POL-PHL-ECO

The author has no clue what they are talking about

Revisado: 08-14-24

The author could have written the same book by typing in "Describe for me a negative assessment of postmodernism" in ChatGPT. Postmodernism is certainly not perfect, but the author does not give a balanced report. It's so one-sided against that it's not even accurate in terms of just reporting what the actual views are. The author is clearly not a philosopher, and it shows a lot. He has no real grasp of anything he's talking about. He sounds more like a journalist than a field expert who actually comprehends anything he's talking about. Why they had him write this book for the series beats me, but it is by far one of the worst books on philosophy or theory or similar that I have ever seen.

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Great Inquiry Into the Social Meaning of Death

Revisado: 09-18-23

This is a remarkably good phenomenological investigation into the sociality of death. It's not about ghosts or ESP or pseudoscience like that, as the title might make some think. It's about the way humans from ancient times through now have coped with the fact of there being people who are "having-been" rather than currently living and how we living humans try to wrestle with how that should affect our lives now. Particular examples would be the burial sites of indigenous peoples, the sociality with the dead of the historical academic enterprise itself, and grieving the death of a loved one.

In terms of precedent, the author is invoking Heidegger, yes, but thankfully he is rebuking Heidegger with the better thought of Emmanuel Levinas who instead of seeing death as a self-centered phenomenon of just about me, sees it as something that always links me to others and my concern for them, their survival, and their legacies.

Although not mentioned in the book (and I as a big fan of Levinas wish it would have been), one can see clearly the enormous practical difference their differing views played when comparing Heidegger being a Nazi who never even acknowledged the horrific nature of the Holocaust for decades after and Levinas who spent his life trying to lay out the philosophical wisdom ot prevent such tragedy from ever happening again. But for Heidegger, life AND death is all about me. For Levinas, life AND death is about caring for the Other.

The author follows along the thought of others as well like the almost forgotten but hugely important Alfred Schutz, who combined Edmund Husserl's phenomenology with Max Weber's sociology.

Most of all, I really wish this series from Stanford University Press - Cultural Memory in the Present - would put more of their publications on Audible. So far, I only count three. Some of my favorite philosophy books of all time are in this series, and it would be a huge boost to Audible's philosophy collection to have them all available here.

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Horrible in Both Competence and Morality

Revisado: 04-27-23

(I would give 0 stars, if that was an option) I am no Leftist. But I am absolutely not what Friberg is, and no one should be if they care about reality or morality. And what is Friberg, according to his very own words? White supremacist, collectivist, authoritarian, and honestly just not very bright. Either he's very unintelligent or very dishonest, because he contradicts himself backwards and forwards.

- He literally ignores that there is any actual reality of racism. I've heard people like him pretend they themselves are not racist, but never have I heard someone so stupid or dishonest as to implicitly or explicitly deny racism even exists.

- He claims he is against assimilation or for a right to difference, yet in complete contradiction says people SHOULD be assimilated to their ethnic group. Because, and this is emphasized about an actual 100 times in the writing, he's against individualism. And yet he says autonomy and freedom matter to him, BUT that someone is basically somehow just a predetermined product of their race. Again, either very stupid or very dishonest.

- He talks about man as spiritual and against attacks to this, yet then he goes on to root all spirituality biologically and ethnically, which if one has even the most basic understanding of philosophy, even ancient, they know that makes no sense. And although he doesn't outright say so, many of his influences, especially Evola, literally, explicitly hate Christianity. Even Leftist atheists understand Christianity to at the least have contributed culturally. But oh, that's where the alt right doesn't like it, because God forbid God himself preach equality of all human beings in ontological value. They therefore think themselves as God who gets to deem truth and right simply because they say so.

- He claims he is against Negative Legitimization, where he says the Left says "Vote for us, because we're not the alt right," but he does the EXACT SAME thing. He says the Left is wrong on this and that. Why, you ask? Because he said so. He says he is right on this or that. Why, you ask? Because he said so. He offers no proof of what is natural, unnatural, true, false, etc. - no argumentation, no evidence, not even statistics. He just says to believe him because he's not them. Again, very stupid or very dishonest.

