MFC

Reflexion and Sensibity

Revisado: 09-04-23

I was after hard facts on history of Arabs I found something much different, yet very rewarding.

This is not a book about the past. Those are refexions of a man that is seeng the history very much alive, manifesting itself out of his window in form of the Yemeni civil war. It is the fruit of a great effort to make sense of a tragedy affecting the Arabs, in light of 3000 years that passed but never really went away. It's inteligent, sensible and dramatic. A great book.

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Should be 40h and not 6h and 8min

Revisado: 09-02-21

I was looking for a book that would cover with reasonable level of details both the history of Islam and the vast complexity of the current Islam world. In retrospect, I see it was foolish to expect someone to squeeze such extensive matters in just 6h. Unfortunately, I think Audible still owe us a title that could fulfill such expectation. But the lecturer did a relatively good use of such short time to introduce the subject. Contrary to some reviewers, I found the presenter did a good job in providing clear explanations and keeping my attention all the time. I just found some issues with excessive repetition of some arguments. I completely got Islam is not a particularly violence prone our misogynous religion. Knowing something of the tradition of tolerance in middle ages Islamic world, I had no difficulties to accept that. I also see how important is for the world to understand it, but I still think too much time was spent on the same subject.

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Rushy and insesitive narration

Revisado: 03-06-20

Just after hearing another Kierkegaard's work, Fear and Trembling, with magnificent narration by Mark Meadows, this is being quite a disappointment. After about half hour hearing, I am considering if I should switch to the written version. Although the pronunciation is good and the voice fairly pleasant, the narrator seems to have been in great rush to finish the job, spitting sentences like machine gun bullets. I am fairly used to hear philosophy audio-books, but here I found impossible to follow author's line of thought without reducing the speed to 75%. An that is not to mention all the Kierkegaard poetic that was lost with this insensitive treatment.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Great book and Formidable Narration

Revisado: 03-06-20

Enough has been written on this marvelous work. Here, I have nothing to add,
As for the narration, before buying this audio-book I seriously considered if hearing instead of reading was appropriate considering the nature of this work. But now am short of word to praise the magnificent performance of Mark Meadows in a task that is as challenging as it could be. Kierkegaard's thoughtfulness and poetics, drama and perplexity have found a perfect translation in a narration that is by itself a work of art.

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esto le resultó útil a 12 personas

A lot of merit, but bad as introduction to Thomism

Revisado: 12-31-18

This audiobook is being sold as “Beginners Guide”, and it is therefore being assessed as such. If not for the unfortunate decision of the editors to direct to be marketed in that way, I would rate it better. Such poor judgment will certainly influence my willingness to acquire other titles marketed by Bolinda. How can a work that barely mentions Summa Theologica and the concept of natural law be considered a minimally decent introduction to Thomism?

The author defends his points intelligently and elegantly, though not always in completely convincing or fallacy free manner. While I disagree with most of its conclusions, hearing it made me reexamine my beliefs in a way they now lay on more solid basis. I see no way to acquire any depth in philosophy (or in any other complex matters) other than allowing your thoughts to be challenged by people that think differently than you.

But I perceive this audiobook as completely unsuited for beginners, for following reasons:
- There is no intention here to offer a comprehensive general overview of the Thomist ideas, situate them in the cultural context, examine the influences in and out of it and point their place in the history of the western thought. For such things that are generally important for beginners, you must look elsewhere. This is just an in-depth discussion of cherry picked philosophical concepts which are relevant to the authors religious agenda. All that is completely legitimate aim for a book, but not for a beginners guide to Aquinas.
- Though the author exposes it's arguments in clear words and in logical order, what you will find there an unbroken sequence of concatenated arguments, with no quarter for those which do not have their attention 100% committed to the hearing. And if you wish to do the hearing in a reflective and critical way, which is the only way that makes the endeavor worth, you will often find yourself pausing and retroceding. In my opinion, if you are not already deep into philosophy, this title is much better suited to reading that to hearing. I believe most of the beginners will find it very dry.
- This is a defense of the Thomism by a staunch believer, with both feet stuck in the 13th century. Any opposing view to Thomism is exposed only insofar as to be most easily refuted. I think the beginners would benefit from a more critical and balanced point of view.
- The author deals with Aristotelian/Thomist thought mostly as a single block, and you may finish the book without an idea on distinctive contribution of St. Thomas built on top of its Aristotelian basis.

