Metaphysics of William James and John Dewey e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Chapter I presents some religious examples. In which certain features appear that later chapters will show to be congruent to philosophy. This chapter includes ancient religions which provided a cradle for our Western civiliza tion, Canaan, Greece, and Christianity. Whatever else we may say about their witness, these religions reveal a common polarity of process and structure. By means of the attributes of their gods, they reflect an orientation to changing life and its significance in the construction of the future, plus a seemingly conflicting orientation toward the direction of life and its measure and control of the changing process itself. The illustrations which the book presents show that this polarity is not identically the same in each case, but that within each particular cultural variation it does exist. For instance, within the predominantly agricultural society of Canaan, a paramount concern of the people is the coming of the new rainy season and the birth of the new crop. In so far as this concern expresses itself in the people's attempt to affect the crop and in their acceptance of its coming and going as ultimately significant in the meaningof the world, we have an orientation which accepts changing life as significant in the construction of the future. Baal, the fertility god who brings the seasonal growth, is its religious symbol. The people believed that by allying themselves with Baal they and he could affect the world in which they lived. The other pole is the one that expresses itself in the acceptance of the necessity for a structural measure which controls and directs the changing life process itself. Within the predominantly agricultural society of Canaan, the people express this awareness in a concern for the regulation of the seasons and an acceptance of measure as of ultimate signifi cance. El, the chief god of the pantheon, to whom all the gods must do homage even if only to fulfill their seasonal chores, is its religious symbol. In th