A philosopher thinks with a literary work
345081
I give five stars to this book because it is an instance of a philosopher really thinking with a literary work instead of applying his philosophical system on it as some kind of testing instrument of truth, or using the work to illustrate a point or two about his system. Philosophy and Literature converge here on a tangential, but fruitfull encounter.
102915
It is such a treat to read this philosopher's simple but profound words. Despite not knowing the meaning of his calligraphy art, except in his words, I enjoy the book greatly.
4096946
While this book does discuss education, it's primarily about philosophy.  Any student of philosophy would find the author's clear discussion of philosophical traditions a rewarding reading experience.
2582869
The indefinability of the self and the multiplicity of personal identity are the main lines of thought connecting these 11 pieces of excellent literature, among the finest of Borges's.  An author of short fiction  stories, essayist and poet -though perhaps too much of a thinker for  poetry-, Borges is, without hesitation, one of the greatest writers of all  time. This careful, well-thought selection gives a brilliant account of one  of Borges's conspicuous, recurrent themes: the difficulty of defining  self-identity, since a man's distinctive features, whether mental, physical  or even metaphysical, are not unique to him. As in some of the most noted  masterpieces of literature, the philosophical substrate provides the  background for fascinating and intriguing stories, frequently trespassing  the fantastic or the bizarre. So, we witness the struggle of an early 20th  Century French novelist to write The Quixote -not a contemporary version of  Cervantes's renowned work, but the original -- and succeeding! We have the  occasion to come to terms with the strange world of Tln and its uncanny  understanding of reality, as shown by its diverse, odd languages. The  Lottery of Babylon gives every man the opportunity to become rich, powerful  and exultant...or appallingly miserable and abject -by chance? The Garden of  Forking Paths is a legacy of innumerable futures -which, however, does not  include all of them. Death and the Compass displays the confrontation of a  detective with his murderer, whom he is chasing, in a labyrinth of clues  spread throughout space and time.  The brief historical and literary  essays concerning the elusive and somewhat contradictory character of the  Emperor of China, builder of the Great Wall and destructor of books, and  the precursors of Kafka, paving the way for something they ignore and being  later re-created, explore the indefinability of man's essence, in much the  same way as the previous fiction stories, since one never knows quite what  are the limits between fiction and fact, both inside and out of Borges's  work.  Borges and I and Everything and Nothing -the latter is the  original title by the author in English, though the work was written, as  the rest of the compilation, in Spanish- express succinctly the core  argument of the book, raising an uneasy metaphysical question: Whereas man  may not know exactly who he is, does God know?  Finally, two  conferences given by Borges close the volume, turning to episodes from  Borges's own life, in order to resume somehow the book's contents by  invoking the fantastic worlds of dreams -rather, of nightmares- and of  blindness, that suggest a vaster and more weird reality with perhaps  blurrier limits than we can possibly understand. However, there is space  for man if we are able to accept what we cannot understand, as a starting  point for creating our own-made life.
2122402
This is a great little book that is part Robert Pirsig, part Robert Fripp, part Gurdijeff, part Plato. I mean this in all the highest forms of flattery. Phillips presents philosophy as something lived and to be lived. It is a bit like taking the Socratic pursuit of Thinking, throwing it in Heideggerian fashion into being and then asking for questions in most unacademic places. Christopher Phillips has "rescued" Thinking from its academic brackets in the process.
It is also Chris's story. Interwoven with his wonder at the remarkable observations of children, senior citizens, prisoners, men and women he meets in cafes is the story of his life as well. So, at times I thought of Robert Pirsig, at times King Crimson diarist Robert Fripp. Elements of Gurdijeff's MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN are given uncanny twists: sometimes it is a Mexican kid from the mission district in San Francisco, sometimes a white collar criminal who realizes too late how and whereby he messed up his life. Some of the people are looking for Truth, be it emotional or spiritual truth. Sometimes unexpected answers are uncovered. At all times, Phillips recognizes that this is as close to the real deal as Philosophy can get.
