In process philosophy, an event is a unit of becoming — a happening that constitutes itself through its relations to other happenings and then perishes, contributing its achieved definiteness to subsequent events. Events are not things that happen to substances; they are the fundamental constituents of reality, and what we call substances are patterns of events that exhibit stability across time.
Alfred North Whitehead’s actual occasions are the most developed formal account of events as ontological primitives. Each actual occasion is an event of experience that arises, achieves a determinate character through concrescence, and then becomes an object for future occasions through prehension. The occasion does not persist — it happens and is done — but its achieved character is available as data for what comes after.
The event concept matters for relational ontology because events are inherently relational: an event is constituted by what it takes in from other events and what it contributes to subsequent ones. There is no event apart from its relations. This makes events a natural ontological primitive for any framework in which relations are prior to entities.
Related terms
- Actual occasion — Whitehead’s formal account of events
- Process — the broader category of becoming
- Concrescence — how an event becomes determinate
- Substance metaphysics — the framework events replace