Book Description
This volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind. The essays deal with such central topics as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the concept of a person, the structure of the will, the nature of action, the constitution of the self, and the theory of personal ideals. By focusing on the distinctive nature of human freedom, Professor Frankfurt is ale to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be a person and of what one should care about in life.
Customer Reviews:
The Answer.......2005-09-08
This book contains essays about personal ethics -- the decisions we make and what those decisions say about us. The author's conclusions are revealing and complex, and they lead the reader to deeper self-examination. I will re-read this book several times before I surrender it to someone else.
Contemplating One's Naval.......2005-09-01
The title intrigued. The book . . . not really a book but a group of essays, one of which provided the title . . . disappointed. Spending ten pages of fine print on the exact definition of a word left me a bit angry -- angry that I do not have the courage to toss a book that I have paid for and started to read.
Best short philosophy book of the 1980s.......2000-05-22
This book collects Frankfurt's most important essays from 1969 - 1988. It begins with "Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," the most important essay on the conditions of moral responsibility in the second half of the twentieth-century. This essay introduced "Frankfurt-style" counterexamples to the principle that to be responsible for an action (or intention, decision, etc) we must have alternatives to it, or be able to avoid it. Thirty years later, the debate about free will and moral responsibility ignited by Frankfurt's essay continues to dominate the scholarly literature. Frankfurt's reply to Peter van Inwagen in this debate is also included in the book. The second essay, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," is even more important: in response to Peter Strawson, it introduced the idea that a person is a being capable of forming "higher-order volitions," and thus capable of taking volitional attitudes towards his/her own motivational states (1st-order desires, emotions, etc). This essay began a series of debates about human autonomy and the structure of the self that continue to dominate that literature in analytic philosophy. Frankfurt develops his idea that we can identify with or alienate our own first-order desires (or subjective reasons for action) in "Three Concepts of Free Action," "Identification and Externality," and "Identification and Wholeheartedness." In the remaining essays, Frankfurt introduces his concept of "caring," which is related to the higher-order will, and begins his argument that our most fully autonomous or unambiguously self-determined motives may be found in cares that involve "volitional necessity" for us, an unwillingness to let alternatives even become available. Thus we see at the end that Frankfurt's 1969 argument concerning the compatibility of responsibility and inevitability is required for his concept of the self, which is defined by its commitments or cares. Although several of these papers require philosophical training the appreciate, the essays on caring and the unthinkable will be interesting to any educated layperson. The book could be used for an advanced undergraduate seminar, and is essential for all graduate students studying moral psychology.
Book Description
Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical writings by Donald Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. His first two collections, published by OUP in the early 1980s, are recognized as contemporary classics. Now Davidson presents a selection of his work on knowledge, mind, and language from the 1980s and the 1990s. We all have knowledge of our own minds, knowledge of the contents of other minds, and knowledge of the shared environment. Davidson examines the nature and status of each of these three sorts of knowledge, and the connections and differences among them. Along the way he has illuminating things to say about truth, human rationality, and the relations among language, thought, and the world. This new volume offers a rich and rewarding feast for anyone interested in philosophy today, and is essential reading for anyone working on its central topics.
Customer Reviews:
Classic Articles.......2002-09-11
Oxford is in the process of re-issuing these Davidson anthologies. The anthologies on truth and action do not have much new material. This anthology has some excellent previously published articles on self-knowledge/epistemology and rationality, which has become necessary reading on these respective topics.
Also, look out for new stuff in Vol. 4 and 5 in this series.
I also recommend Stroud's work on Davidson, which can be found in both of his recent collections (Oxford UP).
Customer Reviews:
Totality and Infinity--extremely hard, but also fulfilling.......2006-03-20
I only read parts of Totality and Infinity, but I found Levinas extremely hard and rewarding. His insights in the book are helpful to everyday life, and they've changed my world view altogether. read it, but preferably with someone else who is reading it, too, or have someone else who has read it help you.
One of the Great Books.......2006-03-16
To previous reviewers:
~ Levinas is trying to uncover the source of the idea of infinity ~
No, infinity by definition is boundless and cannot be encompassed or reduced. Levinas is not asking the Cartesian question nor concerned with securing the `existence' of the external world. The concept of infinity is unique in that its content always exceeds or overflows its concept. Ethical relation operates in just this manner: the relation to the other is not negative (ala Idealism) but rather a relation to an excess. This excess is no Hinterwelt, but rather goodness.
~ Then he proceeds to "show" that the face to face relation with the Other is the source for our capacity to have theoretical and practical knowledge. ~
Indeed. Though the term `source' is very problematic. Levinas shows theoretical and practical `knowledge' - science and law/politics - are fundamentally social. In this way, the ethical relation opens and conditions this `knowledge,' while always exceeding it. What if science claimed to discover that women were `inferior' to men? We would no doubt question the `truth' of this discovery. Why? Because such a claim seems to exceed the bounds of what scientific activity can produce. This example shows how ethics exceeds theoretical knowledge. The same goes for the `practical.' Why do we think that segregation is wrong or unjust? Why is excluding the `other' from basic political participation, and the responsibility and rights it entails, a problem? Political theory and practice, which in its way is a kind of `scientific ethics,' can also lead to problematic situations. How are we able to judge or discern or resist claims that seek to justify unethical attitudes and practices? The face-to-face is Levinas's attempt to grapple with this perennial problem.
