by Claes G . Ryn (Author)
Will, Imagination, and Reason sets forth a new understanding of reality and knowledge with far-reaching implications for the study of man and society. Employing a systematic approach, Claes Ryn goes to the philosophical depths to rethink and reconstitute the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. He shows that will and imagination, together, constitute our basic outlook on life and that reason derives its material and general orientation from the interaction between them.
The imaginative master-minds-novelists, poets, composers, painters, and others-powerfully affect the sensibility and direction of society. Sometimes a distorting, self-serving willfulness at the base of their visions draws civilization, including reason, into dangerous illusion. More penetrating and balanced vision and rationality spring from a different quality of will. Ryn explains the kind of interplay between will, imagination, and reason that is conducive to a deepened sense of reality and to intellectual understanding. He argues that human life and self-knowledge are inescapably historical. In developing his dialectical view of intellect, he draws from Irving Babbitt, Benedetto Croce, and other philosophers to refute positivistic, formalistic, and ahistorical theories of knowledge and to develop his alternative.
Advancing a systematic epistemological argument, Ryn throws much new light on the nature of reason but also on central issues of ethics and aesthetics. This trenchant and original work is indispensable to philosophers, social, political and cultural theorists, literary scholars, and historians.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 258
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 30 Jan 1997
ISBN 10: 1560009187
ISBN 13: 9781560009184
It is a book to be pondered, a quintessentially serious and profound book that stands in a great European intellectual tradition.
-- Modern Age
An excellent book, written with clarity, learned judiciousness and yet with a kind of passionate urgency.
-- Modern Language Notes
Brilliant and philosophicaly systematic.
-- Chronicles.
Highly original and provocative ... an intellectual tour de force of the first order [with] enormous implications for modern ethical thought.
-- World & I.
Exhibits great seriousness and depth.
-- University Bookman.
A splendidly written and researched book on a topic of great importance to contemporary ethics.
-- Review of Metaphysics.
It is a book to be pondered, a quintessentially serious and profound book that stands in a great European intellectual tradition.
--Modern Age
An excellent book, written with clarity, learned judiciousness and yet with a kind of passionate urgency.
--Modern Language Notes
Brilliant and philosophicaly systematic.
--Chronicles.
Highly original and provocative ... an intellectual tour de force of the first order [with] enormous implications for modern ethical thought.
--World & I.
Exhibits great seriousness and depth.
--University Bookman.
A splendidly written and researched book on a topic of great importance to contemporary ethics.
--Review of Metaphysics.
-It is a book to be pondered, a quintessentially serious and profound book that stands in a great European intellectual tradition.-
--Modern Age
-An excellent book, written with clarity, learned judiciousness and yet with a kind of passionate urgency.-
--Modern Language Notes
-Brilliant and philosophicaly systematic.-
--Chronicles.
-Highly original and provocative ... an intellectual tour de force of the first order [with] enormous implications for modern ethical thought.-
--World & I.
-Exhibits great seriousness and depth.-
--University Bookman.
-A splendidly written and researched book on a topic of great importance to contemporary ethics.-
--Review of Metaphysics.
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