Offers examples of oral narratives and literature from the nineteenth century to the present

This historical study of the infinite covers all its aspects from the mathematical to the mystical. Anyone who has ever pondered the limitlessness of space and time, or the endlessness of numbers, or the perfection of God will recognize the special fascination of the subject. Beginning with an entertaining account of the main paradoxes of the infinite, including those of Zeno, A.W. Moore traces the history of the topic from Aristotle to Kant, Hegel, Cantor, and Wittgenstein.

“The present volume is the first in a projected trilogy, the other two of which are ‘On the Logical Demonstration of Divine Existence’ and ‘On the Logical Origins of Right’. The entire work could be described as an essay concerning the ontological basis of political philosophy. “What an elementary work on the logic of infinitary sets can possibly have to do with political philosophy will become apparent only as the various arguments unfold. The connection is reasonably straightforward, however, and has to do with the relation of what I call ‘analytic impressionism’ to the general rationale of revolution: it is to regard a contradictory, anomalous, or even immoral situation—a fantasia of some kind—as a done thing and then cook up a story about how, notwithstanding, it might have been accomplished or justified rationally. The goal of all this is to be able to do with a certain impunity whatever you can contrive to get away with, and in particular to appropriate the primacy of right for oneself: all of which is rooted in the desiccated ontology of virtualization and results in a narcissistic and infantilized culture.” From the Preface