Inexhaustibility and Human Being: An Essay on Locality (Oxford Science Pubn)

Product description Review Ross (SUNY, Binghamton) has written a somewhat idiosyncratic treatise that extends his earlier work in metaphysics (Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics, CH, Feb'81) toward a comprehensive theory of human existence. The author's overall project takes its point of departure from the notion of indeterminateness as it figures centrally both in the American pragmatist and in the contemporary Continental anti-foundationalist traditions. Ross suggests a plan to universalize the epistemological concept of indeterminateness, turning it into a pervasive feature of reality referred to under the term "inexhaustibility." For Ross, "inexhaustibility" captures both the finiteness of being and its complementary openness to determinations. In developing this neo-existentialist ontological framework into a philosophical anthropology, Ross interprets inexhaustibility as "locality"; being is understood functionally, as the ever unstable result of multiple relations. The central notion of locality is then brought to bear on such traditional anthropological topics as emotion, sociality, life, and death. The book is difficult to read and even more difficult to judge in its merits as a reontologized descendant of earlier existentialist anthropology. Graduate level.-- "--Choice" About the Author Stephen David Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton.