A slim volume that offers as much clarity on the topic as one could expect from the often opaque world of philosophy.
A pragmatic primer on a contentious topic.
A distinguished philosophy professor in both his native England and the United States, Blackburn (Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, 2014, etc.) aims his analysis at general readers, but it requires close attention and willingness to follow the reasoning, which is steeped in centuries of philosophical inquiry. And inquiry is very much the point here, because even if we can never agree on absolute truth, or even the possibility of it, the author maintains that having a process of inquiry by which we can get closer to it, and agree on its utility and social value, is not only possible, but crucial. “Living outside the reality-based community is not actually an option,” writes the author, while acknowledging that the Trump era has some thinkers postulating that we have entered a brave new world of post-truth and alternate facts. He continues, “the basic reason why the concept of truth will never die is that to believe anything at all is itself to take a stand on its truth.” We acknowledge the truth of a speeding train as it hurtles toward our car at the crossing and of the hot stove that might burn us if we touch it. Beyond such basics, are there truths upon which we can agree? Here we turn to process and to consensus and how general agreement on general principles can promote welfare. “Sometimes we have to settle for mere opinion or guesswork, but the god of truth is better served by attendant deities, such as reason, justification and objectivity,” writes Blackburn. “Once we have it, truth radiates benefits such as knowledge and, perhaps most notably, success in coping with the world.” In the second half of the book, the author shows how arts criticism, ethics, and religion might even approach their own kinds of “truth.”
A slim volume that offers as much clarity on the topic as one could expect from the often opaque world of philosophy.Pub Date: July 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-19-086721-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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
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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