Boorstin - The seekers: the story of mans continuing quest to understand his world

THE SEEKERS

THE STORY OF MANS CONTINUING
QUEST TO UNDERSTAND HIS WORLD

DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

The road is always better than the inn.
CERVANTES

RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK

CONTENTS

AN ANCIENT HERITAGE

The Way of Prophets: A Higher Authority

From Seer to Prophet: Moses Test of Obedience

A Covenanting God: Isaiahs Test of Faith

Struggles of the Believer: Job

A World Self-Explained: Evil in the East

The Way of Philosophers: A Wondrous Instrument Within

Socrates Discovery of Ignorance

The Life in the Spoken Word

Platos Other-World of Ideas

Paths to Utopia: Virtues Writ Large

Aristotle: An Outsider in Athens

On Paths of Common Sense

Aristotles God for a Changeful World

The Christian Way: Experiments in Community

Fellowship of the Faithful: The Church

Islands of Faith: Monasteries

The Way of Disputation: Universities

Varieties of the Protestant Way: Erasmus, Luther, Calvin

COMMUNAL SEARCH

Ways of Discovery: In Search of Experience

The Legacy of Homer: Myth and the Heroic Past

Herodotus and the Birth of History

Thucydides Creates a Political Science

From Myth to Literature: Virgil

Thomas Mores New Paths to Utopia

Francis Bacons Vision of Old Idols and New Dominions

From the Soul to the Self: Descartess Island Within

The Liberal Way

Machiavellis Reach for a Nation

John Locke Defines the Limits of Knowledge and of Government

Voltaires Summons to Civilization

Rousseau Seeks Escape

Jeffersons American Quest

Hegels Turn to The Divine Idea on Earth

PATHS TO THE FUTURE

The Momentum of History: Ways of Social Science

A Gospel and a Science of Progress: Condorcet to Comte

Karl Marxs Pursuit of Destiny

From Nations to Cultures: Spengler and Toynbee

A World in Revolution?

Sanctuaries of Doubt

All History Is Biography: Carlyle and Emerson

Kierkegaard Turns from History to Existence

From Truth to Streams of Consciousness with William James

The Solace and Wonder of Diversity

The Literature of Bewilderment

A World in Process: The Meaning in the Seeking

Actons Madonna of the Future

Malrauxs Charms of Anti-Destiny

Rediscovering Time: Bergsons Creative Evolution

Defining the Mystery: Einsteins Search for Unity

For RUTH

As long as theres no find, the noble brotherhood will last.
Woe, when the piles begin to grow!

B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Caught between two eternitiesthe vanished past and the unknown futurewe never cease to seek our bearings and our sense of direction. We inherit our legacy of the sciences and the artsworks of the great Discoverers and Creators, the Columbuses and Leonardos and Shakespearesrecounted in my two earlier volumes. We glory in their discoveries and creations. But we are all Seekers. We all want to know why. Man is the asking animal. And while the finding, the belief that we have found the Answer, can separate us and make us forget our humanity, it is the seeking that continues to bring us together, that makes and keeps us human. While this brief volume does not aim to survey the history of philosophy or of religion, it does sample ways of seeking by great philosophers and religious leaders in the West. This is a story not of finding but of seeking. I have chosen those Seekers who still speak most eloquently to me, and whose paths toward meaning in our lives and in our history still invite us on our personal quest.

Our Western culture has seen three grand epochs of seeking. First was the heroic Way of Prophets and Philosophers seeking salvation or truth from the God above or the reason within each of us. Then came an age of communal seeking, pursuing civilization in the liberal spirit, and then most recently an age of social sciences, when, oriented toward the future, man seems ruled by forces of history. We draw on all these ways in our personal search. They still speak to us, not so much for their answers as for their ways of asking the questions. In this long quest, Western culture has turned from seeking the end or purpose to seeking causesfrom the Why to the How. Might this empty meaning from our human experience? Then how can we recapture and enrich our sense of purpose?

The plan of this volume as a whole is chronological. But in detail it has a shingle scheme. Each of the three books overlaps chronologically with its predecessor, as the story advances from antiquity to the present. This, too, is a story without end, as we continue to explore our humanity in the eternal Why. And we see how we have come from seeking meaning to finding meaning in the seeking.

Copyright 1998 by Daniel J. Boorstin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

American Bible Society: Excerpts from the Todays English Version (TEV) Bible, 2nd Edition. Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Reprinted by permission of the American Bible Society.
Fourth Estate Ltd: Excerpts from A Kierkegaard Reader, edited by Roger Poole and Henrik Stangerup. Copyright 1989 by Roger Poole and Henrik Stangerup. Reprinted by permission of Fourth Estate Ltd.

Boorstin, Daniel J. (Daniel Joseph), 1914
The seekers: the story of mans continuing quest to understand his world / Daniel J. Boorstin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
CivilizationHistory. 2. Meaning (Philosophy)History. 3. Meaning (Philosophy)Religious aspectsHistory. I. Title.
CB151.B66 1998
909dc21 98-15430

Random House website address: www.randomhouse.com

This book is also available in print as ISBN.

eISBN: 978-0-679-46270-5

v3.0_r2