~ Oh yeah, the Other is a man, because the feminine other is not Other enough for Levinas, and romantic love is bad. ~
The problem of the feminine in Levinas is a real issue. Yet only a reductive and amateurish reading would pose the problem in these blunt terms. "The Other is man" and not women, is false according to any close reading of Levinas's texts. It is true that Levinas implicitly treats gender with a patriarchal slant, yet it is also true that he complicates and problematizes the way gendered is valued. There is a running debate on this within feminist camps. The more thoughtful and rigorous feminists realize the complexity and nuanced structural problems within Levinas's thinking of the feminine. Even if we admit that there is an undeniable patriarchal aspect in Levinas's work, we must also admit that he subverts that same patriarchy from within his own work. Here we may possibly oppose Levinas to Levinas. (Check out Tine Chanter's essay in `Addressing Levinas'). Oh ya, `romantic love is bad'?? Go read `Phenomenology of Eros' more carefully.
~Essentially, what he does is fuse Husserl and Heidegger's theories, to an extent, and replaces the transcendental ego of Husserl with the face to face relation with the Other.~
This sounds like a bad regurgitation of certain of Levinas's critics. The more precise way to put it is this: Levinas plays Heidegger's anti-scientism against Husserl, and Husserl's anti-historicism and relativism against Heidegger. There is a certain sense where the other displaces Husserl's T-Ego, in terms of its structural function. Yet Levinas is not after absolute knowledge, and `replacing' the ego with alterity precisely disturbs and relativizes - in fact renders impossible - constitution.
~ Levinas is just intentionally writing obscurely, perhaps because he realizes how silly his whole enterprise is and how much modernism is contained within it (still trying to find the condition for experience itself, did someone say German Idealism?).~
This comment shows the extent of our reviewer's ignorance. 1st: Levinas's entire project is one the most rigorous and non-reductive challenges to the Idealist tradition from Fichte to Husserl. Levinas's project is precisely a critique of the modernist project to secure absolute foundations. He ever retained an allergy to G-Idealism and saw within its totalizing logic the seeds of Auschwitz. 2nd: The claim that Levinas intentionally wrote obscurely betrays intellectual laziness and a certain chauvinism. A simple survey of Levinas's contemporaries, French philosophy of the mid-20th century, shows that Levinas is writing within a specific intellectual culture and style. Continental philosophy in general tends to be more difficult for us Anglophones in that we are socialized into an instrumental and minimalist stylistic culture. One need only read Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, or Derrida to the see the extent in which Levinas is operating within a certain tradition and style of philosophy.
Finally, the following suggestion by the above reviewer can help us understand Levinas's basic point:
~ you would be better served by spending 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own working definition of the following words: --- "totality" --- "infinity" --- "other"
Then spend 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own understanding of how the three are interrelated.~
As you sit `contemplating' your definitions, imagine you are right on the cusp of a new idea that will refute Levinas and bring you philosophic immortality. All of a sudden, a frantic bang on your door jars you. You open the door and there stands your neighbor with blood running down his face. He explains that while he was sitting watching water flow over rocks (while contemplating Aristotle); a tree branch fell on his head. You immediately begin to help your neighbor: bandages, ice, call the ambulance, and so forth. By the time the ordeal is over, you have forgotten the specifics of you idea and must start all over.
The supplicating demand of the other interrupts all self activity, rendering our clarity and certainty and sedentary contemplation secondary and relative. No matter how grand and all encompassing our ideas become, there always remains an exterior: an other who bangs on the door needing help; whom we feel obliged to help even if the don't agree with our ideas, even if they are stupid, confused, and so forth. This knock on the door is not another `meaning,' idea, world, or theory, not another term to be defined or explained. The knock on the door is the face of the other that needs and demands whether or not our theory or definition justifies it.
Totality and Infinity is, no doubt, one of the Great Books.
Your Time.......2005-11-13
I have to confess I didn't get very far with this one. If you have to read this for a course, I'm very sorry.
I'm not an academic, but I do I read a lot of philosophy. I'll put a lot of energy into a complex text, but I prefer to invest it with works that will enlighten, not confuse.
On the clarity-precision scale, I would push Levinas right past "dense" or "challenging" and put it somewhere between "turgid" and "impenetrable." (His apologists decry the inability of human language to convey Levinas' sophisticated thoughts. Maybe so, but perhaps the apology says more about his thoughts than it does about human language.)
In any case, it will take you a long time to genuinely read this book. If you're looking for truth (as opposed to a passing grade in a required course), you would be better served by spending 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own working definition of the following words:
--- "totality"
--- "infinity"
--- "other"
Then spend 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own understanding of how the three are interrelated.
Then get a decent translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. (I like the McKeon translation, but there are certainly newer, hipper ones.) Then read Aristotle instead of Levinas. If you find the idea of reading a Dead White Guy repugnant, spend the time watching water move over rocks. Either choice will provide you more wisdom than you could get from a lifetime studying An Essay on Exteriority.
difficult - so important.......2004-09-05
Yeah, this is hard to read. Yes, it is worth it. Levinas stands tall in a tradition that embraces the flux and rejects the totalizing tendencies of modernity. Totality and Infinity was a powerful influence on Derrida, can be seen as a parrallel to Heidegger's Essay Concerning the Question of Technology, and certainly repesents a powerful attempt at post-metaphysical ethics.
Levinas points out the egology, the self and family centered closedness that does violence on many scales. In a time when there seems to be unconditional heralding of freedom, Levinas points out the violence of freedom and encourages responsibility. Regardless of how effective one finds his arguments, I think the attitude and way of being Levinas is describing is one that would make life much fuller and less driven by inertia and ignorence.
Infinitely important (pun), highly recommended.
deconstructing Levinas.......2004-08-15
Here is a summary of the argument contained in this book:
Levinas is trying to uncover the source of the idea of infinity, which he decides cannot come from "totality" and must come from something that cannot be "totalized." He decides that it must come from the face to face relation with the Other, since neither the Other nor the face to face relation can be totalized. Then he proceeds to "show" that the face to face relation with the Other is the source for our capacity to have theoretical and practical knowledge. Oh yeah, the Other is a man, because the feminine other is not Other enough for Levinas, and romantic love is bad. Essentially, what he does is fuse Husserl and Heidegger's theories, to an extent, and replaces the transcendental ego of Husserl with the face to face relation with the Other.
