Lebensprozess e organismo vivente. Elementi di contatto tra le filosofie della natura di Hegel e Whitehead – attraverso Jonas

This contribution aims at developing an original position within the debate which studies the relation between Hegel’s dialectical thought and Whitehead’s process philosophy. The main positions of the debate understand Whitehead as an author who has, on the one side, undoubtedly developed some Hegelian insights regarding reality as a becoming process, but who on the other side has developed his own metaphysics in a way that significantly differs from Hegel (1.). Passing through the interpretative mediation of Hans Jonas, who both appreciates and criticizes Whitehead’s theory, drawing attention to his idea of “nature alive” and its becoming process (2.), I aim at demonstrating how Hegel’s understanding of the living organism and his concept of life reveal themselves to be crucial categories to understand Whitehead’s notions of process, life, and actual entities as organisms, thus drawing a possible comparison between Whitehead’s and Hegel’s philosophies of nature, understood as great efforts to overcome metaphysical dualisms (3.). The result is that Whitehead can be seen as a thinker who developed a philosophy of the organism which – paradoxically without an immediate influence and study of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature – shares with it important categories and intents.