BILDUNG AND CONCRESCENCE:

A Short Critical Comparison

Alfred James Ellar

INTRODUCTION The main purpose of this short critical essay is to consider certain comparative consideration between Gadamerian Bildung and Whiteheadian Concrescence, to which such comparisons could lead to a breed of philosophical hermeneutics in relation to process perspective. There are limited literatures discussing the connection of Whitehead to Gadamer. They were contemporaries in terms of historical period, but distinct in terms of their philosophical orientation and project. Gadamer was involved in the continental tradition of literary theory and criticism forming a certain kind of philosophical hermeneutics. Whitehead main project was to develop a cosmological theory to which reality in interpreted in terms of process rather than substance. In a sense, their respective projects have no direct contact. However, the range of coverage of their philosophies provides a certain point of convergence in terms of creativity. On one hand, Gadamers Bildung is a creative activity of forming new meaning derived from the relationship of text and the interpreter; Bildung describes more than the result of the process of becoming than the process itself (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1975). Whiteheads concept of Concrescence, on the other hand, is based on the creative process of many becomes one and increased by one which characterized the actual world (Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929). In other words, Bildung as an act of forming and Concrescence as the process of becoming are all manifestation of creativity. Bildung and Concrescence are concrete process of relation as much as they appear as theoretical descriptions of reality. GADAMER AND BILDUNG On one hand, Gadamers work Truth and Method (1975) is a systematic presentation of what is to be known as philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer criticizes the method of induction employed by natural sciences, as inapplicable method in the philosophical investigation under human sciences due to its intrinsic limitation to explain certain reality and truth regarding human and social phenomena. Instead, Gadamer employs the method rooted on the humanist tradition such as the Bildung, sensus communis, judgment and taste. Bildung serves as the initial response to the insufficiency of inductive method to capture the truth and reality of human phenomena. The Bildung fundamentally is a process by which person is engaged in interpreting human phenomena. According to Gadamer, every individual is always engaged in the process of Bildung and in getting beyond his naturalness, inasmuch as the world into which he is growing is one that is humanly constitutedfor Bildung is the element in which they move (15). In other words, Bildung is concerned with the process of formation undetermined by the limits of nature in which by forming the thing it forms itself (13). Through Bildung, the dichotomy imposed by the method of natural sciences is eradicated into the formation of meaning of the thing. In the process of formation, the person and the thing, that is, the giver of meaning and the recipient of meaning are not dichotomized, but unified in such process. This is precisely what Gadamer meant by fusion of horizons, that through Bildung, the interpreter forms meaning of the thing as he or she forms himself or herself. The meaning derived from

the interpretation is the new dimension to which the subject and the object creatively find their merging point. The meaning is then preserved by the process of Bildung itself. WHITEHEAD AND CONCRESCENCE On the other hand, in Whiteheads Process and Reality (1929), he describes his philosophy organism as a speculative philosophy in terms of a speculative interpretation to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted (5). By this, Whitehead is constructing a general theory of reality by which the interrelationship of the subject and object, which are termed actual entities, find their unity. In defining the kind of interpretation he has in mind, he is also aware of the problems in the method of induction, which made him affirms that the method of mathematics is deduction, which as commonly conceived natural sciences is highly indebted to the use of mathematical equations in their analysis of reality. Whitehead, however, emphasizes that the method used in philosophy is descriptive generalization as more than induction and deduction. As such, to accomplish the task of philosophy to provide a general description of reality, there is a general scheme of interpretation to which the immediate matters of fact of experience becomes meaningful. Here, the basic contention of Whitehead is that reality is fundamentally a process; the actual world is a process, a creative advance to novelty. This process is can be generically terms as creativity. Creativity is the ultimate fact about reality as an ongoing process. The process in which the fundamental elements of reality, that is actual entities, are related to one another is termed concrescence. Concrescence means growing together of the many into the unity of one(320). As such, in concrescence the subject which is in the process of concrescing takes other actual entities as object to become part of itself its internal constitution, thereby grow together in unity from many into a novel one. The creative aspect of the process of concrescence is that while the many are being unified into one entity, such process of synthesis produces another entity which is distinct from that of the many and that of the one. This is precisely what Whitehead meant by creativity as a synthesis of the many becomes one, and are increased by one (26). SOME CRITICAL COMPARISONS The basic critical analysis of Bildung and Concrescence is that the former is a process of forming a thing at the same time forming itself, while the latter is the process of growing together many into one. As such Bildung and Concrescence are conceived as a process and act of creativity. Moreover, Gadamer criticizes inductive method of natural sciences; Whitehead affirms that the method of mathematics is deduction which implies that the natural sciences, which apparatus is mathematics, are actually using deductive method instead of inductive. Second, Whitehead avoids the term universal and replaces it with the term creativity itself; Gadamers general orientation of Bildung made use of term universal instead of term transcendence or creativity. Third, Gadamers Bildung is a process of preservation; Whiteheads Concrescence is a process of transformation. Finally, Whiteheads concrescence is systematic process following schematic phases by which the subject prehends, or takes into consideration other actual entities, as object in the creative process to novelty; Gadamers Bildung is a spontaneous process following unpatterned phases of interpretation based on the fusion of the subjects horizon and the objects horizon. Nevertheless, Bildung as a process of creativity is much as preservation than production of new things, or meanings, which if incorporated in the process of concrescence would yield advancement in the interpretation of the more general scheme of reality including the natural sciences. Concrescence is limited in its function in the formation of internal constitution, which the Bildung provide more external relations in terms of formation of elements appropriate among the elements constituting the internal process of concrescence.