|
The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy |  | Author: Rousas John Rushdoony
Publisher: Ross House Books
Buy New: $26.00
as of 3/11/2010 08:28 EST details
New (2) Used (2) Collectible (1) from $24.00
Seller: chalcedon-rhb
Rating:  3 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
ISBN: 1879998467
EAN: 9781879998469
ASIN: 1879998467
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The question of where ultimacy lies should be central to the Christian. It is easy to see the social implications of allowing priority to fall to either the one or the many. This volume examines in-depth the Christian solution to the problem of the one and the many the Trinitarian God. Only in the godhead is this dilemma resolved. Only in the Trinity does there reside an equal ultimacy of unity and plurality.
Rushdoony examines the history of Western thought from the standpoint of the one and the many and demonstrates clearly that the most astute thinkers were unable to resolve this philosophical conflict. What is needed now is a complete return to the Trinitarian view of God and its implications for a Christian social order.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 The Problem of the One and the Many: Pressed and Resolved December 18, 2009
Mike Robinson
Force of habit is a potent dynamic. How else can one explain why the great majority of people have never pondered the problem of the one and the many? Most philosophers in history (not necessarily a legion of contemporary philosophers or epistemologists) have fought the strong proclivity to take the composition of reality, things, laws, and entities for granted. Hence R.J. Rushdoony's "The One and the Many: Studies in Philosophical Order and Ultimacy" reveals the rational problem of universality vs. particularity. The author exposes the problem of an affirmed ultimacy that affects the political, educational, philosophical, and epistemological realms. The author not only exposes this "basic presupposition" is referenced to the "one and the many."
God of scripture is a self-complete and self-contained unity. There is but one God. God is an absolute personality. There are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Within the being of God, diversity is no more fundamental than unity. God is a tri-unity. The persons of the one God are mutually eternal and exhaustive of one another. The Holy Spirit and the Son are ontologically equal with God the Father. Thus the triune God is the solution to the problem of the "one and the many."
We baptize in the name (singular) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (plurality). The unity of the particulars is grounded in the being of God. There is a unity and a diversity in God and there is a unity and diversity in the cosmos. The cosmos is called the "universe." It is a unity and a diversity. A unity and a diversity make up the physical reality. The cosmos has unity that is on par with the diversity because in the nature of the triune God there are no particulars not in equal relationship with the universals. There is nothing universal that is not equally ultimate in the particulars. God said, "Let us (plural) make man in our (plural) image (singular) and our (plural) likeness (singular)." No aspect of the universe is more ultimate than the other. The unity in the universe is equal with the diversity in the universe. They are equal because the triune God created and sustains them. All non-Christian worldviews sacrifice the unity for the diversity or the diversity for the unity. Only God in three persons can provide the solution to the problem of "the one and the many." Thus other systems of thought are false.
There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and these three are one God; the same in substance, equal in power and glory (Westminster Shorter Catechism).
Let us make man in our image and in our likeness (Genesis 1:26).
The God of the Bible in Trinity is the starting point for epistemology, apologetics, and philosophy. The triune God is reflected and revealed everywhere in the material and immaterial worlds. The Trinity "confronts" humanity and all creation everywhere at all times. You cannot look into a microscope or a telescope or a mathematical table and fail to be confronted by the God alone who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The triune God is the foundation and the solution to the problem of the one and the many. God is the solution and not the problem. Within the being of the triune God: unity and diversity, the one and the many are equally ultimate and infinite.
This volume traverses very profound and deep philosophical issues, nonetheless it furnishes answers in an inspiring easy-to-understand manner. This is one of the few books that is a an intellecutal requirement for the Christian apologist and epistemologist.
One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions
 Essential Stuff February 14, 2008
Ben Hodges (Atlanta)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This entire book is supposed to be the outworking of one of Van Til's central arguments (which can be found in many places, but in short form in his _Defense of the Faith_ pps. 25-8) in large detail and scope: ultimacy's temporal function and applications: how and why.
Since the quality of much of Rushdoony's work is more of a "goes without saying" caliber, I'm not going to bore you with an adulatory defense of the work. It's essential stuff: this is solid Christian Philosophy.
That being said, here are some issues with it that could be easily remedied with a _new edition_!:
a) There are some structural style issues here that really say nothing bad about Rushdoony but only evince a lack of enough editing. I'm not so much talking about typos as much as paragraph construction and chapter layout. A small amount of editing could rearrange a few paragraphs to eliminate some of the arduous repetition and to _streamline_ the argument (something at which Rushdoony is characteristically excellent).
b) There is some material that just doesn't seem to belong. There are several sections of particular chapters (all near the end) that seem to veer away from the thesis of the book and are never really explained. Two chapters at the end almost seem more like a history of Western Philosophy than part of a the philosophical treatise at hand. Again, a little editing would take care of this.
c) In some chapters, the analytical criticism seems to disappear and some comparably shallow critical criticism starts to flourish. I didn't think the studies here on Nietzsche, Da Vinci, Wittgenstein, and Romanticism were very helpful, and some of the vocabulary he uses on certain people casts aspersions of the philosophical rigor of the book as a whole. Rushdoony is not usually known for dismissing the value or genius of particular thinkers, poets, artists, &c., but he does it a little here near the end, and it didn't sit well with me. It was kind of a reversion into an easier answer.
