Abstract

Begins with a critique of traditional metaphysics and of modern natural science, disclosing a common root in the more basic fact of creative symbolic expression, which is held to be the key to a radical and rectifying refounding of metaphysics. Expression and symbolization, are held to be essentially constitutive of human existence, of knowledge and of the known, and to be historical communal and creative. The merit of the work is in facing the question of the import for metaphysics of the recent insights into the nature and importance of symbolization. The claims are sometimes too strong, but the discussions, though repetitious, are generally built on sound insights and wide learning, and are often illuminating. --L. K. B.