Four Ages of Understanding: The first Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

1055 Pages·2001·23.2 MB·English

by  John Deely

FOUR AGES OF UNDERSTANDING
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FOUR AGES OF
UNDERSTANDING
The First Postmodern Survey
of Philosophy from Ancient Times
to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century
JOHN DEELY
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press 2001
Toronto London Buffalo
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4735-1
(oo)
Printed on acid-free paper
Toronto Studies in Semiotics
Editors: Marcel Danesi, Umberto Eco, Paul Perron, and Thomas A. Sebeok
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Deely, John N.
Four ages of understanding : the first postmodern survey of philosophy from ancient times
to the turn of the twenty-first century
(Toronto studies in semiotics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4735-1
I. Philosophy - History. 2. Semiotics - History. 3. Postmodernism.
I. Title. II. Series.
872.043 2001 190 COO-932O75-X
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program
of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities
of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP).
To Whom,
if not to those few who will read every word?
and to the living memory of Anthony Francis Russell
"Tony"
2(5 November 1922 - 1999 April 12
ally of spirit to each such reader
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Aviso: Why Read This Book?
I came from my Parkview house to the Hispanic gathering in Jackson Park just in
time for the food (having been able from the window to see when the time was
right).
"Where have you been?" a lady unknown to me asked from across the table at
which I took a seat.
"Writing a book," I replied, taking my first bite.
"Oh?" queried the stranger. "What about?"
"The history of philosophy" I said, taking another bite. Her face took on a
quizzical look. "What are you thinking?" I asked, taking still another bite.
"Hasn't that already been written" she said, less a question than a hint I was
wasting my time and, worse, the time of prospective readers who could already find
what I had to say written elsewhere and, likely, better.
"Not so" I countered. "Besides, I have an angle."
"Then perhaps I shall have to read your book" she said; a polite comment, in a
tone only half convinced. "When will your book appear?"
"Had the calendar not been wrong", I said, referring implicitly to matter discussed
in chapter 5 of the alleged book, "it would have been in the twenty-first century. As
it is, probably in the last year of this one. What a pity."
But you, dear reader, with the book in hand, haven't the need to ask when it will
appear, though before further committing yourself you are likely indeed to want to
know what possible "angle" could truly justify another - yet another - history of
philosophy?
Well, I can tell you this much going in. Like any history, this book presents
you with a large-scale hypothesis, or series of hypotheses ("more or less confirmed
guesses", as a friend of mine might put it) about what happened in the past. But, in
addition, because it is a philosophical history, the hypotheses presented are presented
in the framework of a single unifying hypothesis about what bearing all this past
has today for the immediate future of philosophy - for the history, that is to say,
that someone else will have to write, even if for no other purpose than to set straight
the story I am about to tell those of you who read on.
viii Aviso: Why Read This Book?
For it is an outrageous story. I tell you that philosophy as it has been taught in
our American universities since their beginning in 1636 has mainly left out so many
irreducibly key elements as to get the whole thing wrong, when it has not been
made downright incomprehensible. And philosophy itself as a discipline of thought
has suffered severely in consequence. For the probative details you have the book
itself, an invitation to think for yourself long, deeply, and widely about the situation
of human understanding as the twenty-first century of our era dawns.
Here is my bet. If you read this book through, you will come away convinced that
what has claimed to be and been in fact the mainstream of philosophical thought
in contemporary culture has turned into a side current, perhaps even a backwater.
In the seventeenth century, modern philosophy, in order to develop, had to move
pretty much outside the academy. In the late twentieth century, the philosophical
establishment within the academy has become to philosophy's future what the judges
of Galileo were to the future of science. That is how the story of philosophy will
appear when our successors look back on the twentieth century. That is the bet. To
call the bet you have only to read the book; and all the while yourself philosophize.
Contents at a Glance
Contents in Detail xi
List of Tables and Illustrations xxiv
Preface The Boundary of Time xxix
1 Society and Civilization: The Prelude to Philosophy 3
Part I ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY: The Discovery of "Reality"
2 Philosophy as Physics 17
3 The Golden Age: Philosophy Expands Its Horizon 42
4 The Final Greek Centuries and the Overlap of Neoplatonism with
Christianity 93
Part II THE LATIN AGE: Philosophy of Being
5 The Geography of the Latin Age 161
6 The So-Called Dark Ages 212
7 Cresting a Wave: The Second Stage 251
8 The Fate of Sign in the Later Latin Age 364
9 Three Outcomes, Two Destinies 411
10 The Road Not Taken 447
Part III THE MODERN PERIOD: The Way of Ideas
11 Beyond the Latin Umwelt: Science Comes of Age 487
12 The Founding Fathers: Rene Descartes and John Locke 511
13 Synthesis and Successors: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde 540
14 Locke Again: The Scheme of Human Knowledge 590