Philosophical Imagination and the Evolution of Modern Philosophy - Softcover

"For beginners, it will provide a useful overview of many--possibly even most--of the high points of Western philosophy. For philosophy graduate students and professors, it will provide a lot to think about and (often) disagree with. For theologians, it may provoke thought and comment about what is truly good or valuable in religion and theology.... But in its short 172 pages the book covers an enormous ground.... It is also remarkably well and clearly written, with a minimum of philosophical jargon, so almost everyone should be able to read it without straining to understand what the writer is trying to say. I recommend it without hesitation."----Excerpt from International Journal on World Peace, September 2017, by Lloyd Eby, Lecturer in Philosophy at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. "James Danaher has written a clear, succinct, and compulsively readable history of the philosophical imagination and the evolution of the modern mind. Even more important, he has questioned the usual truth-claims of philosophy and suggested that there is another way to truth that is both higher and wiser. Not to be missed."----Maggie Ross, author of Silence: A User's Guide ..".a critically important and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, and academic library Contemporary Philosophy collections." --Midwest Book Review In Philosophical Imagination and the Evolution of Modern Philosophy, James Danaher expands our understanding of the meaning of truth, reconnecting it to beauty and goodness. His exploration of truth's philosophical evolution helps us appreciate how truth is being itself. This insightful book takes high philosophical concepts and makes them interesting and accessible for the general reader.---- Steve McIntosh, author of The Presence of the Infinite, and president of The Institute for Cultural Evolution This is the book I have been waiting for. Danaher straightens out the maze and gives us a readable, compact, and comprehensive journey of twenty-five centuries of philosophical perspective from Heraclitus and Aristotle to Kuhn and Lyotard. Danaher has given us, as he says, "a history of the way the philosophical imagination has caused human consciousness to evolve in order to make sense of new data as it has appeared over our history." In addition, he is closely attuned to the Christian story. He says that "originally the Christian religion was not about knowing and believing certain doctrines or theology, but about a certain way to be." Following his theme of truth, goodness, and beauty, he eloquently writes, "Jesus' truth is not something to know but something to fall in love with because it is divinely beautiful and good, and not simply true." This is a small book filled with big understanding and insight for all who would like to find out why they look at life the way they do and where we are heading as we continue to evolve.--Paul Smith, author of Integral Christianity: The Spirit's Call to Evolve (02/21/2017)

Throughout modern history, the philosophical imagination has created the philosophical perspectives of modern materialism, rationalism, empiricism, phenomenalism, historicism, existentialism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and feminism. Although these schools of thought have their origin in the imagination, we all too often believe these perspectives give us access to truth itself, rather than being ways to make sense of our experience. Truth as something to know will always be relative to the imagination and the perspectives it creates. However, another notion of truth as something to be has emerged over the history of philosophical thought from Socrates to the present that is not relative to the changing perspectives of truth as something to know. This book offers a narrative of how the modern mind evolved through the philosophical imaginations of certain individuals who provided new perspectives in order to make sense of emerging data and circumstances of which the inherited philosophical perspectives of the day were unable to explain.