A Clutch of Introductory Books to Philosophy 3

The previous post in this sequence can be accessed here:  Clutch 2.

Books Reviewed Here:

(i) House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies, ed. Henry Jacoby (2009), New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

(ii) A History of Ideas, Kevin O'Donnell (2003), Oxford: Lion Access Guides.

(iii) Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, Simon Blackburn (2001), Oxford: OUP.

(iv) The Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to be happy, Michael Foley (2010), London & New York: Simon & Schuster.

(v) What Do We Really Know: The Big Questions of Philosophy, Simon Blackburn (2009), London: Quercus.

My copies of the books reviewed here

Introduction

I have long been convinced of the truth of the Nobel Laureate for Physics Richard Feynman's contention that he'd rather have "questions that cannot be answered rather than answers that cannot be questioned."  There is much good philosophy in that statement from one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century.  Many years ago the president of the Mater Dei Institute of Education, Rev. Dr. Patrick Wallace, always told us students that ideally we should leave the college with more questions than answers, all the better if we had thornier questions than we would ever have answers for.  Paddy, as we called him, was at heart a visionary and a mystic.  His vision of life could incorporate paradox and enigma and he could live with questions and we never heard him offer a cheap or trite answer to any thorny question.  He was too much a mystic and too great a scholar to be a dogmatist. While Feynman was an atheist and Wallace was a theist, both would have respected the other for their eschewing of unfounded and unsubstantiated opinions.  Both loved the way questions made one think ever more deeply and ever more sharply.  Both believed fervently in wonder.

Reviews:

(i) Our first book listed above, House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies, ed. Henry Jacoby (2009) lies most firmly in the tradition of sharpening and deepening the questions.  As one who simply loves the intellectual and deeply humane thrust of the HBO series House, this book, which contains many chapters from leading philosophers, helps us deepen our questions about life and to avoid easy and trite answers at all costs.  Some of the big questions this book raises are: Is being alive overrated? Are we really just selfish, base animals crawling across Earth in a meaningless existence? Would reading less and watching more television really be good for you? Is House a master of Eastern philosophy or just plain rude?

Our central character, Dr. Gregory House is a most complex and very challenging antihero: he is rude, arrogant and downright obnoxious most of the time, and yet he is mostly right in his diagnoses of serious diseases and he does seem to bring the best out in others in the end. He constantly challenges others to be more authentic and less superficial characters, while ignoring his own addiction to painkillers and his sheer and utter offensiveness. The viewer will often recoil in disbelief at his rudeness and churlishness.

This book is written by a well-qualified team of philosophers - all professors or adjunct professors in prestigious colleges and universities.  They discuss such subjects as: the meaning of life, the existentialist take on life, which House often vividly portrays by treating others following Sartre's statement that "Hell is Other People," Nietzsche's superman, moral choices, medical ethics, the importance of logic, Occam's razor, Zen Buddhism, religious belief, religious fundamentalism, the necessity of conflict, Taoism, Daoism, the ethics of care, Macchiavellianism, the nature of authority, the use of power, the nature of eccentricity, virtues and vices, love, the nature of friendship, the nature of life, chance versus providence and the nature of personality or character among many others. 

In short, what is plainly obvious in this HBO TV series, and in this deep and gripping book is that House wants us to live what Socrates famously called "the examined life" and what Aristotle called the "life of reason," even if most of time we feel that our antihero does not allow for what the psychologist Daniel Goleman calls our Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ) and vastly overrates the IQ.  In this book, the reader will be awoken from his/her world of dreams by such thorny questions and statements as: "Everybody lies." "If you talk to God you are religious; If God talks to you, you're psychotic." "There is no after, there is just this!" Dr House rudely says to a dying patient, "What we do here (in this life) is the only thing that matters." He quips the following: "Why are you not interested in what's killing you?" to another dying patient. Other questions that arise are: "Is solving puzzles more important than caring for or loving others?" "Do we identify more with our minds than our bodies?" "Are we objects or subjects or both?" 

