Michel Weber (born 1963) is a Belgian philosopher. He is best known as an interpreter and advocate of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and has come to prominence as the architect and organizer of an overlapping array of international scholarly societies and publication projects devoted to Whitehead and the global relevance of process philosophy.
In 1997, he defended his doctoral thesis, Intuition pré-systématique et intuition ontologique chez Alfred North Whitehead. Euristique du pancréativisme de l’époque de Harvard (Pre-systematic Intuition and Ontological Intuition According to Alfred North Whitehead: The Heuristics of Pan-creativism in the Harvard Era), written under the supervision of Marcel Crabbé.[1]
Career
From 1997 to 2002 he was Research Fellow at the Centre de Logique de l’Institut supérieur de Philosophie of the UCLouvain. From 2001 to 2002 he taught philosophy at the École européenne Bruxellensis II (European Baccalaureate, Anglophone Section, 6th and 7th years). From 2002 to 2007, he was Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophical Anthropology of the UCLouvain Higher Institute of Philosophy.[citation needed]
In 2000, Weber created, with the support of François Beets and Paul Gochet (University of Liège), the Chromatiques whiteheadiennes and the Whitehead Psychology Nexus,[2] two scholarly societies intended to federate research on different aspects, nuances, and implications of the thought of A. N. Whitehead. In 2001, he created the European William James Project with Jack Barbalet (University of Leicester), Jaime Nubiola (University of Navarra) and the late Timothy L. S. Sprigge (Emeritus Edinburgh).[citation needed]
In 2002, he created the research seminars "Chromatiques whiteheadiennes" with the cooperation of the "Philosophies of Experience" research center at the Université de Nantes Department of Philosophy and the Center for the Study of Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy at the Sorbonne (le Centre d'Études sur le Pragmatisme et la Philosophie Analytique or CEPPA, but renamed since as EXeCO; Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne-École Doctorale).[3]
Since 2004, he has been the Editorial Director of the series Chromatiques whiteheadiennes for the academic publisher Ontos Verlag (Frankfurt) and Editorial Co-director, along with Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh) and Johanna Seibt (Aarhus & Konstanz), of the Process Thought series, also with Ontos Verlag (Advisory Board: Mark Bickhard, Lehigh; Jaime Nubiola, Navarra; and Roberto Poli, Trento).[4]
Since 2005, he has co-edited the Chromatikon: Annuaire de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process at the Presses universitaires de Louvain, first with Diane d'Eprémesnil (UCLouvain), then with Pierfrancesco Basile (University of Bern), and now with Ronny Desmet (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).
In 2006, he created the Chromatiques whiteheadiennes "Centre for Philosophical Practice," a non-profit organization.[5] The center now federates the three networks mentioned above (the Chromatiques whiteheadiennes, the Whitehead Psychology Nexus, and the European William James Project) and provides an institutional base for two new activities: first, the publication of a scholarly book series appearing under the label Les Éditions Chromatika (Chromatika Editions) and, second, the opening in Brussels of Belgium's first philosophical counseling service or "philosophical praxis."[6]
Since 2007, he has been a member of the "Contemporary Ontological Visions" network of the Institute for Philosophical Research of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 2008–9, he was Visiting Professor at the New Bulgarian University, Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology & Department of Philosophy and Sociology.
Since 2009, Weber is also a trained hypnotherapist (Institut Milton Erickson, Brussels).
As a principal source of inspiration, Weber promotes the ideas of a group of loosely associated thinkers from the early 20th century who applied evolutionary thinking to psychology, epistemology, cosmology, metaphysics, and theology, giving rise to the school of thought now known as "process philosophy." Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), along with C. S. Peirce (1839–1914), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and William James (1842–1910), is regarded as one of the fathers of process philosophy.[7] This mostly Anglo-Americanschool of thought still finds only minority endorsement in academic philosophy departments. Nevertheless, despite its limited reception in the United States and Great Britain, process philosophy has begun to interest a small but growing number of scholars worldwide. By organizing a global network of like-minded scholars and fostering the publication of their ideas in Europe, Weber has contributed significantly to the visibility of process philosophy in that continent.
There also appears to be a shift of focus. Until recently, interest in Whitehead, especially in the United States, tended to focus on process theology. Whitehead's brief but provocative theological speculations, added almost as an afterthought at the end of his major philosophical opus Process and Reality[8] (1929), were elaborated into an excitingly new natural theology that seemed particularly attractive to Christian theologians because it made naturalistic sense of God's personal love for creatures. This theological emphasis, however, along with a sometimes evangelical tone adopted by Whitehead's more ardent devotees, may be the reason for the marginalization of process philosophy in mainstream academic philosophy.
