Will, Imagination, and Reason: Babbitt, Croce and the Problem of Reality

Will, Imagination, and Reason sets forth a new understanding of reality and knowledge with far-reaching implications for the study of man and society. Employing a systematic approach, Claes Ryn goes to the philosophical depths to rethink and reconstitute the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. He shows that will and imagination, together, constitute our basic outlook on life and that reason derives its material and general orientation from the interaction between them. The imaginative master-minds—novelists, poets, composers, painters, and others—powerfully affect the sensibility and direction of society. Sometimes a distorting, self-serving willfulness at the base of their visions draws civilization, including reason, into dangerous illusion. More penetrating and balanced vision and rationality spring from a different quality of will. Ryn explains the kind of interplay between will, imagination, and reason that is conducive to a deepened sense of reality and to intellectual understanding. He argues that human life and self-knowledge are inescapably historical. In developing his dialectical view of intellect, he draws from Irving Babbitt, Benedetto Croce, and other philosophers to refute positivistic, formalistic, and ahistorical theories of knowledge and to develop his alternative. Advancing a systematic epistemological argument, Ryn throws much new light on the nature of reason but also on central issues of ethics and aesthetics. This trenchant and original work is indispensable to philosophers, social, political and cultural theorists, literary scholars, and historians.

Table of Contents:
One; 1: The Ethical Will and Reality; 2: The Challenge of Modern Aesthetics; 3: Scientific Reason and Experience; 4: Philosophical Reason; 5: “The Scandal of Reason”; 6: Historical Knowledge; 7: The Logic of Knowledge; 8: Will and Knowledge; Two; 9: Will and Imaginative Truth; 10: Intuitive Wisdom and Illusion; 11: The Way to Reality; 12: Imaginative Perception of the Universal; 13: Will, Imagination and Reason

About the Author :
Claes G. Ryn is professor of politics at the Catholic University of America where he was chairman of his department. He has taught also at the University of Virginia and Georgetown University. He is chairman of the National Humanities Institute and editor of the journal Humanitas. In 2000 he gave the Distinguished Foreign Scholar Lectures at Beijing University His many books include A Common Human Ground, Will, Imagination, and Reason (2nd., exp. ed. published by Transaction), and Democracy and the Ethical Life.

Review :
-It is a book to be pondered, a quintessentially serious and profound book that stands in a great European intellectual tradition.- --Modern Age -An excellent book, written with clarity, learned judiciousness and yet with a kind of passionate urgency.- --Modern Language Notes -Brilliant and philosophicaly systematic.- --Chronicles. -Highly original and provocative ... an intellectual tour de force of the first order [with] enormous implications for modern ethical thought.- --World & I. -Exhibits great seriousness and depth.- --University Bookman. -A splendidly written and researched book on a topic of great importance to contemporary ethics.- --Review of Metaphysics. "It is a book to be pondered, a quintessentially serious and profound book that stands in a great European intellectual tradition." --Modern Age "An excellent book, written with clarity, learned judiciousness and yet with a kind of passionate urgency." --Modern Language Notes "Brilliant and philosophicaly systematic." --Chronicles. "Highly original and provocative ... an intellectual tour de force of the first order [with] enormous implications for modern ethical thought." --World & I. "Exhibits great seriousness and depth." --University Bookman. "A splendidly written and researched book on a topic of great importance to contemporary ethics." --Review of Metaphysics. "It is a book to be pondered, a quintessentially serious and profound book that stands in a great European intellectual tradition." --"Modern Age" "An excellent book, written with clarity, learned judiciousness and yet with a kind of passionate urgency." --"Modern Language Notes" "Brilliant and philosophicaly systematic." --"Chronicles. " "Highly original and provocative ... an intellectual "tour de force "of the first order [with] enormous implications for modern ethical thought." --"World & I. " "Exhibits great seriousness and depth." --"University Bookman. " "A splendidly written and researched book on a topic of great importance to contemporary ethics." --"Review of Metaphysics."