This will not satisfy the academic who believes that sophisticated answers are found only in the in-bred world of the ivory tower. There is no Wittgenstein upheaval of Western Thought, no Quine like analyses of the logical positivistic framework. Nope, just folks thinkin seriously about their lives. Somehow because it is not a task for profit and career, it is all the more genuine. Fripp once noted that the professional (musician) when confronted with an abyss will play what he knows, while the amateur will exceed what he knows because he doesn't know to stop. That's what is at work here. Phillips will draw historical analyses as points are made, but the references are really beside the point. He has done something remarkable, or perhaps the thinkers he has encountered have done something remarkable: they have reclaimed the Socratic dictum of an examined life for themselves, and as such, they have stood up, pointed the way out of the cave to the true light.
This is a book to cherish, and to be enjoyed by all ages. I've just finished it and have given it to my 11 year old niece in St Louis. I suspect we'll have much to talk about. Thank you, Chris.
3588038
--McCarthys Kierkegaard as Psychologist helped me revisit the wisdom of the ancient Greeks while relating modern thinking.  His clear writing starts by introducing how Kierkegaard used the form of the novel.  The early chapters quickly layout how interpreting his novels is a foundation to modernity; Kierkegaard, Psychology, and Freud, Sex and Sexuality, and Emotions about Nothing.  Kiekegaard first perceived, or at least wrote about, things in a way that influences how many modern people think today.
--The first several chapters chart how the novels are repetitive, or at least they return to much the same subject with similar characters and situations.  To borrow the authors aesthetic license, one could think of Cezannes repeated painting of Mt. Arles.  Addressing the reader, McCarthy explains that Kierkegaards sequenced novels, dealing with somewhat similar situations and characters,  was a means for Kierkegaard to re-examine the inner thoughts of the characters and to advance his own thinking from one novel to the next.  In a sense, Kierkegaard used his novels to finding meaning and to conduct thought experiments.
--McCarthys mastery of his subject is obvious and he renders a facile, close exposition of the subject.  This reader experience meaningful pauses from the book, made even more possible by the clear writing style.  He touches on events and people in Kierkegaards life in early nineteenth century Europe (there is a good chronology in the front), but his aim is focused on Kierkegaard and philosophical ontology, and is efficient as a commentary.  The book length, including an Appendix On the Kierkegaard Heidegger Relationship, footnotes, and index is 190 pages.  The notes (end notes) add brief historical color and the authors points of contact with other philosophers and context which added meaning for this reader.
I particularly enjoyed the explanation of Kierkegaards reasoning on melancholy, depression, our fear of possibilities, and anxiety, before psychology existed.  Doubtlessly modern psychology and psychoanalysis is indebted to him, even if it is not greatly acknowledged.  He exposed the awareness experience of that there is nothingthat human awareness may include that there is no god, no myth, no enduring metaphor, the existential awareness. . . and then what do you do?  For me, as McCarthy guides, Kierkegaards reasoning (my grasping) is firm and in turn there are further expectations (my hope) and reason for courage (my faith).
--Finally, McCarthys book helped me understand Kierkegaards influence on modern philosophy, especially existentialism.  Kierkegaards thinking is foundational to Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus.  Even while he refers back to scholastic sources, McCarthy sets Kierkegaard in the continuum of modern philosophers on ontology.
4645401
About 440 years ago, Montaigne introduced the personal essay.
Reading Frame's translation strikes me with how much that form
has changed. Montaigne's essays have been aptly compared to a
mirror: you read his thoughts, and you discover your own. Thus, I
find myself asking who I am, as a 21st Century reader, as I
struggle through these essays. How different they are from the
essay writing I learned in school.