Yeah, forgive me if I don't think this guy is as profound as the other reviewers. And Levinas is not having problems getting his point across because of the "ontological" nature of the language he is using (an explanation that came from Derrida, not Levinas nor the other reviewers). Levinas is just intentionally writing obscurely, perhaps because he realizes how silly his whole enterprise is and how much modernism is contained within it (still trying to find the condition for experience itself, did someone say German Idealism?).
Book Description
Donald Davidson presents a new edition of the 1984 volume which set out his enormously influential philosophy of language. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation has been a central point of reference and a focus of controversy in the subject ever since, and its influence has extended into linguistic theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. This new edition features an additional essay, previously uncollected. The central question which these essays address is what it is for words to mean what they do. Davidson argues that a philosophically instructive theory of meaning should acknowledge the holistic nature of linguistic understanding, in that it should provide an interpretation of all utterances, actual and potential, of a speaker or group of speakers; and that it should not rely upon the concepts it attempts to explain, in that it should be verifiable independently of knowledge of the detailed propositional attitudes of the speaker. Among the topics covered in the essays are the relation between theories of truth and theories of meaning, translation, quotation, belief, radical interpretation, reference, metaphor, and communication.
Customer Reviews:
very hard to read, but pays.......2002-11-28
As the previous reviewer says, the book contains many of Davidson's seminal papers in the philosophy of language. This book, however, cannot be used as an introduction to anything, not to philosophy of language and not even to Davidson's. His style is extremely compressed, and sometimes he merely intimates what should be carefully explained. What it ideally takes two paragraphs to say, Davidson says in two lines; each sentence is therefore crammed up with thoughts; at some places the author becomes oracular.
I would love to say that Ramberg's book on Davidson can be of help for the beginner, but I must confess instead that I find Davidson's "Inquires" an excellent commentary on Ramberg.
This book will be understood only by those who are already trained in philosophy of language and who understand some logic too. I said "only by", not "by all".
For critical comments on the contents of the book, I refer the reader to a rather harsh and carping review by Jonathan Bennett, I think it was in "Mind", 1985.
As one reviewer in the backcover says, "struggle and learn". Here you have a great book by a great philosopher of language.
Read it!.......2000-06-28
Excellent book. A must read for everyone interested in philosophy of language. This book contains all of Davidson's important articles concerning philosophy of language.
Book Description
Foundations of Mind collects the essays which established Tyler Burge as a leading philosopher of mind. This second volume of his papers offers nineteen pieces published between 1975 and 2003, including the influential series that develops anti-individualism. Burge contributes three essay-length postscripts, a substantial new paper on consciousness, and an introduction which surveys his work in this area. The foundations that Burge reflects on are conditions in the individual or the wider world that determine the natures of mental kinds. The conditions include causal, social, psychological conditions, and conditions of phenomenal consciousness. Some of these are basic conditions under which minds are possible. The book is essential reading for philosophers of mind, and should engage a wider public interested in basic philosophical issues.
Book Description
Smashing such stereotypes as "the monolithic Middle East" or "the Western Mind," Amartya Sen examines the much-misunderstood concept of identity.
The world may be more riven by murderous violence than ever before; yet Amartya Sen, the galvanizing Nobel Laureate, proposes in this sweeping philosophical work that the brutalities are driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Conflict and violence are sustained by the illusion of a unique identity, overlooking the need for reason and choice in deciding on bonds of class, gender, profession, scientific interests, moral beliefs, and even our shared identity as human beings. Challenging the reductionist view that people of the world can be partitioned into little boxes in terms of civilizational categories, Sen draws on history, economics, science, literature, and his own memories of difficult as well as easy times on three continents to present an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward violence and war.
About the series: Issues of Our Time: "Aware of the competition for the attention of readers, W. W. Norton & Company and I have created the "Issues of Our Time" as a lucid series of highly readable books through which some of today's most thoughtful intellectuals seek to challenge the general reader to reexamine received truths and grapple with powerful trends that are shaping the world in which we live. The series launches with Anthony Appiah, Alan Dershowitz, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen as the first of an illustrious group who will tackle some of the most plangent and central issues defining our society today through books that deal with such issues as sexual and racial identities, the economics of the developing world, and the concept of citizenship in a truly globalized twenty-first-century world culture. Above all else, these books are designed to be read and enjoyed."—Henry Louis Gates Jr., W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Customer Reviews:
A prayer for freedom of identity.......2007-09-26
Sen is so eloquent it's overkill. To a global but divided world he speaks of identity as a multi-layered matter of personal choice: "The same person can, for example, be a British citizen, of Malaysian origen, with Chinese racial characteristics, a stock broker, a non-vegitarian, an asthmatic, a linguist, a bodybuilder, a poet, an opponent of abortion, a bird-watcher, an astrologer, and one who believes that God invented Darwin to test the gullible." (p. 24)
Sen notes several popular ways of dealing with identity. One he calls "identity disregard", and another is "singular affiliation".
In "identity disregard" we dismiss all shared identity, and treat each person as an economic self-interest group of one. As some proponents of this view argue, "If it's not in your interest, why have you chosen to do as you did?". Sen notes that this assumption, "makes huge idiots out of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela, and rather smaller idiots out of the rest of us." (p. 21)
"Singular affiliation" on the other hand, defines people by their membership in one (only one) of their many social circles. This can be an externally imposed label, as in stereotypes of what Westerners are, or in can be self-imposed general conformity -- as when Oscar Wilde said, "Most people are other people. ... Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation".
