Modern Books - Page 6

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Confirm Edition 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Many of the posted reviews refer to a different version of the text (i.e. Crisp vice Sher)

Sher's version is an inexpensive and accessible (good font size and binding) edition of this classic. It contains the 3 essays (unabridged) use to construct Utilitarianism as well as a speech given by Mill while serving as a British MP in 1868 on capital punishment. Readers should note that aside from a short introduction by George Sher, this edition does not contain any additional analysis. Readers looking for a more detailed discussion will need to look elsewhere. Judging from some of the other reviews it sounds as if Crisp's version may be worthwhile.

Utilitarian philosophy explained 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

Mill develops a theory of morality in Utilitarianism. He argues against the group of people who think that morality is intuitive. Intuitionists think that God put morality in us, thus, morality is a priori. Moral rules or principles were programmed in us, we can see these rules, they are binding, however they do acknowledge that on a case by case basis we still need to use them to reason out the ultimate answer for a particular case.

Mill also believes that there are a set of moral principles that we ought to be thinking about. Intuitionists today think that case by case we can reason out what is right or wrong. However, they would be suspicious that of believing there were general moral principles. Intuitionists say it is not up to us to investigate what is right or wrong. Mill would disagree. Mill doesn't like Intuitionists theory because they can't prove their view; and they can't explain why "lying is wrong" as an example. In addition, they do not provide a list of these innate morals we are suppose to have, and they do not have a hierarchy for them to resolve the conflict between two morals when they arise.

Background on essay, written in 1861 came out in 3 magazine articles, pretty scanty which sometimes drives one crazy trying to deduce what Mill is saying. A lot of interpretation is necessary.

Chapter 2: The second paragraph is official statement of the theory.

"The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

Happiness=pleasure and freedom from pain. This makes him a Hedonist philosophically.


Higher Pleasures Doctrine- Jeremy Bentham says how valuable pleasure was based on 2 dimensions that we evaluate our experience of pleasure by, intensity and duration. Bentham says this determines quantity in pleasure. Bentham said this determined how much a given experience adds to a person's happiness.

Mill adds a third value to evaluate pleasure by and that's its quality, how good it is. Many don't understand Mill's idea that pleasure has value and quality. Most people think that Mill is really talking about quantity, or they don't believe one can be a hedonist, that pleasure is the only thing that has value, and yet think that there is something more to judging how valuable an experience is than the intensity and the duration of the pleasure it contains. So, they say that one of two things must be going on here. Of course, some people are sure it is one thing, and some are sure it is another. Either what Mill is talking about when you get right down to it is quantity in pleasure and different experiences, or all the different things he says about quality can be somehow resolved into quantity. So that really what is going on is that when Mill talks about a pleasure being of a higher quality that just means that there is a lot more pleasure there that the quantity is much greater. Or, Mill is giving up on hedonism at this point and he is admitting that some things are valuable aside from pleasure. So, when he says an experience like reading a good book or something like that is more valuable than an experience of some kind of animalistic pleasure, that really what he is saying is this experience is more valuable for reasons that go beyond the amount of pleasure involved. In addition to how much pleasure is involved there is also that maybe the experience is more beautiful or more noble or something like that and this gives it additional value. So something other than the amount of pleasure involved gives it additional value. Mill can be a consistent hedonist and he can consistently say that pleasure is the only thing that can have value and yet it is still the case that some pleasures are just more valuable than other pleasures.

Editorial Review:

Library of Liberal Arts title.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

Gregory Bateson

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.

"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was the author of Naven and Mind and Nature.

The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

Armand M. Nicholi Jr.

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Editorial Review:

Throughout the ages, many of the world's greatest thinkers have wrestled with the concept of -- and belief in -- God. It may seem unlikely that any new arguments or insights could be raised, but the twentieth century managed to produce two brilliant men with two diametrically opposed views about the question of God: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. They never had an actual meeting, but in The Question of God, their arguments are placed side by side for the very first time.

For more than twenty-five years, Armand Nicholi has taught a course at Harvard that compares the philosophical arguments of both men. In The Question of God, Dr. Nicholi presents the writings and letters of Lewis and Freud, allowing them to "speak" for themselves on the subject of belief and disbelief. Both men considered the problem of pain and suffering, the nature of love and sex, and the ultimate meaning of life and death -- and each of them thought carefully about the alternatives to their positions.

