Being and Value

Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics

By Frederick Ferre

Subjects: Constructive Postmodernism
Series: SUNY series in Constructive Postmodern Thought
Paperback : 9780791427569, 406 pages, February 1996
Hardcover : 9780791427552, 406 pages, March 1996

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Table of contents

Preface

Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought

David Ray Griffin, Editor

1.   What Is Metaphysics?

How Metaphysical Theories Are Familiar

How Metaphysical Theories Are Strange

How Metaphysical Theories Are Valued

PART ONE PREMODERN METAPHYSICS

2.   The Great Pioneers

Cosmos and Decent Order

The Milesians

The Pythagoreans

Change or Permanence?

Pluralists and Atomists

The Sophists

3.   The Great Hellenes

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

4.   The Great Transition

Value-Echoes of Some pre-Socratics

The Platonic Value-Lens

The Aristotelian Value-Lens

Premodern to Protomodern

PART TWO MODERN METAPHYSICS

5.   The Founders

Renaissance Early Moderns

Nonmathematical Early Moderns

Kepler and Galileo

Hobbes and Descartes

6.   The Prevalence of Matter

Malebranche and Spinoza

Boyle and Newton

Philosophes and Idéologues

Comte, Maxwell, and Einstein

7.   The Primacy of Mind

Leibniz and Berkeley

Kant

Hegel

Bradley

8.   The Pervasiveness of Change

Marx and Darwin

Bergson

Alexander

Whitehead

PART THREE POSTMODERN METAPHYSICS

9.   Defining the Postmodern

Poststructuralism

Liberationism

Feminism

Environmentalism

10. Toward an Ecological World Model

Postmodern Ecological Science

Understanding Relations

Understanding Entities

11. Toward a Kalogenic Universe

Fundamental Entities: In General

Fundamental Entitles: In Basic Structure

Fundamental Entities: In Themselves

The Kalogenic Universe: In the Making

12. Toward a Reconstructed Metaphysics

Personalistic Organicism

Constructive Postmodernism

Adequacy: The Material for Construction

Coherence: The Manner of Construction

Works Cited

Note on Centers

Name Index

Subject Index

This book shows the vital relationship between human life and the philosophical placement of value, emphasizing the now-occurring transition from the old mechanical world view to the postmodern alternative inspired by ecology.

Description

Being and Value begins with a discussion on metaphysics, showing the vital relationship between human life and the philosophical placement of value, and emphasizing the current transition from the old mechanical worldview to the postmodern alternative inspired by ecology.

Being and Value shows how intimately premodern philosophy bound value into the fabric of things, and analyzes the expulsion of value from factual being during the modern period. Special attention is given to beauty: What is the relationship between the subjective and objective conditions of beauty? Is the beauty of nature merely the product of human appreciation? The answer is that beauty—and value—is a more potent ingredient in the structure of things than modern reductionism allows.

Frederick Ferre is Research Professor of Philosophy at The University of Georgia, Athens. He is the editor of Research in Philosophy and Technology and co-founded the Faculty of Environmental Ethics at the University of Georgia.

Reviews

"This volume is metaphysics with courage and conviction, set forth with persuasion and comprehensiveness, at a time when few people have such metaphysical courage, conviction, and comprehensiveness (and a great many people are cultured despisers of it). " — Holmes Rolston, Colorado State University