Seeing objective thought as passive, Diefenbeck seeks to develop a theory of thought or of reason “appropriate to the subject as an active agent or first cause.” His system would illuminate and render more effective the creation of values that guide lives. George Kimball Plochmann in his foreword describes the book as “a sus­tained inquiry into the character of knowledge, one seeking to prove that our exclusive cognitive allegiance to the so-called objective sciences is misplaced, not so much because they (...) are faulty in detail or deficient in humanitarian feel­ing, as because they cannot enjoy the epistemological support that they would require were they allowed the hegemony over other branches of cognition that is traditionally accorded them.” Diefenbeck would not destroy objec­tive knowledge, but would allow each philosophy to confront subjective phi­losophy and from the results of that confrontation build a better system of values. (shrink)

This original and thought-provoking volume examines organic life as subjective activity. It shows that organic life operates differently from objective thought and truth. The volume considers topics such as: the origin of life, the absorption of food, the operation of heredity, and the possible control of further evolutionary development.

This history of Western philosophy is based upon two convictions: one is that this must be a subjective enterprise; the other is that its guiding aim should be to interpret the great diversity found among past philosophers as an understandable, connected, and progressive order. The author relates these philosophies to each other to discern a path through 2500 years of reflective thought as pointing toward a justifiable present position. Contents: Early Greek Philosophy; Plato; Aristotle; A Transition: The Stoics and Skeptics; (...) The Emergence of Faith; Saint Augustine; Saint Thomas Aquinas; Faith and the Re-Emergence of Reason; Descartes; Leibniz and Spinoza; The British Empiricists; Kant and Schopenhauer; Vico; Hegel; Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind; After Hegel; A Summary Conclusion and a Look Beyond; Index. (shrink)