Posted on by Michael R D James

Blurb from back cover of forthcoming volume three of “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action”

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The Juggernaut of War and Economics has flattened our philosophical landscape—transformed it into a cultural wasteland in which facts and information lie strewn about the world like dead bodies. The mother of the Juggernaut was the Minotaur from the Platonic cave and the father was Janus, the two faced four-eyed monster that guarded the territory of Roman tyrants. A number of Philosophers throughout the age have complained about our forgetfulness of the many meanings of Being. We seem, as a consequence, no longer able to view the world “uno solo ochiata”in contemplative mood. The philosophical attitudes of awe and wonder of the Ancient Greeks and the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant have been inverted into the  “modern”moods of terror and boredom. Volume three charts the meandering course of 20th century philosophical history in search for a name for what we otherwise call “Modern”. Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy are our guides on this tour in search of signs of the Progress Kant claimed is present on our cultural journey. At stake in this journey are firstly, our human souls, conceived of metaphysically, and secondly the fate of our Civilisation conceived of in terms of the Kantian Kingdom of Ends. Consciousness is a power that opens onto the external world via the powers of attention and perception. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of reason and understanding which are the doors leading to a world in which we can roam  and transform into a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends.

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