Understanding the four ages of thought
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Ivan Mladenov
Abstract
Thinking of one's own thinking is not a favorable job even for philosophers. It seems natural for humans, unnatural for animals, and that is all. Hypotheses are used to explain the patterns of thinking, instead of the flow of thinking in different patterns. The usual approach is to attribute sense to phenomena, rather than to study them “as they are.” As for sense, it is indisputably present. This has been the way undertaken by philosophers over centuries. In his thousand-page “first postmodern survey of philosophy from ancient times to the turn of the twenty-first century,” John Deely traces the main paths of human thought but also examines a “road not taken” by thinkers. By following a mysterious “sign-notion,” abandoned in early modern times in favor of the “way of ideas,” he achieves a profound insight into the skeleton of the entirety of human thought.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Why read Deely? Introduction to the Four ages special issue
- The integration of Thomistic intentionality theory and contemporary semiotics
- The history of philosophy as a semiotic process: A note on John Deely's momumental Four ages of understanding
- Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
- Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
- Relations: The true substrate for evolution
- The church of pragmatism
- Is modernity really so bad? John Deely and Husserl's phenomenology
- Deely, Aquinas, and Poinsot: How the intentionality of inner sense transcends the limits of empiricism
- From sémiologie to postmodernism: A genealogy
- The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
- Four Ages of underrating: Philosophy and zoösemiotic issues
- Cosmic semiosis: Contuiting the Divine
- Understanding the four ages of thought
Articles in the same Issue
- Why read Deely? Introduction to the Four ages special issue
- The integration of Thomistic intentionality theory and contemporary semiotics
- The history of philosophy as a semiotic process: A note on John Deely's momumental Four ages of understanding
- Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
- Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
- Relations: The true substrate for evolution
- The church of pragmatism
- Is modernity really so bad? John Deely and Husserl's phenomenology
- Deely, Aquinas, and Poinsot: How the intentionality of inner sense transcends the limits of empiricism
- From sémiologie to postmodernism: A genealogy
- The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
- Four Ages of underrating: Philosophy and zoösemiotic issues
- Cosmic semiosis: Contuiting the Divine
- Understanding the four ages of thought