Feeling both social and an individual, Sen launches his excellent exporation of identity in the modern world. He visits the great "West VS Non-West" divide, where he dispenses with the usual hoopla:
"... in disputing the gross and natsy generalization that members of the Islamic civilization have a belligerant culture, it is common enough to argue that they actually share a culture of peace and goodwill. But this simply replaces one stereotype with another, and furthermore, it involves accepting an implicit presumption that people who happen to be Muslim by religion would be similar in other ways as well." (p. 42)
In many corners of the world Sen shows the subtle handicaps which delimited identy can impose. He mentions South African doctor and anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele, who describes the impact of polarized identity on the AIDS crisis: The "mistrust of science that has traditionally been controlled by white people" hampers medical efforts; open discussion of the problem is often suppressed by "the fear of acknowledging an epidemic that could easily be used to fan the worst racial stereotyping". (p. 92)
Always sounding magisterial, Sen wades into the home-town issues of British multiculturalism, political correctitude, and the struggles of "globalism vs anti-globalism". He distinguishes between the desire for ethnic groups to leave one another alone, and the desire for a freedom to choose among many cultural options. To those who urge funding schools for each religion he is blunt: "It is unfair to children who have not yet had much opportunity of reasoning and choice to be put into rigid boxes guided by one specific criterion of categorization, and to be told: 'That is your identity and this is all you are going to get'." (p. 118)
To people who believe their identity is more a fate than a choice, Sen affirms we can do better: "We have to make sure, above all, that our mind is not halved by a horizon". The book's opening dedication sounds almost like a Buddhist vow to seek enlightenment: "To Antara, Nandana, Indrani, and Kabir with the hope of a world less imprisoned by illusion".
The Illusion of Great Intellect?.......2007-07-06
Mr. Sen's great contribution to the ongoing debate about our response to terrorism is to add to the confusion.
This book makes a simple point: a cat is not a cat because it is also a mother/ father, a baby, a hunter, a prey, a mammal, a quadruped, and various other things. If we consider it only as a cat, we tend to oversimplify things, which is a great tragedy from an intellectual point of view.
Mr. Sen makes this point across many pages, using facts and information selectively, performing marvelous feats of intellectual contortion, and using his argumentative powers with terrific verbosity. Gradually you start getting tired of trying to understand the argument, and take refuge in his intellectual reputation. If Mr. Sen says so, then it must be so.
Unfortunately, it is not so. Mr. Sen himself has used categories and grouped identities repeatedly in his works. An identity is of course a construct, a definition, which helps us work with an idea. If we abandon these, it will become very difficult to handle complex ideas - we will be reduced to monkeys who are great at dealing with percepts, but not with concepts.
What is the point of this book, one may ask? The book may merely be an attempt to deflect attention from radical forms of Islam, which often lead to terrorism. In this apologist work, Mr. Sen does not bother to ask the Muslims as to how do they see themselves, what do they see as their defining identity.
However, Mr. Sen has no love lost for traditional forms of Islam, if practiced in the West, as he carefully spears the multi-culturalists to death with his eyes carefully trained on the Western audience. For instance, according to him, cultural diversity can be enhanced if individuals are 'encouraged' to live as they value living. It is clear to him, however, that young Muslim women are unlikely to value living behind a veil freely, as that would merely constitute 'an automatic endorsement of past traditions'. Mr. Sen fails to see that following traditions may itself be an implicit and integral value in a particular culture.
It is also difficult for Mr. Sen to see that what is considered 'sexual freedom' by a particular society, may be considered as 'sexual perversity' in another society. Indeed in the same society, people would have differing views. In such a situation, who are we to arbiter what is right for a group of people in their personal lives?
He also makes various vacuous arguments. For instance, both Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh were Muslims. Aurangzeb was 'rather intolerant', whereas Dara Shikoh was interested in Hindu Upanishads. Aurangzeb killed Dara Shikoh (in a fight over the throne). Aurangzeb's great-grandfather was also a tolerant Muslim. Therefore, there is great diversity among Muslims. Therefore, it is wrong to treat all Muslims as belonging to the same mindset.
No one would argue against that. However, after making this kind of obvious arguments endlessly, Mr. Sen slyly insinuates that we should not link hundreds of terrorist incidents (where Muslims were directly involved) with radical Muslims, as Muslims have multiple identities, which he has already proved!
It is really quite a pity. One would wish that Mr. Sen could put his great intellect to more worthwhile use, such as helping us understand why people group together in monolithic blocks or get radicalized enough to want to kill others who do not subscribe to their views.
A hardcover edition of this book has also been published by Penguin India under the banner 'Allen Lane'. While the binding of the Penguin edition is good, the typeface is a little difficult to read. Also the paper is almost like newsprint, and tends to absorb ink (if you like making notes in the margins). The book is a slim volume, easy to carry.
Buy this book if you would like to argue it out with Mr. Sen. Or if you want to appear to be politically correct, never mind the cost to your intellect.
Identity and Violence.......2007-05-17
I felt this book was overly self aggrandizing in a way that academic writing often is. It takes the obvious, couches it in lofty rehtoric and tries to sell the ideas as original and pressing. They may be the latter, but are fairly self evident. I know this man is an intellectual who is well respected so it is surprising to me that in this book he kind of 'dumbs up' a set of premises that could be perhaps more influential were they 'dumbed down' for a different audience.
good ideas, clear thinking, but a bit repetitive.......2007-04-15
The book makes two main arguments. First it argues that identities are rational constructions where group allegiances of all sorts play a part. Second it argues that globalization, though an unqualified good in principle, is in practice often merely a way for some group in a globablizing nation to reap most of the benefits while others suffer most of ill consdquences. Both arguments work together in Sen's view of how one might best understand the phenomena of *opposition to the west*. We (G8 nations) have fallen into the habit of seeing nations as wholes characterized by specific identities. Sen suggests that we'd understand phenomena like saudi-born terror groups or mass disaffection with the G8 by the citizens of latin america, by learning to see the world in a less reductionist fashion: namely intersections of various groups overlapping in persons and populations.