With his 1996 book Process Metaphysics, the eminent and prolific American philosopher Nicholas Rescher began a campaign to rehabilitate a broadly secular style of process thinking. He defended it as the optimal matrix for any systematic theorizing about the nature of things.[9] Like Rescher in the United States, Weber cultivates a critical and largely secular appreciation for process philosophy. He translated Rescher's Process Metaphysics into French in 2006.[10]
In 2000, his monograph La dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead. Sensation pure, pancréativité et onto-logisme (The Dialectic of Intuition in the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead: Pure Sensation, Pancreativity, and Onto-logism) was awarded a prize by the Belgian Royal Academy (Classe des Lettres de l’Académie Royale de Belgique).[11] Weber argues that the term pancreativism constitutes the more appropriate qualification of Whitehead's metaphysics, which is neither a pantheism or a panentheism.
Professional activities
Weber is the author of 10 monographs and 80 scholarly articles and encyclopedia entries. His monograph La Dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead: sensation pure, pancréativité et contiguïsme (The Dialectic of Intuition in the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead: Pure Sensation, Pancreativity, and Onto-logism) was awarded the Prix du Concours annuel 2000 by the Royal Academy of Belgium.[11]
He is also the motive force behind numerous international and intercultural collaborations. He strives to coordinate his professional activities toward the creation of a new, visionary philosophical culture conceived as cooperative, intellectually adventurous, ethically self-aware, and global in reach.
He has founded three international scholarly societies:
And, he oversees (in conjunction with various colleagues) the publication of four book series
the Chromatiques whiteheadiennes,
the Ontos Verlag Series in Process Thought,
the Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies, and
the Chromatika editions,
as well as a philosophical annual,
Chromatikon: Annuaire de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process.
Using process philosophy as a matrix to foster synergies, Weber follows the work of hundreds of scholars worldwide and with each of his projects defines a locus where he thinks creative energies are poised to intersect. Collaborating with some 150 scholars representing all continents, he has to date edited or co-edited 30 collections, bringing together hundreds of original papers on themes relating to process philosophy in an interdisciplinary and multicultural context.
Most ambitious in scope is the two-volume Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, edited by Weber and Will Desmond: "Gathering 115 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought aims at interpreting Whitehead secundum Whitehead, at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary development."[14]
Also noteworthy is the recent interdisciplinary volume edited by Weber and Anderson Weekes, Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, which "opens a dialogue between process philosophy and [the burgeoning field of] contemporary consciousness studies."[15] It is too early to judge how this book will be received by those who approach the study of consciousness from more mainstream backgrounds in Anglo-American Analytic philosophy or in Continental Phenomenology and Existentialism, but the contributors to this volume make a point of establishing what they believe to be fertile common ground between process thought and both its mainstream rivals.
Weber is also the founder of the Centre for Philosophical Practice in Brussels.[6]Philosophical Counseling is a recent movement, probably begun in the United States, employing Socratic methods of dialog for the purpose of short-term counseling that, without seeking to replace more traditional psychotherapies, nevertheless offers an alternative to them.
In July 2010, he organized an Applied Process Metaphysics Summer Institute in Paris, at the Cité universitaire's Fondation Biermans Lapôtre. The second Institute has taken place in July 2011.
In May 2014, the philosophical counselling service moved to the Centre Kinos, now Tonaki, of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Louvain-la-Neuve. Dr Weber is also currently Adjunct Professor, Department of Educational Foundations, University of Saskatchewan.
Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War, but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach in philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only real experience of everyday living. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory or accidental, process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.
Alfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology.
UCLouvain is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It is located in Louvain-la-Neuve, which was expressly built to house the university, and Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Tournai and Namur. Since September 2018, the university uses the branding UCLouvain, replacing the acronym UCL, following a merger with Saint-Louis University, Brussels.
Timothy Lauro Squire Sprigge, usually cited as T. L. S. Sprigge, was a British idealist philosopher who spent the latter portion of his career at the University of Edinburgh, where he was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, and latterly an Emeritus Fellow.
Nicholas Rescher was a German-born American philosopher, polymath, and author, who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh from 1961. He was chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and chairman of the philosophy department.
Charles Hartshorne was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological argument. Hartshorne is also noted for developing Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy into process theology.
