It is a survey of possibilities and their comparison with actualities. It is not-or, at least, should not be-a ferocious debate between irritable professors. Philosophy is at once general and concrete, critical and appreciative of direct intuition. A deluge of such sentiments does more harm than good. “Philosophy is not a mere collection of noble sentiments. For instance, in Chapter 6, Foresight, he writes a description of philosophy that seemed to sum up his aim in this book: When going back over the book a second time, I noticed that the author had given clues along the way of where he was heading. Also, I would have liked to see more sentences that began “for instance.” Still, this reader would have found it helpful if the connecting tissue would have been more evident throughout. Then in the last three chapters, it all came together. For a long stretch, the material seemed so disparate that I asked myself for whom the book was written or whether the book had an overall point. This book is said to be one of the author’s more accessible works, but I could have used some help bootstrapping my way into his thought-world. “In that case, a quick period of transition may set in, which may or may not be accompanied by dislocations involving widespread unhappiness” (p. One is slow decline: “The prolongation of outworn forms of life means a slow decadence in which there is repetition without any fruit in the reaping of value.” The other is when a form of civilization has been exhausted, but not the creative springs of originality that were its basis. One could not help but think of the post-2016-election society as the author diagnoses a civilization that has passed its zenith and reached the close of an epoch. He confidently declares: “o one now holds that, apart from some further directive agency, mere individualistic competition, of itself and by its own self-righting character, will produce a satisfactory society” (p. Whitehead wrote at a time when unbridled capitalism and industrialism had been overcome this seems poignant in light of recent developments. We cannot produce that final adjustment of well-defined generalities which constitute a complete metaphysics” (p. Still, he admits that the project cannot be crowned with any “triumphs of finality. Apart from metaphysical presupposition there can be no civilization” (p. But, such as it is, metaphysical understanding guides imagination and justifies purpose. Our metaphysical knowledge is slight, superficial, incomplete. As Whitehead writes: “The point is, that speculative extension beyond direct observation spells some trust in metaphysics, however vaguely these metaphysical notions may be entertained in explicit thought. This project was not pursued for its own sake, however. Adventures of Ideas represents an integral part of Whitehead’s lifelong quest to reestablish metaphysics in a way that takes seriously challenges to previous metaphysics raised by sensationalist views of the human mind (Locke through Hume) and positivist views of society and history. Then one comes to the final chapters and gains a full grasp of what the terms “adventure” and “ideas” signified for the author. This book is more ambitious than its title, which suggests a primer for youths interested in philosophy, might indicate.
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