Four Ages of Understanding : : The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century / / John Deely.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Deely, John,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

This book redraws the intellectual map and sets the agenda in philosophy for the next fifty or so years. By making the theory of signs the dominant theme in "Four Ages of Understanding", John Deely has produced a history of philosophy that is innovative, original, and complete. The first full-scale demonstration of the centrality of the theory of signs to the history of philosophy, "Four Ages of Understanding" provides a new vantage point from which to review and reinterpret the development of intellectual culture at the threshold of "globalization".Deely examines the whole movement of past developments in the history of philosophy in relation to the emergence of contemporary semiotics as the defining moment of Postmodernism. Beginning traditionally with the Pre-Socratic thinkers of early Greece, Deely gives an account of the development of the notion of signs and of the general philosophical problems and themes which give that notion a context through four ages: Ancient philosophy, covering initial Greek thought; the Latin age, philosophy in European civilization from Augustine in the 4th century to Poinsot in the 17th; the Modern period, beginning with Descartes and Locke; and the Postmodern period, beginning with Charles Sanders Peirce and continuing to the present. Reading the complete history of philosophy in light of the theory of the sign allows Deely to address the work of thinkers never before included in a general history, and in particular to overcome the gap between Ockham and Descartes which has characterized the standard treatments heretofore. One of the essential features of the book is the way in which it shows how the theme of signs opens a perspective for seeing the Latin Age from its beginning with Augustine to the work of Poinsot as an indigenous development and organic unity under which all the standard themes of ontology and epistemology find a new resolution and place.A magisterial general history of philosophy, Deely's book provides both a strong background to semiotics and a theoretical unity between philosophy's history and its immediate future. With "Four Ages of Understanding" Deely sets a new agenda for philosophy as a discipline entering the 21st century.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Aviso: Why Read This Book? -- Contents at a Glance -- Contents in Detail -- List of Tables and Illustrations -- Reconocimientos -- Preface: The Boundary of Time -- CHAPTER ONE: Society and Civilization: The Prelude to Philosophy -- PART ONE: Ancient Philosophy -- CHAPTER TWO: Philosophy as Physics -- CHAPTER THREE: The Golden Age: Philosophy Expands Its Horizon -- CHAPTER FOUR: The Final Greek Centuries and the Overlap of Neoplatonism with Christianity -- PART TWO: The Latin Age -- CHAPTER FIVE: The Geography of the Latin Age -- CHAPTER SIX: The So-Called Dark Ages -- CHAPTER SEVEN: Cresting a Wave: The Second Stage -- CHAPTER EIGHT: The Fate of Sign in the Later Latin Age -- CHAPTER NINE: Three Outcomes, Two Destinies -- CHAPTER TEN: The Road Not Taken -- PART THREE: The Modern Period -- CHAPTER ELEVEN: Beyond the Latin Umwelt: Science Comes of Age -- CHAPTER TWELVE: The Founding Fathers: Rene Descartes and John Locke -- CHAPTER 13: Synthesis and Successors: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde -- CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Locke Again: The Scheme of Human Knowledge -- PART FOUR: Postmodern Times -- CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Charles Sanders Peirce and the Recovery of Signum -- CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Semiology: Modernity's Attempt to Treat the Sign -- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: At the Turn of the Twenty-first Century -- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: At the Turn of the Twenty-first Century -- Historically Layered References -- Gloss on the References -- Index: RERUM ET PERSONARUM -- Timetable of Figures