Sen's prose is quite clear, and I find his claims rather convincing. The books style is a bit grating though. It's very repetitive. The same ideas resurface again and again along with the same examples. I suspect the book is really a compilation of speeches Sen has given. Repetition is necessary in speaking because the audience doesn't have time to step back and make the connections themselves. But in a book like this, already quite short, it's a waste of the reader's time.
Also Sen is not very careful with his historical examples. One recurring story he cites is how my Maimonides fled Christian Europe for Saladin's Egypt. Not true. Maimonides fled Almohad (and thus islamic) Andaluz for Saladin's Egypt. This was an easy fact to check, and you'd think an author of Sen's stature whould take the time to make sure an example he will use four or five times is correct.
The book is definitely worth reading. I only wish the author had spent just a bit more time tightening it up and doing a bit more fact checking.
identity need not mean violent destiny.......2007-01-18
Amartya Sen, Harvard professor and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, still remembers the day sixty-three years ago when a Muslim day laborer named Kader Mia stumbled through the gate into his family's yard in Dhaka, bleeding from knife wounds and begging for help. His father rushed him to the hospital where he eventually died. Kader was a Muslim who was murdered by a Hindu thug, and was but one of the thousands of people who died in Muslim-Hindu riots that erupted in British India in the 1940's. Although most of the rioters shared an economic class identity as poor people, partisans demonized each other with a lethal, singularist "identity of violence," in this instance a diminution of their humanity to religious ethnicity: "The illusion of a uniquely confrontational reality had thoroughly reduced human beings and eclipsed the protagonists' freedom to think." Sen's book is an exploration of this memory of his as a bewildered eleven-year-old boy.
Far too much violence in the world today is fomented by the illusion that people are destined to a "sectarian singularity." Stereotyping people with a singular identity leads to fatalism, resignation, and a sense of inevitability about violence. It partitions people and civilizations into binary oppositions, it ignores the plural ways that people understand themselves, and obscures what Sen calls our "diverse diversities." In particular, he objects to the "clash of civilizations" thesis made popular by Samuel Huntington. Along the way he explores the implications of his thesis for multiculturalism, public policy, globalization, terrorism, anti-Western rage, democracy, and theories of culture.
Sen argues against identity violence caused by the illusion of destiny in three ways. First, he appeals to our common humanity; everyone laughs at weddings, cries at funerals, and worries about their children. More important than any of our external differences, even though these are powerful and important, is our shared humanity. Second, he makes the obvious point that all people enjoy plural identities. To understand a person one must consider factors of civilization, religion, nationality, class, community, culture, gender, profession, language, politics, morals, family of origin, skin color, and a multitude of other markers. Plus, these diverse differences within a single individual depend on one's social context, whether the trait is durable over time, relevant, a factor of constraint or free choice, and so on. Finally, Sen urges us to transcend the illusion of destiny and identity violence by what he calls "reasoned choice." Instead of living as if some irrational fate destines people to confrontation with others who are different, a person needs to make a rational choice about what relative importance to attach to any single trait. Although Sen never explains why rational people succumb to the irrational violence of identity instead of choosing enlightened self-interest, economic incentives, and geo-political peace, this readable book by one of our most brilliant thinkers conveys an important reminder: "We can do better."
Book Description
First published in 1985, W. Allyn Rickett`s authoritative translation of the first 33 essays of Guanzi (or Kuan tzu) performs an inestimable service to the field of China studies. The product of nearly 40 years of careful, committed scholarship, it includes generous annotations and is the standard English edition of this work. The Guanzi, named for the famous minister of state Guan Zhong (d. 645 B.C.), was put together in its present form circa 26 B.C. by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang. The surviving text consists of some 70 essays by anonymous writers dating from the fifth century B.C. to about the time of Liu Xiang himself in the first century B.C. Most noted amongst these essays is material concerning early Chinese economic and political theory, especially the concept of qing zhong, perhaps the world's earliest statement of the quantitative theory of money. The text also includes information on such topics as early Chinese social structure and practices, military organization and theory, early historical romance literature, and early Chinese thought, including Taoism, naturalistic theory, and the amalgam of Taoist and Legalist thought known as Huang-Loa.
Customer Reviews:
an academic work.......2006-07-09
It's not a book for everybody. It's an academic translation. The editor doesn't make any effort to make the book interesting. It's a partial translation. The best parts of the work haven't been translated. I would have liked much more notes and explications. Chinese classics deserve a better handling and treatment.
Customer Reviews:
a classic.......2007-10-22
in deed indeed, an outstanding classic -- and not only for insiders. the title does tell the tale: one need only have an interest in the topic.
Quine's Two Dogmas: Nominalism and Wholism.......2007-04-02
This small book of 184 pages including an index is a collection of previously published papers. The chapters "On What There Is", "Reification of Universals", "Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis", "Reification of Universals", "Theory of Reference" and "Two Dogmas" expound on two central theses of Quine's philosophy of language. The first thesis is his nominalism, and the second is his wholism (or "holism").
"On What There Is", "Reification of Universals", "Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis", "Reification of Universals", and "Theory of Reference" are several papers that set forth Quine's nominalist philosophy of language, which is due to his fidelity to the predicate calculus created by Whitehead and Russell. Quine had written his Ph.D. dissertation titled A System of Logic under Whitehead, who in his "Foreword" wrote that logic shapes metaphysical thought. Whitehead and Russell had a nominalist agenda, and Quine bought into it.
