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A Constructive Critique Of The Foundations Of Philosophy, Ramesh Nath Patel

Philosophy ETDs

Philosophy pursues a rational explication of our under­standing, experiences, and values in terms of objective truth and reality. Conspicuously, its view of rationality has been rigid and preconceived. Application of this preconceived reason in the explication of the essential features of our world fails and issues in a network of dialectical tangles. These artificially created tangles pose a unique intellectual challenge, but the perennial failure to resolve them limits the intellectual response of philosophers to remaining caught in the tangles, or to taking intuitively favorable sides, or to simply denouncing the tangles as meaningless. Each is understandable.

Superficially, traditional philosophical …

Matter And Spirit In Santayana's Realms Of Being, Anton Lissy

Philosophy ETDs

In Scepticism and Animal Faith, the introductory volume of George Santayana's Realms of Being, Santayana claimed that his system of philosophy would place the common sense of ordinary life into a "more accurate and circumspect form" by distinguishing realms or categories of being which he personally found "conspicuously different and worth distinguishing." He also declared that the "chief issue" of philosophy was to investigate "the relation of man and of his spirit to the universe." Paul Schilpp, in an article on the final volume of the Realms of Being, concluded that Santayana was "groping" in print. Schilpp added, however, that …