- He is authoritarian. He believes that hierarchies should rule people, rather than persons ruling themselves. But of course he thinks that if they're the same race, then it'll all be just fine. How stupid is this man? Obviously completely illiterate in history. Neither Left nor Right authoritarianism has ever been good for any subjected to it. He says he believes in autonomy at all nonpolitical levels, but in politics, he thinks you must submit to masters over you who are superior because of God only knows why - just like extreme Leftist communists. He thinks "if only we have the right people." Like. Every. Stupid. Communist. Again, very stupid or very dishonest.

- The man is racist. Let's be honest here. I'm not saying he's racist because he's born white and stained with the sin since being a baby or whatever bogus comprehensive explanation he waves around to make the magic trick of disappearing racism by saying only those explanations of it are used by all people to refer to it. The man is literally racist. He thinks a human being is determined by their genetic history. Ah yes, because Socrates' dad, grandfather, and great-great-great grandfather were all as bright as him. And Friberg lives in Viktor Orban's Hungary now, literally somewhere where Chinese, Central Asian nomads, and Iranian peoples comprise much of the genetic makeup of the people (since global migration has occurred for all time, since before there were even homo sapiens!) - a cool diversity I myself think is awesome and fascinating; yet he and Orban, if they were consistent with everything they say, they would claim it to LITERALLY ruin the country, yet to the contrary they think the country is awesome - how do they explain their total contradiction? And Friberg says he respects a right to difference, but he then states that Europeans are superior and literally calls other people groups "subordinate." Not only does he make this obviously and unambiguously racist claim, but he does so with absolutely zero argument, zero evidence, zero examples, zero anything. He just says it as a matter of dogma. You're supposed to believe him because he said so. Which is literally how every white supremacist grounds their entire argument: "Uh huh, because I said so, and because it's the case because." Again, either very very very stupid or very very very dishonest.

The last thing I'll add to all this is, I might be wrong. He might not be either very stupid or very dishonest - he might be both! And evil. Let's not forget that.

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Outstanding for All Christians and Non-Christians

Revisado: 11-05-22

An excellent, detailed, and understandable walk-through. Highly recommend for anyone - Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, of other faiths, or atheist. This information is crucial to understanding American society and history in particular, with it mix of all Christian denominations. I think it's enriching to any Christian believer and educational and intriguing to everyone else as well. One of the best of The Great Courses, and I've listened to many of them.

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Best Narrator I've Ever Heard

Revisado: 05-11-22

I've listened to over 100 books on Audible, and this narrator blows everyone else out of the water. He is so good at portraying different voices, different accents, different emotions, etc. It'd be nice if he narrated everything on Audible. It would make it easier to read more and more.

The story is good but not as good as possible or as hoped. It is not nearly as related to Don Quixote as I expected, which I finished recently, so I have fresh in my mind. It is almost as funny in parts though. It is a little too pop-culturey for me, but it still had a lot of the deep stuff I like too - e.g. discussions on philosophy, physics, literary theory, social problems, etc. It's definitely enjoyable, but having heard so much about Rushdie, I was expecting it to stand out more, to be more unique, more profound, and more comprehensively astounding. I would call it good though, not astounding.

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Great Narrator

Revisado: 05-28-21

Incredibly good narrator who really gives you a sense of the whole feel of the novel and each character in it

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Best of Philosophy Books

Revisado: 05-18-21

Having studied graduate philosophy, I would say this is one of the best philosophy books I have ever read. Holiday understands what philosophy is really about - real life. He expresses the truths of Stoic words through the living of Stoics and others who showed that there is no mountain too tough to be traversed.

Like Nicholas Nassim Taleb expresses in his book Antifragile, obstacles are not ends of the road. They are, in fact, bridges to even greater success. Look at anybody who has succeeded. Michael Jordan got cut from his high school team. Barack Obama lost his first run for Congress. Marcus Aurelius had a close confidant betray him. But those who know the route to success is never a straight line are the ones who make it there, forged in the fires of struggle by having not just made it out alive, but by having become better for it.

