My Book Reviews

A s I am in a reflective mood these dark, dreary days of January, a mood partially inspired by my attempts to avoid being depressed by the interminable rain we are experiencing in Ireland these days, I wish to continue by reviewing another philosophy book on the heels of Dr Nigel Warburton ’s “little history” of the subject.   The book is titled Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas , Wildfire Books , 2021. There is a saying in education circles, one that has no doubt existed since time immemorial, that the best way to really learn a subject is to teach it.  Having taught for some thirty-five years at secondary level here in Ireland, that piece of wisdom resonates well with my experience.  I have been dipping into some philosophy books on my shelves recently, and that dictum applies well to the philosopher and teacher Jonny Thomson.  Mr Thomson has taught philosophy and politics at St Edward’s Co-educational Boarding School in Oxford for some twelve years....

  Nigel Warburton : A Little History of Philosophy , Yale University Press , 2012   We all have a philosophy of life.  Indeed, we need one simply to motivate us to get out of bed in the morning, and to give some meaning and purpose to our lives, especially when we are presented with the various problems, trials and tribulations which life throws at us from time to time.  We also question the significance of our limited existence in this world, one of just over eight billion people revolving on an insignificant minuscule dot in the seeming infinity of expanding space.  The twentieth-century theologian Karl Rahner S.J. (1904 – 1984), following his philosophy teacher Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), declared that “Man himself is the Question.” Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988), the noted theoretical physicist of that same century, famously declared that "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."   It wou...

Wisdom is always worth repeating, even if its reiteration is occasionally annoying. There is much sound psychology in the statement that I quoted recently in these reflections: “There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it ill behoves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.” Another equally psychologically sound adage, attributed to Oscar Wilde , is “Every saint has a past, and every sinner a future.” In other words, there is an inbuilt duality at the heart of every human being; we are a complex mixture of good and evil. It would seem, according to sound philosophical reflection, certain advanced theological understanding and objective psychological thinking, that human beings cannot simply be divided into saints or angels on the one hand and demons or monsters on the other. Canonising and demonising are essentially exaggerations that miss the mark, that do not take into account the complexity of the human makeup. This assessment of the...

As literature entered the modernist period, classical plot and storyline gradually receded into the background, and accepted ways of opening, developing and concluding a story were consigned to the paper-basket of literary history.   This, as we have seen, was already a hallmark of Anton Chekhov ’s approach to short stories. Style of writing became one of the factors that determined modernity, as did an individual perspective on reality, as the accepted rules of the traditional craft of writing faded.   A sharper focus was placed on everyday life as mirrored through the authentic and personal experience of the author.   This was called a “ slice of life ” approach.   As the short story form developed, emphasis was placed on the overall emotional effect or impact of the story on the reader. The stories of Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) fit nicely into this modernist approach.  The latter began his career as a cub reporter on The Kansas City Star where the st...

In this post, I am reviewing Rutger Christiaan Bregman ’s recent book Humankind: A Hopeful History ( Bloomsbury, London, 2020 ) Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian and author whose name I had never heard before I picked up this well-researched positive perspective on human history.  He has been described by The Guardian as the "Dutch wunderkind of new ideas" and by TED Talks as "one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers.” Indeed, he is very young in my book, being a mere 37 years of age as this year draws to a close.  As an international bestseller, the cover of my paperback edition and several pages in the front matter are covered with encomiums to the author’s brilliance and to the wisdom contained within.  Stephen Fry ’s appraisal of this book, like the other thirty pithy and eulogising promotional quotations, sings the praises of the positivity of this history as a possible and probable renewal of our faith in “the innate goodness and natural decency of ...

Long before the discovery of penicillin by the Scottish medical doctor and microbiologist, Sir Alexander Fleming , many thousands of people died from Tuberculosis .   I mention this disease here as two of my favourite literati, separated in time by just 40 years, died all too young from this highly infectious disease. I speak of the famous Romantic poet, John Keats , who died at the young age of a mere 25 years, and the world-renowned playwright and short-story writer, Anton Chekhov , who died at 44 years of age.  Keats died in Rome in February 1821, while Chekov was born in Russia in 1860.  As an amateur philosopher, an erstwhile psychotherapist and an ageing human being, the “ultimate concern” ( Irvin Yalom ) or “boundary situation” ( Karl Jaspers ) of dying and death features highly in my consciousness.  Both of these great literary figures studied medicine, and both knew that their time on earth was limited once they began coughing up blood.  Chekhov ...