Charles Hartshorne on Metaphysical Statements

Abstract

This article supplements Wolfhart Pannenberg's Metaphysics and the Idea of God by offering a systematic introduction to the tasks and criteria of metaphysics through an exposition of various statements of Charles Hartshome on the subject, chiefly his Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. The article is focused around Hartshorne's understanding of the precise roles of empirical verification and falsification in relation to metaphysical statements, and his challenge to the empiricist dogmas that “necessary truths = a priori = analytic,” and that a statement is rendered contingent by the mere fact that it asserts existence. Some elaboration follows of the implications of Hartshorne's neoclassical metaphysics for theism, and for modal logic.