The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea

by Arthur O. Lovejoy

Overview

From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers and men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world.In this volume, which embodies the William James lectures for 1933, Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles—plenitude, continuity, and graduation—which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse samifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674255425
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/01/1971
Series:	The William James Lectures
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	623 KB

About the Author

Arthur O. Lovejoy taught philosophy for nearly forty years at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous works, including Essays in the History of Ideas and Revolt against Dualism.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: the Study of the History of Ideas

2. The Genesis of the Idea in Greek Philosophy: the Three Principles

3. The Chain of Being and Some Internal Conflicts in Medieval Thought

4. The Principle of Plenitude and New Cosmography

5. Plenitude and Sufficient Reason in Leibniz and Spinoza

6. The Chain of Being in Eighteenth-Century Thought, and Man's Place and Rôle in Nature

7. The Principle of Plenitude and Eighteenth-Century Optimism

8. The Chain of Being and Some Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Biology

9. The Temporalizing of the Chain of Being

10. Romanticism and the Principle of Plenitude

11. The Outcome of the History and Its Moral

Notes

Index of Names and Subjects

Editorial Reviews

The Great Chain of Being, employed as a title, would have suggested…what was 'probably the most widely familiar conception of the general scheme of things'—the idea of a world in which every being was related to every other in a continuously graded scale, with no possible form of diversity missing. Pursuing the biography of this idea through more than two thousand years, the distinguished author of these lectures makes clear its amazing influence on the thought and history of the Western World… Intellectual vigor, critical precision and an amazing knowledge of what mankind has thought and desired in other ages distinguishes this book. No student of the history of literature, science, or philosophy may well neglect it.

Clifford Barrett

A fascinating and moving book… Everyone interested in the larger ironies of human history should read [it].

New Republic - Ernest Nagel

Men are galvanized by ideas and act as vehicles for them… Such a ruling idea is that of the great chain of being. Prof. Lovejoy's study records the birth, the growth, the vicissitudes, transformations, and finally the senility, and perhaps the death of this idea. The study is as fascinating as that of the rise and decay of an empire, and, in fact, it is the study of the empire of an idea over human minds throughout many centuries… Prof. Lovejoy's approach is fresh and different… The learning exhibited in this book is vast.

Modern Language Notes - Raphael Demos

One of the great books of our generation.

Marjorie Nicolsonn Scholar

One of the great books of our generation.

American Scholar - Marjorie Nicolson

Men are galvanized by ideas and act as vehicles for them...Such a ruling idea is that of the great chain of being. Prof. Lovejoy's study records the birth, the growth, the vicissitudes, transformations, and finally the senility, and perhaps the death of this idea. The study is as fascinating as that of the rise and decay of an empire, and, in fact, it is the study of the empire of an idea over human minds throughout many centuries...Prof. Lovejoy's approach is fresh and different...The learning exhibited in this book is vast.
— Raphael Demos

Modern Language Notes

A fascinating and moving book...Everyone interested in the larger ironies of human history should read [it].
— Ernest Nagel

New Republic

One of the great books of our generation.
— Marjorie Nicolson

American Scholar

The Great Chain of Being, employed as a title, would have suggested...what was 'probably the most widely familiar conception of the general scheme of things'--the idea of a world in which every being was related to every other in a continuously graded scale, with no possible form of diversity missing. Pursuing the biography of this idea through more than two thousand years, the distinguished author of these lectures makes clear its amazing influence on the thought and history of the Western World...Intellectual vigor, critical precision and an amazing knowledge of what mankind has thought and desired in other ages distinguishes this book. No student of the history of literature, science, or philosophy may well neglect it.
— Clifford Barrett

New York Times Book Review