Bookshelf

🎨 Impressions

This book appeared on the highly interesting reading list in the appendix of Derek Sivers’ newest release, “Useful Not True” and so made it into my hands. I have read some philosophic works in the past, e.g. those of Marcus Aurelius or Schopenhauer, but in general I was not familiar with the classic philosophers’ stances. Time to find out!

It’s the perfect book if you just want to find out what Plato, Kant, or Nietzsche were actually bringing to the table in their times, and why we today deem their work useful to society. Author Sharon Kaye picked about a dozen of the classics and introduced them in a chapter each. She outlines their main points, but also provides context, controversies, and fun anecdotes.

Each chapter ends with a bullet point summary of what was significant about the person, followed by a short multiple choice quiz to check if you’ve paid attention. I loved those especially! In the kindle edition, which I’ve read, the questions are linked to footnotes which provide the answers. After reading through the four possible answers you can check if you’ve got it right. Very cleverly done and helps to actually remember things. I’m not going to lie, I think I only got about 80-90% of the questions right although they were pretty simple, mostly. It’s a great reminder to pay full attention to the book.

It’s also a good idea of Kaye’s to use simple language. You don’t have to bring much prior knowledge to understand this book. It’s accessible to everyone.

I was wondering what about this book would have been worthy of improvement from my perspective and I honestly couldn’t think of anything. It does exactly what it advertises and it does it well. If you’re looking to get an overview of the history of philosophy, the base on which all current work in the area is done, it’s a perfect option to choose. It even exceeded my expectations – it was less dry and a lot less boring than I hoped. The anecdotes made it fresh and fun, the quizzes kept me paying attention, and the conciseness of the chapters made it easy to get through some of the weirder philosophers.

What I noticed about these roughly 2,500 years of history in the field of philosophy is the change of direction it has taken. Or maybe, it’s more like a deepening instead of a widening of the field that took place, if the book represents well what’s happening. Beginning with Socrates/Plato, it was focused on general life advice, practical guidance, thoughts about life and society, and ways to improve it all. Over time, it got a lot more abstract.

While for over 2,000 years, the focus seemed to not have diverged much from it, lately the achievements don’t seem to be applicable to us humans trying to live a good life.

I was especially taken aback when Bertrand Russell’s quest to prove that 1 + 1 = 2 was detailed. A trilogy of books called Principia Mathematica many years in the making, he set out to get to the bottom of this foundational, not mathematical quest, in order to lay the groundwork for what we all intuitively know to be a correct and pragmatic way to go through life. Kaye says, his attempt even failed in the end, but I looked into it and that seems to be just one of the opinions on it. Some also say he succeeded. In any way, what can we learn here? How important is it really for a human trying to live a good life, if 1 + 1 = 2 is formally proven to be correct?

Might be that there is a whole world to discover and I just don’t understand enough of it yet, and while that’s most certainly true, I prefer the practical ideas and thought experiments of the earlier philosophers.

That’s not a critique of the book at all, I think it did a great job of showing how the landscape of thinkers changed over the centuries.

📔 Highlights

It takes guts to be a philosopher. Although society needs philosophers, it also hates them. This is because philosophers provoke change. It’s human nature to resist change.

The whole goal of philosophy is to find the truth. Philosophers defend with all their hearts the views that they believe are true, and they want others to challenge them so that they can see whether they are right. Good philosophers are happy to modify or even abandon their views if their arguments don’t hold up against criticism.

The view that the material world around us is not real is called idealism. (Plato’s particular version of it is sometimes called ‘transcendental realism’.) It is directly opposed to realism, according to which the material world is real and knowable without transcendent Forms. Plato rejects realism, insisting that it is incapable of securing objective and universal standards. If there are no Forms, he reasons, there is no way to evaluate competing opinions. Every opinion is equally valid. This result is called relativism.

The mantra of his hero, Socrates, was: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

Spotlight: The term ‘platonic love’ today refers to a strong, non-sexual bond. Plato recommended purely spiritual relationships as the highest form of love, though he also recommended starting with a lot of hot and sweaty gay sex.

Aristotle rejects these innate ideas, arguing instead that all knowledge comes from observation of the physical world around us. This view, which is the foundation of modern science, is known as empiricism.

This is the doctrine of the golden mean – that the virtuous person avoids extremes, aiming always to act in a moderate fashion.

That is, if you reason ‘I guess I should go to church and pray, just in case there is a powerful being who wants me to,’ you can just as easily reason ‘I guess shouldn’t go to church and pray, just in case there is a powerful being who doesn’t want me to.’ What makes one line of reasoning any better than the other?

Augustine asserts that evil is necessary in order to appreciate goodness. If God had made a perfect world, human beings would take it for granted – like a bunch of spoiled rich kids.

Pascal’s Wager: The gamble for eternal life: you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by believing in God without proof.

