Metaphysics and the Modern World (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781498238038)

Metaphysics and the Modern World makes the abiding questions of the nature of the self, world, and God available for the modern reader. Donald Phillip Verene presents these questions in both their systematic and historical dimensions, beginning with Aristotle's claim in his Metaphysics that philosophy begins in wonder. The first three chapters concern the origin of metaphysics as the transformation of the conception of reality in ancient Greek mythology, the ontological argument as the basis of Christian metaphysics, and the Renaissance cosmology of infinite worlds and the coincidence of contraries. The final four chapters present the central issues of the metaphysics of history through the New Science of Vico, the principle of true infinity of Hegel's Logic, the dialectic of spirit and life in Cassirer's Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, and the conception of actual entities and God in Whitehead's Process and Reality. In these discussions, the reader will find a lively and learned account of a field of philosophy that is often thought difficult to access, but in this work becomes most accessible and a pleasure to read.

Author: Donald Phillip Verene
ISBN-10: 1498238033
ISBN-13: 9781498238038
Publisher: Cascade Books
Language: English
Published: 09/02/2016
Pages: 166
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2017