Charles Hartshorne: Quotes about the world

“The world has too many automobiles and televisions. Now the standard is there should be one car and TV for every person. This is not healthy for the environment or our souls.”

Charles Hartshorne

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

World , Cars , Soul , Personality

“God thus includes the world; he is, in fact, the totality of world parts, which are indifferently causes and effects. Now AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is equally far from either of these doctrines; thanks to its two-aspect view of God, it is able consistently to embrace all that is positive in either deism or pandeism. AR means that God is, in one aspect of himself, the integral totality of all ordinary causes and effects, but that in another aspect, his essence (which is A), he is conceivable in abstraction from any one or any group of particular, contingent beings (though not from the requirement and the power always to provide himself with some particulars or other, sufficient to constitute in their integrated totality the R aspect of himself at the given moment).”

Charles Hartshorne

Source: Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), P. 348.

God , World , Parting , Perfection

“Musicians who have listened to birds believe [that birds derive pleasure from singing] much more than ornithologists, who are terrified of being accused of anthropomorphism… Having studied thousands of hours of birdsong from around the world, I am convinced some species possess an aesthetic sense, however limited compared to ours. It is part of human egotism to believe that only we have active minds.”

Charles Hartshorne

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

Pleasure , World , Bird , Sense

“I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.”

Charles Hartshorne

In Herbert F. Vetter, " Not The Average Philosopher http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/hartshorne.html", Harvard Magazine, May/June 1997, Volume 99, Number 5. Vetter was surprised by this, given Hartshorne's dozens of substantial books on theology.

Books , World , Bird , Thinking

“I had a happy, idyllic, old-fashioned childhood. Go to the town where I spent that childhood, you will not find my happy hours there. Yet they remain definite constituents of a divine reality about which true statements can still be made. My happy childhood was a gift my parents and the world offered to God.”

Charles Hartshorne

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

God , World , Fashion , Reality

“Hitler made it impossible to keep believing in pacifism, which was one of the many terrible things he did to the world.”

Charles Hartshorne

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

World

“God thus excludes the world; he is only its cause; in no sense is he effect, of himself or anything else. Pantheism (better, "pandeism," for again it is not really the theos that is described) means that God is the integral totality of ordinary cause-effects, and that there, is no super-cause independent of ordinary causes and effects.”

Charles Hartshorne

Source: Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), P. 347.