Modern Books - Page 5

Ideas Have Consequences

Richard M. Weaver

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A mix up on difinitions 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Weaver's book, one of the foundations of the Conservative movement in the US, could have had a better title. After reading it, I thought a better title might be
Ideas have Implications, Actions have Consequences.

As to a foundation of Convservatism, it is easy to see, after reading this book, that Conservatism is rather shalow. AS followers of Edmund Bourke, they take the English, royalty and nobility position versus the French, Voltaire position of turning the government over to citizens.

Consequences are scary... 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This book was interesting, it explained well how we got where we are philosophically. It was crammed with forethought. Good read, it was dry, but it's philosophy, what do you expect?

Editorial Review:

In what has become a classic work, Richard M. Weaver unsparingly diagnoses the ills of our age and offers a realistic remedy. He asserts that the world is intelligible, and that man is free. The catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of unintelligent choice. A cure, he submits, is possible. It lies in the right use of man's reason, in the renewed acceptance of an absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences.

Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind And Its Challenge To Western Thought

George Lakoff

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What are human beings like? How is knowledge possible? What is truth? Where do moral values come from? Questions like these have stood at the center of Western philosophy for centuries. In addressing them, philosophers have made certain fundamental assumptions—that we can know our own minds by introspection, that most of our thinking about the world is literal, and that reason is disembodied and universal—that are now called into question by well-established results of cognitive science. It has been shown empirically that:Most thought is unconscious. We have no direct conscious access to the mechanisms of thought and language. Our ideas go by too quickly and at too deep a level for us to observe them in any simple way.Abstract concepts are mostly metaphorical. Much of the subject matter of philosopy, such as the nature of time, morality, causation, the mind, and the self, relies heavily on basic metaphors derived from bodily experience. What is literal in our reasoning about such concepts is minimal and conceptually impoverished. All the richness comes from metaphor. For instance, we have two mutually incompatible metaphors for time, both of which represent it as movement through space: in one it is a flow past us and in the other a spatial dimension we move along.Mind is embodied. Thought requires a body—not in the trivial sense that you need a physical brain to think with, but in the profound sense that the very structure of our thoughts comes from the nature of the body. Nearly all of our unconscious metaphors are based on common bodily experiences.Most of the central themes of the Western philosophical tradition are called into question by these findings. The Cartesian person, with a mind wholly separate from the body, does not exist. The Kantian person, capable of moral action according to the dictates of a universal reason, does not exist. The phenomenological person, capable of knowing his or her mind entirely through introspection alone, does not exist. The utilitarian person, the Chomskian person, the poststructuralist person, the computational person, and the person defined by analytic philosopy all do not exist.Then what does?Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosopy responsible to the science of mind offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self: then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytic philosopy. They reveal the metaphorical structure underlying each mode of thought and show how the metaphysics of each theory flows from its metaphors. Finally, they take on two major issues of twentieth-century philosopy: how we conceive rationality, and how we conceive language.Philosopy in the Flesh reveals a radically new understanding of what it means to be human and calls for a thorough rethinking of the Western philosophical tradition. This is philosopy as it has never been seen before.

The Human Condition (2nd Edition)

Hannah Arendt

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then—diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions—continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book's argument and examines its present relevance. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the leading social theorists in the United States. Her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy and Love and Saint Augustine are also published by the University of Chicago Press.

The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure

Michel Foucault

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good Use of Leisure 5 out of 5 stars.
39 of 43 people found this review helpful.

Although it is not as theoretically courageous, The Use of Pleasure is tenfold more interesting and approachable than the first volume in this trilogy on the history of sexuality.

Foucault delves deep into the recesses of our occidental world by attempting to answer the question, "Why is it that sexuality has become morally problematic?" Why and when did we attribute a negativity to certain sexualities? And what does this imply about sexuality itself?

Foucault works with irresistible sources (e.g. Plato's Republic; Hippocrates' Ancient Medicine) in an effort to reconstruct the Hellenic approach to sexuality. The result: a clear and fascinating delineation of the similarities and differences between modern sexual consciousness and "pagan license".