The inspiration for the PBS series of the same name, The Question of God does not presuppose which man -- Freud the devout atheist or Lewis the atheist-turned-believer -- is correct in his views. Rather, readers are urged to join Nicholi and his students and decide for themselves which path to follow.

Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Immanuel Kant

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Cornerstone of Modern Ethical Thinking 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

'Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals' by Immanuel Kant is easily the most important work devoted exclusively to thinking about morality in the history of Philosophy, especially considering it's size.

The cornerstone of the work, and the end result of Kant's analysis is the categorical imperative which says that a moral law are only those for which you can state should be true of all people.

In one fell swoop, Kant marginalizes all thinking about relativism in morality and at the same time distinguishes moral from religious thinking.

If you pair this up with St. Paul's statements in his letter to the Romans (3:19-28) which states strongly that adherance to the law has virtually nothing to do with salvation, it should make things pretty clear to all concerned.

Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple. As important as Kant's conclusion is, it is necessary but not sufficient for a complete analysis of morality.

One excuse may be that this work is really Kant's version of 'Cliff Notes' to his moral argument. His full presentation comes in the 'Critique of Practical Reason', which, however, is not often read.

Note that contrary to another review of this edition, the translator and commentator is the noted Kant scholar of 70 years ago, H. J. Paton.

To people who are not used to reading philosophy, I will not hide the fact that Kant is tough going. He may not be quite as tough as Hegel, the Existentialists, or the ancient Greeks, but he is definitely harder to understand than any modern nonfiction book I can think of.

The biggest argument against the 'Groundwork' and the categorical imperative is usually the fact that it does not rule out trivial rules, such as 'you must always eat a starch at least once a day'. This rule is physically possible for anyone living anywhere in the world, yet it is certainly not a moral law. It is not even a very good dietary law, but that's neither here nor there. A second argument is that Kant's argument seems a bit circular, when he says that the only thing which unqualifiedly good is a good will.

For anyone who has been vexed by moral questions, an honest reading of this work will at the very least give you hope that with the right amount of thought, one can make sense of moral issues.

A truly great book.

Editorial Review:

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument.

"Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976 (Lectures at the College de France)

Michel Foucault

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Offering an unusually insightful perspective 5 out of 5 stars.
50 of 57 people found this review helpful.

Capably and collaboratively edited by Mauro Bertani and Allesandro Fontana, "Society Must Be Defended" is a collection of French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault's eleven lectures given at the College de France from 1975 to 1976, and which are ably translated into English for an American readership by David Macey. Offering an unusually insightful perspective and wisdom on a wide variety of educational topics ranging from the origin of feudalism, to the functions and domains of racism, to Hobbes' ideas on war and sovereignty, and a great deal more, "Society Must Be Defended" is a very thought-provoking and instructive collection from a uniquely informed and informative point of view. As Michel Foucault writes about this compilation of his views: "The role of history will, then, be to show that laws deceive, that kings wear masks, that power creates illusions, and that historians tell lies. This will not, then, be a history of continuity, but a history of deciphering, the detection of the secret, the outwitting of the ruse, and the reappropriation of a knowledge that has been distorted or buried. It will decipher a truth that has been sealed".

Editorial Review:

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers

From 1971 until 1984 at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within society that could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern.

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

Richard Dawkins

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Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says Dawkins--Newton's unweaving is the key too much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mystery. (The Keats who spoke of "unweaving the rainbow" was a very young man, Dawkins reminds us.) With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made his books worldwide bestsellers, Dawkins addresses the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, and combines them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. This is the book that Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and what it isn't), a tribute to science "not because it is useful (though it is), but but because it is uplifting, in the same way as the best poetry is uplifting."

ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS: A POLEMIC BY WAY OF CLARIFICATION AND SUPPLEMENT TO MY LAST BOOK "BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL" (WORLD'S CLASSICS)

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.

