The Felt Meanings of World: A Metaphysics of Feeling [Hardcover]

Quentin Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1986

In a critical dialogue with the metaphysical tradition from Plato to Hegel to contemporary schools of thought, the author convincingly argues that traditional rationalist metaphysics has failed to accomplish its goal of demonstrating the existence of a divine cause and moral purpose of the world. To replace the defective rationalist metaphysics, the author builds a new metaphysics on the idea that moods and affects make manifest the world's felt meanings; he argues that each feature of the world is a felt meaning in the sense that each feature is a source of a feeling-response if and when it appears. The author asserts that we must synthesize our two ways of knowing-poetic evocations and exact analyses-in order to decide which mood or affect is the appropriate appreciation of any given feature of the world. Smith gives evocative and exact explications of such features as the world's temporality, appearance, and mind-independency, as these features appear in the appropriate recitations.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Purdue University Press (August 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0911198768
• ISBN-13: 978-0911198768
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,078,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very worthwhile phenomenological work........, January 21, 2001

By 

J. Reid (Kalamazoo, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Felt Meanings of World: A Metaphysics of Feeling (Hardcover)

I have come to the conclusion that phenomenology is truly one of the only worthwhile and honest branches of philosophy, and Smith's book is one of the most interesting and thorough examples of phenomenological reflection published in America. His knowledge of the history of philosophy is impressive, and he mounts a convincing attack on the history of rational philosophy and its eventually termination in nihilism. He proceeds in part II to develop a phenomenological theory of value that is very insightful, although it ultimately is as vulnerable to charges of subjectivism as all phenenonology. A great work. A must read: well written, but dense.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Information about 2005, second edition, July 31, 2003

By 

Philosopher - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Felt Meanings of World: A Metaphysics of Feeling (Hardcover)

The second, expanded edition, has a new and substantial Foreward, which focuses on an assumption widely but implicitly accepted by thinkers ranging from contemporary analytic theist philosophers to postmodernists. The second edition will be published in 2005 by Purdue University Press. The assumption, common since Plato, is that the world's ground, or groundlessness, is what we are interested in when we intuitively ask "What is the world's meaning?" This assumption is dubious. The world's having a reason for existing is relevant to us only because it has a felt meaning, such as numinousness. If the world lacks a reason for existing, this is of interest only because the world's groundlessness has the felt meaning of emptiness. It falsely seems to us that it matters if the world has a reason for existing or not. What really matters is the experiencing of the felt meanings, numinousness or emptiness. This suggests there are other felt meanings of the world, having nothing to do with whether it has or lacks a reason for existing, such as its infinite immensity. This has the felt meaning of tremendousness. Philosophers from Plato onwards have searched for a reason for the world, by-passing what a closer look shows really matters to us, namely, the felt meanings of the world.
One of the better books influenced by the 1986 edition is Arthur Witherall's THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE (Ashgate Publishers); he has a genuine understanding of the basic approach of THE FELT MEANINGS OF THE WORLD and also develops, a novel, original theory of his own.

For music historians: A small but important typo appears on page 7. In the first edition, there is the sentence: "However, this period [of dissonnance in classical music] did not achieve its more mature expression until the last movement of Arnold Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 4 (1907), which except for its final cadence in F-sharp major is the first entirely atonal music."

"String Quartet No. 4" should read "String Quartet No. 2".

I should add that, perhaps more historically signficant than this fact, is that the first piece of classical music that was entirely atonal was Schoenberg's "The Book of Hanging Gardens" (1908).

One Shoenberg scholar, Allen Shawn, dates the second String Quartet as 1908 ("Arnold Schoenberg's Journey": New York, 2002, p. 44) but does not provide evidence for his ascription of this work to 1908 rather than 1907. Nonetheless, he seems to understand intuitively the two historical felt meanings of this quartet, for he quotes only two lines from the quartet's (unusual) inclusion of songs, namely, the lines,

"All is lost"

and

"I feel the air from other planets".

It seems Shoenberg understood and musically expressed the felt meanings of emptiness and alienness; Allen points out "there is also evidence that during this period [of composing String Quartet No. 2] he contemplated suicide himself, since he wrote out several wills."