The philosopher Henry Jacoby maintains that House illustrates "the tendency of the sadist not merely to derive security from objectifying others, but to derive even greater satisfaction by making himself the individual upon whom other individuals depend." (p. 25)  In this, he is making himself into a god, which Sartre contends, is everyone's secret wish.  After all, Jacoby continues, "(w)ho would want to admit the fact that he is a depressed, drug-addicted, socially maladjusted genius with chronic pain and a permanent physical disability?" (p. 25). Altogether a gripping read that is a fitting accompaniment to the boxed set of the series.

(ii) A History of Ideas, Kevin O'Donnell (2003), Oxford: Lion Access Guides.

This book is an ideal introductory text for senior formers at secondary school or for light reading for those who struggle with obligatory philosophical courses at first-year third level, courses that are ancillary in nature.  Again, this book does exactly "what it says on the tin." It is lavishly illustrated and fits nicely into one's jacket pocket.  One could quite easily read this little gem of a book - and it is a gem, a reader's delight - in an hour or two or just dip into it from time to time.  Its writer is obviously in love with his subject and his enthusiasm and wonder emanate and radiate from all its pages.  When I studied philosophy under a wonderful teacher the late  Fr. Patrick Carmody, M.A., M. Phil. all those years ago in the late 1970s we were told that "philosophy begins in wonder" and that "the sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher."  These sentiments are found both in Plato and Aristotle, and Kevin O'Donnell is a philosopher in this Grecian sense. Like the Greeks, our author asks these questions: (i) What is the Universe made of? (early science or natural philosophy), (ii) What is the meaning of life? (a very broad question involving all areas of philosophy from ontology to epistemology to metaphysics, a question that extends even beyond its frontiers into theology, art, literature and so on) and (iii) How should we live? (Ethics and morality). Our author, who is an Anglican vicar as well as a philosopher chose the title "A History of Ideas" as his title because his short gem of a book includes philosophy as well as religious and spiritual ideas, scientific and ethical ones.

I loved O'Donnell's opening paragraph where he recounts the following illustration to capture his wonder at life: "If we imagine that the tip of the longest finger on our left hand is the beginning of our cosmos, then the fingernail on the longest finger on the right hand is the last 100,000 years or so of its life when Homo Sapiens have been in existence.  Today is the very edge of the nail." (p. 6)  As a teacher, I can see myself using this analogy by way of capturing the attention of my class.  One could give this book, in my opinion, to a pupil at the primary level, too, such is its clarity of expression and lack of complexity.  Now, this is not to say, obviously, that it simplifies things too much.  Our author is too much a philosopher to do that.

O'Donnell places a premium on good, logical, solid thinking, which will be the very catchphrase of our next book in this sequence of short reviews.  The first chapter deals with the question of mythology and the nature of mythical thinking as well as giving a brief account of the insights of Carl Gustave Jung, the famous twentieth-century psychiatrist into making life meaningful.  There is also a brief account of the importance of storytelling to human life.  There then follow chapters which discuss the Greek philosophical inheritance, Eastern philosophy and beliefs, the Christian era, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Muslim World,  the growth of science and knowledge, the Modern World, Descartes, John Locke, Empiricism, Newton's scientific discoveries, the Enlightenment, Existentialism and finally Modernism and Postmodernism.  Other interesting references are to literature, language and their relationship with philosophy, psychoanalysis and Marxism, and O'Donnell also brings deconstruction and feminism into his brief history to round the whole thing off.  Obviously, he discusses none of these in any detail, but he whets the reader's appetite to learn more as every good book should do.  

(iii) Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy, Simon Blackburn (2001), Oxford: OUP.

This book is a good introductory text for anyone wishing to study academic philosophy.  The author, Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University.  He has published widely and is well known for his critical thinking ability.  Again, the title of the book sums up Blackburn's approach: for him, philosophy is more a way of thinking than the reading of, or musing on, learned texts, no matter what their provenance.  In this book, he invites his readers to think deeply about such topics as: consciousness, fate and chance, God, truth, goodness and justice.  When you pick up this book you will not be given any answers: instead, you will be invited to think and ponder the debates, both traditional and current, in philosophy today.  One does not suspect that our author is in any sense ego-driven, given the subtitle of this small volume: "A compelling introduction to philosophy." The contention rather illustrates his passion for his subject and his conviction that he is doing a good job. The Irish novelist, John Banville calls this book "a thrilling introduction to the pleasures and problems of philosophy."  

