THE LIFE OF REASON

The Phases of Human Progress
Volumes One Through Five
GEORGE SANTAYANA

hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê

 


In Five Volumes
Introduction to Life of Reason

 

 

 

REASON IN COMMON SENSE

Volume One of “The Life of Reason”
GEORGE SANTAYANA

hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê


CONTENTS

Introduction

THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTECEDENTS

Progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates.—Efficacious reflection is reason.—The Life of Reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness.—It is the sum of Art.—It has a natural basis which makes it definable.—Modern philosophy not helpful.—Positivism no positive ideal.—Christian philosophy mythical: it misrepresents facts and conditions.—Liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world.—The Greeks thought straight in both physics and morals.—Heraclitus and the immediate.—Democritus and the naturally intelligible.—Socrates and the autonomy of mind.—Plato gave the ideal its full expression.—Aristotle supplied its natural basis.—Philosophy thus complete, yet in need of restatement.—Plato’s myths in lieu of physics.—Aristotle’s final causes.—Modern science can avoid such expedients.—Transcendentalism true but inconsequential.—Verbal ethics.—Spinoza and the Life of Reason.—Modern and classic sources of inspiration. Pages 1-32

CHAPTER I

THE BIRTH OF REASON

Existence always has an Order, called Chaos when incompatible with a chosen good.—Absolute order, or truth, is static, impotent, indifferent.—In experience order is relative to interests which determine the moral status of all powers.—The discovered conditions of reason not its beginning.—The flux first.—Life the fixation of interests.—Primary dualities.—First gropings.—Instinct the nucleus of reason.—Better and worse the fundamental categories. Pages 35-47

CHAPTER II

FIRST STEPS AND FIRST FLUCTUATIONS

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