Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (William James Lectures Series)

Arthur O. Lovejoy

ISBN 10: 0674361504 / ISBN 13: 9780674361508

Published by Harvard University Press, 1936

About this Item

1970 printing. Light creasing and rubbing to the dust jacket. dust jacket is price clipped. Light wear to the boards. Sound binding. Clean interior pages. This could have light cosmetic flaws, but remains in good condition. Dust jacket condition is Good. This copy is the Later Printing of the published work. Secure packaging for safe delivery.

Seller Inventory # 1680940027

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (William James Lectures Series)
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1936
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674361504
• ISBN 13: 9780674361508
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Weight: 1.15 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers and men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world.

In this volume, which embodies the William James lectures for 1933, Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles - plenitude, continuity, and graduation - which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse ramifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

From the Back Cover

'Men are galvanized by ideas and act as vehicles for them ...Such a ruling idea is that of the great chain of being. Prof. Lovejoy's study records the birth, the growth, the vicissitudes, transformations, and finally the senility, and perhaps the death of this idea. The study is as fascinating as that of the rise and decay of an empire, and, in fact, it is the study of the empire of an idea over human minds throughout many centuries...Prof. Lovejoy's approach is fresh and different.' Modern Language Notes