The Broken Ring

<p>This work is regarded as the founding text of a new epistemology and may be read as an introduction to <em>The Crisis of Religious Symbolism </em>by the same author. It begins with a historical survey of theories of symbolism stretching from antiquity to the modern period moves on to a critique of contemporary linguistic theory and then turns to a ground-breaking structural analysis of the symbolic sign that uncovers a necessary but too long elided metaphysical dimension. In sum it presents a theory of the symbol that seeks to restore intelligibly and in a way that transcends contemporary deconstructions the ancient doctrines of both East and West. But make no mistake: this is philosophy not ethnology. The symbolic sign is the nodal point of metaphysical thought the place where nature becomes culture and culture becomes nature; that is where being and meaning are reconciled without confusion. Such is the central concern of <em>The Broken Ring.</em></p>