Philosophy Books

The Enlightenment was the turning point that created the World as we know it. The transition from the superstition and intolerance of religious dominated society, to the modern educated (at least in theory) democratic, science based lives we enjoy today.

This book is a good collection of examples of the kinds of thinking, and the free expression of those thoughts, that was impossible, and usually fatal in earlier times. Ideas that challenged the established order, and caught on like wildfire in the coffee houses and fraternal lodges where the future leaders of society gathered.

There are more complete and more detailed books available, but for a broad introduction to many of the important sources of the Enlightenment phenomenon, this book is a great start.

Dr. Kramnick does a disappointing job editing the selections in this volume. I constantly found that they missed key points to the individual papers, which lend a great deal to their meaning. It is always difficult when compiling an abridged reader of this nature. What stays in? What goes out? I recommend skipping this reader, if possible, especially if you are interested in the Enlightenment. Stick with the source documents for the "whole story".

This was the most helpful anthology when I needed to write a research paper on seventeenth century religion. It has sections for almost all aspects of life and contains various selections that truly show the Enlightenment spirit!

The eighteenth century Enlightenment is one of the most interesting and exciting periods of intellectual history. The thinkers of that age had a sizable impact on concepts of science, nature, politics, religion and society. How do we become immersed in the wealth of writing of that period, however, without giving up job and family in order to read the works of the Enlightenment authors?

This reader is an excellent book for novices and experienced readers alike. It is an excellent 600+ page book filled with short, pithy excerpts from the key thinkers of the period. Actually the writings go back as far as 1620 with an excerpt from Francis Bacon where he puts down the Greek philosophers and introduces what is to become the scientific method. Beccaria comes up with novel thinking on crime and punishment. Does the death penalty deter crime? How about the punishment fitting the crime instead of being meted out at the whim of some aristocrat?

Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Paine weigh in with their political philosophy. The skeptics speak up with their religious criticisms. Manners, morals, art, war, and gender and race issues are all discussed by the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft, David Hume, Reynolds, Pope, and Bentham.

Bite sized as these entries are, they give the flavor of Enlightenment thought. And, importantly for the general reader, they are all mentally digestible. You don't have to read every paragraph six times in order to get a glimmer of the authors' meanings. The represented authors are not just from France either. The best thinkers from France, Italy, Germany, the United States and Great Britain are represented.

The Age of Enlightenment, the Rise of Science, the art, and literature of the eighteenth century has always been an interest of mine. So you can imagine how amazed and elated I was when I came across this gold.

It has all the big enlightenment writers such as Voltaire, Diderot, Leibniz, Paine, Addison, Pope, Montesqieu, Franklin and many more. It gives a great run down of the wit, the result of the evolution of thought, politics, society and reason as seen in the words of these great minds.

The only thing that I didn't like about this is that there is no Hobbes, which is only a minor quibble. I just thought that since there is Descates, who is not of the eighteenth century enlightenment (17th century and dryer than dust), but a major influence (like Hobbes was included, Hobbes, who was a major link from Descartes to Locke should be included and the provacative and ENLIGHTENING words from The Leviathan should grace the pages of this indispensible book and yet another superb volume from the Viking Portable Library.

This text - essential to a course I am taking and to oe I am teaching was an OLDER edition than I needed which was not stated...I will think very carefully before ordering again.

This is not for me (also I'm lawyer), is for my daughter who study philosophy at University of Buenos Aires and will learn the book when we arrive home next Jan 22.

The amount of praise given to this work does not surprise me given that there is a widespread, yet subtle, socialist movement in America as well as in Europe. Despite this, the book is a failed attempt at reconciling the ideal with reality. Rawls commits one of the many age-old flaws of collectivism, attempting to force morality on immoral beings. Rawls' entire work is fundamentally flawed in that the hypothetical situation from which the entire theory relies, selectively allows certain knowledge, assumptions, etc. while conveniently eliminating others. For instance, empirical evidence that shows capitalism outperforms other economic systems cannot be known in the original position. This is profound when one considers that we live in a hostile world that requires nations to invest in security of which economic power is imperative. Thus, capitalism may be a necessary injustice in order to safeguard liberal democracy. If we compare the human condition prior to capitalism, one can see that perhaps a collectivist system that may contribute to capitalism's downfall is immoral, if it leads us back in this direction. Consequentalism perhaps? Despite this, the people in the original position cannot have this knowledge. Therefore, information that is direly relevant to the construction of a social system in a hostile world cannot be used in determining its structure. Somehow though, the people do understand the important of the right to vote, equality, etc. This is absurd and impractical. Rationale beings need to analyze as much information as is available and pertinent to any decisions they make. Rawls continuously attempts to explain his "tweaks" as rationale but it is obvious that they are all implemented in order to discount human nature and proceed in theoretical terms. On a side note, Rawls' first principle calls for the right to vote, what would his state do if citizens began to vote for a more capitalistic system that defied his "justice"? Iron fist? Nevertheless, it is quite obvious what Rawls is attempting here. In a hypothetical situation where we all have to fear being born without intelligence, strength, status etc. we will take the safe route and ensure ourselves the highest index of goods. This may be true, or it may not (human nature seems to embrace risk taking) however this situation is irrelevant because of its exclusion of relevant information. Hobbes for instance accepted human nature and the potential for a wide array of circumstances in his hypothetical Natural Condition. While Rawls may have some strong arguments in declaring that his two principles are the epitome absolute justice, this does not mean they are practical in a hostile world. Essentially, what Rawls is saying is that none of us deserved to be born intelligent, responsible, hard working, but that we were simply lucky in the natural lottery. Because of this arbitrary distribution, he believes that we all must compensate for those unfortunate souls that were born unintelligent, lazy, and perhaps even immoral! I'd admonish Rawls not to attempt applying his insane reasoning to the criminal justice system (Poor, unfortunate murderer). If Rawls believes that the laziest, dumbest, and most immoral person still deserves a living wage despite not working, he has contradicted himself in that this justifies slavery, forcing individuals to work for other individuals without compensation. This simply cannot be justice as "fairness". Nevertheless, I'd recommend it to all free market advocates simply to strengthen their positions. As a warning however, be prepared for a work that lacks brevity, organization, coherence, and most importantly, reality.

