The World as Idea: A Conceptual History (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

355 Pages·2021·32.409 MB·English

by  Charles P. Webel

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The World as Idea
In The World as Idea, Charles P. Webel presents an intellectual history of
one of the most influential concepts known to humanity— that of “the
world.”
Webel traces the development of “the world” through the past, depicting
the history of the world as an intellectual construct from its roots in
ancient creation myths of the cosmos, to contemporary speculations about
multiverses. He simultaneously offers probing analyses and critiques of
“the world as idea” from thinkers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and St.
Augustine in the Greco-R oman period to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein, Merleau- Ponty, and Derrida in modern times. While Webel
mainly focuses on Occidental philosophical, theological, and cosmological
notions of worldhood and worldliness, he also highlights important non-
Western equivalents prominent in Islamic and Asian spiritual traditions.
This ensures the book is a unique overview of what we all take for granted
in our daily existence, but seldom if ever contemplate— the world as the
uniquely meaningful environment for our lives in particular and for life on
Earth in general.
The World as Idea will be of great interest to those interested in the
concept of “world as idea,” scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and
history to political and social theory, and students studying philosophy,
the history of ideas, and humanities courses, both general and specialized.
Charles P. Webel, Ph.D., is currently a Professor and Guarantor of the
School of International Relations at the University of New York in
Prague. A five- time Fulbright Scholar and a research graduate of the
Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, he has studied and taught
at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, where
he received his Ph.D. He is the author or editor of many books, including
Peace and Conflict Studies (with David Barash), the standard text in the
field, as well as Terror, Terrorism, and the Human Condition, and The
Politics of Rationality.
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Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought
159 Critical Rationalism and the Theory of Society
Critical Rationalism and the Open Society Volume 1
Masoud Mohammadi Alamuti
160 Functionalist Construction Work in Social Science
The Lost Heritage
Peter Sohlberg
161 Critical Theory and New Materialisms
Hartmut Rosa, Christoph Henning and Arthur Bueno
162 Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations
A Reconstruction
Stephen Kalberg
163 Temporal Regimes
Materiality, Politics, Technology
Felipe Torres
164 Citizenship in a Globalized World
Christine Hobden
165 The World as Idea
A Conceptual History
Charles P. Webel
166 Max Weber and the Path from Political Economy to
Economic Sociology
Christopher Adair- Toteff
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ series/
RSSPT
iii
The World as Idea
A Conceptual History
Charles P. Webel
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First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of Charles P. Webel to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Webel, Charles, author.
Title: The world as idea : a conceptual history / Charles P. Webel.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge studies in social and political thought |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021023019 (print) | LCCN 2021023020 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138013520 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032115665 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781315795171 (ebook) | ISBN 9781317746720 (adobe pdf) |
ISBN 9781317746706 (mobi) | ISBN 9781317746713 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Cosmology. | Existentialism. | Phenomenology.
Classification: LCC BD511 .W43 2021 (print) |
LCC BD511 (ebook) | DDC 113–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023019
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023020
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 01352- 0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 032- 11566- 5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 79517- 1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/ 9781315795171
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
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Contents
Introduction 1
1 The World and Its History 17
2 From the Existence of the World to Our Existence in
This World: The Creation of the Modern Universe 95
3 Existential and Phenomenological Words and Worlds 182
4 Talking About the World: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
Language of the World 257
A Conclusion Without an End, or an End Without a
Conclusion? 311
Index 325
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vii
Detailed Contents
