Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The Renaissance development of science fulfilled the ancient ideal of integrating quantitative and qualitative thinking, but failed to recognize valuational thinking and thus deprived moral, aesthetic, and political thought of cognitive status. The task of this book is to reconstruct the concept of thinking in order to exhibit valuation, not reason, as the foundation for thinking and to integrate valuational with quantitative and qualitative modes. Part I explains the broad thesis, interpreting the problem of the foundations for thinking and providing a general theory of value. Part II explains the role of valuation at the imaginative level of thinking with discussions of synthesis, perception, form, and art. The method of reconstruction requires a cosmology that is generated in successive waves.
"I believe this to be a truly important book. It is the first genuinely neo-Whiteheadian offering on a large, systematic scale." — Donald W. Sherburne
"The architectonic of the book is a marvelously creative application of Plato's divided line. Like nested boxes, each part is at a level of perspective different from the others; each chapter within each part rehearses those same levels; each section within each part does likewise; and even within the sections a similar movement across levels is exhibited. This is a method of inquiry, not a gimmick, and Neville both argues for and exhibits this method throughout the volume." — George Allan
Preface
Part 1: Foundations
1 Foundational Issues of Thinking
An Historical Crisis in Thinkin
Valuation
A Foundational Hypothesis
Structure of the Argument
2 Cosmology and Its Sources
The Nature of Cosmology
Critique of Cosmology
Plato and the Cosmology of Thinking
Aristotle and the Task of Cosmology
3 Axiological Cosmology
Cosmological Categories
Body, Nature, and Society
A Metaphysics of Value
Cosmology: Norms and Good Thinking
4 Responsibility, Norms, and the Social Reality of Thinking
Epistemology of Value
Critique of Axiology
General Norms for Thinking
Responsibility
Part 2: Imagination
A Beginning
5 Imagination as Synthesis: Religion
Phenomenology of Synthesis
Critical Interpretation
Cosmology of Imagination as Synthesis
Religion and the Commonality of the Worm
6 Imagination in Perception: Beauty
Phenomenology of Imagination in Perception
Critical Interpretation
Cosmology of Imagination in Perception
Responsibility in Imagination in Perception
7 Imagination as Appearance: Form
Phenomenology of Appearance
Critical Interpretation
Cosmology of Appearance
The Public Character of Image-Formation
8 Imagination as Engagement: Art
Phenomenology of Engagement
The Criticism of Images
Cosmology of Imagination as Art
Responsibilities of lmagination
Notes
Bibliography of Works Cited
Index