12/2/21

The first half of the book is pretty good going. It's well structured and quite well written too. The many quotes and references to various thinkers contribute to make the text richer. But the author is not taking his role seriously as a guide into philosophy. He presents various points of view only to immediately give his own judgment of them and is leading the reader quite terribly at times instead of letting him draw his own conclusion. The fact that he writes "What do you think?" after half a page of argumentation for one side changes nothing, it's a meaningless gesture.

This malaise becomes very evident about halfway into the book, when the question of god is discussed, and by which time the author has already set the stage with his argumentation that a) dualism is far more plausible than materialism and b) he believes in life after death. Now comes a far more detailed examination of various arguments for and against the existence of god than any section before has received, and the author, so predictably at this point, draws the conclusion any reader can smell from 100 pages back. Worse still, he is using this as a basis from which to discuss other topics later on in the book, all the while considering his case to be a proven one, eg. "life has no meaning if not through god". He actually does a whole chapter on Pascal's wager, prefaced by a hagiography of Pascal to make his wager seem more authoriative.

Fitting perhaps it is that the chapters about the existence of god, which give the appearance of being a central part in the book, betray at times such a lacking intellectual capability that it makes you ask yourself how did I end up reading this book?

This is not "Philosophy for dummies", this is "You're ignorant about philosophy and I'm going to convince you of everything I believe while pretending to be neutral". I feel for this guy's students. ( )

1 110 MORR

Don't remember whether or not I read this. If I did, it didn't make much of an impression.