That's enough criticism, for all that is a _very small_ part of the book.
This is the most-referenced book I've ever read. One chapter has 162 citations, and another has 176. This is serious scholarship and makes me look like a fat and lazy bum...which I am.
Rushdoony's treatment of the polis in many of the ancient worlds, with emphasis on Greece and Rome (including the Pre-Socratic and Post-Socratic Greek philosophers as well as the Roman pre-Empire and post-Empire philosophers) might just be the _best in print_. His treatment was one of the most enlightening things I read this past year.
The book is mainly political in nature, but is overall a study into the metaphysical necessity of the ontological Trinity. There are many quotable passages as well as whole arguments that I know I'll probably never understand in their entirety.
Attention should be paid to the two appendices as well. They are both short, popular essays on modernism, and while they show their age a little in that the book was written in 1970 (i.e., no attention was paid to how postmodernism affects culture and is used by culture), they are absolutely fantastic. Talk about streamlined, stomach-punching essay-writing; these represent it well. The argumentation is obviously not as philosophically rigorous, but that is not what he was going for. Besides, after read the book proper, which is mostly quite philosophically vigorous (at least critically, not necessarily analytically), you will probably appreciate their more popular scope.
It should also be notes that at times, Rushdoony argues from a pragmatic standpoint: i.e., this is not a book _on the trinity_; it's a book on _what happens_ when the trinity _is denied_. In this fashion, it should be read along with a more thetical statement, and chapters X-XVI of Van Til's _Survey of Christian Epistemology_ should be more than you'll ever understand, or you could really bite the bullet and read _The Christian Theory of Knowledge_. I've yet to do that!
Essential stuff January 7, 2007
Ben Hodges (Atlanta)
This entire book is supposed to be the outworking of one of Van Til's central arguments (which can be found in many places, but in short form in his _Defense of the Faith_ pps. 25-8) in large detail and scope: ultimacy's temporal function and applications: how and why.
Since the quality of much of Rushdoony's work is more of a "goes without saying" caliber, I'm not going to bore you with an adulatory defense of the work. It's essential stuff: this is solid Christian Philosophy.
That being said, here are some issues with it that could be easily remedied with a _new edition_!:
a) There are some structural style issues here that really say nothing bad about Rushdoony but only evince a lack of enough editing. I'm not so much talking about typos as much as paragraph construction and chapter layout. A small amount of editing could rearrange a few paragraphs to eliminate some of the arduous repetition and to _streamline_ the argument (something at which Rushdoony is characteristically excellent).
b) The book itself would get much more attention if it were printed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. This printing has a tenuous binding and little margin room. This makes annotation a pain and hand comfort a constant nuisance. Ross House Books could totally do the world a favor with a reprint of this fantastic book in one of their fabulous paperbacks.
c) There is some material that just doesn't seem to belong. There are several sections of particular chapters (all near the end) that seem to veer away from the thesis of the book and are never really explained. Two chapters at the end almost seem more like a history of Western Philosophy than part of a the philosophical treatise at hand. Again, a little editing would take care of this.
d) In some chapters, the analytical criticism seems to disappear and some comparably shallow critical criticism starts to flourish. I didn't think the studies here on Nietzsche, Da Vinci, Wittgenstein, and Romanticism were very helpful, and some of the vocabulary he uses on certain people casts aspersions of the philosophical rigor of the book as a whole. Rushdoony is not usually known for dismissing the value or genius of particular thinkers, poets, artists, &c., but he does it a little here near the end, and it didn't sit well with me. It was kind of a reversion into an easier answer.
That's enough criticism, for all that is a _very small_ part of the book.
This is the most-referenced book I've ever read. One chapter has 162 citations, and another has 176. This is serious scholarship and makes me look like a fat and lazy bum, which I am.
Rushdoony's treatment of the polis in many of the ancient worlds, with emphasis on Greece and Rome (including the Pre-Socratic and Post-Socratic Greek philosophers as well as the Roman pre-Empire and post-Empire philosophers) might just be the _best in print_. His treatment was one of the most enlightening things I read this past year.
The book is mainly political in nature, but is overall a study into the metaphysical necessity of the ontological Trinity. There are many quotable passages as well as whole arguments that I know I'll probably never understand in their entirety.
Attention should be paid to the two appendices as well. They are both short, popular essays on modernism, and while they show their age a little in that the book was written in 1970 (i.e., no attention was paid to how postmodernism affects culture and is used by culture), they are absolutely fantastic. Talk about streamlined, stomach-punching essay-writing; these represent it well. The argumentation is obviously not as philosophically rigorous, but that is not what he was going for. Besides, after read the book proper, which is mostly quite philosophically vigorous (at least critically, not necessarily analytically), you will probably appreciate their more popular scope.
It should also be notes that at times, Rushdoony argues from a pragmatic standpoint: i.e., this is not a book _on the trinity_; it's a book on _what happens_ when the trinity _is denied_. In this fashion, it should be read along with a more thetical statement, and chapters X-XVI of Van Til's _Survey of Christian Epistemology_ should be more than you'll ever understand, or you could really bite the bullet and read _The Christian Theory of Knowledge_. I've yet to do that!
Anyway: buy it and read it! You can still buy it new from www.rosshousebooks.com
Maybe after they're sold out, they'll commission a second edition! :-)
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
| |
