Pragmatism Books

The Art of Travel

Alain De Botton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The art of looking at things ... 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

It's always a nice thing when you read something spot on that's either close to what you believe or something you have experienced. De Botton is quite good at that, as in being able to phrase insights and observations you never realized were there bur are. I expected this one to be more about the actual travelling. To me the book should have been titled 'The Art of Looking At Things That Seem Unfamiliar, Bleak Or Uncommon At First Sight But Do Possess Certain Qualities If You Are Willing To Take Your Time To Look' but I guess that is a bit to long. Then again, it doesn't really matter for De Botton manages to make this one a breeze through read anyway, and while at it, actually gives you the idea you read something that mattered.

Editorial Review:

Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.

Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

Louis Menand

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Total reviews: 77 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war times. Together, "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world."

Despite this potentially forbidding theme, The Metaphysical Club is not a dry tome for academics. Instead, it is a quadruple biography, a wonderfully told story of ideas that advances by turning these thinkers into characters and bringing them to life. Menand links them through the Metaphysical Club, a conversational club formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. It lasted but a few months, and references to it appear only in Peirce's writings (its real significance seems rather limited), though Holmes and James were both members. (Dewey was much younger than these three, and more an heir than a contemporary.) It is difficult to describe in a sentence or two what they accomplished, though Menand takes a stab at it: "They helped put an end to the idea that the universe is an idea, that beyond the mundane business of making our way as best we can in a world shot through with contingency, there exists some order, invisible to us, whose logic we transgress at our peril." Academic freedom and cultural pluralism are just two of their legacies, and they are linchpins of democracy in a nonideological age, says Menand.

A book like this is necessarily idiosyncratic, yet at the same time this one is sweeping. It presents an accessible survey of intellectual life from roughly the end of the Civil War to the start of the cold war. Dozens of figures receive fascinating thumbnail sketches, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin to Jane Addams and Eugene Debs. The result is a grand portrait of an age that will appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the history of philosophy and ideas. --John Miller

Status Anxiety

Alain De Botton

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Important Satire 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Status Anxiety as coined by Alain de Botton, is probably one of the most important aspects of modern western life, as it is propably one of the greatest causes for unhappiness in us modern supermarket folk.

His book dives deep into this issue, and shows how the lack of Status Anxiety can bring one much more happiness.

Editorial Review:

Anyone who’s ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor’s Lexus had better read Alain de Botton’s irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents turns his attention to the insatiable quest for status, a quest that has less to do with material comfort than with love. To demonstrate his thesis, de Botton ranges through Western history and thought from St. Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anthony Robbins.

Whether it’s assessing the class-consciousness of Christianity or the convulsions of consumer capitalism, dueling or home-furnishing, Status Anxiety is infallibly entertaining. And when it examines the virtues of informed misanthropy, art appreciation, or walking a lobster on a leash, it is not only wise but helpful.

Philosophy and Social Hope

Richard Rorty

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Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Today's word is "panrelationalism" 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, though excellent, is dense, and assumes a lot of knowledge of Western philosophical traditions. This book, by contrast, is pretty straightforward, and has excellent prose. Rorty argues once again for social constructionism, which, contrary to what rabid critics say about it, is neither nihilistic nor relativistic. Rorty is persuasive and straightforward, and does an excellent job of suggesting ties between the philosophy which he advocates and the politics of "social hope" which he stands for.

By dividing this apologia for social constructionism into several short chapters (most of them originally published as stand-alone essays), Rorty provides responses to many objections which have been made to his previous work. Some of these essays are pretty useless for most readers (e.g., an essay on Derrida's Specters of Marx), but most are models of simple and well-formed expository writing.

Editorial Review:

Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative figures in recent philosophical, literary and cultural debate. This collection brings together those of his writings aimed at a wider audience, many published in book form for the first time. In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political hopes; he also offers some challenging insights into contemporary America, justice, education and love.

Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics)

Hannah Arendt, Jerome Kohn

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

More vitamins than a semester full of the "usual texts" 5 out of 5 stars.
34 of 34 people found this review helpful.

Notice inside the parenthesis next to the title it says (20th century classics). That's because this work belongs to that rank. I first read this book back when I was in grad school, and have used it as a reference ever since. If a 'classic' -- if we may dare use such a term still -- is something akin to a great poem as Ezra Pound defined it, "News that stays new", then this work is a classic. Arendt must have been a great teacher as well as a thinker. These essays read like lectures: Lectures given by a caring professor who actually gives a damn about getting through to her audience. Yes, some Greek and Latin here and there, but with Arendt as your guide you cannot get lost if you pay attention. The subtitle of the book is Eight Exercises in Political Thought, and Arendt, in her grand style, deals with the big topics -- Freedom, Authority, Power, Tradition, etc -- that ground everything else in civic life. The sheer pleasure to be had in encountering the density of her scholarship is found not only in her crystal clear prose, but also in her mastery of the foundational concepts and experience, Roman and Greek, that shape, willy nilly, the warpature within the space of our civic and political discourse even today. However, in her presentation of the trajectory of tradition, she also shows exactly where and how the displacement of tradition occurred. In the opening lines of her essay 'What is Authority?', she asks whether we ought not instead be asking 'What WAS Authority?', making clear from the get go that the notion of Authority has undergone an irreversible transformation since the Roman conception. And then she goes on to explain how that change occurred and in what way, with what chain of consequences. This book is noteworthy not only for its content and inimitable delivery, but also as a model of intellectual "exercise". The calmness, the steady architectural build-up of the argument, attention to philological detail when it's called for, all make up Arendt's generous style of writing and thinking. But that generosity is especially evident in this collection of essays. This is one of those rare books that, if read well, will actually make you more thoughtful. And smarter. Besides, you get to pick up some Greek and Latin for free.

Editorial Review:

Arendt describes the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill once more the vital essence of these concepts.

Pragmatism: A Reader

Louis Menand

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Pragmatism has been called America's only major contribution to philosophy. But since its birth was announced a century ago in 1898 by William James, pragmatism has played a vital role in almost every area of American intellectual and cultural life, inspiring judges, educators, politicians, poets, and social prophets.

Now the major texts of American pragmatism, from William James and John Dewey to Richard Rorty and Cornel West, have been brought together and reprinted unabridged. From the first generation of pragmatists, including the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the founder of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce, to the leading figures in the contemporary pragmatist revival, including the philosopher Hilary Putnam, the jurist Richard Posner, and the literary critic Richard Poirier, all the contributors to this volume are remarkable for the wit and vigor of their prose and the mind-clearing force of their ideas. Edited and with an Introduction by Louis Menand, Pragmatism: A Reader will provide both the general reader and the student of American culture with excitement and pleasure.

The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Wisconsin Project on American Writers)

Cornel West

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Disappointing 2 out of 5 stars.
23 of 42 people found this review helpful.

AS a reader intimately interested in pragmatism I came to this book in anticipated expectancy. Unfortunately Cornel West has managed to write something I could scarcely credit: a book which makes pragmatism and pragmatists seem turgid and boring. I think this is primarily because West's own interests seem always to be overpowering his descriptions of the pragmatists he is writing about. West wants to write a manifesto but he has dressed it up as a genealogy. Unfortunately for this reader the clothes don't fit properly and what is presented seems vaguely ridiculous. I don't mean to be rude. Apparently in the States West is something of an intellectual celebrity who writes on matters of race and religion. In my own locality West is unknown and his agenda seems just as foreign. His idea of pragmatism as "cultural criticism" is the one bright spark in this book that I will take away from it. However, as his interests and mine are doomed to be forever different the lasting impression this book leaves is one of a writer over-intellectualising what is meant to be a philosophy of plain common-sense. Sorry Cornel, we just didn't hit it off.