Essays, as I was taught, usually begin by stating a particular
point or position, proceed by arguing for that point using logic
and evidence, and conclude with a brief summary. Following the
dictates of Strunk and White, Zinsser, Hemingway, or Orwell, one
should write simply and directly, omitting needless words,
preferring the active voice, etc.

What then is one to make of his essay "On Solitude", for example,
beginning with these words:

"Let us leave aside the usual long comparison between the
solitary and the active life; and as for that fine statement
under which ambition and avarice take cover -- that we are not
born for our private selves, but for the public -- let us boldly
appeal to those who are in the midst of the dance."

I struggle to parse the meaning of that opening sentence. Is it
just me? Or, is it that I am reading a translation, albeit one
widely regarded as excellent? By modern tastes, Montaigne's
writing is often florid, meandering, and unnecessarily complex. I
find myself impatiently wishing he would just get to the point.

But, should this be taken as a criticism? I expect Montaigne
wrote for his contemporaries, for people who had both the time to
read for pleasure and the willingness to follow the meandering
wherever it lead. Four centuries later, we are awash with words
and media. Something in me wants the PowerPoint bullet point
summary, the "take home message" of his thoughts on solitude --
delivered as concisely as possible. The problem here may be with
me, the reader.

About solitude, Montaigne argues that the business of governing
one's life is not easily escaped. He says,

"Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and lust do not leave us
when we change our country.

'Behind the horseman sits black care.' --Horace"

Here is a second issue: his use of classical quotations. I have
no idea what how Horace quotation contributes to the point
Montaigne is making. Do you? Throughout his essays, Montaigne
delights in being the "what do I know?" skeptic, the nonexpert,
the author who believes that a personal truth can be as great as
a universal one. It's that attitude that gives him his
friendliness and his greatness.

So, why is it, then, that he so often quotes ancient authorities?
Most such quotations add little to his arguments and occasionally
come across as snobby name-dropping. What could be Montaigne's
motivation? If you read his essay "On the vanity of words", you
will see that he is well aware of the malign power of fine-sounding
rhetoric to bamboozle audiences.

Perhaps my issues with Montaigne are merely a matter of taste.
Essays admit many styles, some quite different than that used by
Montaigne. Solitude has been discussed by many authors. In
Walden, for example, Thoreau wrote

"I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for
friendship, three for society."

I thank Montaigne for the form, yet I prefer the simple
directness of Thoreau.
2811683
Pascal's thoughts, because they are raw, are intense and beautiful.  I can't think of a more poetic work of philosophy.  At the same time though, Pascal is very good at using observing and theorizing about human weakness.
2979287
I have recently finished reading book one of A. J. Bueno's trilogy. It reflects the author's truly astounding knowledge of philosophy and philosophers - and of language - while it sets the stage for what I expect to be conclusions he reaches in volumes two and three. I am looking forward to reading these and surmise that he will seek to arrive at a fixed point amid the shifting sands of current relativism.
William V. Cox
2576735
In this book, Virginia Woolf explores the following thesis: "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.  Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom."  Writing at a time when, as she herself stated in her diary, writing was not a respectable occupation for women, Woolf showed great courage in propounding this profoundly simple, pithy book.
The book began as a lecture which she prepared for a girl's school.  Asked to lecture on the subject of women and fiction, she determined to propound her theory that financial independence was necessary for the creation of genius.  In her way of thinking, women throughout history may have had genius, but were never given the opportunity to develop it, being always dependant upon men for their social and financial standing.  She urged women to earn their own living through writing; to break free of these social and financial constraints.  However, in speaking out against the male-dominated intellectual scene, she did so without anger, without acrimony.  Her usual good humor and simplicity, found so clearly in her diary and letters, shine throughout the book, making it invaluable not only as a social statement, but also as a precious insight into her personality.  She is in turn serious, playful, mocking, and tender.
A Room of One's Own is not so applicable today as it was seventy-five years ago, but it is still valuable as an historical document; as a moral boost for aspiring young women writers; and as a further insight into the character of Virginia Woolf.
2750122
One of the great poets of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, in America. These poems provide a worldview that's at once deeply attentive to minute, natural detail -- as well as attuned to the principal moral dilemmas of the day. The new work is both challenging and ruminative, and this book feels like a significant point of pause in a forty year career. Moving and daring,
1247073
George Steiner's prose sometimes raises the expository to the poetic, to the level of the best art, has sometimes on its own terms the resonance, density, depth, etc., of a Shostakovich movement, a passage by Proust or Kafka or T.S. Eliot, and etc.; and I have not in recent years met a better up-to-date description, assessment, evocation of where we are now, how and what we are now, in the big sense, the grandest theoria or most privileged view, than this book's final essay "Begging the Question" on what Steiner calls (page 201) "the ache ...  the hunger at the heart of us ..."

