Louisville Process Theology Network

Before Process Theology, There was Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was “an early exponent of the doctrine of organicism which claims that an organism,

as a developing unity of hierarchical and independent parts serving the life as a whole,

is the model for understanding the human personality, societies and their institutions, philosophies and history…….

(Hegel's view of) philosophy, like all of reality, is organic in character, a functional interdependence of parts, as is the case with a living growing organism…..

Different philosophies are like the stages of growth of the bud, blossom, and the fruit…..

Each is a necessary part of the organic growth and unity of all philosophy……

Each one displaces the other,

but they do not falsify each other.

Each is a necessary stage in the development of the whole truth…”

Excerpts of From Socrates to Sartre by T.Z. Lavine