Editorial Review:

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture.

The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, 1893-1913

Charles S. Peirce

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Editorial Review:

This convenient two-volume reader's edition makes accessible to students and scholars the most important philosophical papers of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce. Volume 2 presents twenty-nine pivotal texts, beginning with "Immortality in the Light of Synechism", in which Peirce proposes synechism, the tendency to regard everything as continuous, as a key advance over the three popular 'isms' materialism, idealism, and dualism, and ending with Peirce's late and unfinished investigations of the relative merits of different kinds of reasoning.Included are selections from Peirce's Harvard lectures on pragmatism, Lowell lectures on logic, and 'Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic,' all of 1903. During his later years Peirce worked unremittingly to integrate new insights and discoveries into his general system of philosophy, and to make his major doctrines fully coherent within that system. This volume gives the first comprehensive presentation of Peirce's mature philosophy and is required reading for students who want to appreciate the breadth of learning and wisdom of America's greatest pragmatist.

The Essential Dewey, Volume 1: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy

Thomas M. Alexander, John Dewey

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Editorial Review:

In addition to being one of the greatest technical philosophers of the twentieth century, John Dewey (1859-1952) was an educational innovator, a Progressive Era reformer, and one of America's last great public intellectuals. Dewey's insights into the problems of public education, immigration, the prospects for democratic government, and the relation of religious faith to science are as fresh today as when they were first published. His penetrating treatments of the nature and function of philosophy, the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of life, and the role of inquiry in human experience are of increasing relevance at the turn of the 21st century.Based on the award-winning 37-volume critical edition of Dewey's work, "The Essential Dewey" presents for the first time a collection of Dewey's writings that is both manageable and comprehensive. The volume includes essays and book chapters that exhibit Dewey's intellectual development over time; the selection represents his mature thinking on every major issue to which he turned his attention. Eleven part divisions cover: Dewey in Context; Reconstructing Philosophy; Evolutionary Naturalism; Pragmatic Metaphysics; Habit, Conduct, and Language; Meaning, Truth, and Inquiry; Valuation and Ethics; The Aims of Education; The Individual, the Community, and Democracy; Pragmatism and Culture: Science and Technology, Art and Religion; and, Interpretations and Critiques. Taken as a whole, this collection provides unique access to Dewey's understanding of the problems and prospects of human existence and of the philosophical enterprise.

Achieving Our Country : Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Richard Rorty

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Editorial Review:

There are many shameful incidents in America's past: the institution of slavery, genocidal assaults on the indigenous peoples of this continent, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and so on. What should our response to such acts be? Should we regard the nation as irredeemably tainted by sin and spend our time cataloging its evils, or should we acknowledge its shortcomings and make a conscious effort to turn it into a better nation?

Philosopher Richard Rorty believes that there is hope for America, but that today's Left is not meeting the challenge. He contrasts the cultural, academic Left's focus on our heritage of shame (which, he admits, has to the extent that it makes hatred intolerable had the positive effect of making America a more civil society) with the politically engaged reformist Left of the early part of this century. "The distinction between the old strategy and the new is important," he writes. "The choice between them makes the difference between what Todd Gitlin calls common dreams and what Arthur Schlesinger calls disuniting Americans. To take pride in being black or gay is an entirely reasonable response to the sadistic humiliation to which one has been subjected. But insofar as this pride prevents someone from also taking pride in being an American citizen, from thinking of his or her country as capable of reform, or from being able to join with straights or whites in reformist initiatives, it is a political disaster."

Not everyone, to be sure, is going to agree with Rorty's ideas. But his approach to civic life, which is pragmatic in the tradition of John Dewey and visionary in the tradition of Walt Whitman, is bound to provoke increased discussion of what it is to be a citizen, and his call for a renewed awareness of the history of American reformist activism can only be applauded.