I suppose one of the great attributes of the internet is that it allows the juxtaposition of the good, the bad and the ugly. Where else could one find reviews of one of the twentieth century's towering works that variously describe it as a recipe for a police state, an incitement to theft, or as written by someone with no understanding of philosophy (my personal favourite - thanks Adrian!)

Rawls clearly sucks in great chunks of political thought - Kantianism, Utilitarianism, free market capitalism, utopian socialism, the Enlightenment idea of human progress in this capacious work. At the crux of his thought is the difference principle - the notion that inequalities can only be justified if they benefit the least well off.

Whatever you make of his theory, it can't be ignored. Anyone even remotely interested in 20th Century Liberal thought must consult A Theory of Justice, as it is the precursor to so much that has been written in the last 35 years. Check out any political journal and there will still be several articles anually which assess some part of Rawls' legacy.

In the 1970s, when Rawls' book came out, many people thought he had cracked liberal thought. Since then OPEC crises, divisions over the welfare state, the problem of benefit traps, pension funding shortfalls and a whole menangerie of other problems have beset contemporary liberalism. But to go back to a brave, well throught out articulation of one great thinker's view of liberal equality, seek out Rawls.

A Theory of Justice is surprisingly accessible, even to those of us without extensive training in philosophy. Rawls briefly examines two of the most influential Western liberal philosophers (Locke and Mill), and then proceeds to construct his own Theory which builds on Locke and Mill while solving for some of the deficiences in each.

As Rawls admitted, the gist of his Theory can be gleaned from the first part of the book, though the book reads easily enough that one should be able to get through the whole thing fairly quickly.

I highly recommend this book to those who think of philosophy as convoluted jargon written long ago by men in powdered wigs and robes, as well as to those who are unsure of the philosophical basis for much modern liberal political thought. A remarkably accessible and important development in liberal thought.

I just received this book in the mail a couple of weeks ago and I'm already on my second read through. It is such an uplifting book. I read a few pages with my son everyday. What a clever idea of putting all of these wonderful quotes into one little gem of a book. I look forward in getting your other quote books. Thanks for the smile!

I wish I could give half star ratings sometimes. This book would have gotten a 4 and 1/2 rating if I could.
The only thing that I did not like about it was the Bible passages. To me they do not lift my spirit, but that is just because I am not of that faith. Otherwise this is a great book.

I've purchased many copies of this little book over the past year. They are great girl friend books or for any quote lover. I've keep one on hand for myself and often reference it when I need some inspiration. Buy two, one to give away and one for you!

we write a quote in our elementary class each day and use this book as one of our references.

This is one of those purchases where I really felt like I got my monies worth. I refer to the quotes within this book on a weekly basis as I offer a "final thought of inspiration" to my yoga students. Since my family is a group of bathroom readers, Ive also been thinking about doing a bathroom wall of quotes. This book offers a variety of quotes nicely arranged in categories. Great to sit, read and ponder!

In Praise of Shadows is a very readable and succinct essay regarding Japanese aesthetics and their gradual Westernization around the turn of the twentieth century. While it provides a good glimpse of what Tanizaki felt about his country, and gives good perspective to better understanding his other works, ultimately its not very informative about Japan. Many of the conclusions about westernization tend to be largley exaggerated. In addition, the picture he paints of Japanese aesthetics is overly romanticisized as well. While it is very readable, and at times interesting, if you read it, use it as a character study of Tanizaki, but if your looking for a good introduction to Japanese aesthetics take this one with several metric tons of salt.

I took a class on Japanese culture last semester, and this was one of our texts. While Tanizaki's views provide an interesting perspective, this whole essay is really just an old man talking about how traditional Japanese aesthetics are good and Western-influenced aesthetics are not. He repeatedly insults and dismisses Western ideas of beauty simply because they are Western. He may well be right, at the very least in certain aspects, by saying that the Japanese ideals of beauty are best, but his refusal to give a second thought to Western ideals makes his point moot. It's the basic fallacy of origin.

