Abstract

Armour's Being and Idea begins with the felt need for unity, the need at the base of the philosophies of both Spinoza and Hegel and a need increasingly felt by us who inhabit a modern or postmodern world. "Sometimes," Armour writes, "we are looking for a unity of knowledge which will enable us to 'make sense of' the various things that we know. Sometimes we are looking for a thread that will link together the seemingly meaningless events of our lives. Sometimes we are looking for a unity between the source of 'explanation' of the world and the world of appearances. Sometimes we are looking for a unity of principle either in our moral affairs or in our scientific explanations".