St. Augustine's Press

 For almost the entire twentieth century, the discipline of philosophy has been in a quandary in attempting to identify and define its proper role in the contemporary world. During the past twenty-five years, it has fallen on bad days in academe, often reduced to overly technical ramblings or post- modernist rants. Its demise has been predicted, if not reported, for years.

Finally, in this provocative and controversial book, Robert Greene does the dirty deed and puts philosophy out of its misery, issuing a coup de grace to the current ill-conceived, skeptical discipline. But then he breathes life into the great interdisciplinary tradition of philosophers, freeing them from the straitjacket of the mind-body dualism and “the problem of knowledge.”

The heart of the book is a long chapter and two appendices expounding the brilliance of Aristotle on language, the soul, and mind.

The Death and Life of Philosophy not only presents the great thinkers of the past in a new light, but also satirizes the philosophy professors of today, putting their work and even their aims into perspective in a highly readable and engaging manner.

“Robert Greene manages to resuscitate the corpse of philosophy in the course of performing a brilliant autopsy. Write with the clarity and crispness of a Roger Scruton, Green puts before his reader the plight to which philosophy has brought itself, identifies the point at which things started to go off the rails, and then, in confirmation of Dante’s judgment that Aristotle is the ‘master of those who know,’ relies on the Stagirite for guidance on how things can be made right again. This is not a matter of going backward in time so much as recovering – or uncovering – truths that have been right under our noses all along. This eloquent plea for the tradition provides a blueprint for the philosophy of the third millennium.” – Ralph McInerny

“The strengths of The Death and Life of Philosophy are unmistakable. First and most obvious, we have an unabashed and searching defense of Aristotle for a modern or post-modern age. . . . Greene’s strength is that he exhibits these fruits and insights in a novel way, one that offers something to trained philosophers and to novices. . . . [A]nyone who revels in the intellectual life ought to read The Death and Life of Philosophy.” – Bruce Silver, Modern Language Notes

 

Home

Books



Print out, fax or mail your order
The Death and Life
of Philosophy
Robert Greene

316 pages, 6” x 9”, clothbound,
ISBN: 1-890318-19-1
notes, bibliography, appendices,
index, 1999
$30.00sp