This shaping with the Russellian symbolic logic is accomplished by combining existence claims with quantification, such that the only relation the symbols can have to the real world is by reference. Elsewhere in his "On Universals" as well as in "Reification of universals" in this book Quine thus argues that in the Russellian logic realism must be expressed by quantifying over predicates so they reference universals (i.e. ideas or meanings) as "entities". And he co-authored with Goodman "Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism", a nominalist manifesto, in which all philosophers are classified as either "platonists" or nominalists depending on whether or not predicates are quantified. Nonnominalists are chagrined at the "platonist" caricature. Furthermore nominalism typically gives philosophers the willies, and Willie Van Quine's appeal to the contrived Russellian logic used as an Orwellian newspeak has caused few to reconsider.
Quine's first statement of his wholistic thesis is set forth in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951), which has been much more influential than his nominalism; in fact it is this article that motivates many readers to buy this book. The enabling feature of Quine's wholism is his thesis that language is so empirically "underdetermined" that there is much latitude for choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. The thesis of the empirical underdetermination of language can be traced to Duhem's view of physical theory, which Quine cites in this article. Duhem said that there could be many theories, all equally empirically adequate, that explain the same phenomenon. But Quine furthermore extends Duhem's thesis to include not just theory but all of language including observation language.
Quine's most elaborate statement of his wholistic thesis is set forth in his first full-length book, Word and Object (Studies in Communication) (1960), where he expresses it in the literal vocabulary of behavioristic psychology instead of the metaphorical statement given in "Two Dogmas". His wholistic view went through some retrogression, when he came to think that his earlier and more radical pragmatism implies an unwanted cultural relativistic view of truth. Consequently in the 1970's he attempted to restrict the extent of his semantical wholism, so that the semantics of theory is not viewed as contributing to the semantics of observation language. This is a residual positivism that does not inhibit later pragmatists.
"Two Dogmas" is a seminal document that has guided the way to the contemporary pragmatism, which prevails in academic philosophy today. For more on Quine Google my History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science at my philsci web site for the book with free downloads by chapter.
Thomas J. Hickey
A Nice Period Piece.......2006-09-20
`From a Logical Point of View' originally published in 1953 in a series of essays by W.V.O. Quine. My comments pertain to the 2003 re-release by Harvard University Press which includes the prefaces to both the 1953 and 1980 editions.
The two best known essays from this text, "On What There Is' and `Two Dogmas on Empiricism' have been reprinted in many anthologies over the years. Although Two Dogmas may strike contemporary readers as trivial, coming at the end of the verificationist era, it did have some historic significance and is worth a look for that reason alone. I also enjoyed some of the other essays, e.g. "Reference and Modality" and "Meaning and Existential Inference". Potential buyers may wish to access the on-line table of contents prior to purchasing.
I enjoyed the book - it is a relatively accessible look back at mid twentieth century analytic thought. That said, it is largely a period piece and probably only of interest to dedicated followers of modern analytic philosophy.
Worth the cost for the first two essays alone........2002-12-30
This collection is worth the price simply for "On What There Is" and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" alone. "The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics" is a gem that (along with the last six essays) is too often overlooked, simply because it occurs after the above two (notorious) essays. If you do not own this book, then you cannot be someone who works in the contemporary, post-positivist philosophy of language.
Metaphysics is dead! - long live the conceptual scheme!.......2000-11-30
With this book, Quine bursts onto the scene of analytical philosophy with claims the boldness and insight of which dealt a deadly strike to the orthodoxy of logical positivism. Being published for the first time in 1953, From a Logical Point of View followed hot on the heels of Wittgenstein's Philosophische Untersuchungen and although it's approach is quite different from that of Wittgestein's work, it has received less attention than P.U. Quine's arguments are transparent and yet very substancial in their claims. Better than anyone before or after him Quine realised that the rejection of traditional metaphysics has much graver consequences than it was imagined by the logical positivists. Quine tries to reconcile empiricism with metaphysics-criticism through a pragmatic view of the theory of reality. The result; - the conceptual scheme, is a fasinating and extremely controversial idea, but it has changed the face of metaphysics and epistemology forever. Long since philosophical classics, the essays "On What There Is" and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" are still the best and most readable expositions of the views, which saw Quine elavate theoretical philosophy to a level of thinking, of which it still benefits tremendously.
Book Description
Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays. In this seminal investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons; these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations. Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson's views have developed.
Customer Reviews:
Anomalous monism makes no sense.......2007-05-18
In fact, very little of what Davidson says makes much sense. Maybe it's just me, but I read this book, and "Essays on Truth and Interpretation" or whatever it's called, and don't have much idea what they were even about. What I will say is this: the prose is outstanding. Maybe the best of any philosopher. Just exceptional prose. No "Elements of Style" lessons needed here. Davidson can write. But can he think? This I just don't know. My guess is, yes...he can. As a critic of philosophy, I think he would be very good. That is, I think he could make apt comments on the philosophy of others. Find gaps in arguments, stuff like that. The observation that quotations are in fact structured, contra Quine, else languages would be unlearnable (in the other book, not this one)--that sort of thing. He does this, actually, fairly regularly. Left to himself, however, I'm less hopeful. Maybe this is a question of creativity, or judgment. It's these qualities I find lacking in Davidson's otherwise tremendous writing.
I liken Davidson to a chessplayer who, as a kibitzer, can regularly spot combinations over the shoulders of other players who miss them, but who, as a player, can't get himself into the sorts of positions where he can make those same combinations.