Writing almost 70 years ago, Tanizaki put great value on an unique sense of beauty in Japan and regretted that it was disappearing as poeple were trying to follow the Western way of life. Tanizaki unhesitatingly admitted that the Western culture was in many respects superior to that of Japan, and that it was in a sense inevatble that Japan should imitate the Western lifestyle for the improvement of its living standard,and that in the process Japanese traditional lifestyle should be to some extent abandoned. But, he emphasized with deep emotion how different the things would have been had Japan developed its own science and technology consistent with its unique sense of beauty, and had it not been compelled to abandone some of its own traditions in favor of the Western lifestyle.

The Japanese have an aesthetic concept called "Wabi Sabi." This term consists of two words. "Wabi" literally means "poverty," but in the aesthetic context it stands for simplicity; "Sabi" is literally "solitude, loneliness," and for aesthetic purposes it means something like natural impermanence. Wabi Sabi encourages, as one observer put it, a profound feeling of inner melancholy, and an appreciation of quietly clear and calm, well-seasoned and refined simplicity.

Andrew Juniper's "Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence" summarizes the concept by saying that "the term wabi-sabi suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, asymmetry, and imperfection. These underlying principles are diametrically opposed to those of their Western counterparts, whose values are rooted in the Hellenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection. ... Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things." (pages 2 and 51)

In order to appreciate Junichiro Tanizaki's 50-page pamphlet "In Praise of Shadows" it helps to keep the concept of Wabi Sabi in mind. While many people would object to Tanizaki's anti-modernist view of art (and call it "reactionary" or "nationalist"), it is in fact a contemporary take on an ancient aesthetic concept that favors obliqueness (shadows) over brightness, weathered naturalness over functional novelty, the crude over the polished, and - ultimately - irrationality over rationality.

Tanizaki's essay contains good examples of Wabi Sabi, and a few peculiarly funny ones that reek of Zen humor: "one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature." (page 4) To a Western reader this sounds like unmitigated satire. But it is not. Tanizaki is serious about this stuff.

In sum, I find "In Praise of Shadows" a very entertaining illustration of an important Japanese aesthetic concept, written by one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. I bought the Leete's Island Books edition of the text, which I review here. Later I found that exactly the same translation is contained in Phillip Lopate's collection "The Art of the Personal Essay." It may be better value for money.

Of course, aesthetics are always a matter of taste. Speaking of which, "wasabi" - if you recall the title of this review - is Japanese horseradish.

In this classic 1933 essay, novelist Jun'ichiro Tanizaki explores the idea of shadows as a key note of Japanese aesthetics. Shadows are a natural function of traditional Japanese architecture - large rooms with broad eaves to keep rain and snow away from paper walls naturally create richly dark and quiet interiors, where shadows seem to have a presence all of their own. Tanizaki extends this idea, following the shadows from temple toilets to the darkness of lacquered tableware, into the folds of women's traditional clothing, and onto the Japanese stage. Some of his notions are purely fanciful - that gold was only valued by the ancients for the way it reflected candlelight; that the Japanese have an implicit distaste for their own skin given the way the light reveals its imperfect whiteness - while he is spot-on when it comes to articulating the beauty of No actors, and the way candlelight changes the quality of a restaurant meal. The essay's meandering structure might surprise those more accustomed to a rigorous argument, but as Thomas J. Harper notes in his insightful afterword, it invokes the Japanese artistic tradition of following the line wherever it leads. Along the way, Tanizaki makes a none too subtle critique of Western incursion into Japanese life. He mourns the displacement of candlelight by neon, the patina of a well-used bowl being reinterpreted as 'filth', and the white faces of Kabuki made monstrous by American spotlights. Tanizaki's essential contribution with this enduring piece is to remind us of something which, in the West, is so often forgotten: the quality of the materials and light from which a space is constructed - for light really is a tangible architectural element - will dictate on the subtle level the quality of human experience possible in that space. Modern life is too brilliantly lit, which might be why it so often lacks reverence and solemnity.

Anyone in interested in how evolution impacts their day-to-day lives should read this book. It's not only informative, but also an enjoyable read.

Why we get sick is great for explaining evolutionary medicine for first timers. It's great for students, classrooms and anyone interested in Evolutionary medicine.

PROS: It helps you understand why some illnesses are good for you. Well written and easy to read.

CONS: It's a dated. Medical advances and knowledge have come a long way in the last 15 years.

CONCLUSION: I would suggest reading "The Survival of the Sickest" instead. It's more up to date and has better writing than this book.

"If you are starving in a rain forest, eat the camouflaged frog that is hidden in the vegetation, not the bright one sitting resplendent on a nearby branch."

At first glance, this quote from WHY WE GET SICK wouldn't seem to be relevant to the topic. But since the hypothesis of the book is that evolution and natural selection govern the senescence of aging and the physiological responses to diseases and mortally competitive environments, the fact that the gaudier frog has evolved with potent internal poisons that (should) signal "danger" to any potential predator makes the connection vis-a-vis both the amphibian's toxin and the starving hiker whose internal defense mechanisms may at least cause vomiting and diarrhea if frog's legs make it onto the dinner menu.

