Crack open for a hard boiled think
Contemporaries called Spinoza ‘Satan incarnate’ and ‘the most impious atheist who ever lived upon face of the earth’. But he is now revered as one of the greatest philosophers since Plato, as the political theorist who first enunciated the general principles for a secular democratic society, and in many ways a modern saint. Baruch, later […]
Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein Read More »
‘The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad. . .’ So begins what is arguably Frank Raymond Leavis’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._R._Leavis and http://www.pro-europa.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=345:paul-dean-the-last-critic-the-importance-of-f-r-leavis-&catid=27:spirit&Itemid=61 and http://www.theguardian.com/books/1978/apr/18/classics.johnezard) most controversial book, The Great Tradition, an uncompromising critical and polemical survey of English fiction that was first published in 1948. He puts a powerful case for moral
The Great Tradition by F.R. Leavis Read More »
Why do Japanese businessmen wear Western style suits? Why are global financial markets run on Western European models? How have Western consumerist values come to dominate the world? How has English come to be the global language of science, technology, education, commerce, and just about everything else? British-born archaeologist, classicist and historian Ian Morris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Morris_(historian) and
Why The West Rules ~ For Now by Ian Morris Read More »
In this comprehensive book E.J. Michael Witzel (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Witzel) demonstrates the prehistoric origins of most of the mythologies of Eurasia and the Americas (‘Laurasia’). By comparing these myths with others indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, Melanesia, and Australia (‘Gondwana Land’) Witzel is able to access some of the earliest myths told by humans. The Laurasian mythologies share
The Origins of the World’s Mythologies by E.J. Michael Witzel Read More »
Simon Blackburn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Blackburn andhttp://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/) puts forward a compelling and original philosophy of human motivation and morality. Why do we behave as we do? Can we improve? Is our ethics at war with our passions, or is it an upshot of those passions? Blackburn seeks the answers to such questions in an exploration of the nature of
Ruling Passions by Simon Blackburn Read More »
Ivor Armstrong Richards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._A._Richards and https://archive.org/details/practicalcritici030142mbp was one of the founders of modern literary criticism. He enthused a generation of writers and readers and was an influential supporter of the young T.S. Eliot. Principles of Literary Criticism was the text that first established his reputation and pioneered the movement that became known as the ‘New Criticism’. Highly
Principles of Literary Criticism by I.A. Richards Read More »
If a man supports Celtic one day and Rangers the next then he is fickle but not necessarily illogical. From this starting point, and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, Wilfrid Hodges (http://wilfridhodges.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Hodges) takes the reader through the whole gamut of logical expressions in a simple and lively way. Readers who are more mathematically adventurous
Logic by Wilfred Hodges Read More »
Antonio Damasio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio and http://www.ted.com/speakers/antonio_damasio.html) does not claim to have solved the mystery of consciousness in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. This is fortunate, because in many senses Damasio’s book does not provide much new information about consciousness and why its highest forms occur only in humans. Instead, Damasio
The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio Read More »
Most autobiographies cover the main events of a life with the reader often left with only glimpses of the inner life of the author. Carl Jung’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung) autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections (first English translation 1963), focuses on the great psychologist’s spiritual and intellectual awakenings. The descriptions of his visions, dreams and fantasies, which he considered his
Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung Read More »
