Description
Book SynopsisTreats human communication in terms of ideal cooperation. In this book, the author establishes that form permeates society just as it does poetry and the arts. It states that forms of art are not exclusively aesthetic: the cycles of a storm, the gradations of a sunrise, the undoing of Prince Hamlet are all instances of progressive form.
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE
PART I
ON INTERPRETATION
CHAPTER I: ORIENTATION
All Living Things Are Critics
Veblen's Concept of "Trained Incapacity"
Training, Means-Selecting, and Escape
The Pavlov, Watson, and Gestalt Experiments in Meaning
The Scapegoat as an Error in Interpretation
Connection between Rationalization and Orientation
CHAPTER II: MOTIVES
Motives Are Subdivisions in a Larger Frame of Meaning
The Pleasure Principle in Orientation
The Strategy of Motives
Further Consideration of Motive as Part of a Larger Whole
Motives Are Shorthand Terms for Situations
CHAPTER III: OCCUPATIONAL PSYCHOSIS
The Nature of Interest
Occupational Psychoses of the Present
The Technological Psychosis
Effects upon Literature
Occupational Psychosis as Trained Incapacity
CHAPTER IV: STYLE
The Essence of Stylistic Appeal
Various Romantic Solutions
The Need for Definition
CHAPTER V: MAGIC, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE
The Three Orders of Rationalization
A Humanistic, or Poetic, Rationalization
PART II
PERSPECTIVE BY INCONGRUITY
CHAPTER I: THE RANGE OF PIETY
Magical and Utilitarian Meanings
Piety As a System-builder
CHAPTER II: NEW MEANINGS
The Factor of Impiety in Evangelism
Necessitous and Symbolic Labor
Reservations Concerning Logic
Piety-impiety Conflict in Nietzsche
CHAPTER III: PERSPECTIVE AS METAPHOR
Illustrations of Perspective by Incongruity
Planned Incongruity in Bergson
The Function of Metaphor
CHAPTER IV: ARGUMENT BY ANALOGY
Analogy and Proof
Tests of Success
Classification Dictated by Interest
Interrelation of Analogy, Metaphor, Abstraction,
Classification, Interest, Expectancy, and Intention
The Search for Analogous Processes
An Incongruous Assortment of Incongruities
CHAPTER V: SECULAR CONVERSIONS
The Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis
McDougall's Modifications of Freudianism
Exorcism by Misnomer
Examination of a Case Described by Rivers
Conversion and the Lex Continui
CHAPTER VI: MEANING AND REGRESSION
Pure, or Unmixed, Responses
Conversion and Regression in Religion
CONCLUSION
A Historical Parallel
Towards a Philosophy of Being
PART III
THE BASIS OF SIMPLIFICATION
CHAPTER I: CAUSALITY AND COMMUNICATION
Major Shifts in Perspective
The Rock of Certainty
Two Aspects of Speech
CHAPTER II: PERMANENCE AND CHANGE
Modern Parallels to Ancient Thought
CHAPTER III: SECULAR MYSTICISM IN BENTHAM
Bentham's "Table of the Springs of Action"
CHAPTER IV: THE ETHICAL CONFUSION
Recommending by Tragedy
The Peace-war Conflict
Critique of Veblen's Solution
Egoistic-altruistic Merger
Ethicizing of the Means of Support
Variants of the Ethicizing Tendency
The "Pathetic Fallacy"
CHAPTER V: THE SEARCH FOR MOTIVES
Magical and Scientific Interpretation
Statistical Motives
Where Scientists and Mystics Meet
The Basis of Reference
The Part and the Whole
Outlines of a "Metabiology"
CHAPTER VI: OCCUPATION AND PREOCCUPATION
Extending the Concept of Occupation
Ambivalence of Weakness and Prowess
CHAPTER VII: THE POETRY OF ACTION
The Mystic's Sterilization of Combat
In Qualified Defense of Lawrence
Recalcitrance
CONCLUSIONS
APPENDIX
On Human Behavior, Considered "Dramatistically"
AFTERWORD
Permanence and Change: In Retrospective
Prospect
