The Great Chain of Being has been recognized for fifty years as the masterpiece of the History of Ideas movement in America. Lovejoy's work stimulated deeper research into our heritage, which has demonstrated that the idea of the chain of being has not lost its vitality. However, Lovejoy would probably be surprised that hierarchy is now defended in philosophy of science, in ontology and metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in philosophical anthropology. This volume presents concepts of hierarchy and the (...) great chain of being from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, medieval and Renaissance thinkers, Hindu philosophy, and authors of the twentieth century. This volume represents the ideas of twenty scholars, among whom are Dominic O'Meara, Ronald Hathaway, Ewert Cousins, John Sommerfeldt, Lewis Ford, David Blumenthal, and Marion and Paul Kuntz. The editors have compiled a bibliography of four hundred and fifty items and an index of names, places, and concepts which allow the reader immediate access to the variety as well as the unity of ideas. (shrink)

The concept of order has been subjected to clarification both by Linguistic Analysts and by Phenomenologists. Since the question of the parallelism of the work of these schools, or their overlap and possible collaboration, is now seriously raised, it seems appropriate to examine the methods and results with reference to this common, or similar, problem.

A paper on Hume's metaphysics might be exceedingly short: we might say that Hume pricked bubbles but blew none. Most readers of Hume think there is nothing here to write about, unless anti-metaphysics be a form of metaphysics. l Hume's good repute rose with agnosticism and positivism, and it is characteristic of the Germans to credit Hume with being the awakener from dogmatic, that is, metaphysical, slumbers. Add to this those who deplore Hume as the antithesis of classical philosophy, and (...) we have a chorus who would laugh down the claim that Hume had, as he claimed, a system . And indeed who cannot quote Hume's eloquent conclusion about ‘divinity or school metaphysics’: ‘Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion’ ? 2. (shrink)

The reputation of Rudolf Hermann Lotze was high in the philosophic world, especially the English-speaking philosophic world, during the period 1880–1920. One encyclopedia of the period says that “in the U. S. his influence is stronger in academic philosophy, perhaps, than that of any other author.” In typical histories of philosophy Lotze is counted among the great successors in the tradition of Kant and Hegel. I have elsewhere sought to explain the reasons for his great influence. Writers contemporary to Lotze (...) wanted first to classify him as an Herbartian, and in spite of his protests, he seemed some sort of Kantian or Hegelian. The character of his philosophy remained enigmatic, and he was sometimes called an “eclectic” since his philosophy contained aspects that reminded readers of some predecessor or other. But clearly he resisted the tendency to make all questions problems of knowledge: “The constant whetting of the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with it.” And clearly he is no Hegelian. He considered the rationalistic search for a single principle and a single method to have failed. German philosophy had failed to respect what is given in experience. Even in aesthetics, where surely one might be expected to attend to what the arts present for sensuous enjoyment, German intellectualism, to Lotze’s disgust, tended to use a deductive method. Santayana accused a priori German philosophers of “egotism”; he might have learned this from Lotze who found this same tradition marked by pretension. Only God could satisfy the program of Fichte. The demand of an all-embracing system is that it “make all particular parts of it pass before [us] in the majestic succession of an unbroken development!” Wrote Lotze, “It seemed to me that only a Spirit who stood in the centre of the universe which he himself had made could, with knowledge of the final aim which he had given his creation…” see the whole. Lotze’s kind of philosophy is professedly modest, nondogmatic, fallibilist. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that Marxist theories of order deal with the transition from one order to another, whereas most non-Marxist theories of order, whether of ideas or of societies, stress the stability of some established order, showing how, by gradual modification, it avoids the violence of revolutionary change. Wild's theory is one of the few non-Marxist theories of revolutionary transition. It stresses the breakdown of the mythical order and emergence of cosmic order which repairs the defects of its predecessor (...) and what we are now enduring, the breakdown of the cosmic order. Out of the ruins is growing a new order, the personal order. That philosophers should attend to the transition from order to order is the precept and practice of Whitehead in Adventures of Ideas, and in Modes of Thought. Wild's theory resembles both the Hegelian-Marxian dialectic of orders and the Whiteheadian doctrine of orders. Wild's theory, although it does not mention Whitehead's, is in certain respects more like the latter than the former. Any order is from a perspective with limitations that become evident when we compare it with alternative perspectives; and although this implies that there is no absolute or final order, no framework within which all phenomena fit, it does not imply that there is no order or no knowledge at all. Most Hegelians will find Wild's theory lacking synthesis, and most Marxists would feel Wild had failed to grasp necessity, specifically material necessity, in the process. The transitions spring rather from the inadequacies of personal perspective: any interpretation is bound to the man in his situation and therefore must be superseded. The resemblance of Wild's theory to Whitehead's goes deeper than form because they are moved by esteem for the human individual and distrust of powerful groups that tend to overpower free men. Both refuse to bend the knee to collective order. Wild could well accept as this own this statement from Adventures of Ideas. There are. (shrink)

