Greatness and Philosophy: An Inquiry Into Western Thought

ISBN-13: 9789401501668 / Angielski / Miękka / 1966 / 294 str.

Vincent Vycinas

Opis

The present study is not a series of disconnected essays concerning select ed Western philosophies. All its parts belong organically together and constitute one whole. For this reason, the reader is warned not to use it as a reference book for one or another philosopher here treated. The study begins with the declaration of the exposition of fundamental event in Western philosophy which prevails with a different hue in each of the major philosophies and which relates these to pre-philosophical or mythical thought. The study then treats selected Western philosophies se parately with the tendency to disclose the major event of philosophy in them. Finally it approaches contemporary man from the perspective of the fundamental event in philosophy. An inquiry into Western man's greatness is maintained here all along as intimately bound up with the historical development of philosophy. Philosophy involves greatness - not one of many philosophies, how ever, but Philosophy as such. Philosophy as such is not a composite of the various major philosophies in history; it precedes these, and is present in each one of them in a concealed way. It holds sway over them, and they belong to it. Philosophy rules the thought of thinkers; it is the Ordinance which directs the way of thought, and which is responded to by the thought of the thinkers. In this way, the major philosophies in history are diverse phases which, like the bends and turns of a river, belong to Ordinance - to Nature's thought."

Spis treści

Introduction: Greatness of Western Man.- Introduction: Greatness of Western Man.- I: Ordinance.- I Philosophy and Myth.- II Disintegration of Phtsis-is-Logos.- III Concealed Re-Entry of Phtsis-is-Logos Into the Western World.- IV Re-Disclosure of Phtsis-is-Logos in Contemporary Times.- II: Philosophy in Philosophies.- V the Early Greek Philosophers.- I. Guilt.- II. Man - the Measure of Things.- III. Physis and Disclosure.- IV. Thales and Anaximander.- V. Heraclitus.- VI. Parmenides.- VI Plato.- I. Ideas.- II. Goodness.- III. Man.- IV. Ideas and Gods.- V. Thing in Plato’s Philosophy.- VII Aristotle.- I. Thing-Orientation of Aristotelian Philosophy.- II. Categories.- III. Substance.- IV. Form and Matter.- V. Actuality.- VI. The First Mover.- VIII Saint Thomas Aquinas.- I. Being and Knowledge.- II. Cosmological Reality.- III. Psychological Reality.- IV. Theological Reality.- V. Actuality.- VI. Thomism and Kantianism.- VII. ‘Unthingly’ Aspects in Thomistic Philosophy.- VIII. Thomistic Subjectivity.- IX Rene Descartes.- I. Subjectivity and Mathematics.- II. Subjectivity and its Principles.- III. Cartesian God.- X George Berkeley.- I. Rationalism and Empiricism.- II. Perceptions or Ideas.- III. Esse Est Percipi.- IV. Soul.- V. God in Berkeley’s Philosophy.- VI. Empiricism and the Sciences.- XI Immanuel Kant.- I. General Character of Kantian Philosophy.- II. Kantian Truth.- III. Structure of A Priori.- IV. Thing as Appearance.- V. Kantian Man.- XII Friedrich Nietzsche.- I. Truth and Nietzsche.- II. Values and Superman.- III. Will to Power.- IV. Eternal Return.- III: Contemporary Man.- XIII Greatness of Contemporary Man.- XIV Scientism.- I. Scientism and Technology.- II. Pragmatism.- III. Logico-Mathematics.- XV Technology.- I. Planning Man.- II. Technology and Mathematics.- III. Technology and Accordance.- IV. Technology and Causality.- V. Stability.- VI. Establishment.- VII. Technology and Greatness.- VIII. Absence of Gods.