Comparative study

1. Contacts:
Co-authors:
Ideas of Harmony in Whitehead and
Hartmann: Comparative Study
The department of Philosophy and Pedagogy
Associate professor, PhD Denys Zhadiaiev, Ukraine
Harmony: Interface of cosmic, Ethical
and Religious Orders
Bangalore
India
09-12 Jan 2019
+38 0502532020
dzhadiaiev@windowslive.com
none

2. Harmony
1. pleasing arrangement of parts :
congruence
Example: a painting exhibiting
harmony of color and line
2. internal calm: tranquility
Example: a period of relative
harmony
Synonyms
balance, coherence, concinnity,
consonance, consonancy,
orchestration, proportion, symmetry,
symphony, unity
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harmony

3. 3
HARMONY
Congruent:
superposable so as to be coincident throughout congruent
triangles
Congruous:
marked or enhanced by harmonious agreement among
constituent elements
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/congruous
Balance: an aesthetically pleasing integration of elements
Balance (verb): to bring into harmony or proportion
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/balance
Balance: harmony of design and proportion (art)
Balance: establish equal or appropriate proportions of
elements in
Source: Oxford Dictionary of English, Revised Edition. © Oxford University
Press 2005. 355000 entries.
Synonyms:

4. Harmony:
- the quality of forming a pleasing
and consistent whole
- the state of being in agreement
or concord
Oxford Dictionary of English, Revised Edition. © Oxford University
Press 2005. 355000 entries.

5. 5
Similarities in Hartmann and Whitehead
In overcoming dualistic approaches
Whitehead: creates cosmology in which opposites emerge
only in analysis (in abstraction)
Hartmann: Overcomes duality between Daβ Sein (this-
being) and Was Eine (thus-being)
Hartman’s relation to conference (Harmony: Interface of cosmic, Ethical and
Religious Orders) in a sentence:
"The tragedy of man is that of somebody who is starving and sitting at a richly
laden table but does not reach out with his hand, because he cannot see what is
right in front of him. For the real world has inexhaustible splendour, the real life is
full of meaning and abundance, where we grasp it, it is full of miracles and glory.“
(Nicolai Hartmann: Ethik. 4. Aufl., de Gruyter, Berlin 1962, p. 11).

6. 6
Denys Zhadiaiev, Dnipro University of Technology, Dnipro, Ukraine
Nicolai Hartmann (German: [ˈhaɐ̯ tman];
1882 – 1950) was a Baltic German
philosopher. He is regarded as a key
representative of critical realism and as
one of the most important twentieth
century metaphysicians.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 –1947) was an
English mathematician and philosopher.
He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school
known as process philosophy, which today has found application to
a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education,
physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas.

7. 7
Perfect interpretation Regular interpretation
Perfect interpretation requires work with language, not experience
But the understanding of unity of truth, beauty and good requires experience and thought.
To achieve both means to live and think longer: “since the question is nor easy and life is too
short”

8. 8
Main works in our analysis:
Nicolai Hartmann. ZUR GRUNDLEGUNG DER ONTOLOGIE [1935,
Ontologie, (4 Volumes) I: Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, de Gruyter,
Berlin-Leipzig]
Translated into Russian as: Николай Гартман. К Основоположнию онтологии. Перевод с немецкого Ю. В.
Медведева под редакцией Д. В. Сютяднева. Санкт-Петербург «НАУКА» 2003
Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality (1929)
Adventures of Ideas (1933)

9. Balance in Whitehead
Balance “…the absence of attenuations
due to the elimination of contrasts which
some elements in the pattern would
introduce and other elements inhibit”
[PR, 278]
“For ‘balance’ here means that no realized
eternal object shall eliminate potential
contrasts between other realized eternal
objects” [PR, 278]
Compare with Adventures of Ideas:
Harmony is an avoidance of mutual
inhibition by incopatibilities
See glossary (Process and Reality and Adventures of Ideas) for
more definitions (if you find them really useful!)

10. 10
Whitehead in his notions
Past Present Future
Science art morality
Truth beauty good
“instinct” “here and now” “depth of an idea”
Knowledge action or performance “hope,” “belief”
Perception emotion relation
Determinism
Causal efficacy
teleology (freedom, self-
causation)
Macroprocess ‘Concrescence’ (?)
Many becomes one and
increased by one
microprocess
Reality harmony appearance
actual occasion eternal object (?)
discrete continuity discrete
I N T U I T I O N
( u l t i m a t e )

11. 11
Hartmann:
There is no need for being to be a subject [of perception], nor subjects [e.g. in dream,
fantasy hallucinations] need to be existent (part one, b. Being of phenomenon and
relation of understanding)
In argumentation for things-in-themselves and phenomena we have equal degree of
difficulty to provide them with proper definition.
Definition is not sufficient for the concept of Harmony since the definition is always a
limitation [de-finite]

12. Hartmann in his main ideas
1. Intentio recta: immediate
cognition, feeling
2. Intention obliqua: perception,
recognition [when being turns to
be a subject of perceiver and
thus, is in opposition to them]:
being as a subject is an illusion!
(part one)

13. Dualism: Descartes was
genius, but…

14. Whitehead

15. Hartmann and Whitehead
again:
1. Hartmann: there must be one,
entire reality behind the
perception of human being and
that even in perception we may
grasp only different aspects of
one and the same subject,
regardless difference in epochs
[Towards the Grounding of Ontology].
2. Whitehead: an actual entity and
perception of the same actual
entity are different processes [PR].

16. Hartmann:
Thus-being this-being
Ideal existence
Real existence
A priori
understanding
A posteriori
understanding
Dream
events (?)
Logic,
hypothesis
Theory, Ethics
NATURAL SCIENCES
Epistemology,
psychologyetc.
Intentio recta
Intentioobliqua

17. 17
Hartmann’s Ontology Whitehead’s philosophy of
organism (process philosophy or
cellular theory of reality)

18. Contacts:
Co-authors:
SPINOZA:

19. Thank you!
Denys Zhadiaiev,
Dnipro, Ukraine