Introduction 1
“My” World 2
The Origins of “The World” 3
The Varieties of Fate 6
Human and Humanity 6
Varieties of Existence 8
Planet Earth 10
Our Earth 11
Life on Earth 12
Humanity on Earth 13
My Perspective on The World 14
1 The World and Its History 17
The Historical Periodization of the World 17
Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern Worlds 17
The Cosmos and the World 18
Cosmogony and Cosmology 19
Some Asian Theories of the Universe and World 20
Myths of the World 20
Myths of Life, Death, and Their Meanings 21
Myths of Creation 22
Mythos, Nous, and Logos 24
Mythos and Logos in Presocratic Greek Thought 26
Heraclitus 28
Xenophanes 28
Parmenides 29
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans 30
Empedocles 32
Anaxagoras 32
Atomistic Materialism: Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, and
Lucretius 34
The Sophists 37
Socrates’ World 41
The Socratic Problem: Who Was Socrates? 42
Socratic Definitions, Ethics, and Politics 43
Socrates’ Trial, Death, and Political Philosophy 44
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viii Detailed Contents
Socratic “Ignorance” and Virtues 45
The Post- Socratic World 46
Plato: The Form(s) of a Better World 47
Platonic Discourse 48
The Two Worlds in Plato’s Thought 48
Plato’s Cosmos 51
Plato’s Politics of Human Nature 51
Aristotle’s World 54
Aristotle’s Philosophy and Methodology 55
Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy 56
The Aristotelian Cosmos 58
The Eternity of the World 58
The Soul According to Aristotle 59
Aristotelian Ethics and Political Theory 60
Aristotle and Plato 62
Aristotle’s Influence 65
The Stoics 66
The Stoic Universe 66
The Stoic God 67
Stoic Fate and Freedom 67
The Neoplatonists 68
The Neoplatonic Universe, Mind, and Soul 68
Neoplatonism’s Influence 69
Philosophical, Cosmological, and Theological Interlude 70
Cosmological Arguments in Theology 71
Logos in Early Christianity 72
St. Augustine 73
Creation and Time 76
Aquinas and Medieval Scholasticism 77
Aquinas and Aristotle 78
The Material and Metaphysical Worlds, From Nature to Divinity in
Aquinas 79
The Enduring Influence of Aquinas’s Worldview 79
Medieval Islamic and Jewish Worldviews 80
Avicenna 80
Averroes 82
Maimonides 83
From the Cosmos to the World 84
2 From the Existence of the World to Our Existence in
This World: The Creation of the Modern Universe 95
From the Heliocentric Universe to the Modern Universe 95
The Copernican Universe 96
The Mechanical Universe of Sir Isaac Newton 98
Newton’s Legacy 99
The World and the Mind According to René Descartes 100
The Cartesian Cosmos 101
Cartesian Actual and Possible, Old and New, Worlds 102
Descartes and Cartesianism 103
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Detailed Contents ix
God’s Design for “The Best of all Possible Worlds” 104
The God- Permeated Universe of Baruch Spinoza 104
Leibniz and the “Best of All Possible Worlds” 105
The “Best of All Possible Worlds” 106
The Fate of an Idea 108
Kant’s Conceptual Worlds 109
Kant’s Metaphysical and Epistemological Worlds 110
Kant’s Moral Worlds 116
Knowing and Having the World: Kant’s Anthropocentric
Anthropology 119
Human Nature in the Historical and Political Worlds 121
Kant’s Philosophical History of the World 125
Toward a Peaceful World? 126
Kant’s Worlds and the Worlds to Come 128
Kant’s Impact on the World to Come 129
Hegel: The History of the World Is the World’s Court of Judgment 129
Hegel’s Metaphysical World as Appearance and Essence
(as “In- and For- Itself”) 130
Hegel’s Historical and Political Worlds 132
The Philosophical World’s Judgments of Hegel’s Worldview 134
Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation 135
From Nothingness, Through Misery, and Back to Nothingness 135
Schopenhauer’s Worldly Influence 140
Søren Kierkegaard’s Existential World 141
Kierkegaard’s Singular Literary and Paradoxically Absurd Worlds 143
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life- World 148
Nietzsche’s Life’s Work 149
Nietzsche’s Textual Worlds 152
Nietzsche’s Anti- Philosophical Hammer Pummels the “Idols of the
World” 153
The World Is the Will to Power, and We Have Created It! 155
Nietzsche’s Aestheticization of the World? 158
The Riddle of the World and the Puzzle of Nietzsche’s Inner World 159
3 Existential and Phenomenological Words and Worlds 182
Husserl’s Phenomenological Worlds 182
Phenomenological Worlds as Bracketed, Intended, and Constituted 184
Husserl’s Natural and Arithmetical Worlds 185
Husserl’s Transcendental and Transcendent Worlds 186
Husserl’s World as a Whole, as Form, as a Concept, and as a Community
of Incarnate Egos 186
Husserl’s Lifeworld and Environmental World 188
The Non- Being or Annihilation of the World According to Husserl 189
Martin Heidegger’s Being- In- This- World 190
Heidegger’s Life- and Political Worlds 191
Heidegger’s Philosophical Being- In- The- World 194
The World in Being-and-Time 200
Heidegger’s Post-B eing- and- Time Worlds 201
Heidegger’s Continuing Virtual Being- In- This- World 207
Jean- Paul Sartre’s Engagement with the World 210