The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought (Classic Reprint): Critically and Historically Considered

by Rudolf Christoph Eucken

Excerpt from The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought

In every instance the question is always curious and often instructive, What was the popular and general meaning Of the term before it crystallized into its special and fixed meaning? Or, if it were originally a term of the schools, by what steps of transition did it proceed from one meaning to another, till finally it took on a signification which was the opposite of that which it originally bore, or till two correlated terms completely interchanged their significations? The remark of Cole ridge is often repeated, that there are cases in which more knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a word than by the history of a campaign. This is emphatically true, and more; for, in cases not a few, the history of a word is the history of an actual campaign of patient research or active controversy.

326 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2009

About the author

Rudolf Christoph Eucken (German: [ˈɔʏkn̩]; 5 January 1846 – 15 September 1926) was a German philosopher. He received the 1908 Nobel Prize for Literature "in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength in presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life".