Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Scepticism and Animal Faith

George Santayana

4.2/5 ( ratings)

In this work, Santayana analyzes the nature of the knowing process and demonstrates by means of clear, powerful arguments how we know and what validates our knowledge. The central concept of his philosophy is found in a careful discrimination between the awareness of objects independent of our perception and the awareness of essences attributed to objects by our mind, or between what Santayana calls the realm of existents and the realm of subsistents. Since we can never be certain that these attributes actually inhere in a substratum of existents, skepticism is established as a form of belief, but animal faith is shown to be a necessary quality of the human mind. Without this faith there could be no rational approach to the necessary problem of understanding and surviving in this world.
Santayana derives this practical philosophy from a wide and fascinating variety of sources. He considers critically the positions of such philosophers as Descartes, Euclid, Hume, Kant, Parmenides, Plato, Pythagoras, Schopenhauer, and the Buddhist school as well as the assumptions made by the ordinary man in everyday situations. Such matters as the nature of belief, the rejection of classical idealism, the nature of intuition and memory, symbols and myth, mathematical reality, literary psychology, the discovery of essence, sublimation of animal faith, the implied being of truth, and many others are given detailed analyses in individual chapters.

Language: English

Pages: 336

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Dover Publications

Release: June 01, 1955

ISBN: 0486202364

ISBN 13: 9780486202365

Scepticism and Animal Faith

George Santayana

4.2/5 ( ratings)

In this work, Santayana analyzes the nature of the knowing process and demonstrates by means of clear, powerful arguments how we know and what validates our knowledge. The central concept of his philosophy is found in a careful discrimination between the awareness of objects independent of our perception and the awareness of essences attributed to objects by our mind, or between what Santayana calls the realm of existents and the realm of subsistents. Since we can never be certain that these attributes actually inhere in a substratum of existents, skepticism is established as a form of belief, but animal faith is shown to be a necessary quality of the human mind. Without this faith there could be no rational approach to the necessary problem of understanding and surviving in this world.
Santayana derives this practical philosophy from a wide and fascinating variety of sources. He considers critically the positions of such philosophers as Descartes, Euclid, Hume, Kant, Parmenides, Plato, Pythagoras, Schopenhauer, and the Buddhist school as well as the assumptions made by the ordinary man in everyday situations. Such matters as the nature of belief, the rejection of classical idealism, the nature of intuition and memory, symbols and myth, mathematical reality, literary psychology, the discovery of essence, sublimation of animal faith, the implied being of truth, and many others are given detailed analyses in individual chapters.

Language: English

Pages: 336

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Dover Publications

Release: June 01, 1955

ISBN: 0486202364

ISBN 13: 9780486202365

More books from George Santayana

الإحساس بالجمال : تخطيط النظرية فى علم الجمال

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The Life of Reason

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Reason in Art

3.7/5 ( ratings)

The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy/Character & Opinion in the United States

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Reason in Religion

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, Goethe (Barnes & Noble Rediscovers Series)

4.5/5 ( ratings)

The Letters of George Santayana

3.2/5 ( ratings)

Filosofia del viaggio

Sonnets and Other Verses

4.5/5 ( ratings)

History of Philosophy: five classic books in a single file

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell

The Letters of George Santayana, Book 7, 1941-47

Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies

The Letters of George Santayana, Book 8, 1948-52

Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante And Goethe

The Life of Reason - Unabridged Plus an Overview, Summary, Analysis and Author Biography

The Life of Reason (with ClicBrowz navigation)

Winds of Doctrine, Critical Edition, Volume 9: Studies in Contemporary Opinion

Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst

The Sense of Beauty

Rate this book!

Write a review?