The author pursues two objectives. The first is to show that the Thomist conceptual bases are still an acceptable point of departure, undefeated by the passing of time. The second,is to show that the Thomist ideas, and in particular its proofs of God existence and of different aspects of the divine nature, form a body with perfect internal coherence, and with many advantages over the “mechanicist” view of the nature.

As for the first objective, the author missed the point of his foes: Aristotelian assumptions were abandoned by most of the modern scholars not because they are incoherent, but because its bloated ontology it is not necessary to account for the phenomena – it does not pass the Occam’s razor. And also because the “mechanicism” is able to obtain progress where Aristotelian/Thomist alternative strikes a dead end. As for the second objective I believe he does much better, though not perfect, job in showing the internal coherence than the advantages.

The most relevant issue with the “mechanicism” would be that the Thomist scholasticism allegedly allows to grasp the ultimate causes (God) while “mechanicism” does not. Here, the author does the same thing he sometimes accuses his opponent of doing: lists as shortcoming something that is indeed out of scope. “Mechanicism” does leave the place of the last cause vacant, and it will always be possible to fit God there. Indeed, the philosophers that brought the dominion of scholasticism to the end were mostly deeply religious people, such as Descartes and Leibniz.

One of such assumptions is the alleged impossibility of the infinite regress. There is nothing indisputable in it, and many modern scientist do indeed postulate a cyclic nature of the universe. The possibility of infinite regress does indeed nicely cohere with what we know. The author further argues for the necessity of a finite chain of necessarily simultaneous causal events, which would always begin, of course, with a divinity which sustain the functioning of the universe. For that to work, he would need to rule out one of the basic facts of our experience: that the thing that happen in past and the present have causal bearings on future.

The author goes so far in order to save the Aquinas arguments as to modify them when he notices they will not withstand the criticism as they are. The most obvious example is the proof of the existence of God from degrees of perfection. There, the author is forced to sacrifice the generality of the Aquinas’ claim to restrict it only to God’s transcendental perfections, turning it effectively in Feserian, and not Thomist, thesis. But a lot of things still remain unexplained. Why some properties require the reference to the superlative perfection and other not? Why we could not use as reference of perfection the most perfect thing we know from our immediate experience? And finally, how we can establish as reference the divine perfection our mind is not even able to grasp?

My general impression is that author, as Aquinas himself, picks the base assumptions that will allow for the pretended final conclusion. And it all becomes circularly referenced: the author departs from the final cause, which, the author admits that (at least in case of inanimate substances) must be lent by God, to prove the God as existing. And it is a large detour to come to a rather obvious conclusion: that God is able to plug all the gaps in knowledge.

For me, the existence of God is still a matter of personal belief. And maybe it is meant to be like that. If we were supposed to reach such knowledge rationally, God would have no problems in providing easily accessible evidences for it. Where the atheist may see just the lack of evidences, the Christians may see a God that values faith above everything. And faith may only exist if there is space left for doubt.

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My best Audible experience

Revisado: 11-06-18

I am very much impressed with the degree of zeal, subtlety and passion poured in this course. My initial prejudices were proven unfounded: the author presented the thoughts of different thinkers, from St Augustine to Marx with honesty and care, and the religious biases I expected from his background were nowhere to be found. That is something very difficult to achieve, except when author genuinely admires the richness of human though. The course is excellent since the beginning, but its finest hour is in the final chapters. The language is plain, without boastful displays of erudition, placing no unnecessary hindrances to understanding. But the challenge here is not to understand, but to confront the learning with the experience of our actual world, our thought and our deeds. And if the course hits only your intellect and fails to dialogue with your emotions, you really lost something.

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