The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress – Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, V VII Book One: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, ... One: Volume 7 (Works of George Santayana) - Hardcover

Santayana, George; Coleman, Martin; Jr., Herman J. Saatk

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262016745 ISBN 13: 9780262016742

Publisher: MIT Press, 2011

Synopsis

Santayana argues that instinct and imagination are crucial to the emergence of reason from chaos.

Santayana's Life of Reason, published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, Santayana traces the development of the human capacity for appreciating and cultivating the ideal. It is a capacity he exhibits as he articulates a continuity running through animal impulse, practical intelligence, and ideal harmony in reason, society, art, religion, and science. The work is an exquisitely rendered vision of human life lived sanely.

In this first book of the work, Santayana provides an account of how the human animal develops instinct, passion, and chaotic experience into rationality and ideal life. Inspired by Aristotle's De Anima, Darwin's evolutionary theory, and William James's The Principles of Psychology, Santayana contends that the requirements of action in a hazardous and uncertain environment are the sources of the development of mind. More specifically, instinct and imagination are crucial to the emergence of reason from chaos. Separating himself from the typical thought of the time by his recognition of the imagination, Santayana in this volume offers extensive critiques of various philosophies of mind, including those of Kant and the British empiricists.

This Critical Edition, volume VII of The Works of George Santayana, includes a chronology, notes, bibliography, textual commentary, lists of variants, and other tools useful to Santayana scholars. The other four books of the volume include Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science.

About this title

About the Author

George Santayana (1863–1952) was a philosopher, poet, critic, and novelist. The MIT Press has published The Letters of George Santayana in eight books and the five books of The Life of Reason.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262016745
• ISBN 13: 9780262016742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408