Items related to The Capacity And Extent Of The Human Understanding

The Capacity And Extent Of The Human Understanding - Softcover

John Kirkby

 
9780371432525: The Capacity And Extent Of The Human Understanding

Synopsis

The Capacity And Extent Of The Human Understanding: Exemplified In The Extraordinary Case Of Automathes; A Young Nobleman, who Was Accidentally Left, In His Infancy, Upon A Desolate Island, And Continued Nineteen Years In That Solitary State, Separate From All Human Society. A Narrative Abounding by John Kirkby. The work presents the labyrinthine exploration of knowledge, education, and religious sensibility through the impossible tale of Automathes, a shipwrecked youth who lives nineteen years in isolation on a remote island. In a first-person frame, Automathes recounts how an invisible tutor—subsequently identified as the memory and guidance of his deceased mother—leads him to rational understanding and a deep sense of the divine. He forms a self-guided curriculum in languages, mathematics, astronomy, geometry, and moral reflection, using beavers as models for social organization, and a contemplative analysis of education's origins. The narrative also includes criticisms of ecclesiastical and civil governance, and embraces a Providence-centered epistemology: knowledge arises through education from a transcendent source and through human conscience, culminating in a reunion with humanity. The text thus merges travel narrative, philosophical argument, and religious exhortation.

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