Overview
- Covers such figures as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in the ancient world and Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Dewey in modern philosophy
- Deals capaciously with the topic of the theoretic life in both ancient and modern philosophy
- Addresses the topical issue of the “crisis of the humanities” in modern education and culture
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Table of contents (17 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Part I
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Front Matter
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Part II
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Front Matter
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Keywords
- Theoretic Life in Classical Greek Philosophy
- The New Barbarism
- Techno-Economic Pragmatism
- Crisis of Humanist Culture
- Aristotle
- Good life and human happiness
- Contemporary Crisis of the Humanities
- Socrates
- Philosophy and politics
- Aristotelian Revolution
- Theoretic Life and the Supreme Good
- Natural cosmology and the human place within it
- Bacon, the Ancients, And the Rebirth of Time
- Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hobbes
- Politics and ethics
- Baconian Revolution
- Hume, Kant, and the Dethronement of Metaphysics
- Modern Revolution
- Socratic and Aristotelian ideals
About this book
In this work, Alexander Rosenthal Pubul presents a broad examination of the ancient philosophical question: “What is the good life?”, while addressing how the liberal arts can help us to answer this question. Greek philosophy distinguished between the “noble” (what is good in itself), from the merely “useful” (good for something else). From thence follows the distinction between the liberal arts which pursue such noble goods and the mechanical arts which are only instrumental. For Aristotle, the most noble and excellent good is wisdom itself. Hence the theoretic life devoted to the love of wisdom for its own sake –philosophy - is the highest and the most excellent.
This work theorizes the origins of modernity in a rebellion against this Greek conception resulting in a complete inversion of the classical hierarchy. Sir. Francis Bacon reconceiving the purpose of knowledge as power, enthroned technology over philosophy and theliberal arts. The unfolding of the modern Baconian revolution progressively sidelines the liberal arts, as practical economic and technical utility become the standard of value. In assessing this problem, the book engages in a capacious journey across disciplines like philosophy, history, art, politics, and science. It is also a veritable tour across the Western intellectual tradition including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Dewey, Berdyaev, Einstein, and Heidegger. It pleads the urgent need to preserve the humanizing cultural ideals of the ancient classics against the modern tyranny of utility and the dangers of a new barbarism.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Theoretic Life - A Classical Ideal and its Modern Fate
Book Subtitle: Reflections on the Liberal Arts
Authors: Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02281-5
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-02280-8Published: 14 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-02281-5Published: 01 January 2019
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 165
Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations
Topics: Classical Philosophy, Intellectual Studies, History of Philosophy, European History, Ethics, Political Philosophy