The main theme is kinds of order considered in relation to one another. Is there a unitary order that underlies experience, existence, and the good? Or is one of those fundamental, and the other two derivative? Or are there such contrasts and differences between certain orders that the furthest we can honestly go is to contrast them, setting one against the other?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 151-165 [Access article in PDF] Santayana and Buddhism: The Choice between the Cross and the Bo Tree Paul Grimley KuntzEmory UniversitySantayana honors Gotama Buddha as a profound religious genius as well as an original philosopher. Gotama's way is genuine spiritual wisdom, and constantly compared with Christian mysticism as a way of enlightenment. It is therefore understandable that a Spaniard, who learned his catechism in Ávila, (...) and who was educated in the New England of Emerson and other Transcendentalists who honored Oriental wisdom, should have so much to say about the Buddha and Buddhism.The effort of this paper is to gather many of the isolated passages to give a coherent picture of Santayana and Buddhism. One difficulty to be overcome is that the philosopher rarely quotes his sources (the exception is a single quotation from Dasgupta). Although Santayana has numerous opinions, he does not reveal on which translations he has relied. Nor does he contrast different traditions of Buddhists. To overcome the vagueness of scholarship, I have used the volumes found in Widener Library: the sorts of books known to Santayana's dissertation director, Josiah Royce, and those of a sympathetic sort that had led Santayana as early as the writing of his dissertation on Rudolf Hermann Lotze to reject the latter's defiantly Christian and Western contempt for oriental "superstition." The sympathy can be expressed as similar to that of Schopenhauer in reading the Upanishads or Wilhelm von Humboldt in studying the Bhagavadgita. Santayana's study makes him aware of his Catholicism but he is unlike the Jesuit Dahlmann who attacks Buddhism as Nihilism. Santayana is more like his contemporaries who worked in psychology and philosophy of religion. Although Friedrich Heiler's work 1 and writings of James Bissett Pratt 2 were a bit too late to have influenced Santayana, comparison serves to illuminate and strengthen Santayana's conclusions. Perhaps Heiler is even more appropriate because Buddhistic insights remind him of those of St. Theresa. Santayana would support Pratt's view that Nirvana is not the annihilation of all desire but the extinguishing of evil passions. What Santayana finds congenial in Christian Neo-Platonism and in Spinoza, as well as in Buddhism, is the achievement of freedom of the spirit. 3 It has become a commonplace of world history that the two greatest founders of religion whose ways of salvation triumphed in Europe and in Asia respectively are the Christ and the Buddha. Philosophers of religion like Heiler accept both as saviors with a universal message, one, Jesus "the master of prayer" ("der Meister des Gebets"), the [End Page 151] other, Gotama "the master of contemplation" ("der Meister der Versenking"). Santayana is not concerned with the fact of the success of their missions, for there are indeed other triumphs such as Mohammed's Islam, and if it be classified as a religion, Marx's Communism. Santayana is hardly offering his services as a philosophic mediator, as Whitehead tries to do in Religion in the Making, to bring the two communities of faith to a closer approximation of a truly universal religion. 4Santayana reveals great personal depth as he ponders the contrast between the Gospel and the Fourfold Noble Truth. What is the appeal of Christ on the Cross dying "to save us?" What is the appeal of "the serene Buddha, lifting the finger of meditation and profound counsel?" 5 These questions are asked in a meditation in Soliloquies in England in the sympathetic way of those American philosophers who like Pratt have the option of remaining Christian or converting to Buddhism. William James might well have patted Santayana on the back for struggling with the alternatives, for wrestling with a live option. Probably because of Buddha's message of truth, Santayana has shifted from religion as poetry, which James considered "rotten," to how "a general truth about existence and experience" is symbolized poetically, which James would consider healthy.In answering the question "What does the cross signify?" Santayana strips away the "various analogies, legal, sentimental, or chivalrous," and he... (shrink)