Aims : a brief metaphysics for today / James W. Felt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Felt, James W., 1926-2022.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Metaphysics.

Physical Description:

xii, 148 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, [2007]

Summary:

"James Felt's Aims: A Brief Metaphysics for Today is an excellent book. It is engagingly written with exemplary clarity, compactness of expression, and admirable thoughtfulness. It is a work in constructive metaphysics that offers a marvelous introduction to the beginner, as well as being engaging to the advanced student. While Aims shows the main influences of Aquinas and Whitehead, with Bergson and Merleau-Ponty also important, more importantly it gives expression to the singular appropriation of some of the basic metaphysical issues by James Felt himself. It develops a view of relational realism, with lucid expositions of themes such as the nature of primary being, the act of existing, freedom, participation and God, and the nature of self-knowledge. It distills the author's long reflection on these issues and communicates his considered insights with measured lucidity."

"There is a welcome freshness and easy-access approach in this creative presentation of the central philosophical discipline, metaphysics. It starts firmly anchored in our human experience, then moves easily into deeper waters of a proposed Aquinas-Whitehead synthesis."

"With modifications to both Aquinas and Whitehead and their complementary interplay, and in contrast to the priority usually given to effective or originating causality, the author argues for the interactive preeminence of teleology (aim) and existence (esse) in the promotion and enhancement of cosmic and interpersonal value. In so doing he seeks to restore to the transcendental Good its appropriate place and role."

Contents:

The beginning

A brief description of experiencing

Interlude on method

A preliminary metaphysical interpretation of experience

Aims and the experiencing subject

The object-structure of immediate experience : space

The subject-structure of immediate experience : time

On the interactions of primary beings

Free acts

The basic structure of primary beings

Existing as participated act

Participation and God

The problem of the origin of essential aims

Three options for a solution

Making a choice

"Know yourself!"

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-142) and index.

ISBN:

9780268029012

0268029016

OCLC:

162126816