Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-294) and index.

Preliminary Material / John Eustice O’Brien -- Overview / John Eustice O’Brien -- Meaning as Critical for Social Sciences / John Eustice O’Brien -- Isaiah Berlin’s Romantic Uncertainty / John Eustice O’Brien -- Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetic Critique / John Eustice O’Brien -- The Crisis of Western Rationality / John Eustice O’Brien -- Phenomenology of Perception / John Eustice O’Brien -- Merleau-Ponty’s Sociology / John Eustice O’Brien -- Merleau-Ponty’s Shadow’s Husserl / John Eustice O’Brien -- Aesthetic Consciousness / John Eustice O’Brien -- Closing Issues: Consciousness over Mind? / John Eustice O’Brien -- Bibliography / John Eustice O’Brien -- Index / John Eustice O’Brien.

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In his Critique of Rationality , John Eustice O’Brien proposes a fascinating rectification for the distortion of technical necessity in Western Society due to unbridled instrumental reason. He begins with a review of this issue first raised by the Early German Romantics as discussed by Isaiah Berlin and Walter Benjamin. Following French social philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s radically different apperceptive epistemology, he explores the possibility of a social world in which each is anchored by a préobjective disposition to meaning based on the intersubjective presence of all. This justifies the postulate of aesthetic-consciousness as the site of socialization in communities of meaning, as a frame for judgment and creativity. The struggle must continue for awakening that consciousness if an open society is to be realized.