{"product_id":"minding-the-modern-human-agency-intellectual-traditions-and-responsible-knowledge-paperback","title":"Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eThomas Pfau\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this brilliant study, Thomas Pfau argues that the loss of foundational concepts in classical and medieval Aristotelian philosophy caused a fateful separation between reason and will in European thought. Pfau traces the evolution and eventual deterioration of key concepts of human agency--will, person, judgment, action--from antiquity through Scholasticism and on to eighteenth-century moral theory and its critical revision in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Featuring extended critical discussions of Aristotle, Gnosticism, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, and Coleridge, this study contends that the humanistic concepts these writers seek to elucidate acquire meaning and significance only inasmuch as we are prepared positively to engage (rather than historicize) their previous usages. Beginning with the rise of theological (and, eventually, secular) voluntarism, modern thought appears increasingly reluctant and, in time, unable to engage the deep history of its own underlying conceptions, thus leaving our understanding of the nature and function of humanistic inquiry increasingly frayed and incoherent. One consequence of this shift is to leave the moral self-expression of intellectual elites and ordinary citizens alike stunted, which in turn has fueled the widespread notion that moral and ethical concerns are but a special branch of inquiry largely determined by opinion rather than dialogical reasoning, judgment, and practice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA clear sign of this regression is the present crisis in the study of the humanities, whose role is overwhelmingly conceived (and negatively appraised) in terms of scientific theories, methods, and objectives. The ultimate casualty of this reductionism has been the very idea of personhood and the disappearance of an adequate ethical language. \u003ci\u003eMinding the Modern\u003c\/i\u003e is not merely a chapter in the history of ideas; it is a thorough phenomenological and metaphysical study of the roots of today's predicaments.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThomas Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English and professor of German at Duke University, with a secondary appointment on the Duke Divinity School faculty. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including \u003ci\u003eRomantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790-1840\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 684\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1.4 x 10.1 x 7 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e February 15, 2015\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45304899928166,"sku":"9780268038441","price":71.02,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0599\/7255\/0758\/files\/d2wyak1ELzkrN0luTFE4YXJYVFZKdz09.webp?v=1774043436","url":"https:\/\/infinitylightwa.com\/products\/minding-the-modern-human-agency-intellectual-traditions-and-responsible-knowledge-paperback","provider":"Infinity Light","version":"1.0","type":"link"}