An edition of The structure of evil (1968)

The structure of evil

an essay on the unification of the science of man.

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Last edited by MARC Bot
February 13, 2020 | History
An edition of The structure of evil (1968)

The structure of evil

an essay on the unification of the science of man.

  • 0 Ratings
  • 10 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

The history of the science of man that I draw in these pages is based on the following assumptions, and seeks to support them:

In order to understand the problem of a unified science of man today, we must go back at least to the decline of the medieval cosmology, and to the more or less decisive break from the old order that took the form of the French Enlightenment and, subsequently, the French Revolution. [...]
In the second place, each rereading of history is occupied with "new" facts, even if it uses facts that have been used time and time again. [...]
The specific vantage point that I use for this rereading of history II is a new, unified theory of human behavior. The theory has been very long and very slow in the making, and it is only now that it has become possible to articulate it. This means that my endeavor is a circular one, but I hope a justified, self-reinforcing circularity: a new reading of history that derives from a new theoretical understanding; and a new theoretical understanding that is substantiated by a new reading of history. The circularity, then, is not a "vicious" or sterile one, but rather an incremental one of enhanced logical consistency, and added insight and meaningfulness.

This book, then, is actually the third of a trilogy, which records the development of my ideas and the substantiation of the early perspectives I reached for. In the first work, The Birth and Death of Meaning: A Perspective in Psychiatry and Anthropology, I pulled together an abstract scheme for conceptualizing human behavior, and offered a suggestion for a new orientation for the science of man. The book was directed partly against the ascendancy of medical-psychiatric explanations of human behavior, including Freudian, instinctivist ones. Thus it stressed the largely fictional nature of human meanings, the uniquely linguistic aspects of human experience, and the wholly social-psychological genesis of the self.

In a second work, The Revolution in Psychiatry: The New Understanding of Man, I attempted to fill out this perspective by elaborating comprehensive, social-behavioral theories of mental illness. This second book sought to provide a broader and more detailed explanation of human action and its failures, and to see them as grounded in total, organismic functioning—and not merely in symbolic, linguistic modes. On the one hand, it had to do this without losing the truth of the symbolic approach, specifically, of the social-psychological explanation of the origin and nature of the human self, and how it functions in social interaction. On the other hand, it had to accomplish this total organismic restatement without resorting to the facile reductionist and Freudian-instinctivist explanations of total biological functioning. These two works supplied, I think, the necessary basis for a unified theory of action.

The present, third work, finally, complements the first two, by rounding out and substantiating historically a unified theory of action. Its task is to place the whole understanding of human nature into the historical perspective of the past two centuries, during which time this understanding was gradually being developed. Furthermore, it continues the task begun in the second book, which is to introduce frankly ideas from philosophy and naturalistic descriptive ontology and to attempt to show their indispensable place in a science of man.
The overall result, I dare to hope, is an integral framework for setting in motion a socially experimental science of man—something we have been building for over two centuries.
[From the Preface]

Publish Date
Publisher
G. Braziller
Language
English
Pages
430

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Previews available in: English

Book Details


Published in

New York

Edition Notes

Bibliography: p. 405-419.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
128
Library of Congress
BD450 .B4

The Physical Object

Pagination
xviii, 430 p.
Number of pages
430

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL5605738M
Internet Archive
structureofevila00beck
LCCN
68012890
OCLC/WorldCat
169047
Library Thing
358222

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History

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February 13, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
November 18, 2017 Edited by contulmmiv Added new cover
November 18, 2017 Edited by contulmmiv Added description
February 9, 2011 Edited by EdwardBot add lending subjects
October 20, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page