In the same essay (page 195) Steiner writes, "At  best, I think of myself as a Platonic anarchist. It is not a winning ticket." I hope he soon writes more on that.
3646098
Some of the quotes in this book are fairly well known (or, at least, I have seen them before) such as:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice this thought because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own reflected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with a good-humored inflexibility greater than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 254

But they are food for thought nevertheless.  This short book contain several pithy quotes worth pondering, such as:

Information is only a means of insight, and in itself of little or no value; that it is his way of thinking that makes a man a philosopher.  With by far the largest number of learned men, knowledge is a...philosopher means, not an end.  Arthur Schopenhauer, p. 236

His view of history is also reflected in his other book, "History has much to Tell," but I like his two companion books on metaphysics the best: "The Conscious Interlude" and "The Sanctuary of Self."
4398489
This is a book to curl up with in front of a fireplace on a series of snowy winter nights.  The author brings his skills as a novelist,  biographer, and a journalist together - and not to "make a point" or to  "prove a thesis".  This is a comfy, rambling, fascinating exploration of  19th Century thought, mixing anecdote, philosophical reflection,  theological theory, and "bon mot's.  The language fits the topic.  Perhaps  the closest to a focus Wilson comes is when (pg. 13), he states that "God's  funeral was not, as many in the nineteenth century might have thought, the  end of a phase of human intellectual history.  It was the withdrawal of a  great Love-object."  After reading, underlining, and re-reading this work,  I'm still not sure where Wilson stands on many of the issues he raises -  but I'm glad he produced this smorgasbord!  -- "God's Funeral" introduces  us to hundreds of 19th century thinkers (The author is English; his focus  lingers on those from England!).  They range from the still famous (Marx,  Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Kant), to figures out of high school  literature courses (Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Swinburne, and the  Rosettis), to such forgotten's as Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer,  Feuerbach, David Strauss, and Benjamin Jowett.  The greatness of this  volume is that it makes one want to read the books that these people wrote.  (Finding some of these tomes may prove harder than one would expect; it  took me months to get a 102-year old copy of Thomas Carlyle's "The French  Revolution"!)  Wilson is a man of strong opinions.  For example, he states  of Herbert Spencer: "No real philosopher today has the smallest interest in  him, since his use of language is so inexact that it is usually difficult  to know precisely what he means."  About Tolstoy, obsessed in later years  with "the famous injunctions not to hoard up treasure on earth, and not to  take revenge upon enemies" Wilson writes that he was "hated (and eventually  excommunicated) by the Orthodox Church precisely because he showed that if  these texts were acted upon, even partially, European civilization, with  its aggressive nation states, its greedy capitalism, its ruthless pursuit  of laissez-faire economics, its empire-building, its religious  conservatism, would collapse."  A.N. Wilson does NOT waffle!  [His harsh  words about creationism and American fundamentalists in the Preface have  certainly hit some nerves!]  But Catholics (devout and lapsed alike) will  find the final chapter, about Modernism, fascinating.  The "modern heresy"  of Modernism, following the declaration of Papal infallibility in 1870 is  an area seldom examined by modern Catholics, even a university level.  Wilson gives a fascinating introduction to this neglected period of Church  history (1890-1910).  -- Oh, incidentally, one nice touch (thank you, dear  publisher!) is the inclusion, in the middle of the book, of 38 photos and  engravings (mostly portraits).  -- Wilson ends his book (p. 354) with a  clarion call that should cheer the religious: "...the God-idea, so important  a part of human consciousness, has not been discarded with anything like  the readiness which the late Victorians would have predicted.  One of the  most extraordinary things about the twentieth century has been the palpable  and visible strength of the Christian thing, the Christian idea.  ... Simone  Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nicholas Berdayev and Teilhard de Chardin were  waiting in the wings...."
2091851
Nietzsche has been interpreted to represent the last word in a line of thought which begins with Socrates, generally referred to as the era of Western classical philosophy. Like enormous bookends, Nietzsche and the object of so much of his thought, Socrates, sit, at the crucial intersections of the flow and development of ideas, and adjudicate, with all that came between and after somehow in the radius of their influence.  Nietzsche, father of existentialism, intellectual father of the 20th century.