As authors Randolph Nesse and George Williams summarize:

"First, there are genes that make us vulnerable to disease ... Most deleterious genetic effects ... are actively maintained by selection because they have unappreciated benefits that outweigh their costs ... Second, disease results from exposure to novel factors that were not present in the environment in which we evolved ... Third, disease results from design compromises, such as upright posture with its associated back problems ... Fourth, ... natural selection ... works just as hard for pathogens trying to eat us and the organisms we want to eat. In conflicts with these organisms, as in baseball, you can't win 'em all. Finally, disease results from unfortunate historical legacies ... the human body must function well, with no chance to go back and start afresh ... Susceptibility to disease ... cannot be eliminated by any duration of natural selection, for it is the very power of natural selection that created them."

Under the umbrella of natural selection, the authors include everything from the obvious and non-arguable, such as fever as a mechanism to kill invading pathogens with heat, to the less obvious and perhaps debatable, such as the instinctive desire of small children to remained unweaned from mother's breast, which serves to prolong lactation and ensures that Mom won't become pregnant with a potential rival. Other examples fall into the category, Gee, Why Didn't I Think of That, including the morning sickness of pregnancy, which serves to prevent Mom from ingesting toxins during that vulnerable period when the unborn child is experiencing peak organ formation, and the causative agent of gout, uric acid, the build-up of which also protects the body from the aging effects of oxidative damage. Then there's cancer, which wouldn't be a problem had we not tissue cells that grow and regenerate. And did you know that premature ejaculation in the male is ostensibly selective, in an evolutionary sense, for those men that can get the gene transfer job done, so to speak, and then flee before the female's alpha male partner shows up to brain the interloper with a knotty pine cudgel?

Nesse and Williams lucidly present an unconventional paradigm of medicine, a different perspective from which to view disease and aging, that's only accasionally preachy. They rue the fact that it's not part of the mainstream, and argue for its inclusion in the curriculum of the country's medical schools. They fail to mention what I think is the more practical route to widespread acceptance, i.e. when it can make the medical industry lots of money.

Hey honey! How about some frog legs for dinner? I see a bright green one with yellow and red speckles perched in the carrotwood out back!

Insightful, progressive, meaningful, and comprehensive coverage of the field. I learned a lot from the book. Few minor points that can be improved. One, the figures in the book (there are only a few anyway) are vague and don't add much to the content. Two, there are many sentences in the book that are either out of context or they don't convey what the authors have in mind. Third, the book could have benefited from a bibliography. Alphabetical bibliography is easier to use to look the sources up than to struggle to find them in the Notes section at the end of the book. But, overall, a great book.

The following comments pertain to the Miller translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit published by Oxford University Press. Arguably the Phenomenology is one of the most significant works in modern philosophy, certainly in German idealism. While clearly an important work, even by the arcane standards of German idealism it is a difficult read for the non-Hegelian. And, can be nearly impenetrable if approached without the assistance of a skilled guide (or two). The following comments are limited to the respective quality of the Oxford University Press edition, and, to offer some potential resources that may be helpful for readers new to Hegel.

First. In addition to the text of the Phenomenology a foreword and para by para commentary by Findlay is also included. Though he is a capable thinker, Findlay's commentary is rather terse and may be of limited help to first time readers. From a physical stand point, while the font is of an adequate size, the margins are relatively small and not conducive to copious note making.

Second. With regard to additional resources, Robert Stern's commentary in the Routledge Philosophy Guidebook series is quite good as a starting. It is readable, short, and clear - not overly laden with technical jargon and its citations are referenced to the Miller translation. A modest drawback to Stern is the lack of a glossary. Hegelian terminology can be difficult and some assistance in this regard would be useful. More advanced students may wish to augment Stern with a more detailed commentary from the likes of Harris, Hyppolite or Lauer.

Third. J. Bernstein has a wonderful yearlong graduate-level course discussing the Phenomenology available on-line for no cost at BernsteinTapes.com. Kudos to the folks who have made this available it is an outstanding resource.

Overall, this is a solid version of the Phenomenology that offers good value to the purchaser.

I am very please with this text. As dense as it is, Phenomenology is truly a philosphical and theological work of genius.

In this book, Hegel's work in on a new creation theorry. But, all of Hegel's work should be linked to the work of Nicholas of Cusa. Hegel does not link his work to Cusa, probably because he feared being burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church. Cusa's very different 15th century creation theory was not propagated into the USA by the Vatican until 1979. (See American Cusanus Society) This book by Hegel is very important to the future of the USA and all future sciences.

Both Cusa and Hegel used Plato's negative (Sophist at 257b)to develop a new and different creation theory based only on things-in-themselves. This new creation theory cannot be aligned to the Bible or any other scripture. I discuss this new creation theory in my book, "The First Scientific Proof of God."

