Reason and analysis

Reason and analysis / Brand Blanshard.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Blanshard, Brand, 1892-1987
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: London : Routledge, 1962
Series:Muirhead library of philosophy.
Subjects:
Knowledge, Theory of.
Logical positivism.
Reason.
epistemology.
reason.
PHILOSOPHY > History & Surveys > General.
Knowledge, Theory of
Logical positivism
Reason
Online Access:Click for online access
Table of Contents:
  • Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Original Title Page; Original Copyright Page; Dedication; Preface; Table of Contents; Chapter I The Revolt Against Reason; 1. Reason in its nuclear sense is the grasp of necessity; 2. It has lost respect through a cultural revolution; 3. Which Has Had Many Causes; 4. The decline has continued over several decades; 5. Philosophy at the turn of the century was dominated by idealistic rationalism; 6. Which has now almost wholly vanished; 7. The attack on it was opened by realists; 8. And continued by naturalists.
  • 9. Instrumentalism sought to replace contemplative reason by practical intelligence10. Logical empiricism discountenanced the rational knowledge of nature; 11. Linguistic philosophy has shifted interest away from speculative thought; 12. Existentialism is deeply sceptical of reason; 13. In theology the current emphasis is on the inadequacy of reason; 14. In psychology, Freud reduced the work of reason largely to rationalization; 15. Making reason the veneer of powerful non-rational impulses; 16. In sociology belief in an objective reason gave way to cultural relativity.
  • 17. Which was applied by Mannheim to reason itself18. In politics, the trust in reasonableness was a casualty of two wars; 19. And of three anti-rational dictatorships; 20. Irrational nationalism remains a major peril; 21. In literary criticism the appeal to sanity appears outmoded; 22. And there is a wide acquiescence in meaninglessness; 23. The most popular revivals from the past are those of anti-rationalists; 24. The subject of this book is the revolt against reason in philosophy; Chapter II The Idea of Reason in Western Thought; 1. Reason is taken to differentiate man from the animals.
  • 2. When so taken, reason has four distinguishable components3. Its chief early application is in the connection of means with ends; 4. The free use of theoretic reason seems to have been achieved first by the Greeks; 5. And depended on their notion of form; 6. (1) Form as essence meant logical definition; 7. (2) Form as end involved implicit purpose; 8. (3) Form as law made possible a knowledge of the connection of concepts, which was; 9. (i) Certain; 10. (ii) Novel; 11. (iii) Independent of sense; 12. (iv) Universal; 13. (v) Objective; 14. (vi) Independent of time.
  • 15. (4) Form as system implied a world of interlinked concepts16. The exercise of reason was, for the Greeks, a condition of the good life; 17. The Greek conception of reason has been dominant in western thought; 18. Descartes held certainty to be the product of reason alone; 19. He analysed the method of reason as pursued in mathematics; 20. This method could be applied universally, in spite of inner obstacles; 21. And even more formidable ones in nature; 22. Spinoza's rationalism had richer motives than that of Descartes; 23. Progress in reason was for him the end of life.

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