Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism.

"Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought I, 2004. (339 p. ; ISBN 3-937202-49-8 ; 89 €) When Rescher’s Process Metaphysics (1996) was published, it was widely acclaimed as a major step towards the academic recognition of a “mode of thought” that has otherwise been confined within sharp scholarly boundaries. Of course it is not an easy book: despite its stylistic clarity, it remains the complex outcome of a life’s work in most areas of philosophy. The goal of the present volume is to systematically unfold the vices and virtues of Process Metaphysics, and thereby to specify the contemporary state of affairs in process thought. To do so, the editor has gathered one focused contribution per chapter, each paper addressing specifically and explicitly its assigned chapter and seeking to promote a dialogue with Rescher. In addition, the volume features Rescher’s replies to the papers. « Whenever Nicholas Rescher writes, wise philosophers take note. This volume bears witness to that fact. Its essays not only engage Rescher's wrestling with Alfred North Whitehead and process metaphysics in helpful ways but also make distinctive and instructive contributions of their own. This book advances the development of an important and lively philosophical tradition. » John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College, USA. "

« Rescher on Process », in Robert Almeder (ed.), Rescher Studies. A Collection of Essays on the Philosophical Work of Nicholas Rescher. Presented to Him on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2008, 429-444.

This bibliographic essay introduces the process-relational philosophical tradition. It is excerpted from my book "Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times" (Punctum, 2018), where it appears as an appendix. The entirety of the book is available for free download as an e-book from Punctum Books.

The present short study plans to tackle the ontological question of the Ultimate from the perspective of an interpretation of Whitehead’s reformed subjectivism coming to terms with psychosis. The conundrum is the following: understanding the process subjectivism Whitehead is arguing for constitutes a royal path to grasp his overall intuition; what happens if we seek to apply it to psychosis?

To combat the ecological crisis, fundamental change is required in how humans perceive nature. This paper proposes that the human–nature bifurcation, a deeply entrenched and potentially environmentally unsound metaphysical mental model, stems from embodied and tacitly held substance-biased belief systems. Process philosophy can aid us, among other things, in providing an alternative framework for reinterpreting this bifurcation by drawing an ontological bridge between humans and nature, thus providing a coherent philosophical basis for sustainable dwelling and policy-making. Michael Polanyi's epistemology can further help us understand these environmentally oriented tacit processes of knowing, and also provide a basis for political and educational implementations of process-philosophical insights, particularly via the nudging of mental models.

"The present Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought is the product of three years of collective labor. Gathering 113 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, it aims 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 development. There is indeed an urgent need to interpret Whitehead secundum Whitehead and to read him from the vantage point of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. As Felix Frankfurter claimed in his tribute to the philosopher some sixty years ago, the “need for breaking down sterilizing departmentalization has been widely felt. Unfortunately, however, a too frequent way of doing it has been, wittily but not too unfairly, described as the cross-sterilization of the social sciences.”1 This misplaced concreteness is precisely what we seek to avoid here."