When using Plato's negative, the negation of a finite thing will reveal a not-finite thing (that is, an infinite thing). The double negative reveals God as the unity of all opposites. The negation of a known thing can open the mind of a scientist and reveal other positive things in the universe. Negation can also avoid the production of dirty negatives, such as the radiation waste products of fission energy.

Today's scientists do not use Plato's negative. I believe that this is why our young scientists are becoming lost.

Both Cusa's work and Hegel's work should be taught is every college and university. Karl Marx was a follower of Hegel. But, Marx's atheism led to the failure of the Soviet union in the late 1980s.

What is the Phen. of Spirit about? Essentially it is Hegel's answer to Kant and his strong disagreement with Kant's unwillingness or inability to close the gap between the subject and the so called "thing in itself" (the "truth" of any external object). Kant developed an epistemology that argued for certain conditions in order for any object to be experienced. These included the "pure" forms of intuition (space and time), which are, by Kant's account, inside of us and imposed by the mind on sensation (they may or may not be also real, we don't and can't know), the pure categories of the understanding- logical constructs such as cause and effect we impose on experience in order to have any coherent experience at all and the transcendental unity of apperception (understanding that my manifold of experience is "mine"- a non-reflective sense of subjective ego- not who I am or anything about "me" but simply an innate "sense" of continuity of experience, of personal subjectivity). We create our experience through judgments of the understanding by marrying the categories of understanding with our sensations, both altered by the pure forms of intuition and we understand this as our own unique experience through apperception. This then is our reality. These transcendental elements of experience are beyond and prior to (constitutive of) direct experience and understood by us only indirectly through logic.

Hegel objected to Kant's dualism of the subject who "creates" the world of experience and the unknowable "object" of experience (that is, the objective truth of that object). Since Kant left it there without any hope of grasping "reality" (the reality we know is intersubjectively true because we all think the same way but we have no idea if that is the reality of God who can see things intuitively as they really are) he was widely felt by the next generation of German philosophers (who had grown up in reverence to his philosophy) to have only come half way.

Hegel approached the goal by emphasizing the subject as the determinant of any truth statement. The self conscious subject (a form of "Spirit" when combined with like thinking self-conscious subjects in a community of belief) does have the Kantian experience conditions of categories (notions to Hegel) that he/she applies to external objects of sensation (although not the pure forms of intuition) and the element of "self-consciousness", the transcendental unity of apperception of Kant, emphasized by Hegel to the point of being the pivot to forming truth statements. Hegel also apporopriates Kant's "pure reason", a feature that for Kant is only "regulative" and not constitutive of experience (reason, for Kant, is at play in the fields of the Lord so to speak and engaged in manipulation of the pure categories of the understanding to create ideas of theory that, disconnected from the input of the senses, do not apply to actual experience and so do not directly further our knowledge of reality ). In Hegel's view reason is the key element of self-consciousness that moves our evolving understanding of truth.
The book examines various immediate epistemic positions such as "sense certainty" etc. and, using the Hegelian dialectic, that is, examining how the idea matches up with itself in a test of internal consistency to determine if it has done what it sets out to do or explain what it sets out to explain, finds each of these logically inadequate to provide us with an account of the "truth" of external reality. Finding these empiric or realist positions to be untenable he proceeds to "self consciousness" or Spirit and examines how, through history, forms of consciousness, and the grounds they have used to support their beliefs, have matched up with this test of internal consistency. Hegel begins anew with his dialectic in an examination of self consciousness and we seem to see a pattern of forms of consciousness developing grounds for belief that are more and more effective. The "self", in its desire and grasping for purchase in the world defines the external world (and importantly other consciousness) in terms of its own making (notions). Like a form of epistemic evolution, those definitions that work best are selected and others discarded over time. The conditions of experience, immutable for Kant, are subject to change according to Hegel as the successive forms of spirit work through something like his dialectic and finally come to the Absolute, the final Notion that provides us with reality. Not a divine metaphysical reality but the achievement of human self-consciousness in finally reaching a point where its transcendental notions define the truth of the objective world in a way that best satisfies the needs of (social)consciousness. This then provides a closing of the subjective-objective divide that Kant was never able to bridge. Hegel, a firm idealist, never argues that we have the means to go beyond the conditional limitations Kant described but rather that what objective truth is for us is defined by the best set of beliefs about it that serves to satisfy our innate desires and requirements. A very speculative philosophy but certainly not outside the realm of reasonable possibility.

Today, an entire market has been created for the manufacture of literature designed to make philosophy intelligible to your average moron, all in the spirit of the assumption that "anyone can do philosophy" provided of course that everything is put into fart-jokes and countless other idiotic colloquialisms. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the genuinely incomprehensible and pretentious works which truly deserve the bashings that the simple-minded laymen of the world give to them. In many ways, these types of books are in fact more damaging than the "moron-friendly" ones, precisely because they create an image of philosophy that is nothing but empty verbosity. That is, they are parodies of genuine thinking.

Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" can be said to be a canonical example (even perhaps the prototype) of this latter category. On the whole, this book is less of a systematic philosophical treatise (despite what Hegel claims in the preface) and more of an exercise in using literary hand-waving to mystify a naive audience into accepting a series of absurd, premeditated conclusions. This book is filled to the brim with dizzying tautologies, circular thinking, and completely arbitrary conclusions and jumps of logic. Either Hegel seems to have honestly confused the accidental (the infamous "philosophical prose") with the essential (a search for truth) and was therefore genuinely stupid/insane, or he was a very calculating and precise intellectual charlatan. While the Phenomenology itself is probably a mixture of both, the latter case seems to apply more fully to Hegel as a person.

In spite of all this, what makes this book at least worth delving into, and also what makes Hegel appear to be something slightly more than a complete fool/psychopath, is his ability to not only point out the modernist point of view, but also to exemplify it in himself.

Firstly, the very crux of his entire "dialectic," is his fundamental belief in progress. Riding the same intellectual current as Darwin and others, Hegel posits that mankind is gradually raising itself up from a "primitive" and "ignorant" state into a more "complex" and "knowledgeable" one. As such, Hegel considers his Phenomenology of Spirit to be the final stage of this "development," after which humanity will arrive at an "end of history" and live in a state of perpetual utopia. Obviously, this was quite influential to Marx's own eschatological vision, as well as people like Francis Fukuyama. What's more, this is the essence of the entire contemporary "conservative" viewpoint: one in which humanity, through centuries of "progress," has arrived at a more or less perfected state of existence.

Additionally, Hegel remarkably points out the fact that it is impossible for the modern worldview to truly criticize itself "from within." Nearly two centuries later, Ted Kaczynski had noticed the exact same thing. In this sense, Hegel can be seen as where both the "liberal" and "conservative" points of view meld into one: modernism. Hegel also explicitly states that the Protestant Reformation in effect killed the presence of the sacred and transcendent in Western civilization.

In conclusion, my recommendation to readers would be to study the Phenomenology of Spirit in a very detached way, as intellectual history only--That is, if they can cut through the jungles of verbiage and horrible writing. In terms of providing any sort of absolute truth about how reality really functions, this book is absolutely worthless. What you will find instead is a lengthy apologetic for a collectivist, secular, "feel-good" society in which God has become nothing but a dead function of the capricious mass-mind. However, in terms of providing a more or less clear window into the zeitgeist of the modern age, this book is truly like no other.

A great book to understand what green and sustainable environment exactly mean! a lot of good informations.

Simply put, this book serves up excellent insights into the only future of architecture and the hope for our injured environment... sustainable design. McLennan is more than an author or advocate... he is a deep green thinker who practices on a daily basis what he preaches. Of the many great books available on this subject I found this one the most comprehensive. The Philosophy of Sustainable Design encompassing not only the materials, technologies, and methods available to green designers but it highlights the leaders, champions and innovators who are driving the green building movement forward. This book offers information (and inspiration) for the seasoned and the novice. Read it, share it and read it again!

Jason is the quintessential green warrior. Young, enthusiastic, exceedingly bright, and seemingly undaunted at the prospect of swimming against the current, Jason shares with us his passion for sustainable design. Having spent the formative years of his career working with the veritable giants of the sustainable design field, Jason shares his unique perspectives and experiences that today's up and coming green warriors can only dream of.

A must for any aspiring architect, Jason takes the reader through the entire series of timeless principles that form the very foundation of sustainable design with loads of practical examples and current references to help empower the reader to internalize and apply those principles in their own practice. At the end of our journey, we are convinced that it is the rest of the world that is, in fact, swimming against the current, and we are emboldened and encouraged to follow our instincts, and are reminded that good design not only can, but in fact must be sustainable. He also dedicates an entire chapter to predicting the future of architecture, complete with a timeline for the next 100 years!

Jason specifically reaches out to encourage the next generation of green warriors with a chapter dedicated to understanding the drivers of, and barriers to, sustainable design in today's corporate structures and design firms, giving the reader a helpful "big picture" overview to help recognize the progress of an organization's corporate culture on the path to sustainability, and to better understand how to make a difference.

To complete the package as an essential resource, the appendices include Jason's own "Green Warrior Reading List", & a "Who's Who in Green Design".

A must-read for anyone serious about facilities design in the 21st. century.

I came late to bioneering, after I was inspired by Herman Daly's Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications, Brian Czech's Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All; and everything by Paul Hawkin, but especially The Ecology of Commerce.

I have had an interest in the intersection of global science, sustainable political and social and economic orders, and the vulnerability of the nation-state in the face of growing complexity for some time, and many of my other reviews focus on these literatures, as well as the literatures of collective intelligence, global assemlages, wealth of networks, localized resilience, and so on.

I make mention of that broader literature to add emphasis to my view that this book is one of the most extraordinary I have ever encountered. I made a mistake when I first got it months ago and put it sight unseen into my "hard and dense, save for intercontinental trip." This book is not hard, not dense, and it is both easy to read and intellectually elegant. I can easily see this book as the single mandatory first year or summer pre-reading at any level--undergraduate or graduate--along with contextual books such as:
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition
The Future of Life
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century and
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

The sixteen chapters and five appendices are elegant--concise, clear key points, short, just the right mix of photos (including color in a center spread) figures, and text.

