| Description |
xvii, 278 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction to the Transaction Edition -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Development -- 3. The Characteristics of Man -- 4. European Man -- 5. The European Tradition -- 6. Europe after 1600 -- 7. The Twentieth Century -- 8. Nine Thinkers I -- 9. Nine Thinkers II -- 10. Unitary Man -- 11. The World Trend -- App.: Glossary of Unitary Thought |
| Summary |
"Whyte's thesis is that the current stage of human development makes not only necessary, but inevitable, constructing a "unitary method of thought" to overcome the dualism of the modern Western mind. He argues that the deepest troubles of Western civilization are due, in large part, to excessive reliance on the ancient Greek postulates of permanence and invariance as an ordered form of thought resulting in an extreme, mechanistic anti-humanism. What culminated in two world wars, Whyte argued, is a European dissociation, or "lesion." This dissociation represents an achievement in terms of rational mastery of the natural and human worlds, unique social dynamism and differentiation, and the flowering of individuality. But the price was high: disordering of thought, emotion, and will; conflict between our deliberate and spontaneous, conscious, and unconscious energies; unstable polarization between a delusive unchanging ideal world and the reality of human transience and limitation |
|
Whyte chooses nine thinkers to illustrate this historical and evolutionary movement, including Heraclitus, Marx, and Freud, and the resulting vignettes are a synthesis of knowledge that suggest, as well, a reorientation of thought, feeling, and action for the future."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Originally published: Next development in man. London : Cresset Press, 1944 |
|
Includes index |
| Subject |
Civilization -- Philosophy.
|
| LC no. |
2002073282 |
| ISBN |
0765801620 acid-free paper |
|
0765809699 paperback |
|