_On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo_ consists of translations by Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale of the works _On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic_ (_Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift_), first published in 1887, and _Ecce Homo_, written in 1888, by the tormented German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche. _On the Genealogy of Morals_ was Nietzsche's eighth book and consists of three essays which reveal his opposition to Christian morality. _Ecce Homo_ was an autobiographical work which consists of several chapters detailing Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietzsche's philosophical viewpoint may be described as that of aristocratic radicalism, in which he sets up an opposition between the morality of the masters and what he terms "slave morality". It is this "slave morality" motivated by a spirit of ressentiment that Nietzsche seeks to overcome by a return to the morality of the masters. Nietzsche is firmly opposed to the Judeo-Christian tradition, which he views as the culmination of slave morality. Indeed, according to Nietzsche the slaves sought to revolt against their masters by supplanting the morality of the masters with their own which glorifies the weak, meek, and sickly. Instead, Nietzsche advocates a revaluation of all values with a return to the morality of the masters, who are proud, strong, and heroic.

_On the Genealogy of Morals_ consists of a preface followed by three essays and an appendix which consists of aphorisms from his various writings. The preface notes the slave rebellion in morality, in which a morality of pity came to replace the morality of the masters. Nietzsche references the work of Schopenhauer, his great teacher, who he believes has made possible a new Buddhism for Europeans - nihilism. The first essay of this book is entitled ""Good and Evil", "Good and Bad"" and it details Nietzsche's opposition to Judeo-Christianity and Christian morality as well as Platonic philosophy. Nietzsche argues that the Jews, a slave people, began a great revolt in morality which resulted in the inversion of moral values in which what previously had been called "good" and "noble" came to be replaced by the lowly, weak, and sickly. Nietzsche argues that with Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish slave revolt was accomplished in which Europe became under the sway of a Jew. Nietzsche contrasts this with the "blond German beast", the primitive Aryan tribesman, and his morality of the conquerer. Nietzsche quotes extensively from the church fathers, including Tertullian, regarding the "kingdom of God" and offers in opposition to the sign on the entrance of Dante's hell, "I too was created by eternal love", the sign "I too was created by eternal hate", instead. Nietzsche offers the opposition "Rome against Judea, Judea against Rome". In addition, Nietzsche shows how the Jews have come to conquer Rome through the slave revolt in which today in Rome they bow before three Jews and a Jewess (Jesus, Peter, Paul, and Mary). Nietzsche claims that the Renaissance represented a return to the classical idea; however with the Reformation motivated largely by ressentiment and the French Revolution the slave revolt was made complete. The second essay in this book is entitled ""Guilt", "Bad Conscience" and the Like". This essay focuses on the meaning of guilt and ressentiment showing the cruelty of punishment and torture. Nietzsche shows himself to be a primitive psychologist in his understanding of "bad conscience" and "guilt" and his theories were an important precursor to modern day psychoanalysis. The third essay of this book is entitled "What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?". Here, Nietzsche focuses on Richard Wagner with whom he had a complicated relationship. Nietzsche also expresses his disgust with the German anti-Semites of the time (though only with a certain type of anti-Semite, the kind who still retained adherence to the Christian tradition). This essay ends with the following line: "man would rather will nothingness than not will", an expression of Nietzsche's nihilism. This book concludes with an appendix, "Seventy-Five Aphorisms in Five Volumes", containing various aphorisms from Nietzsche's writings.

_Ecce Homo_ was Nietzsche's last work and was not published during his lifetime. The book is subtitled "How One Becomes What One Is". _Ecce Homo_ contains a preface and three chapters, followed by discussions of several of Nietzsche's books, and then a final chapter. The chapters attempt to show Nietzsche's philosophical progression as he began his career as a philologist, the influence of Wagner on his early life, his subsequent break with Wagner, and his later writings. Nietzsche also includes commentary on his own writings, particularly his _Zarathustra_ and shows the opposition between the Dionysian and the Appolinian. Nietzsche entitles his chapters brazenly: "Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Write Such Good Books", followed by his discussion of his individual works, and then "Why I Am Destiny". It has been suggested that Nietzsche may have been experiencing the early symptoms of his mental decline at this point and his complete mental collapse was to occur soon thereafter (rumored to be the result of syphilis, though probably wrongly). Nietzsche claims that he is wise because of his aesthetic sensitivities. He claims that he is clever because he can choose the right nutrition, climate, residence, and recreation for himself. He claims to write such good books because they open up a series of new, delicate, and noble experiences. And, he claims to be destiny because his anti-moral truths serve as intellectual dynamite which can topple the sickness inherent in Western culture. Indeed, Nietzsche writes, "I am no man, I am dynamite." Nietzsche opposes Dionysus to "the Crucified", as his new god of life's exuberance to overcome the god of the heavenly otherworld. Nietzsche claims that he wants no believers and that he fears that he will be worshipped and pronounced holy in the future. He wants to assure that his publishers will prevent his book from doing "mischief". Nietzsche ends with the pronouncement that he is the great immoralist and that Dionysus has come to supercede "the Crucified".