The publisher has been criminally remiss in failing to load the varied items that Amazon allows, such as the table of contents. I am increasingly disenchanted with publishers and of the view that Amazon should get into the book publishing business, sending digital copies to FedExKinko's, helping authors self publish (full disclosure: BOTH Fred Smith at FedEx and Jeff Bezos at Amazon blew me off--these guys are simply not serious about innovation).

Preface: Philosophical Beginnings
Chapter 1: The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Sustainable Design
Chapter 3: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Biomimicry)
Chapter 4: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Human Vitality)
Chapter 5: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Ecosystem/Bioregional)
Chapter 6: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Seven Generations)
Chapter 7: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Energy/True Cost)
Chapter 8: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Holistic Thinking)
Chapter 9: The Technologies and Components of Sustainable Design
Chapter 10: Shades of Green--Levels of Sustainability
Chapter 11: Productivity and Well-Being
Chapter 12: Greening Your Organization
Chapter 13: Green Economics
Chapter 14: The Sustainable Design Process--Holistic Thinking
Chapter 15: The Aesthetics of Sustainable Design
Chapter 16: The Future of Architecture
Appendix A: The Green Warrior Reading List
Appendix B: Who's Who in Green Design
Appendix C: The Phases of Green Design
Appendix D: The Elements of Green Design Methodology
Appendix F: The Principles of Sustainable Design--Summary

I put this book down with several thoughts:

1) Enormously impressed with the University of Oregon in Eugene, to the point of trying to get my oldest to take his computer and creative skills there.

2) Profoundly delighted with the deep philosophical underpinning that one finds throughout the book, without pretense or pomposity.

3) The one appendix I would have liked to see that is not there is the one entitles: Green to Gold--Bottom-Line Dollar Savings Over Time, and then a whole range of the elements of sustainable design by climate zone.

This is an extremely satisfying book to read. My last throught: it's time to write the Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Read more about this at Earth Intelligence Network. This book by Jason McLennan is a perfect model for what the larger systems book should strive to be.

See also the literatures under panarchy, resilience, sustainability.

A very easy to read book that will help anyone, with or without an architecture or design background, to understand the basics of Sustainable Design. Well written, with very precise, intelligent, and oftentimes humorous commentary. Mr. McLennan knows his stuff, and the only thing in my mind that he could be faulted for is not going deep enough on some of the topics. That is the nature of the book, however. It is mean to be a high level overview of all aspects of Sustainable Design. Mr. McLennan has been very thorough, though, in including tons of references for those of us looking for a deeper understanding of any of the topics mentioned in the book. A must have for any aspiring architect or designer and a fabulous addition to any arcophile's library!

This book contains the "inner chapters," not the entire Chuang Tzu, but generally considered the essential and least corrupt chapters. It's one of my favorite books, and after reading Watson's translation I'm unable to read anyone else's - it's wonderful (and there are quite a few weak versions, and weaker paraphrases). Of the Chinese classics I've read this is not only the most subtle and profound, it's sometimes absolutely hilarious. His parodies of Confucianism are a riot, his magical unrealism is timeless, his man dreaming he's a butterfly - or is it the other way around? - the useless tree that's preserved itself so long by being useless, not like all those fructiferous trees .... It's a rare combination of inane silliness with serious reflections on human nature, existence, nature and metaphysics (if that's the right term).

My impression upon first reading this work is that the material could be differently, and perhaps better, translated.

This is a very different book than the Lao Tzu. It's written in a much less poetic style, but I find Chuang Tzu more readable for that reason. The style is more conversational, and well rendered into contemporary English by Burton Watson.

These inner chapters contain only the core of a much longer work. Over the 2200 years since its writing, many accretions had crept into the work, including commentaries and addenda by other authors. Watson strips those away and leaves only the central and most vivid writings. Some of those may already be familiar to today's reader. For example, this book originates the man dreaming to be a butterfly dreaming to be a man. Chuang Tzu offers many more of these anecdotes, too long to be analogies but too short for fables. He also calls on the history and mythology of his time - not always distinct from each other - and creates mythology of his own, whether he meant to or not.

That mythology lived on in Chinese alchemy, when Chuang Tzu's magical sages were taken as literal beings. Chuang Tzu lived on, too, in Taoism's eventual alignment with Buddhism. His cryptic, non sequitur style of answer seems to foreshadow the koans of the distinctly Chinese and Japanese schools of Buddhism.

This is a wonderful complement to the Lao Tzu. If that book is the art of enlightenment, then this is more like the practical craft. I recommend it highly to any student of eastern classics.

I must add that Chuang Tzu is an older romanization of "Zhuangzi" - different renderings of one name. It is easy to become confused and think that the two were different writers. It is especially confusing since Watson published this same material many years later under the "Zhuangzi" spelling (ISBN 0231129599). While I have the highest respect Burton's scholarship, I think that this difference-without-a-difference should be made more explicit.

