Book Description

Excerpt from Cultural Reality The present study of cultural reality constitutes the first part of a general introduction to the philosophy of culture, to be supplemented soon by a second part bearing upon the fundamental principles of creative activity. As will be clear from the first chapter of the present volume, in calling the body of knowledge for which this introduction intends to lay the formal foundations a "philosophy of culture," I do not mean to say that it is a mere branch of philosophy in general, but to indicate by this term a standpoint and a method applicable to the entire field of research which has belonged or can belong to philosophy. This field is incomparably wider than, not only scientists, but even professional philosophers are now inclined to admit. There can be hardly a more paradoxical situation found in the history of knowledge than that of modem professional philosophy, which is slowly waning for lack of material, whereas at no other period was there such a wealth and variety of ready materials at hand. We find the question quite seriously discussed whether philosophy has or not a subject-matter of its own, while innumerable concrete problems, as vital, as positive, as important, as those which any theoretic discipline ever had to deal with, are waiting to be adequately formulated and solved by a well-organized and self-conscious philosophy. We see philosophers trying to put an artificial life into old systems, or attempting to synthetize the ready results of special sciences, or reducing their discipline to a mere investigation of the methodological and ontological presuppositions of these sciences, or even resigning all unity of philosophical purposes and methods and dissolving philosophy into a multiplicity of partly philosophical, partly scientific or practical, monographs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.