Descartes argues that, if you want to discover true knowledge, your first step must be to question absolutely everything that you have ever believed.

This seems to support the metaphysical view known as dualism, according to which human beings are composed of two different kinds of substance: physical and mental.

How will your soul cause your body to take action? This is known as the mind–body problem.

So, the phrase ‘equally able to do either one’ is a crucial part of the definition of free will.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Determinists allow that everyone feels as though they have free will. This is because we have a lot of contrary desires within us. When our desires are battling against each other, we pause, hovering, feeling as though we could equally go either way. But, in fact, the strongest desire always wins.

If freedom is an illusion, then we are left with fatalism, the view that it doesn’t matter what we do because everything is fixed in advance. Although some philosophers, such as the ancient Stoics, were content to embrace fatalism, most regard it as a depressing and counterproductive outlook.

Hobbes was one of the first modern thinkers to propose that government is legitimate only when the people willingly agree to subject themselves to it. We make a covenant, or social contract, with one another to give up our natural rights in exchange for peace.

In Locke’s view, we consent to government only in order to secure an impartial judge to prevent and resolve property disputes. By conceiving of human social relations in terms of innate freedom and equality, Locke became the founding father of political liberalism.

A falling tree creates a disturbance in the air (a primary quality) that becomes a sound (a secondary quality) only for those who have ears.

Hume insists that causation, the ‘necessary connection between events’ is all in the mind, not in the world.

Empiricists begin firmly grounded in experience of the physical world, but proceed to render the human mind a passive receptacle of data. Rationalists keep the human mind actively searching for the truth within, but leave us in doubt about the physical world.

Kant is called a ‘transcendental idealist’ because, like Plato, the idealist whom we met in Chapter 2, he places ultimate reality in a realm beyond human experience. Against Plato, however, who concluded that the physical world is an illusion, Kant insists that the phenomenal realm is real for us.

If you don’t want to have friends, then you don’t need to be kind. Kant argues that true duty can only be conceived of in the form of a categorical imperative – a requirement that leaves room for no ‘ifs’, ‘ands’ or ‘buts’. For example: ‘Be kind.’

There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Kant would insist that whenever you lie to someone you’re using them. You need them to be ignorant of the truth in order to accomplish your goal. Even if your goal may seem noble – such as protecting them or others from harm – the ends don’t justify the means.

Healthy people treat themselves as valuable for their own sakes.

Utilitarians maintain that, because happiness is the only worthy goal of human life, we must promote it whenever and wherever we can. The ethical act is the one that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Mill distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures. He would argue that playing music is more valuable than merely listening, and that writing music is more valuable than merely playing, even though the difficulty increases in each case. Why is this? Because the greater difficulty implies a greater satisfaction and value.

Utilitarianism is sometimes called consequentialism because it is concerned not with principles but with results.

He asks us to suppose we are condemned to repeat our lives the same way over and over again for ever – an eternal recurrence. This should inspire you to do whatever it takes to be sure you love every moment.

Human beings are no different, and exerting ourselves always means confronting and overcoming others. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are all pushing to seize the highest possible position in life – an instinctual urge Nietzsche calls the ‘will to power’.

In asserting that God is dead, Nietzsche does not mean to be taken literally – that God was once alive. On the contrary, God never existed, in Nietzsche’s view; he was always just a story the masters told to keep the slaves from rebelling.

Mill seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain – a trivial and unworthy aspiration from Nietzsche’s perspective. The Übermensch, in contrast, lives deeply, richly and significantly without shying away from pain, because, as Nietzsche famously remarks, ‘that which does not kill us makes us stronger’.

All of our apparent achievements (one thinks, for instance, of the latest mobile phone) are really just superficial distractions from a hollow lack of substance at the centre. While it may be upsetting to come to this realization, it is also liberating.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear.

Awareness of nothingness is a state of mind. You have to notice the things you are not in order to realize you are free.

Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

Authenticity is the antidote to bad faith. It means having the courage to follow your passion, breaking out of imposed social roles to be true to yourself.

Though he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, he became the first ever to reject it (along with its cash reward). He called it too ‘bourgeois’ – referring to the middle class, which existentialists have long criticized as a class of mediocre people devoted to material gain.

While freedom is intoxicating, it also produces the overwhelming sense of responsibility that Sartre calls nausea. You cannot blame anyone else for what you become. And, as it turns out, it’s not at all easy to become something good.

Existentialism: The view that human beings must define themselves

Dewey doesn’t want to make much of a distinction between art and technology insofar as each is the solution to a problem. While art solves an internal problem, technology solves an external one.

If you moved through the world effortlessly, accomplishing all your goals without a single challenge, you would never acquire knowledge.

Dewey argues that education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living. Because life is problem-solving and problem-solving is learning, learning should extend far beyond the classroom.