//wiredweird

The Chuang Tzu (rendered Zhuangzi in pinyin, which is becoming the standard transliteration these days) is second only to Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching in its popularity and veneration in the Taoist world. If you've not heard of or read this book before, you're in for a real treat! The first time I read the Inner Chapters of the Chuang Tzu was like a revelation--the thoughts and ideas expressed in these passages still resonate today for their acuity, humor, satire, stabbing profundity, and life-changing potential. Indeed, after better understanding the thought this book expresses, I felt like so many loose ideas and insights I'd gleaned from other philosophy, literature, music, and poetry had been tied up together and formulated into a concise and elegant package that is urgently relevant to every day life--pretty amazing for a text that is well over 2000 years old!


I recently completed reading the last of three complete translations of the Chuang Tzu, and I decided to wait until I read all of them before reviewing any of the three. Since this text is written in ancient Chinese, a language that was reserved for the intellectual and cultural elite two thousand years ago and has been considered effectively "dead" (like Latin) for quite a while, even understanding what the author(s) were trying to say is difficult, let alone translating the words from Chinese to English. So I figured reading a few different translations is probably the best way to get a broad and deep understanding of the text, and the cumulative effect would make up for each translation's weaknesses. This proved a good strategy--the other translations I chose were Victor Mair's Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu and A.C. Graham's The Inner Chapters. All three were rewarding and worthwhile reads (I mean, it IS the Chuang Tzu!), but I still come back to Burton Watson's The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu as my favorite. I won't go into depth about what the Chuang Tzu says, since the writing in the text is so eloquent and vivid that any description won't do it justice, and because I would probably ramble on forever about either the academic issues and questions regarding the text's authorship, historicity, and philosophy, or about how mind-blowingly intellectually stimulating it is!

After reading three different translations of the Chuang Tzu, I have to say that this Basic Writings translated by Watson is the best place for the uninitiated to start--it contains nearly all the best ideas and passages from the text (which has many interpolations from other, later authors that are often not as interesting and never as well-written as the ideas expressed in the Inner Chapters). Graham's translation is very academically rigorous, but makes Chuang Tzu's already distant culture and time period even more distant for new readers by means of very technical terminology and commentary. Mair's translation is good but doesn't flow as well as Watson's, and it's also much longer since it contains the entire Chuang Tzu. Watson's Complete Works is great, but this Basic Writings is much cheaper and more concise an introduction--once you read it and get hooked on the surprisingly fresh insights of these ancient thinkers, perhaps you'll delve into some other illuminating translations--until then, I have to say that this should be required reading for anyone interested in philosophy or Eastern classics.

Anyone who may be coming to Chuang Tzu for the first time is in for a treat. Although Chuang Tzu is sometimes described as the most brilliant of all Chinese philosophers, what we find in him isn't what we normally understand by 'Philosophy' and isn't technical at all.

His appeal is not so much to the intellect as to the imagination, and he chose as a vehicle for his philosophical insights, not tedious and lengthy abstract treatises, but brief and witty anecdotes and dialogues and tales. His humor, sophistication, literary genius, and philosophical insights found their perfect expression in his brilliant fragments, and once having read them you never forget them.

Not much is known about Chuang Tzu, other than that he seems to have lived around the time of King Hui of Liang (370-319 B.C.). The received text of his book, which is sometimes referred to as 'the Chuang Tzu' (CT), is made up of thirty-three Chapters. Most scholars seem to feel that the CT is a composite text, and that only the first seven - the Inner Chapters - plus a few bits from the others are Chuang Tzu's own work, the remainder being by others.

Among the better known of his translators, all of them excellent, are Arthur Waley, Burton Watson, and A. C. Graham, though only the latter two translated the complete text. An abridged version of Watson's complete translation has now been made available for those who want to confine themselves mainly to the Inner Chapters.

Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a brilliant translator. Unlike certain others, he wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden the text with extraneous matter. His many translations from Ancient Chinese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth having as they are books one often wants to returns to.

The present book won't, as I've said, give you the whole of Watson's Chuang Tzu. For that you'll have to find a copy of his 'Complete Works of Chuang Tzu.' But it will give you most of what is generally agreed to be Chuang Tzu, and everyone should read it. If you're not a Chuang Tzu enthusiast before you start, I can guarantee that you'll be one before you finish.

Now in a revised and updated second edition, Pastimes: The Context Of Contemporary Leisure by Ruth V. Russell (Professor of Recreation, Indiana University, Bloomington) is a highly accessible and scholarly textbook on the specific subjects of leisure behavior; the history of leisure; the recreational activities in literature, art, and music since the Kingdom of Kush and Ancient Greece; the balance between leisure and capitalism; and much more. Enhanced with discussion questions, summaries, resources, references, and an index Pastimes is a superb text for curriculum studies or self-education on the subject of contemporary leisure and the impact of pastime pursuits on American popular culture.

This book provides a fantastic explanation of the things that human's do for leisure. The book describes how leisure has changed from ancient times, and shows the importance of leisure in contemporary society. This is a must for philosophy students and people interested in finding out why leisure skills are important to human beings.