Editorial Review:

In this sequel to The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, the brilliantly original French thinker who died in 1984 gives an analysis of how the ancient Greeks perceived sexuality.

Throughout The Uses of Pleasure Foucault analyzes an irresistible array of ancient Greek texts on eroticism as he tries to answer basic questions: How in the West did sexual experience become a moral issue? And why were other appetites of the body, such as hunger, and collective concerns, such as civic duty, not subjected to the numberless rules and regulations and judgments that have defined, if not confined, sexual behavior?

The Foucault Reader

Michel Foucault

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world, someone whose work has affected the teaching of half a dozen disciplines ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. But of his many books, not one offers a satisfactory introduction to the entire complex body of his work. The Foucault Reader was commissioned precisely to serve that purpose.

The Reader contains selections from each area of Foucault's work as well as a wealth of previously unpublished writings, including important material written especially for this volume, the preface to the long-awaited second volume of The History of Sexuality, and interviews with Foucault himself, in the course of which he discussed his philosophy at first hand and with unprecedented candor.

This philosophy comprises an astonishing intellectual enterprise: a minute and ongoing investigation of the nature of power in society. Foucault's analyses of this power as it manifests itself in society, schools, hospitals, factories, homes, families, and other forms of organized society are brought together in The Foucault Reader to create an overview of this theme and of the broad social and political vision that underlies it.

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

David Bohm

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Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The "real" way to think about wholeness 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The fragmented muddle that Quantum Physics has made of "the way we used to view the world," is at last confronted "head on" in this densely packed but short monogram. It is not an easy ride, but this, one of Einstein's last and most famous students, takes it on with the zeal and the relish of a young boy. Here, Dr. Bohm attempts to answer some of the most perplexing philosophical questions to face us since Zeno's paradox. The most important of which are: What is the nature and relationship of consciousness to the underlying reality of which it is a part? And also: What is the underlying commonality between the "relativistic order" and the "quantum physical Order?"

However, before he can address these, the first of several questions he attempts to answer, he is required to invent his own conceptual machinery in order to "work around" our own deeply embedded fragmented thinking. In the process of doing so, he comes up with a new way of understanding what a "universal order" is; a new way of using our language (what he terms Rheomode); a host of new theoretical and conceptual "constructs," the most important of which being his notion of the "enfolding" and "unfolding" of a holomovement, also known as the "Implicate Order." With these radically innovative conceptual inventions he leads us on a mathematical ride to new vistas for dispensing with our old fragmented Cartesian worldview and coming to grips with a new unified conceptual worldview and a new conceptual order.

Nailing down this new conceptual machinery turns out to be a daunting task, and each of his new concepts could fill a monogram onto itself, but in stride, Bohm takes them all on in this short book with poise and a great deal of clarity. His writing necessarily is as precise as his thinking, but always lively and never obsessive or forced. However, that this is true makes it only slightly less difficult for the reader to grasp the ideas in this manuscript. This book is neither for the faint of heart, nor for the causal non-scientific reader.

Even though Bohm provides an overview of the main themes needed to understand the content of this book, one still needs at least a rudimentary "and an independent" understanding of the basic problems and experiments of both Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, and should at least be able to follow the main content and themes of the rather abstract mathematics that is introduced to support his ideas from chapter four on. Also, an additional word of warning is in order: this is not a book that can be "scanned" or "speed read." Many of the concepts are difficult and build on each other progressively. Missing the real intent and understanding of an earlier concept, as is true elsewhere, is particularly fatal to a full understanding of the later content of this book. That said, the rewards are great, the least of which is not that one gets to sit at the table of one of the great minds of ours, or any time.