Jean André Wahl was a French philosopher.
Process and Reality is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.
We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions. Such a change of thought is the shift from materialism to Organic Realism, as a basic idea of physical science.
Ferdinand Alquié was a French philosopher and member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques from 1978.
Joseph Maréchal, SJ was a Belgian Jesuit priest, philosopher, theologian and psychologist. He taught at the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven and was the founder of the school of thought called transcendental Thomism, which attempted to merge the theological and philosophical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas with that of Immanuel Kant.
The Institute of Philosophy is the faculty of philosophy at the KU Leuven in the Belgian city of Leuven. It was founded in 1968 when the Institut supérieur de Philosophie - Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte of the Catholic University of Leuven (1835–1968) was split into a Dutch-speaking entity and a French-speaking entity. Its main buildings are located in the center of Leuven at the Kardinaal Mercier Square, named for the founder of the original institute.
Kevin Mulligan is a British philosopher, working on ontology, the philosophy of mind, and Austrian philosophy. He is currently Honorary Professor at the University of Geneva, Full Professor at the University of Italian Switzerland, Director of Research at the Institute of Philosophy of Lugano, and member of the Academia Europaea and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters. He is also known for his work with Peter Simons and Barry Smith on metaphysics and the history of Austrian philosophy.
Paul Gochet was a Belgian logician, philosopher, and emeritus professor of the University of Liège. His research was mainly in the fields of logic and analytic philosophy. He is perhaps best known for his works on Quine's philosophy.
Dorothy Mary Emmet was a British philosopher and head of Manchester University's philosophy department for over twenty years. With Margaret Masterman and Richard Braithwaite she was a founder member of the Epiphany Philosophers. She was the doctoral advisor of Alasdair MacIntyre and Robert Austin Markus. Emmet was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, where she took first-class honours in 1927.
Charles De Koninck was a Belgian-Canadian Thomist philosopher and theologian. As director of the Department of Philosophy at the Université Laval in Quebec, he influenced Catholic philosophy in French Canada and also influenced Catholic philosophers in English Canada and the United States. The author of many books and articles in French and English, he contributed to a variety of philosophical fields including natural philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and political philosophy, but he also wrote on theology, especially Mariology.
Jason W. Brown is an American neurologist and writer of works in neuropsychology and philosophy of mind. He has been a reviewer and recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and is or has been on the editorial boards of leading journals in his field. He has written 14 books, edited 4 others, and more than 200 articles.
The Center for Process Studies was founded in 1973 by John B. Cobb and David Ray Griffin to encourage exploration of the relevance of process thought to many fields of reflection and action. As a faculty center of Claremont School of Theology in association with Claremont Graduate University, and through seminars, conferences, publications and the library, CPS seeks to promote new ways of thinking based on the work of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne, and others in the process tradition.
The Institut supérieur de Philosophie (ISP) is an independent research institute at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. It is a separate entity to the UCLouvain School of Philosophy.
The International Philosophical Bibliography (IPB), also known in French as Répertoire bibliographique de la philosophie (RBP), is a bibliographic database covering publications on the history of philosophy and continental philosophy.
References
↑ An abstract can be found in the "Chronique de l’Institut supérieur de Philosophie," Revue philosophique de Louvain, November 1997, pp. 793-794.
↑ EXeCOArchived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine [Expérience et connaissance (Philosophies contemporaines); Chromatiques whiteheadiennes Séminaire coordonné par Michel WEBER, UFR de Philosophie, Université Paris 1].
↑ See Nicholas Rescher, Process Metaphysics (Albany: SUNY Press), 1996.
↑ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Corrected Edition (New York: The Free Press), 1978, pp. 337-351.
↑ Nicholas Rescher, Process Metaphysics (Albany: SUNY Press), 1996.
↑ Nicholas Rescher, Essais sur les fondements de l'ontologie du procès (Process Metaphysics); translation and preface by Michel Weber, translation reviewed by the author (Frankfurt/Paris/Lancaster: Ontos Verlag), 2006.
1 2 See Jean Ladrière, Marc Richir, Jacques Taminiaux, "Rapports des Commissaires," Académie Royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 6e série, Tome XI, Bruxelles, 2000, pp. 122-126.
↑ For a report on their Fifth International Conference, see "Politics, Science, and Religion Converge in Belgium," Process PerspectivesArchived 2015-06-10 at the Wayback Machine , 29:1 (Summer 2006), p. 16.
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