Average rating - some papers 4-5 stars; some less.......2001-07-06
This is the standard collection of Davidson's early writings on events, action, and some of his work on the philosophy of mind and psychology. Some of the papers are very good ("The Logical Form of Action Sentences" is rightly regarded as a classic) whereas some other papers (e.g. "Mental Events") are obscure and confused. The latter suffers from (apparently) a lack of contact with how psychology (and in particular, cognitive neuroscience) is practiced. I nevertheless recommend the volume as a good collection of papers by one of the 20th century's more influential philosophers. I should note in passing that Davidson's current views on the individuation of events are not discussed in any of the papers. For that, see _Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosphy of Donald Davidson_ and his article "Reply to Quine on Events" therein.
Defeat of behaviorism and an embrace of free will.......2000-08-23
As a guy who wrote no books, Davidson's two published collections have done the work of securing his legacy. In this volume, among other things, we have the papers that argue for two of his most important theses in philosophy of mind. (1) The behaviorists argued that every state of mind was at best a disposition to some behavior, as in Gilbert Ryle's _The Concept of Mind_. Davidson, in "Actions, Reasons, Causes" and a couple of other papers in this volume, laid bare one of the essential arguments that put down this view for good. We often have many reasons or other mental states upon which we do not act. But such beliefs or desires are still reasons, and still mental states--just ones that behaviorism can't account for. (2) Davidson argues for the oft-maligned but influential thesis of anomalous monism, as a strategy to resolve the worries arising from "materialism of the mental". If the mind is mere matter, then physics will eventually figure out its laws! Then where will our free will be? Davidson argues, relying on some tendentious claims about what a law is, that there can never be laws of the mental *even though* there are laws of the physical stuff. The mental is anomalous and not lawlike.
Anyway, this volume is a very important piece of recent philosophy of mind. It also sets into motion an important tradition of thinking about moral psychology, action theory and ethics from the perspective of reasons for agential action.
Amazon.com
"Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not." So wrote Isaiah Berlin in "The Pursuit of the Ideal," the semiautobiographical essay that commences The Proper Study of Mankind, the intellectual equivalent of a "greatest hits" collection. Born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909, Berlin left the Soviet Union for England 12 years later. After being educated at St. Paul's and Oxford, he would go on to become one of the 20th century's most vigorous--and eclectic--political philosophers until his death in 1997.
The Proper Study of Mankind shows the full range of Berlin's work and the breadth of his interests. In "The Originality of Machiavelli," after summing up what others have thought of the author of The Prince, Berlin launches into his own thoughtful analysis, concluding that Machiavelli's most significant contribution to philosophy was "his de facto recognition that ends equally ultimate, equally sacred, may contradict each other, that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration, and that this happens not merely in exceptional circumstances, as a result of abnormality or accident or error ... but ... as part of the normal human situation." This concept of pluralism is the undercurrent that flows through much of Berlin's writing on the history of ideas, whether he addresses opposition to the French Enlightenment or considers Tolstoy's theory of history. Other treats to be found in this collection include the autobiographical "Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak" and what might be considered "intellectual profiles" of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. This book is highly recommended for any reader interested in modern philosophy; one can only hope that it will inspire some to delve into more of Berlin's work. --Ron Hogan
Book Description
Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin's famous essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox"; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defense of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder.
Customer Reviews:
Advice from Chapter 2.......2006-08-02
Going by the reviews that read below this one, I've decided to deliver a useful note for the prospective reader. If however you are well versed in the philosophers of the 18th-20th century, you might like to skip my review. I've yet to complete Berlin's anthology of essays as I've taken a time out to understand each of his referenced philosphers that he lists ever so extensively throughout just the 1st 2 chapters. To clearly comprehend Berlin's arguments, it is effective to consider the thoughts of most if not all the arguments he has referenced from a list of great thinkers from the 18th century. Since I have made the effort to do so, Berlin's thoughts have been raising out of the book with such greater clarity, permitting a far more entertaining read despite his solemn context.
Of the content itself, Berlin has written his essays in easy to read prose, which is very favourable. In his intelligible language he shares his philosophy, first, of a concept with which to analyse mankind that has till presently been a test to define. He then delves greater into his discourse of a proper study of mankind.
Fact of the matter is, it is truly difficult to provide a strong and consequential review of Berlin's work if one hasn't appropriately studied the works of other great thinkers of his time, and is well aquainted at least with the dogmas that have been influenced as a result. If you have a remote curiosity as to what this book might behold given it's very appropriate and self-explanatory title, enter the mind of Berlin with the motivation to learn, experience, and perhaps understand the effects, or perhaps the lack of it, in our world, that has been due to these, or the lack of, great thinkers.
I shouldn't pay any attention to the review below mine........2006-03-01
The review written below can only be the work of someone who hates the English language. Emphasising Isaiah Berlin's verbosity is like emphasising Michael Jordan's long legs or Pete Sampras' hairy arms. Berlin writes as well as any of the great Russian novelists.
The reviewer below also claims that Berlin is a cultural relativist. This is outrageously incorrect! Isaiah was a pluralist! Berlin believed that human values and ends were constant across cultures. He believed in objective, universally accessible, values. He would often support this with an idea of Wittgenstein's: if a lion could speak, we would not understand him. And yet we can understand other cultures and civilisations across the ages. Such understanding was Berlin's life-work. However, Berlin always warns, the values we hold, while constant, even universal, are irreconcilable, being conceptually incompatible: they are not in Pythagorean harmony. So we must make choices. And such choice must inevitably involve loss.
This is an anthology of Isaiah's essays. All are collected elsewhere, but this volume makes for a beautiful first collection - perfect for taking on holidays and reading on the beach.
Verbose and weak.......2005-06-27
If you want to get to the chief ideas of Berlin, buy THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX as a stand-alone book; do not waste your money on this highly verbose and repetitious book.