The present reviewer found all chapters of this book stimulating, especially chapter four on the concept of the self.  "Who am I?" is a perennial question on the lips of any thinking individual who wants to explore the meaning of his life on planet Earth - a mere dot spinning in the vastness of space.  Chapter four investigates what exactly different philosophers throughout history maintained the "self" actually is and makes the reader question his/her presuppositions as to who s/he is.  In fact, it questions whether anything like the "self" in fact exists at all.  The philosophers that Blackburn discusses concerning this question range from the early Greeks to St Augustine to the scepticism of David Hume, the talented Scottish philosopher who maintained that the self was merely a "bundle of perceptions." (See p. 123 ff)  Other questions concerning identity that Blackburn discusses are: Is the acorn the same "thing" as the oak?  Is the 58-year-old man I am the same as my 45-year-old or 21 year old or 1-year-old self?  Is the current ship of Theseus the same ship as it was many years ago when literally all its parts have been replaced over the years?  I'm thinking here, also of the wonderful character called Trigger in the BBC comedy Only Fools and Horses where he tells Dell Boy and company that "this old broom has had seventeen new heads and fourteen new handles" and that it is still the same brush. (See Trigger's Broom).  Another deep question Blackburn asks us is: How much of your personality can you lose and still be you?  

He goes on to raise interesting questions also about the existence of God and human beliefs in such a concept.  He questions at one point in the book whether religious practices "have only an emotional point or a social point.  Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends." (p. 150)  Without a doubt, one can agree with his contention that it is nothing short of silliness to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false.  In his chapter on God, Blackburn discusses the question of religion and belief in God in terms of argument, reason and evidence. (see p. 151)  Like Christopher Hitchens (See HERE ) and Richard Dawkins, Blackburn concludes that the evidence simply does not stack up.  One can only concur with his logical conclusion given his premises, namely argument, reason and evidence.

Other topics covered in this challenging but brilliantly argued book are the nature of knowledge, the concept of mind, free will and reasoning.  In short, this book will make the reader long to read more from this challenging author's pen.

(iv) The Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to be happy, Michael Foley (2010), London & New York: Simon & Schuster.

Michael Foley is a Northern Irish author who lives in London and writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  He has published four novels, three non-fiction books, five collections of poetry and a collection of translations from French poetry.  His web page is HERE.

This book is more a book on the problem or pursuit of happiness (and its absurdity or futility) in twenty-first-century modern life than an introduction to philosophy. However, were I giving an introductory course to philosophy, I should put it on my reading list. Aristotle maintained that the goal of life was not so much to gain happiness but rather to flourish as human beings.  The Greek word he used for this goal in life was "eudaimonia" which translates as flourishing.  In other words, we should live life in order to be fulfilled and to reach some state of well-being where we will flourish as human beings.   The Easterns always maintain that happiness is never a goal - in fact, in Foley's words, such a goal is nothing short of absurd - that it is, in fact, a decision or choice we make every moment of our lives.  A cursory perusal of the end-notes shows us that Foley refers to a legion of philosophers, poets and writers from many periods in history: Mahon, Rousseau, Mill, Kant, Nietzsche, Fromm, Freud, Jaspers, de Botton, Baggini, Camus, Tolstoy, Nettle, Damasio, Meister Eckhart, T.S. Eliot, Oliver James and so on.

However, the saving grace of this book is its humour blended artfully with much wisdom from a wide range of sources.  There is at least one good laugh per page. "and now I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror - a raging gargoyle corroded by acid rain.  How can this have happened to a 1960s flower child?" (p. 3)  Foley's insights into the Freudian "id" are fascinatingly comprehensive and reveal how widely he is read in philosophy and literature and how deeply he has a handle on his subject.  He mentions a wealth of historical detail regarding the "id," viz., Plato's bad horse, Mara for Buddhists, Satan for Christians, the ogre in medieval folktales, the "self" in Nietzsche, the dark figure who wrests the helm from the legitimate officer for Kafka or the old reptile brain lurking at the base of the new brain. (See pp. 22 - 23) Like philosophy, Foley argues that Buddhism is more a method than a creed.  In this sense, it has much in common with philosophy. 

