Satisfaction is Alfred North Whitehead’s term for the final phase of concrescence: the moment at which an actual occasion achieves its fully determinate character. At satisfaction, all prehensions have been integrated into a coherent unity guided by the subjective aim, and the occasion has become exactly what it is — no longer open, no longer becoming, but complete.
Satisfaction is simultaneously the end of the occasion as a subject and the beginning of its career as an object. Once an occasion reaches satisfaction, it “perishes” — not in the sense of ceasing to have any reality, but in the sense of ceasing to be a subject of experience. Its achieved character is now a datum: an objective fact available for prehension by subsequent occasions. This transition from subjective immediacy to objective immortality is what generates the temporal advance of the universe.
The term is deliberately chosen. Satisfaction carries the connotation of fulfillment — the occasion has satisfied the demands of its situation by achieving a definite integration of the data it inherited. But satisfaction does not imply that the achieved result is the best possible outcome. An occasion may achieve a trivial satisfaction (a minimal integration with little novelty) or an intense one (a rich synthesis that maximizes the contrast and complexity of its data). The quality of satisfaction depends on how the subjective aim navigated the possibilities available to it.
Related terms
- Concrescence — the process that terminates in satisfaction
- Actual occasion — the entity that achieves satisfaction
- Subjective aim — the lure that guides concrescence toward satisfaction
- Prehension — subsequent occasions prehend the satisfied occasion
- Nexus — the satisfied occasion enters into nexūs as objective datum
- Creativity — satisfaction is the achieved result of creative synthesis