What the Book is about:

In our current worldview, the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time, makes up the fundamental "axes" as well as "axioms" of "Cartesian reality" as we have come to understand it. This fragmented universe of four dimensions, that has so fatally separated mind from body, has served us well and is the best we have been able to come up with so far. However, as is the case with the four forces of nature, there has been the nagging and lingering suspicion among scientists that at a deeper level of understanding, these dimensions could very well just be part of a more integrated, continuous and singular reality, that is to say part of a larger existential and non reductive whole. Relativistic and quantum physics have traditionally approached this problem from different ends of the conceptual microscope, using "orders" peculiar to their respective conceptual modalities. However, against this philosophical backdrop, it is as clear as day to Professor Bohm that there is only one common reality and that a common more "universal order" must lie at the substrate and at the intersection of these two competing views of reality. As a result, he posits an idea he calls the "implicate order" which in his view, is this broader, continuous unified conception of reality all scientists have been in search of.

The problem is how to get from "here" to "there" -- from our present deceptively fragmented picture of reality (Bohm's "explicate Order), to a more unified vision of it (that is to his, "Implicate Order").

The missing conceptual link is that reality is not just a reductive Newtonian clockwork of many distinct and disparate parts, but is a continuous whole in a constant state of "connected motion," motion that also includes the movement of our consciousness!

The trick Bohm uses to nail down his idea however is to remind us that the movement that is taking place is only in the "relationships" and "processes" among the connected parts of the same universal whole, that is the constant "enfolding and "unfolding" of reality onto itself. We don't need the illusion of separate parts to understand the underlying reality, only movement: It is movement (like the vortex in an eddy of water that rises and then disappears back into the flow) and their relationships that give us this illusion of discrete parts and separate mechanical functioning.

It is this movement -- the "enfolding" and "unfolding" itself -- that IS "the reality," not the names we give to our own self-defined illusionary parts. This "flowing reality" away from and back into itself, constitutes a change in the conceptual paradigm of our reality in the same sense as that discussed by Thomas Khun in his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." In other words, since our fragmented reality must necessarily be incomplete -- if not incorrect altogether -- it thus must also give way to a proper and much broader and much needed conceptual refinement.

That is my understanding of this book.

One of the reviewers, Professor Stahl, has given the very helpful suggestion of reading 'Space, Time and Beyond' by Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben; and Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos' "The Non-Local Universe," as well as, "In Search of Reality" by Bernard d'Espagnat, which I did. The last two of these were very useful indeed; the first one less so. I would add to Professor Stahl's list two other important book: Both are Professor Bohm's own books in which he is interviewed about precisely these very ideas. The first is called "Unfolding Meaning: A Weekend of Dialogue with David Bohm (Ark paperback, London 1985). The second is called "Thought as a System," 1992, published by Routledge.

In this last reference, Bohm makes clear that it is our language and our slavish reliance on our faulty measuring devices that has gotten us into trouble and that has led our conceptualization astray and into deep water. However, there is much too much to say about this book without reviewing it separately, as I will soon do. Anyway, this book (Wholeness and the Implicate order) will either "turn you on" or "turn you off." It "turned me on." Fifty Stars.

Editorial Review:

This work develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence, including matter and consciousness, as an unbroken whole. The author presents a rational and scientific theory which explains cosmology and the nature of reality. The work is intended to be of relevance to those interested in physics, philosophy, psychology and the connection between conciousness and matter.

Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

Fredric Jameson

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 3 out of 5 stars.
78 of 95 people found this review helpful.

