Coalescenza e concrescenza: tra oggetti eterni ed occasioni attuali. Un’incursione nelle lezioni di Whitehead ad Harvard (1924-1927)

In this paper we will try to problematize the vexata quaestio of the relation between eternal objects and actual occasions in Whitehead’s thought. To do so we will highlight how Whitehead’s cosmology directly entails a resemantization of the notion of universality, towards a philosophy of the universe where actual occasions and eternal objects are mutually intertwined, according to a regime of coalescence and indiscernibility. Ultimately, we will try to show how it is possible to overcome a dualistic Platonic reading of Whitehead’s alleged opposition between the domain of the potential and the actual. We believe that the two recently edited Volumes of the Harvard Lectures (1924-1925/1925-1927) can contribute to show a germinal path in the development of this difficult interaction. So, in the second part of the article we will focus on the impact that these lectures had on Process and Reality. If, in fact, in Process and Reality the distance between universality and abstraction, and between particularity and concreteness is clear and demarcated, in the Harvardian lectures it is still an open field, which Whitehead probes in its problematicity. This theoretical path will demonstrate in what sense eternal objects are inter res abstractions, a bundle of possible worlds that have a differential relevance in determining the qualities of actual occasions. Ultimately eternal objects and actual occasions are two dimensions and polarities of the evenemential process, but we believe that Whitehead never implies a radical dualism between them.