The Seventeenth Century Background: Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Basil Willey

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9780331604504: The Seventeenth Century Background: Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion (Classic Reprint)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0331604507 ISBN 13: 9780331604504

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

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Excerpt from The Seventeenth Century Background: Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion

First it may be well to enquire, not with Pilate 'what is Truth?' but what was felt to he 'truth' and 'explanation' under seventeenth century conditions. As T. E. Hulme and others have pointed out, it is almost insuperably difficult to become critically conscious Of one's own habitual assumptions; 'doctrines felt as facts' can only be seen to be doctrines, and not facts, after great efforts Of thought, and usually only with the aid of a first rate metaphysician. It is, however, less difficult to detect the assumptions of an age distant from our own, espe cially when these have been subject to criticism. At this distance Of time it should be possible, I think, to state fairly accurately what the seventeenth century felt as 'true', and what satisfied it as 'explanation'. In reading seventeenth century writers one feels that it was as 'ex planation' that they chiefly valued the 'new philosophy', and it is for this reason that I wish first to enquire, briefly, what is 'explanation'?

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