Who am I?
I'd like to begin this critique on Hartshorne’s Event-Metaphysics with a poem written by a certain Dietrich Bon Hoeffer. He was a young theologian of great promise and was martyred by the Nazis for his participation in the plot against the life of Adolf Hitler.
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woe-begone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!
(March 4,1946)
While this man languishes inside the prison as he awaits his execution, he significantly asks a very profound and philosophical question, a question worth pondering for us all, a question that could lead us to the truth of ourselves.
If so I ask, who am I? Am I defined by my size and shape and color and weight? Am I defined by my clothes I wear? Not any accidents could ever define who I am. Classical Thomists would simply refer to me as ME, as simply ME. A substance. A particular individual substance. Rusty as he is. The problem here is that I could not fully grasp or understand myself as I in this regard. I could not fully grasp or understand Rusty, that particular individual substance as to who am I really. And if we refer to this, how could we ever answer that question, who am I? Who am I, then? Rusty? The substance Rusty? How could we ever explain that? I agree with Charles Hartshorne as to how Classical Thomism falls short in resorting to “substance” especially in response to this question, as a basic unit of reality.
But if Hartshorne, on the other hand, were to answer the question, who am I? Am I the person who entered the seminary at the age of 22? Who extended the novitiate? Who had his prophylaxis last Saturday? Who slept late last night? Who just read you the poem of Hoeffer? Am I who experienced all these? Hartshorne would bet that I am? But am I just simply a collection of events? Hartshorne, as I would interpret him, would say no as he would claim the “I” undergoing all these series of events which is not equated with the collection of events. Still, the question “who am I?” remains to be a mystery.
Who am I? This question recognizes the existence and the validity of the SUBJECT, that which both camps do not deny. Classical Thomism would view this SUBJECT as something subsisting, persisting, possessing a static nature, while Hartshorne would view the SUBJECT as going through experiences and events and being understood as something dynamic. Nevertheless, in the Classical Thomistic mind, this SUBJECT is essentially a substance, which I know the Hartshornean mind would not accept for it is not properly the case.
But that the SUBJECT that is going through a series of events that merely speak of who I am NOW is what I believe and hold onto. This is my position. And so who am I? Who is Rusty? I’m not limited to something, to my substance or to an event, nor am I limited to all my experiences as of yesterday. I am more than that… NOW! I exist. I am… and I am constantly changing and growing and creating and becoming. And so I feel that no one has the right to judge me, to have prejudices against me, to put me in a box. It is not about that I am consistent or not about something, I simply “become” everyday. Everyday the ME gets better and better, being shaped by experiences and events. For this reason, I do not believe that persons are born “worthless.” They are as significant as any person living right now.
The “I” that goes through events is seen in a man endowed with freedom. I agree with the both camps. Freedom is not only voluntariness or an act of indifference according to the Classical Thomists. But also, in the full sense, freedom is creativity according to Hartshorne. Yet, however, this freedom for Hartshorne is also extended to the other creatures below man. Not the rocks, he would say, but the molecules or sub-atomic particles that has the tendency to at times break from the natural flow or cycle of determination. While that may be true, the natural movement or law remains. And to press further, I would argue that even animals and human beings are made up of atoms and sub-atomic particles. Even a strand of our hair and a dead skin cell may contain these. Thus, it would then appear that we and the world are replete of this “freedom.” Consequently, I feel that this would tend to reduce “freedom” into simply a break from routine and lose that what Hartshorne claims as “creative freedom” which is freedom in the full sense that undoubtedly, the human being could properly exercise.
Yet, I believe that reality is indeed a social process. It doesn’t have for lower creatures to possess that freedom for all beings to interact. I still hold the causality of nature and the creative freedom of man as sufficient to explain this interconnectedness. Yet I believe that nature is part of the social process, such that according to the Chaos theory, a flutter of butterfly could cause a tornado in one part of the world. Everything is seen as interconnected. And we human beings play a very significant and primary role in this interconnectedness. Yet, what needs to be highlighted in this interconnectedness is that human being encounters. Consequently, the human being undergoes events and experiences. Thus we say that every human being has a story to tell that is in connection with the story of others or even the story of the things and nature he so encounters.
To sum up all these, I mostly agree with Hartshorne in his view of man as a process and in-process, a subject undergoing events in creative freedom who eventually, grows, creates, and becomes something “more.” Man is also in process with others and things in nature in his encounter and experience with them. It’s not necessary for created beings below man to possess creative freedom themselves to participate in the social process, for their existence, causality and our experience with them suffice in order to be part of that social process, yet man is the key player of that social process in the sense that he makes up the ‘career’ or ‘history’ in a state of continuing becoming, confronted by that basic question posed by Hoeffer, “who am I?” Who knows? In the end, we might end up agreeing with him:
