DER VORRANG DER VORGÄNGE. HARTMANN, WHITEHEAD UND ARISTOTELES ÜBER WERDEN UND VERGEHEN
THE PRIORITY OF PROCESSES. HARTMANN, WHITEHEAD AND ARISTOTLE ON THE PHENOMENA OF GENERATION AND CORRUPTION

Summary/Abstract: The following paper presents the three most powerful approaches to the metaphysical phenomena ofgeneration and corruption stemming from Aristotle, Alfred North Whitehead and Nicolai Hartmann.After starting with a general overview of the historical developments of philosophical concepts on theissue of generation and corruption, the article sheds light on different criticisms evaluating the classicalAristotelian account of substance. Thereafter, I refer to the work of Nicolai Hartmann whose aim is toontologize the fundamental processes of coming-into-being and passing away while his contemporaryA. N. Whitehead sets up a certain process philosophy conceptually refraining from an Aristotelian conceptionof substance. In my view, both approaches require an overall re-examination of Aristotelianmetaphysics. In his rediscovered and attention-getting work De generatione et corruptione Aristotlegives an impressive account on how to understand substance out of the processes of coming-into-beingand passing-away. Against this backdrop, I finally argue that Aristotle’s conception of becoming iscloser to Whitehead’s process philosophy than to Hartmann’s positivistic ontology because in De generationeet corruptione the self-standing character of substance emerges as a subsequent moment of anencompassing processuality (described as a teleological alternation of generation and corruption). Incontrast, Hartmann claims that the process itself has to be taken as a self-standing substance.

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