The Life of Reason, critical edition, Volume 7: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One - Couverture rigide

Santayana, George

 
9780262016742: The Life of Reason, critical edition, Volume 7: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One

Synopsis

Santayana argues that instinct and imagination are crucial to the emergence of reason from chaos.

Santayana's Life of Reason, published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, Santayana traces the development of the human capacity for appreciating and cultivating the ideal. It is a capacity he exhibits as he articulates a continuity running through animal impulse, practical intelligence, and ideal harmony in reason, society, art, religion, and science. The work is an exquisitely rendered vision of human life lived sanely.

In this first book of the work, Santayana provides an account of how the human animal develops instinct, passion, and chaotic experience into rationality and ideal life. Inspired by Aristotle's De Anima, Darwin's evolutionary theory, and William James's The Principles of Psychology, Santayana contends that the requirements of action in a hazardous and uncertain environment are the sources of the development of mind. More specifically, instinct and imagination are crucial to the emergence of reason from chaos. Separating himself from the typical thought of the time by his recognition of the imagination, Santayana in this volume offers extensive critiques of various philosophies of mind, including those of Kant and the British empiricists.

This Critical Edition, volume VII of The Works of George Santayana, includes a chronology, notes, bibliography, textual commentary, lists of variants, and other tools useful to Santayana scholars. The other four books of the volume include Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science.

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À propos de l?auteur

George Santayana (1863–1952) was a philosopher, poet, critic, and novelist. The MIT Press has published The Letters of George Santayana in eight books and the five books of The Life of Reason.

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Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780262538787: The Life of Reason, critical edition, Volume 7: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0262538784 ISBN 13 :  9780262538787
Editeur : MIT Press, 2011
Couverture souple