Concrescence and Transition : Whitehead and the Process of Subjectivation

The book deals with the complex notion of process worked out by Alfred N. Whitehead, a notion that includes his deep revision of the concepts of time and space. Throughout his whole career, Whitehead emphasized the importance of process for the account of reality. The book discusses Whitehead’s concept of process starting from his works in mathematics, logic and epistemology of the natural sciences, in order to pave the way for a better understanding of Whitehead’s speculative philosophy. The focus is on the relationship between concrescence and transition, seen as deeply correlated and reciprocally determined. In this perspective, the book offers a reinterpretation of Whitehead’s most enigmatic proposal: the event of subjectivity interpreted as a process of subjectivation. This poses the problem of the endurance of subjectivity. The book suggests that this problem is solved by Whitehead through is appropriation of Plato’s notion of chora, seen as the “place” of a processual subject.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Historical and theoretical similarities
The Presence of Marx in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language
Language and mind
Marx, Gramsci and Wittgenstein on Mind and Language
Critique of Language and Critique of Human Forms of Social Life in Marx
Subjectivity and human agency
Subjectivity and Late Capitalism: From Marx to Wittgenstein
Marx and Wittgenstein on the True Nature of Human Agency
Reification: From Marx to Wittgenstein?
Language between critical theory and social sciences
Beyond Critical Theory. Wittgenstein, Discourse Ethics and Emancipatory Practice
Social Science and the ‘Augustinian Picture of Language’: A Fieldwork Experience and its Significance