They speak to anyone who has been baffled by the old conflict between personal freedom and causal order. More widely, they examine the role of action in the projection of any general order, including the physical. They find history as the career and evolution of self-criticizing and self-correcting action. They reject all "theories" of history, whether as a chaos or an episode in an ahistoric totality. They propose a common source of science and the humanities, of laboratory and the Muses. Key words here are act and action. They contrast with passivity and with the convention that requires us to keep out of our own thought in order to avoid illusion and egotistical pretentiousness.
"Dry wit and analytic adroitness ... [This survey] contains some rich and stimulating material." -Kirkus Reviews
Miller uses his original reinterpretation of the history of philosophy to examine the philosophy of history. He criticises all attempts to interpret history on premises not themselves historical.
The Definition of the Thing is John William Miller's Harvard dissertation of 1922. In this unusually provocative and original essay, Miller had already worked out a number of the basic contentions of his mature philosophy.
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