This thing we call life is what Socrates thought philosophy was about, as did the Stoics, St. Augustine, and more recent existentialists (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marcel, Sartre, Camus, Buber...). Philosophy as only parsing between logic is as complete as a body with only a head and nothing else. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, not the lust for total knowledge.

Holiday's book shows him to be wise beyond his years, and beyond many who have far more years of "professional education" in loving wisdom. Many of the professionals wouldn't know true philosophy if it stared them in the face.

This book teaches, as my mother - who also was not a "professional philosopher" - used to tell me, "A trial can make you better, or it can make you bitter. It's your choice." We aren't left with a binary of destruction or survival. We have the option to do better than survive through disaster; we have the option to thrive.

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Religion the Right Way

Revisado: 01-01-21

Dr. Crosby does an incredible job at explaining the profound significance of the thought of St. John Henry Newman for our daily lives. A relationship with God is not merely some abstract matter, nor is it merely some simple good feeling. It is a personal communion with He who created us each individually, who sees us each individually, and who cares about each of us individually.

Personalism as a school of thought in general balances between the errors of individualism, which we see in a hyper form in many Western societies, and collectivism, which reduces the person to a cog in the machine. It sees that man is an individual endowed with subjectivity but is always in community, in intersubjectivity with others. It recognizes that man is personally free and responsible, but is fulfilled in freely responding to value and to the Other as another I.

Crosby shows how Newman, though not a professional philosopher by trade, is as shrewd in many of the matters of philosophy of the human person as contemporaries like his Protestant counterpart Kierkegaard and later phenomenologists and existentialists like Husserl, Scheler, Marcel, and others, many of whom were personalists. If you are a philosopher who is also a believer, this is the perfect book for you. Newman is a much more philosophically sophisticated thinker than most theologians, seeing things extremely lucidly and rigorously in terms that probe the depths and the crux of each matter.

Newman is a thinker who bridges the gap between a dry abstract thought of Scholasticism and its mainly cerebral relation to God and modern existential thought which highlights the now undeniably obvious centrality of the heart. If God is love and in relationship with us, then certainly a lot more matters than our intellect in relation to him as some Christian relationship in general. He wants you to love him as only you can do. And the same goes for your calling in life and to others.

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Husserl WILL Change How You Think About Philosophy

Revisado: 05-12-20

Bravo to Ukemi for putting up a work of one of the most important and influential thinkers of all time! If you want to understand Continental Philosophy, read this book. It is difficult to get through, but it is profound. Husserl is original and extremely insightful. Every footstep of continental thought since Husserl's earlier work Logical Investigations (1900/1901) bears his imprint and influence. There is nowhere you can go the last 100 years in continental philosophy and not see his impact. Later thinkers may have surpassed him in notoriety - Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, to name a few - but they arguably did not surpass him in influence. They and every one of their peers built their systems on his method. Many studied under him and/or wrote their first books about his thought. He is not always given the credit by them that he is due, but his work is as critical to the entire last 120 years of continental philosophy as Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, and Ludwig Wittgenstein are combined to analytic philosophy.

Anyone in Analytic Philosophy can gain a wealth of additional understanding by delving into early phenomenology. Husserl's phenomenology is critical for contemporary contextualizing of nearly every philosophical sub-discipline - Epistemology, Ethics, Logic, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Ontology, and Metaphysics. If you've already read the accounts of intentionality by Searle, you will be delighted by the intricacy of Husserl's account. If you're trying to understand the workings of consciousness and have tread through the waters of Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, and Psychology, look also to Husserl's phenomenology. And if you want to grasp anything from Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, or postmodern thought, Husserl is the reference point, the origin from which their variety of viewpoints find common starting points.

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The Story of a Political, Moral, & Spiritual Hero

Revisado: 02-16-20

What this book (and the recent Terrence Malick film A Hidden Life) expresses most clearly is that A REGULAR PERSON'S LIFE MATTERS. Malick's film title came from a Georg Eliot quote, which is just as relevant to this book: "For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."