The term, Postmodernism refers to the cultural and ideological configuration that is taken to have replaced or be replacing Modernity. New movements in architecture and the arts as well as social theories indicate a change from modernity to postmodernity.
Frederic Jameson, an American Marxist social theorist and the author of the book, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, draws the attentions to the differences in culture between the modern and postmodern periods. In order to explain his arguments, Jameson is specially interested in the fields of architecture, art and other cultural forms. He places the heaviest emphasis on architecture. In his article, Jameson's basic argument is that postmodernism is a dominant cultural form and that is indicative of late capitalism.
Jameson's article begins with the comparison of Van Gogh's painting to Warhol's. Jameson contrasts Van Gogh's painting with Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes," He refers to the former as the symptom of a typical "modernist" work and the latter as a prime example of a "postmodernist" one. His main assertion here is that cultures and production has experienced important changes and these changes must be accounted by even more significant changes in history . He focuses on these changes on the individual level in postmodern society and his main concern was the cultural expressions and aesthetics that is associated with the different systems of production.
Jameson suggests that postmodernism is differed from other cultural forms by its emphasis on fragmentation. He specially emphasizes on the term, fragmentation. For Jameson, the fragmentation of the subject replaces the alienation of the subject which characterized modernism. Postmodernism always deals with surface, not substance. There is no center, rather everything tends to be decentralized in postmodernism. Postmodernist works are often characterized by a lack of depth. According to Jameson, individuals are no longer anomic and anxious, because there is nothing from which an individual could cut his or her ties. The liberation from the anxiety that characterized anomie may also mean a liberation from other kind of feeling as well. For him, this is not to say that the cultural products of the postmodernism are devoid of feelings, but rather such feelings are now free-floating and impersonal.
Jameson defines the late capitalist age as a distinct period, which focuses on commodification and the recycling of old images and commodities. Jameson provides an example of Warhol's work, (Diamonds Dust Shoes) as well as Warhol himself. Jameson refers to this cultural recycling as historicism (the random cannibalization of all styles of the past.) It is an increasing primacy of the 'neo'(new) and a world was transformed into sheer images of itself. the actual organic tie of history to past events is being lost.
All of these cultural forms in art and architecture are indicative of postmodernism, late capitalism, or what Jameson calls present-day multinational capitalism. Jameson claims that there has been a radical shift in our surrounding material world and the ways, in which it works. He refers to an architectural example, a postmodern building Symbolic of the multinational world space which people function in daily. Jameson suggests that the human subjects who occupy this new space have not kept pace with the evolution which produced it. There has been a mutation in the object, yet we do not possesses the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace. Therein lies the source of our fragmentation as individuals.
Jameson also suggests that this latest mutation in space, postmodern hyperspace, (he provides the Bonaventura hotel as an example) has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world. This is the symbol and analogue of our inability at present to map the great global multinational and decentered communicational network in which people find themselves caught as individual subjects. He continues, we now live in a world where our daily life, our experiences, our cultural languages are dominated by categories of space rather than by categories of time, which was dominant in past eras. For Jameson, late capitalism aspires to a total space and a vastness of scale.
Jameson's argument in this article is that postmodernism is a dominant cultural form, not simply a style, and Jameson considers this dominant cultural form (postmodernism) as a sign of late capitalism. In explaining postmodernism as a dominant cultural form, he is specially concerned with the field of architecture, art and other cultural forms. Yet, as far as I have seen in this article, Jameson seems to emphases much more on the field of art and architecture than on social and political aspects of postmodernism. For example, he does not explicitly give much attention or interest to social theories such as poststructuralism, which is highly associated with postmodernism. Secondly, although the term, "Late-Capitalism" implies multinational capitalism, media-capitalism, the modern world system and postindustrial society, in the article he only talks about multinational capitalism and he neither explicitly touches nor sufficiently explains the terms like; modern world system and postindustrial society.
I would also like to commend on Jameson's style of writing, in the article, he produces sentences that sometimes can run more than half a page, I think this makes the article a little bit harder to read. Nevertheless, Jameson's article is worth to read since it stands as one of the best written books on postmodernism, besides it also offers detailed analyses of postmodernism and late capitalist age.
In conclusion, by his article -The cultural logic of late capitalism"- Jameson tries to argue that all of the characteristics of contemporary art, architecture and cultural forms reflect the structure of late capitalism as well as contemporary society - (i.e. domination by multinational corporations, the decline of national sovereignty). Moreover he argues that postmodernity is a part of the cultural logic of late capitalism and this is what brings about cultural fragmentation. Although, in this article, social, political and other aspects of postmodernism have not been emphasized as much as art, architecture, and cultural aspects of postmodern age have been, this article clearly explains the connection and relation between postmodernism as dominant cultural form and late capitalist age.

Editorial Review:

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of “postmodernism.” Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low,” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.

For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (Signet)

Ayn Rand

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Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Not the best place to start 2 out of 5 stars.
22 of 29 people found this review helpful.

