Modern thought, finally free from premodern excesses of belief,
immediately fell prey to excesses of doubt. This book points toward
a postmodern approach to knowing that moves beyond the tired choice
between dogma and skepticism. Its key deconstructive aim is to help
contemporary philosophers see that their paralyzing modern
"epistemological gap" is a myth. Its positive outcome, however,
reverses the identification of "postmodern" with deconstruction
rather than construction, with the "end of philosophy" rather than
renewal in philosophy.
Knowing and Value begins by tracing how we got here, and argues
that much of our modern dilemma rests on choices that might have
gone otherwise. Key value judgments underlying Plato's and
Aristotle's epistemological norms, which still tend to govern our
theories of knowledge, are clarified. Next the value-laden sources
of premodern attitudes toward knowing are exposed by showing how
the Christian synthesis of faith and reason was at first built by
medieval Platonists and Aristotelians, then razed by premodern
nominalists. This diagnostic account concludes with a close look at
how modernity, from Hobbes and Descartes to Kant, designed its own
epistemological trap by rejecting some premodern values, while
accepting others.
The book also examines the principal ways moderns (positivists,
idealists, existentialists, and pragmatists) have tried to cope
with the supposed epistemological gap -- each without success, but
with every failure leaving resources for rebuilding.
In a constructive climax, the book shows how an ecological
worldview, emphasizing real relations (the view proposed in its
predecessor volume, Being and Value) can heal the needlessruptures
on which modern epistemic maladies depend. A reformed account of
human experience confronts modern skepticism head-on; a fresh
"process" approach to language and thinking is proposed; and
finally, a postmodern, pluralist view of theories and truth is
offered under a guiding aesthetic metaphor: "Knowing is the music
of thought".
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