The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea: 1 (The William James Lectures)

New
Paperback
1976
$29.00

From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers and men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world. In this volume, which embodies the William James lectures for 1933, Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles-plenitude, continuity, and graduation-which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse samifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

Synopsis

From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers and men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world. In this volume, which embodies the William James lectures for 1933, Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles-plenitude, continuity, and graduation-which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse samifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

$29.00

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 394
Edition: Revised ed.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 31 Jan 1976
ISBN 10: 0674361539
ISBN 13: 9780674361539

Media Reviews

The Great Chain of Being, employed as a title, would have suggested...what was 'probably the most widely familiar conception of the general scheme of things'--the idea of a world in which every being was related to every other in a continuously graded scale, with no possible form of diversity missing. Pursuing the biography of this idea through more than two thousand years, the distinguished author of these lectures makes clear its amazing influence on the thought and history of the Western World...Intellectual vigor, critical precision and an amazing knowledge of what mankind has thought and desired in other ages distinguishes this book. No student of the history of literature, science, or philosophy may well neglect it. -- Clifford Barrett New York Times Book Review One of the great books of our generation. -- Marjorie Nicolson American Scholar A fascinating and moving book...Everyone interested in the larger ironies of human history should read [it]. -- Ernest Nagel New Republic Men are galvanized by ideas and act as vehicles for them...Such a ruling idea is that of the great chain of being. Prof. Lovejoy's study records the birth, the growth, the vicissitudes, transformations, and finally the senility, and perhaps the death of this idea. The study is as fascinating as that of the rise and decay of an empire, and, in fact, it is the study of the empire of an idea over human minds throughout many centuries...Prof. Lovejoy's approach is fresh and different...The learning exhibited in this book is vast. -- Raphael Demos Modern Language Notes

Author Bio

Arthur O. Lovejoy taught philosophy for nearly forty years at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous works, including Essays in the History of Ideas and Revolt against Dualism.