This was Rand's first work of nonfiction, and it is supposed to be an introduction to her philosophy of Objectivism. But it is certainly not the best place to start. The book consists of one rather lengthy essay, followed by excerpts from her four novels. As expected, more pages are devoted to excerpts from Atlas Shrugged than to any of the other novels - in fact, than to all of the others put together. Galt's seventy-plus page speech is included in its entirety.

Unfortunately, the excerpts aren't as interesting outside the context of the novels. Even worse, the title essay is probably the weakest Rand ever wrote. In it, Rand attempts to explain all of history in terms of the two types of men who have dominated it, Attila and the Witch Doctor. Attila represents those who have ruled men by force, whereas the Witch Doctor represents the irrational mystics who have controlled men's minds. The whole thing is just plain ridiculous.

If you want to know what Rand thought, you'd be better off starting with The Virtue of Selfishness, followed by Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.

Philosophy: Who Needs It

Ayn Rand

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Applying Objectivism 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

When discussing philosophy, I know of few better ways to get people worked up than by bringing up the name of Ayn Rand. Rand's personal history and her philosophy of Objectivism rarely fail to stir people's passions, whether in praise or denigration, an impressive feat for a philosopher. (How many people do you know who get worked up over Russell Kirk, for example?) That doesn't mean her philosophy is necessarily any better than that of lesser-known intellectuals, but when one considers the difficulty intellectuals face in getting the public to even discuss philosophy, Rand's success with Atlas Shrugged merits admiration for her ability to get her ideas into the public sphere, regardless of what one may think of her ideas.

Philosophy: Who Needs It is a collection of essays, speeches, and letters written by Rand in the 1960s and 1970s. Rand died before it could be completed, and so it is an anthology rather than a focused work. If the reader is looking for a book that will actually answer the title question, he might be well-advised to look elsewhere, as after the initial essay, Rand moves on to other topics. That initial essay (actually the commencement speech Rand gave to the West Point class of 1974) provides a very good overview of what philosophy is and why it is important to not only have one, but to consciously understand what it is.

The real value of the book, however, is in the later essays in which Rand comments on the state of society and her prescriptions for what should be done about it. As the United States has changed in many ways since the writing of those essays, reading them allows us to examine how well Rand's Objectivism did in assessing the problems of that time. In some areas, she appears quite prescient, while in others it appears that her assessments were not particularly accurate predictors of the future. Reading her views on events that are now part of the recent past are also interesting and entertaining because they remind the reader of many of the problems we did face at that time, and how certain patterns seem to repeat themselves in human history.

The essays are all relatively short, and Rand's prose is cutting and brief, laying out her views crisply and concisely. There are no John Galt-style speeches to be had in the book, a significant virtue as it allows the reader to focus on what Rand is saying rather than getting lost in the details. It is unlikely the book will convince many readers of the truth of Rand's philosophy in itself, but for those seeking more information about Objectivism will find the work a trove of information, as it shows precisely how Rand applied Objectivism to various situations.

If you're looking for simple entertainment, this book is definitely not for you. But if you're looking for examples of practical application of philosophy or just want to learn more about where Rand was coming from, Philosophy: Who Needs It is an excellent reference.

Editorial Review:

Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand’s answer: Everyone.

This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy but which one to have: rational, conscious, and therefore practical; or contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal. Written with all the clarity and eloquence that have placed Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy in the mainstream of American thought, these essays range over such basic issues as education, morality, censorship, and inflation to prove that philosophy is the fundamental force in all our lives.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume

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Editorial Review:

The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of truly practical and accessible guides to major philosophical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world up to modern times. Each book opens with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist which covers the philosopher's life, work, and influence. Endnotes, a full bibliography, guides to further reading, and an index are also included. The series aims to build a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, forming a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike.
Now one of the most widely read works in philosophy, David Hume's An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748) introduced his philosophy to a broad educated readership. In it he gives an elegant an accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views about the limited powers of human understanding, the attractions of skepticism, the compatibility of free will and determinism, and weaknesses in the foundations of religion. In this volume, an authoritative new version of the text is enhanced by detailed explanatory notes, a glossary of terms, a full list of references, and a section of supplementary readings.