This translation of two of Nietzsche's important works includes commentary by Walter Kaufman. Some of Kaufman's commentary is useful; however Kaufman was prone to his own understanding of Nietzsche which he interjected all too often. Nevertheless, these two books stand out as important works which must be understood by those who seek to develop an understanding of the rise of nihilism in the Twentieth Century.

Poetry, Language, Thought.

Martin, Heidegger

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The ontology of Art and Truth 3 out of 5 stars.
23 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Heidegger does not address the issue of poetry and truth from the vantage point of a traditional or academic art historian; nor does he employ conventional terms and classifications. Instead, he arrives at his subjects experimentally and tangentially and firmly grounds them on the approach of "ontological knowledge" which has made him famous. His highly idiosyncratic style, however, often playing with the cognate forms of the words of the original German, and which eludes translation, may make his arguments seem imprecise and willfully obscure. Though "Poetry, Language, Thought" is a collection of essays collected from Heidegger's miscellaneous later writings, it is no less formidable than "Being and Time", his masterpiece of ontological enquiry, published in 1927. The most beautiful formulation in the book is that truth is, by its very nature, poetic and this for Heidegger, does not imply a polarity between verse and prose, but actually includes prose as well. In "The Origin of the Work of Art", he defines the truth of the art work as being the setting-up of the art work in relation to the undisclosedness of Being, a conclusion which he argues up to at great length and with much skill and profundity. Like Wittgenstein and Derrida, Heidegger is not a philosopher in the traditional sense who aims to provide an all-embracing theory that would explain ultimate reality. He does not pretend to a First Philosophy which is based on some abstraction such as Reason, the Proletariat or the World Spirit. Rather, he is something of an exegete and experimentalist, probing the assumptions behind people's habits of speech and thought in a way of clarifying central misconceptions and errors. The volume also includes essays titled "What are Poets For?", "Building Dwelling Thinking" and a discourse on "The Thing", "thingness", or "thinghood". Heidegger's own poems, which are prefixed to the edition, may be flawed as art, but they serve, at least, to adumbrate the problems that occupy him in the following chapters.

Editorial Review:

Essential reading for students and anyone interested in the great philosophers. "[A] first-rate translation preceded by an excellent introduction . . . [a] very valuable collection."--Review of Metaphysics

The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Editorial Review:

Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God -- to which a large part of the book is devoted -- and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.

Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.

Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.

Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche.

Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity

Charles Taylor

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In this extensive inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor demonstrates just how rich and precious those resources are. The modern turn to subjectivity, with its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, has led--it seems to many--to mere subjectivism at the mildest and to sheer nihilism at the worst. Many critics believe that the modern order has no moral backbone and has proved corrosive to all that might foster human good. Taylor rejects this view. He argues that, properly understood, our modern notion of the self provides a framework that more than compensates for the abandonment of substantive notions of rationality.

The major insight of Sources of the Self is that modern subjectivity, in all its epistemological, aesthetic, and political ramifications, has its roots in ideas of human good. After first arguing that contemporary philosophers have ignored how self and good connect, the author defines the modern identity by describing its genesis. His effort to uncover and map our moral sources leads to novel interpretations of most of the figures and movements in the modern tradition. Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value which has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth. In telling the story of a revolution whose proponents have been Augustine, Montaigne, Luther, and a host of others, Taylor's goal is in part to make sure we do not lose sight of their goal and endanger all that has been achieved. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defense of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.