Table Of ContentThomas Padiyath
The Metaphysics of Becoming
Process Thought
Edited by
Nicholas Rescher, Johanna Seibt, Michel Weber
Volume 25
Thomas Padiyath
The Metaphysics
of Becoming
On the Relationship between Creativity and God
in Whitehead and Supermind and Sachchidananda
in Aurobindo
ISBN 978-3-11-034255-0
e-ISBN 978-3-11-034277-2
ISSN 2198-2287
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detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
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Dedicated to the memory of my beloved parents
Mr C C Chacko and Mrs Alekkutty Chacko Padiyath
Foreword
I am very happy to recommend this fine book of Dr. Thomas Padiyath to the phi-
losophical reader. Thomas Padiyath’s philosophical talents were evident to me
when he came as a student to Belgium and the Higher Institute of Philosophy at
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, first to do the Masters in Philosophy, and then
the Doctorate. He worked under my supervision, initially on an MA thesis of the
ethics of F.H. Bradley, but later he wanted to spread wider his philosophical
wings and take flight into more heady metaphysical and speculative spaces. To
that end he turned to the thought of A.N. Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo Ghose.
The current book shows something of the results of that flight.
This book brings to completion a process of study, research, and synthesis
extending over many years. It offers us a fitting articulation of years of dedi-
cated work. Initially, Dr. Padiyath had hesitated concerning his theme, but
finally he determined that he wanted to do something with a bearing on the
relation of philosophical thought in both the Eastern and the Western traditions.
Thus he set for himself a difficult task. It is challenge enough to study one major
thinker but a student more than doubles the challenge when he undertakes to
be master of two. For Dr. Padiyath had to study two important thinkers, each in
their own right, and then further in terms of the possibility of their dialogue
with each other – and all this with an eye to the intermediations, in both con-
vergences and divergences, of East and West. Trying to master two important
thinkers, one opens oneself to judgment not on one but two fronts. One has to
please two masters – the Whitehead scholars and the Aurobindo scholars – and
neither is likely to warm to the presence of a competitive rival. In addition, there
is the third master that holds sway over the interrelations of the two masters:
Thomas Padiyath had to orchestrate a kind of virtual dialogue between them
when none explicitly existed in the original. He had to aid them to speak to each
other. I think he has done admirably well in meeting the diverse demands of
these different and exacting masters.
All these challenges notwithstanding, he gave himself over to the work and
in a relatively short time acquired a mastery of both thinkers and the issues they
posed for each other. In due course, he defended his doctorate with a disserta-
tion that was well praised by all of the readers on the jury. It was praise well
deserved. The book now appearing shows the worthy philosophical talents and
scholarly skills of Thomas, his contribution to scholarship in both Whitehead
and Aurobindo studies, and more generally, his contribution to a promising
dialogue on basic metaphysical issues between Eastern and Western thought. It
is a first book by Dr. Padiyath and I hope it will not be the last, and that the
VIII | Foreword
dialogue between Eastern and Western thought will continue to be fostered by
him in the years to come.
The book is a work of synthesis, from many different sources. The book is
very helpful for a person schooled in Western philosophy to get a sense of In-
dian philosophy, and one anticipates also that his Indian readers will be illumi-
nated in various ways concerning many strands of Western philosophy. The
book also tries to take the measure of certain basic philosophical notions where
they come into dialogue between Whitehead and Auronbindo. One of these
central ideas is the contrast of being and becoming. We need both. For White-
head becoming has a priority; for Aurobindo being, and Dr. Padiyath argues for
a complementarity that is no simple homogeneous continuum. There is very
interesting discussion of Aurobindo where it is obvious the matter is no simple
dualism of being and becoming, since in being itself there is becoming. This is
an issue extending to divine becoming, a difficulties itself fraught with deep
complexities, since divine becoming, if there is such, could not be likened to
any finite becoming.
In this regard, we also find interesting discussion of Whitehead’s notion of
process. One must applaud the stress on process against any too static substan-
tialism, but a question that arises concerns how univocal an account of process
one can give, a question also very relevant if we attribute process to divine be-
coming. I myself would distinguish “coming to be” from “becoming,” in that
every process of becoming presupposed a happening of being already having
come to be. And neither coming to be nor becoming is the same as divine duna-
mis, which is in excess of both, while enabling their promising givenness. Dr.
Padiyath’s discussion of Whitehead’s God as having a primordial and conse-
quent nature is of relevance. I am not convinced Whitehead’s way touches the
kernel of the matter. One suspects that Eastern thinkers, with such a long and
auspicious tradition of speculative thought on ultimate matters, have richer
resources for thinking the matter than do philosophers in the modern Western
tradition, shaped as this has been by the not always harmonious twins of em-
piricism and rationalism.
Dr. Padiyath also works hard to make intelligible sense of notions from
Aurobindo such as Supermind. It is evident that the ethos of thought in the East
is not the same as that in the West, where again the legacies of empiricism and
rationalism diversely live on, as does the idea of philosophy as autonomous
thought, separated especially in modernity from the religious. That separation
is not sought by Aurobindo’s practice of philosophy which flowers out of a
Yogic milieu and often finds expression in a style with traces of incantatory
charm. A way of life is at issue, and a certain living porosity between the reli-
gious and the philosophical. Some Western philosophers might condescend and
Foreword | IX
say that the standpoint of true critical philosophy has not been attained in all of
this. Contrariwise, one could make the rejoinder that we in the West have much
to learn, and relearn, concerning the ultimate porosity of religion and philoso-
phy – not as a threat to autonomy, whether philosophical or other, but as the
mother of creativity and ultimacy.
Thomas Padiyath tries to allow Aurobindo and Whitehead to speak for
themselves, but he is not devoid of his own important questions. His book will
tell its own story. It is not my task to tell that story but to recommend attention
to its detailed treatment of very important themes, to praise how these are well
handled overall and carried out with admirable conscientiousness. Thomas has
made every effort to familiarize himself with a wide range of secondary material
on both thinkers, and with background materials relevant to the understanding
of both. The detailed treatment of important themes displays genuine philoso-
phical intelligence, not least in the manner in which he shows respect for close
attention to the historical and philosophical contexts of these two thinkers, the
details of their thought, on their own terms, and what these terms contribute to
a philosophical dialogue beyond themselves. The whole is executed with sober
thoughtfulness in the exemplary manner in which he shows respect for com-
plexity of the concepts of Aurobindo and Whitehead. The work is to be warmly
applauded for showing forth the worthy accomplishment of its author and for
sharing with us his illuminating contribution to the important dialogue of East
and West.
William Desmond
KU Leuven, Belgium