If you have seen Malick's A Hidden Life, this is the biography of the hero in it. If you have not seen the movie, I highly recommend it, for in term's of filmmaking, it is the equivalent quality of a painting by Raphael or Michelangelo. Malick immerses you in the world of the character. In addition to this biography, another insightful resource is Erna Putz's Franz Jagerstatter: Letters and Writings from Prison.

Sociologist Gordon Zahn does a superb job describing the life of Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian man in WWII who put his life on the line to stand up for what was right. Zahn provides keen insights with his social science background but also does great biographical scholarship, having interviewed the actual people who knew this man (the book having been written in the 60's). The table of contents is as follows:
1. Introduction, 2. St. Radegund [his city], 3. The Young Ruffian, 4. The New Man, 5. From Enns to Berlin, 6. One of God's Special Friends, 7. A Train to Hell, 8. The Martyr and His Village, 9. The Marty and His Church, 10. The Martyr as a Rebel: A Sociological Summary, 11. Appendix - The Jagerstatter Documents [his writings].

Franz was called up to serve in the Austrian army after Hitler took over the country, and he refused. To accept any military post required a loyalty oath to Hitler. He would not do that. His neighbors and priests told him to give in, viewing their pleas as saving his life. Soldiers and bureaucrats tried to compel him numerous times to be a piece of the totalitarian machine of Nazism. Constantly, he was given chances to give up on his stand of conscience and have his life spared, BUT he stood firm.

Franz was asked why he should do what was right if doing so would not "change the course of things." In philosophical jargon, we would describe this as a consequentialist argument, where morality is viewed as determined by the consequences of one's actions. Furthermore, he had a wife and four children (three with his wife and one from a relationship before his marriage) who he would assuredly never see again as a result of his stance. He was beseeched to look out for them. But Franz believed there are things that are wrong no matter how you hash them out, and being complicit in them can never be justified. He understood that morality is not weighed on the scales of results, for in that case, anything and everything can be justified.

Franz had the kind of moral heroism rarely seen throughout the history of the world. Despite the lack of geopolitical results his actions would bring and despite the costs they would bring to his family, he remained firm. His strength was fueled by faith and love - his faith in God and love for his family. Zahn recounts how some priests after the war still did not want to praise Franz's actions, since they did not want to make the average Catholic think they must be so bold in each of their own lives. But Zahn asks if in contrast Franz should be held up instead as exactly the kind of example for all to live by.

As stated above, what this book (and the Malick movie) expresses most clearly is that A REGULAR PERSON'S LIFE MATTERS. No, he did not "change the course of things." No, he did not stop the war. BUT he did what was right. As so many others who were considered higher in the eyes of society capitulated to evil, turned a blind eye, or simply stayed away from resistance because of fear of persecution or execution, Franz had the heroic courage to stand for what was right. As seen in the book (but even more in the movie), Franz had a beautiful family and a deep love for his wife whom he cared about dearly. His life was important, valuable, and meaningful, even though he wasn't some famous or wealthy person. His ordinary life in a peasant community was rich and purposeful. He gave that all up, and this act was also supremely purposeful. He didn't "win" in results, but he won in humanity (in opposing a regime that murdered so many human beings), in faith (in opposing a regime that attacked the Catholic Church of which he was a member and attacked its fundamental doctrines of respect for the equal dignity of all persons... and other doctrines), and in community (in opposing a regime that would coopt his country and village and turn them into a instruments for an evil machine). He knew that might does not make right and that victory is not the measure of morality. The victory of standing firm in conscience against oppression stands above the victory of the jackboot and rifle in oppressing. As the movie quotes Socrates, "It is better to suffer injustice than to commit it." That is no easy maxim to live by, but it is one Franz, like Socrates, showed us can be lived by.

Ultimately, the life of Franz Jagerstatter shows us that it is not one's power, social position, wealth, reputation, notoriety, results, etc. that build the measure of one's character, but one's choices - what one does.

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