Foley does not see life as the pursuit of happiness at all costs - because that is sheer absurdity.  It will never happen if we are so obsessed with becoming happy.  Rather, he sees our task in life as being at most the avoidance of as much misery, envy and humiliation as we can.  Of course, we may have to put up with less or more of it depending on our luck.  We must laugh at life, take pleasure in it in its fullness - in its downs as well as ups, in its lows as well as in its highs.  In a sense, what Foley recommends is that we put our "shoulder to the boulder" as it were and get whatever fun we can out of the strenuous push.

Modern life, replete as it is with ever higher expectations, has made our human plight even worse.  It has deepened our cravings and desires as well as heightened our delusions of importance as individuals - modern society panders to our ego and our delusions of self-importance.  Everybody wants to live the good life, achieve the greatest possible success, remain as young as possible, achieve some level of fame, be beautiful and fit, and so on and so forth.  Western individuals, then, have a sharpened sense of their own rights and are often apoplectic with anger at their perceived poor treatment by society and show their widely felt sensitivity to all manner of perceived slights and grievances by protesting loudly to anyone who will listen.

In short, then, this book will make its reader laugh by highlighting the absurdity of life, both that of society and of the reader's own.  For Foley, absurdity can be the new sublime if embraced philosophically or in a Zen-like way.  This book is well worth the read, even for the laugh, and you'll gain some wisdom along the way.


(v) What Do We Really Know: The Big Questions of Philosophy, Simon Blackburn (2009), London: Quercus.

This is an exceptionally good introduction to philosophy.  Simon Blackburn is the Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, from which he retired in 2011.  He is a noted philosopher in the analytic school.  He is also a patron of the British Humanist Association. I especially love reading anything from Blackburn as it is well-argued and even though he comes from a philosophical standpoint with which I don't agree fully, this makes his writing and ideas even more riveting for me.  Any philosopher worth his/her salt should always read books that oppose their viewpoint to sharpen their thinking and open themselves to other viewpoints. In short, Professor Blackburn always makes me think.  Add to all these accolades, the fact that the learned professor is also one of the major popularisers of his subject writing today will give the reader a more rounded appreciation of this great contemporary scholar.

This popular book covers the following topics: Can machines think? What is the meaning of life - the oldest chestnut in our larder as human beings.  Is death to be feared? Why should we be good? What am I?  What do we really know? among many other questions.  This book contains some twenty chapters that discuss most insightfully and provocatively twenty major questions, some of which I've mentioned above.  In this briefest of reviews, I will comment on one chapter only to whet the reader's appetite. 

Let me start with the chapter entitled "Why is there something rather than nothing? The Strange Ways of Being."  This is a chapter to make anyone think and it is closely argued.  I cannot say that I followed Professor Blackburn's logic in every detail, but it was an intriguing and interesting chapter indeed.  Blackburn begins this chapter with a long quotation from Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 - 1716).  Leibniz was a German polymath born in Leipzig.  He was both an important mathematician and philosopher.  Bertrand Russell and many other learned mathematicians argue that Leibniz developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton - from very early on Leibniz's notation was more favoured and more widely used than Newton's. 

The most famous quotation attributed to Leibniz is the question raised by Blackburn in the title of this very chapter.  When I was at college many metaphysicians, philosophers of religion and theologians quoted the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" as being the most basic of questions that allowed them to speculate on the existence of a Creator God.  This quotation comes from a work entitled Principles of Nature and of Grace founded on Reason and in part it reads:

For 'nothing' is simpler and easier than 'something.'  Further, supposing that things must exist, it must be possible to give a reason why they must exist just as they do and not otherwise.... And this final meaning of things is called God. (p. 162)

Blackburn raises the intriguing and most pointed question of which I have never thought before about Leibniz's famous question: "Is it more probable that there should have been nothing rather than something?.... But there are no statistics for first the state of there being nothing, and then the state of there being something." (p.  166)

If you pick up this book, you can pick any chapter at random and you will be treated to a challenging invitation to engage in some very fine logical thinking with Professor Blackburn.  If you are a lazy reader and don't like being forced to think, then this is certainly not the book for you.  The beauty of any book from Blackburn's pen is that you will always be challenged as the writer is a great gadfly in the tradition of Socrates to make us think and to disturb us in our very prejudices.