And what a terrible writing! Pompously and unnecessarily long sentences. At least with Hegel and Kant, you would arrive at a clear meaning after you finished carefully reading a sentence that filled a whole page. With Berlin, whose sentences are teeming with digressive parentheses, you look at a sentence and right off the page jump at you a number of ways a better writer could have condensed his prolix sentences into sentences at least three times shorter than his. In sum, it seems like Mr. Berlin never went beyond the first draft of his essays, omitting to revise, edit, and compress his writing. Yes, yes, you might say, "Well, this reviewer is probably too dumb to understand Berlin." Maybe you are right. But, I find it hard to see why it should be difficult to understand what a sentence about the biographical details of a Russian politician is trying to convey. I would have much easier time confessing to stupidity if the sentences in question were, instead, about some subtle philosophical points concerning the ontological foundations of our a priori ideas or the dialectical movement of the World Spirit, or the sources of our moral directives.
As to the ideas themselves, Berlin does have a few good ones, most notably in THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX. The fox knows many things; and the hedgehog only one big thing. It is a very profound distinction, and after reading this essay you can have a fun time classifying the people you know into these two general categories. However, this distinction is confined, I think, only to the realm of psychology and cannot be used to derogate, as Berlin does, all philosophical attempts to arrive a single system that explains the world. Yes, there is, de facto, a phenomenal variety in our world; but that in itself is not a proof of the errorneousness of all the unitary systems as a class, but rather a part of the problem these systems try, with varying success, to explain. Overall, Berlin's apotheosis of cultural relativity, which he derives from the "fallacies" of the "dogmatist" philosophies, does not rest on any sound and consistent set of arguments, but rather hopes to attain acceptance based solely on the current cultural fads. "Everything is relative!" proclaim the culturally sensitive commentators, caring very little as to how we should, then, explain the fact that there are certain values that are valid universally. Killing and stealing are frowned upon in Mozambique as well as in Montana, and even in Brooklyn. Fortunate for the philosophical supporters of cultural relativity, there are in the world much better partisans of this relativity than Berlin. Read Paul Feyerabend for a much better defense.
The best of the best .......2004-12-13
In this volume Henry Hardy Isaiah Berlin's faithful pupil and editor brings together some of the best essays from the previous volumes of Berlin essays he supervised the publication of. There are essays on 'The Pursuit of the Ideal ' on ' Philosophical Foundations' on 'Freedom and Determinism' on 'Political Liberty and Pluralism' on 'The History of Ideas ' on 'Russian Writers '
on' Romanticism and Rationalism' and on ' Twentieth Century Figures'
The volume contains Berlin's most well- known essays including the essay on 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' the one on ' Machiavelli' and the one ' On Historical Determinism'.
This is a selection of the best writing of a person who is without question one a most significant modern political thinker and historian of ideas.
Berlin's love of ideas, his vast knowledge, his tremendous verbal energy and skill, his humane understanding of character, his original consideration of fundamental historical periods and processes are all at work here.
This is a volume which should be in the library of every person who wishes to think about history and politics seriously.
Includes summaries of some long conversations.......2003-05-08
Isaiah Berlin wrote a lot of essays, as the size of this book, THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND, absolutely demonstrates. Near the middle of the book is an essay, "The Originality of Machiavelli," which shows how well Berlin could categorize intellectual activities into various kinds of significance.
"His distrust of unworldly attitudes, absolute principles divorced from empirical observation, is fanatically strong - almost romantic in its violence; the vision of the great prince playing upon human beings like an instrument intoxicates him. He assumes that different societies must always be at war with each other, since they have differing purposes. He sees history as an endless process of cut-throat competition, . . ." (p. 318).
The index is great, and even has an entry for "Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich . . . conversation with Stalin." Pasternak wanted to talk to Stalin, but the question which Stalin put to Pasternak, "whether he was present when a lampoon about himself, Stalin, was recited by Mandel'shtam" (p. 533) was not what Pasternak wanted to talk about. Pasternak wanted to talk to Stalin "about ultimate issues, about life and death." (p. 534). After Stalin put down the receiver, "Pasternak tried to ring back but, not surprisingly, failed to get through to the leader." (p. 534). Stalin had been quick to decide where that conversation was going, and cut it short by observing, "If I were Mandel'shtam's friend, I should have known better how to defend him." (p. 534). It is not obvious that Stalin would have appreciated a defense which asserted that the poem about Stalin was more true than anything else that Pasternak had ever seen, read, or heard, and any decent country would have comedians that would constantly broadcast such ideas on the radio 24/7 until the invention of TV would allow people to watch movies like "Forrest Gump" in the comfort of their own homes. Stalin has been rightly condemned for being hopelessly authoritarian when judging humor that was aimed at his sorry self, and Isaiah Berlin sees the pattern as one that Russia was particularly prone to suffer indefinitely. "Whatever the differences between the old and the new Russia, suspicion and persecution of writers and artists were common to both." (p. 537).
Berlin's account of his conversations with Anna Akhmatova strive to reflect what culture means for people who actively create work like Heine's comment, "I may not deserve to be remembered as a poet, but surely as a soldier in the battle for human freedom." (p. 537). We are now such a comic society on a global level that pop mock rap on the internet can pick on the soldier's mentality in a hilarious way, but it is good to be able to read Isaiah Berlin to account for how much such humor matters.
Books:
- The Marriage Game: A Novel
- The Origins of Totalitarianism
- The Parallax View (Short Circuits)
- The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Library of Living Philosophers, Vol 24)
- The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics (SPEP)
- The Prince (Bantam Classics)
- The Science of Success: How to Attract Prosperity and Create Harmonic Wealth Through Proven Principles
- The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life
- The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players
- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller; Revised and Updated Edition
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