Elements of metaphysics,

by A.E. Taylor

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Philosophy

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Alfred Edward Taylor was a British idealist philosopher. He was born in 1869, the son of a Wesleyan minister. Among many distinguished appointments, he held the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh from 1924 to 1941. His main interests were Platonic philosophy and the theology of Christianity, and his contributions in both these fields have been of far-reaching importance. "Does God Exist?" was his last considerable work on the philosophy of religion before his death in 1945.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The systematic unity of reality is a single principle in and through multiplicity. The whole system is a single experience, and its consistents are also experiences. A systematic whole is not an aggregate, nor a mechanical whole of parts, nor an organism. The whole exists for its parts and they for it (p. 85).

Reality is a systematic whole forming a simple individual experience. The systematic whole is composed of constituents, which are their individual experiences. In each of these constituents, the nature of the whole system manifests itself with each one contributing its distinct content to the whole system; suppression of any of them alters the character of the whole. The nature of the whole determines the character of each of its constituents. The whole and its constituent members are in complete interpenetration and form a systematic unity (p. 104).