The battle will always rage (Nietzsche, true to the fire of his Herakleitian habit, would have liked that): which is better, the Penguin Hollingdale anthology, A Nietzsche Reader, or Kaufmann's anthology, the venerable Viking Portable Nietzsche? I'll cop on that one. But, for the prospective buyer, I'll attempt a brief, opinionated comparison.
1) Translation: I was nurtured on the Kaufmann, which I used to carry around with me in my high school days, 40 years ago. Thus, for me, the Kaufmann translation rings truer to my tinny ear and limited knowledge of German. Besides, Kaufman was German.  But, as Nietzsche gets down on the Germans at least as much as the English (a fact to which his Nazi misinterpreters liked to turn a blind eye), and, as Hollingdale's translations are accepted in the academic world to be at least as accurate as the revered Kaufman, pas differance there, or one merely of taste.
2) Organization: The Hollingdale is far better organized for quick reference or for the first time reader who wants an easily accessed guide to Nietzsche "from the horse's mouth" (with Nietzsche - this way is best, for so much of Nietzsche's power is in his enormous literary gifts). The creme de la creme of much of Nietzsche's most powerful work is arranged under the key rubrics: Philosophy and Philosophers; Logic, Epistemology, Metaphysics; Morality; Art and Aesthetics; Psychological Observations; Religion; Nihilism; Anti-Nihilism; Will to Power; Superman; Eternal Recurrence. The book ends with a truly neat 20 page collection of many of Nietzsche's best aphorisms and summary statements.
The Kaufmann, on the other hand, sprawls, and weaves a tapestry of the man's conceptions, which coalesce finally into a remarkably comprehensive summation of Nietzsche's basic positions.  One could say that if the Hollingdale is the digital approach, the Kaufmann is the analog. The Kaufmann, however, has one insurmountable advantage: included are the complete texts of Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Neitzsche Contra Wagner, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  The Kaufmann translation of the latter is widely regarded as the best ever, and the book is an awesome masterpiece, at once hilarious and deep, a classic among classics, which says almost all that Nietzsche wishes you to hear in one loud shot.
3) Construction: Both have useful introductory sections, the Kaufmann is a bit better, including a helpful chronology. Neither has a particularly huge Bibliography, but the Kaufmann has been updated fairly recently by Viking. The Hollingdale is svelte, 285 pages, in the time tested Penguin format, tightly bound, light in the pack. The Kaufmann is chunky, 700 pages, a number of which are falling out of my 1968 edition bought for a pittance at a good, old fashioned, independent used bookstore.
My advice: Take the Hollingdale to school, but take the Kaufmann to that proverbial desert island.
379682
The analysis of language has been of some interest to philosophers. This book explores language and religion, focusing on the idea that religious propositions or assertions do not make sense because one cannot falsify them. The problem here is that traditional philosophy and psychology are not falsifiable either. It is true that religious language makes assertions regarding the "whole" or "totality," of which humanity could never have accurate knowledge. Such statements are always "faith," and therefore not certifiably false in the mind of the adherent. They would require some future state of knowledge to be shown true or false. He has done a good job exploring various options in this area. If interested in this area of the philosophy of religion, a classic work.
2665376
The stated project of Cummings' book is to see what the Renaissance looks like "if we take away the secularizing narrative of `renaissance.'" Cummings enjoys an argument. Each chapter overturns a received idea associated with the secularization narrative: the soliloquy is Augustinian, not liberal-individual; new philosophies of chance and probability belong to providential thinking, not to the rejection of predestination; Thomas More is not a proto-liberal dissident but a creative scholastic; Othello's murderous work with oaths stages contemporary controversies around swearing and inquisition. Yet the overall theme of the book is not the hegemony of Calvin over Ovid, but rather the co-existence and mutual influence of humanist and theological explorations of being in the world, especially as those explorations are taken up in art (Drer), theater (Shakespeare), philosophy (Montaigne), and poetry (Milton). In great art, polemic yields to phenomenology, and in great criticism, we experience "the urgency of the present" in works of the past (11).

Cummings most certainly succeeds in writing great criticism: his most stunning readings immerse us in the intricate workings of a simple gesture like the hand thrust into fire in Foxe's Acts and Monuments or the naked body emerging from a dark door in Drer's enigmatic self-portrait. These and other scenes from the art and literature of the period launch a range of reflections on embodiment and mortality that belong to no single faith or anti-faith yet draw sustenance from Scripture and the deep intelligence and range of the human responses to it, while also addressing the extraordinary acts of violence executed in religion's name.