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MIND, LANGUAGE, AND SOCIETY

PHILOSOPHY IN THE REAL WORLD

Why would any intelligent person want to read about philosophy? Searle (Philosophy/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley) presents a far too circuitous guide for those brave souls prepared to enter the philosophical labyrinth. Searle attempts a down-to-earth synthesis of his views “on mind, language, and society, . . . how they relate to each other, and how they fit into our overall conception of the universe.” In the tradition of what is nowadays quite unpopularly referred to as the “logical positivists,” Searle goes a step further: after analyzing reality into its parts, he wants to put it all back tgogether in a constructive mode. The main thesis, however, which is never fully articulated, involves thes rejection of Nietzsche’s belief that reality is constructed through our interpretation of it while affirming his notions of the will to power. The nonspecialist will surely miss the import of this complex argument with Continental philosophy and postmodern thought. Theory and system take precedence over clear and precise explanation. So, for example, one essential technical term, “Cartesian dualism” is found in the introduction but the reader must wade through 44 pages before finding out that dualism is a notion “of radically different kinds of entities in the universe, material objects and minds” and that this particular form of duailsm is named after RenÇ Descartes. Searle never really bothers to unpack the nature of logical arguments or show us how to ask the right philosophical questions. Bertrand Russell, in his The Problems of Philosophy, points out that “philosophy is to be studied not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves.” Searle spends too much time making claims “to have knowledge of the real world” and too little time on the rest of us who are still trying to find some meaning in the often confusing, painful reality of our world.

Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1999

ISBN: 0-465-04519-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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