Tragic Sense Of Life

This Dover edition, first published in 1954, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the English translation originally published by Macmillan and Company, Ltd., in 1921. This edition is published by special arrangement with Macmillan and Company, Ltd. The publisher is grateful to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for supplying a copy of this work for the purpose of reproduction.
Standard Book Number: 486-20257-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-4730 Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N.Y. 10014
THE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE
Philosophy and the concrete man—The man Kant, the man Butler, and the man Spinoza—Unity and continuity of the person—Man an end not a means—Intellectual necessities and necessities of the heart and the will—Tragic sense of life in men and in peoples
THE STARTING-POINT
Tragedy of Paradise—Disease an element of progress—Necessity of knowing in order to live—Instinct of preservation and instinct of perpetuation—The sensible world and the ideal world—Practical starting-point of all philosophy—Knowledge an end in itself?—The man Descartes—The longing not to die
THE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY
Thirst of being—Cult of immortality—Plato's glorious risk — Materialism—Paul's discourse to the Athenians—Intolerance of the intellectuals—Craving for fame—Struggle for survival
THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM
Immortality and resurrection—Development of idea of immortality in Judaic and Hellenic religions—Paul and the dogma of the resurrection—Athanasius—Sacrament of the Eucharist—Lutheranism—Modernism—The Catholic ethic—Scholasticism—The Catholic solution
THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION
Materialism—Concept of substance—Substantiality of the soul—Berkeley—Myers—Spencer—Combat of life with reason—Theological advocacy— Odium anti-theologicum —The rationalist attitude—Spinoza—Nietzsche—Truth and consolation