Symbolic Forms as the Metaphysical Groundwork of the Organon of the Cultural Sciences: Volume 1

This ambitious work reclassifies and restructures the history of ideas and the philosophy of culture through a wide-ranging and novel use of the idea of the organon. It does so by radically revising standard interpretations and theories of all branches of philosophy, and by providing an intellectual and philosophical foundation for the new organon of the cultural sciences. Furthermore, the seeded idea that saw its growth in the form of this book is the unshakable conviction that the only way by which a new apparatus of philosophy, an organon, could be created is by harking back to the vast sources of imagination, inspiration and mimēsis. This entire study is based on the notion that metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the world in its entirety and with human being’s existence and thought, should provide the foundation for the organon of cultural sciences, based on symbolic forms. Given that the colossal amount of information and knowledge of philosophy, arts, humanities, logic, mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences cannot be comprised, analyzed and comprehended per se, it is the organon’s objective to extract the main principles, ideas, postulates, theorems and theories of the cultural sciences, and, subsequently, to shape and restructure them as symbolic forms. Since all these principles are grounded on Becoming—which is not a stable or fixed entity such as Being, substance or thing—the symbolic forms preserve and change, elevate and further the organon of the cultural sciences, via a critical-dialectical process.


Israel Bar-Yehuda Idalovichi worked as a Professor, Lecturer and Research Fellow at various universities in Israel, Germany, Italy, South-Africa and USA. He has published three books and more than 50 articles pertaining to philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and education.

"Despite many centuries of criticism and frequent predictions of its demise, metaphysics continues to attract adherents and defenders, critics and apologists, many of whom have returned in recent years to classical philosophical works. Israel Bar-Yehuda Idalovichi’s project is a thought-provoking attempt to shape a philosophical apparatus, by which it will be possible to establish a unified theory of all cultural domains. [...] These two dense volumes present a worthwhile new view, which obviously stems from a comprehensive background of learning."

Asaf Friedman, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Philosophy in Review, 35: 3 (2015)

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ISBN: 1-4438-5906-0

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-5906-6

Release Date: 17th October 2014

Pages: 510

Price: £59.99

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