Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

Daniel A. Dombrowski is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of twenty-two books and over a hundred and ninety articles in scholarly journals in philosophy, theology, classics, and literature. Among his books are Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). He is the Editor of the journal Process Studies and is Past-President of the Metaphysical Society of America.

• Introduction1. Reflective Equilibrium as a Process2. Political Liberalism and Process Thought3. Gamwell on ‘The Comprehensive Question’: A Rawlsian Critique4: Religion, Solitude-in-Solidarity, and the Bloodlands5. Heidegger, Political Philosophy, and Disequilibrium6. Organic Marxism and Process Liberalism7. From Nonhuman Animals to the EnvironmentBibliography

The contemporary movement that traces its origins to Whitehead and Hartshorne is at a critical juncture. Some would align process thought with anti-liberal political philosophies that are starkly at odds with the basic commitments expressed by Whitehead and Hartshorne themselves. Dombrowski is a leading process thinker whose resistance against this anti-liberal shift should give pause to those who have abandoned liberalism in this ominous time of testing, in which pluralistic democracy is being challenged around the globe.