Neo-Berkeleyan Whitehead by Bogdan Rusu
Self-causation and Creativity in Hegel and Whitehead by Stascha Rohmer
Aufhebung and Synthesis: Evolution in Hegel and Whitehead by Claudiu Baciu
The Problem of Relations and the Notion of Contrast in Whitehead’s Critique of Bradley by Marco Bonutto
Temporalizing the Absolute: Royce, Whitehead and the Specious Present by Keith A. Robinson
Whitehead and Russell on the Nature of Experience and Judgment by Constantin Stoenescu
Whitehead, Idealism, and Relativity by Ronny Desmet
Panpsychism and Speculative Biology: A.N. Whitehead and C.H. Waddington by Leemon B. Mchenry
Between Realism and Idealism: A.N. Whitehead and R.G. Collingwood by Guido Vanheeswijck
Idealism and the Philosophy of Organic Relations in Whitehead by Henrieta Șerban
Whitehead’s Process Philosophy as Aufhebung of Idealism by Marian George Panait
Whitehead and the Axianoetic Tradition: A Speculative Relational Synthesis of Axiarchism, Idealism, and Theism by Andrew M. Davis