John Boswell Cobb Jr. (9 February 1925 – 26 December 2024) was an American theologian, philosopher and environmentalist. He is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Cobb is the author of more than fifty books. In 2014, Cobb was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A unifying theme of Cobb's work was his emphasis on ecological interdependence—the idea that every part of the ecosystem is reliant on all the other parts. Cobb argued that humanity's most urgent task is to preserve the world on which it lives and depends, an idea which his primary influence, Whitehead, described as "world-loyalty". Cobb is well known for his transdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from many different areas of study and bringing different specialized disciplines into fruitful communication. Because of his broad-minded interest and approach, Cobb has been influential in a wide range of disciplines, including theology, ecology, economics, biology, and social ethics. In 1971, he wrote the first single-author book in environmental ethics, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, which argued for the relevance of religious thought in approaching the ecological crisis. In 1989, he co-authored the book For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, Environment, and a Sustainable Future, which critiqued global economics and advocated for a sustainable, ecology-based economics. He wrote extensively on religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue, particularly between Buddhism and Christianity, as well as the need to reconcile religion and science. Cobb was the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California. The Center for Process Studies remains the leading Whitehead-related institute, and has witnessed the launch of more than thirty related centers at academic institutions throughout the world, including twenty-three centers in China.
Biography
John Cobb was born in Kobe, Japan, on 9 February 1925, to parents who were Methodist missionaries. Until age 15, he lived primarily in Kobe and Hiroshima and received most of his early education in the multi-ethnic Canadian Academy in Kobe, to which he attributed the beginnings of his pluralistic outlook. In 1940, Cobb moved to Georgia, US, to finish high school. He found himself both bewildered and disgusted by the pervasive racism in the region, particularly the demonization of the Japanese. Seeing how the same events could be presented in such different ways based on the country in which he was living, Cobb became ever-more counter-cultural and critical of the dominant views in churches, media, universities, and government. After his graduation from high school, Cobb attended Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, before joining the US Army in 1943. He was chosen for the Japanese language program, which was filled mainly with Jewish and Catholic intellectuals who helped make him aware of the narrow, parochial nature of his Georgia Protestantism. Cobb served in the occupation of Japan, then returned to the United States and left the army soon afterward. He then entered an interdepartmental program at the University of Chicago in 1947. There, he set out to test his faith by learning the modern world's objections to Christianity:
I was determined to expose my faith to the worst the world could offer. Within six months of such exposure my faith was shattered ... God, who had been my constant companion and Lord up to that point, simply evaporated, and my prayers bounced back from the ceiling unheard. Hoping to reconstruct a Christian faith more compatible with scientific and historical knowledge, Cobb entered the University of Chicago Divinity School. He was successful in restoring his personal faith primarily with the help of Richard McKeon, Daniel Day Williams, and Charles Hartshorne. McKeon introduced Cobb to philosophical relativism, while Hartshorne and Williams taught him Whiteheadian process philosophy and process theology. Alfred North Whitehead's thought became the central theme of Cobb's own work. After receiving his PhD degree from the University of Chicago under the supervision of the Divinity School's Dean Bernard Loomer in 1952, he spent three years teaching at Young Harris College in north Georgia, while also serving as part-time pastor to a six-church circuit and establishing a seventh congregation in the area. Ernest Cadman Colwell, formerly president of the University of Chicago, brought Cobb to Emory University in Georgia to teach in the new graduate institute for liberal arts. In 1958, Cobb followed Colwell to Claremont, California, where he was named Ingraham Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology and Avery Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University. He established the Process Studies journal with Lewis S. Ford in 1971 and co-founded the Center for Process Studies with David Ray Griffin in 1973, making Claremont the center of Whiteheadian process thought. Twenty-five years later, together with Herman Greene, he organized the International Process Network. This organization holds biennial conferences, the tenth of which took place in Claremont in 2015. During his career, Cobb has also served as visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, University of Chicago Divinity School, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Iliff School of Theology, Rikkyo University in Japan, and the University of Mainz in Germany. He has received six honorary doctorates. Cobb died on 26 December 2024, at the age of 99.
Transdisciplinary work Although Cobb is most often described as a theologian, the overarching tendency of his thought has been toward the integration of many different areas of knowledge, employing Alfred North Whitehead's transdisciplinary philosophical framework as his guiding insight. As a result, Cobb has done work in a broad range of fields.
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