Book Review-How to Live a Good Life. Edited by: Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary, and Daniel Kaufman

The book is also subtitled: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy. I was unaware that the personal philosophy was important to me until a few years ago when I read another book by Massimo Pigliucci on the ideas of stoicism. I enjoyed it as it made a massive impact on how I viewed my life and how I am to conduct my daily existence. It was natural that when I saw that he had written another book about personal philosophy, I was interested and seeing what else he had to say. 

This book, however, lays out the many different possible personal philosophy that one can choose as their own. It consists of series of essays written by the practitioners of each one of these philosophies. The authors are also scholars in each of these areas in order to ensure that the scholarship is sound and complete in order to make a good argument in favor of each of the philosophies. The idea is for the reader to go through the entire book in order to be swayed by each of the authors to their preferred personal philosophy. Their job is constrained in a very short format, they are to layout the main tenets of the philosophies that they espouse and to make argument on why we should choose that philosophy as our own. The book is split up into four main parts. 

 Part 1 is split amongst the ancient philosophies from the East. It consists of the big three: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism . 

 Part 2 is a regarding the ancient philosophies from the West: Aristotleanism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism. 

Part 3 consists of five religious’ traditions: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Progressive Islam, and Ethical Culture. 

Part 4 is the modern philosophies: Existentialism, Pragmatism, Effective Altruism, and Secular Humanism. 

I found Parts 1 and 2 to be the most compelling, partly because I am familiar with the philosophies within those two parts. The ancient philosophies of the East are my cultural reference, so the concepts and the argument are well known to me. I particularly enjoyed Owen Flanigan’s essay on Buddhism. 

The ancient philosophies from the West is something that I have spent some time learning and I have some understanding of these philosophies. Even though they did not cover all of the western philosophies, which I found curious. Perhaps they felt that the ancient philosophies are similar enough that they had the coverage that they needed. Pigliucci made a much more convincing case in his own book, of course making his case in a much shorter form is very constraining. Part 3 is what most readers would be the most familiar with, since the Judeo-Christian religions are the major part of the western Canon of religion. Less is known in the West about Hinduism or Progressive Islam but both those essays are quite well written. I personally thought that the Ethical Culture essay was the least convincing of the four in that part of the book. It just did not read like there was enough underlying philosophy to make it a viable and strong personal philosophy. Same could be said for Effective Altruism essay. Much to my chagrin, I found the essay on Secular Humanism less than inspiring. I had followed Secular Humanism many years ago and in reading this essay it reminded me why I did not continue to follow the belief as a personal philosophy. 

 I enjoyed the Existentialism and Pragmatism essays, putting them back to back was a great choice, the material lent itself to a very effortful reading, but at the same time I was able to exercise my thoughts with the mental gymnastics I had to perform in order to understand the essays. Interesting thing to me is that while John Kaag is a natural choice to write the chapter on Pragmatism as he had written American Philosophy: A Love Story, a story buttressed by his search through the books and papers of the founders of American Pragmatism, yet he also wrote Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, a revelatory memoir/travelogue regarding Existentialism. I wonder if the two authors had written their essays in parallel and compared notes, since the chapters complemented each other well. 

The most interesting thing that happened to me as I read each essay is that I had come to agree with much of what was written, while being older, I did not find myself switching to each one of these philosophies as I made my way through it as my younger self would have been tempted to do. Instead I stopped looking for orthodoxy and looked to become a true believer, I was happy to pick and choose amongst all these philosophies to try to create my own personal philosophy. If you were to ask me what is my personal philosophy right now? I could not tell you. What I could tell you after reading this book is that I know which parts of each of these philosophies made sense to me. It is almost like I'm back in my college years trying to find a moral and philosophical path for myself, but instead of looking for a single monolithic belief, I have come to the belief that choosing one from column A and one from column B is not such a bad way to go as far as personal philosophies go. 

Consistency of belief is important of course, the logic and reason behind the belief needs to be aligned, but I find that it is not the only thing. The driving motivation in selecting a personal philosophy is that one needs to be true to one’s self, whatever that is, and no monolithic philosophy can encompass all the nuances and variations of my beliefs. Indeed, that is the only way to go as no one person can be happy in a singular set of belief, because we are so different. I enjoyed this book in fits and starts, not because the authors were incapable of writing cogent summaries of their philosophies and make incisive arguments, it all goes back to the material they start with, that made the most difference. It was a nice roller coaster ride through some very intellectually stimulating philosophies.

Book Review-The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis C. Rasmussen

I had been curious about David Hume’s life for a long time but had not yet found a biography that appealed to me. I did not know of his relationship with Adam Smith, I had thought of Adam Smith as an intellect who dealt strictly with economic philosophy. This book brought these two great men of intellect in my mind’s eye. It very effectively told the story of two opposites, a gregarious extravert, David Hume with an introvert that wasn’t as engaging on a social front. The book was laid out chronologically, tracing both men’s lives as it evolved from when they first met until Hume’s passing and beyond, detailing every important aspect of their intertwined lives as loyal friends, effective critics, and sounding boards for each other’s philosophical ideas. The story traces the roots of their friendship as diligently as possible since Smith was an infrequent letter writer. The author, Rasmussen, had to piece together the historical narrative with bits of documentation other people’s surviving writing along with writing from their friends and peers, sometimes squeezing out details through tangential correspondences. Hume contributed mightily as he was a prolific letter writer, so his letters to others helped Rasmussen in this regard. It must have taken a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics and conjecturing for Rasmussen to write a compelling of a narrative as he did here. It was especially fascinating to follow the author along as he tried to reconstruct their debates and friendly thrust and parry on their significant works. The depth of the philosophical arguments and the nuances brought forth by the author was impressive. Even as I was trying to read this with a skeptical eye, the author never overreached his narrative and his conjectures as to the original meaning of the authors were well supported and logical in his conclusions. It is fascinating to essentially reconstruct the debates that these men had over their most intimate thoughts and works. The book was not strictly a restatement of their thoughts however, the author did a remarkable job discussing the event of the day and of their lives and how the current events of the day affected their thoughts and their lives. There was a good amount of discussion regarding each of the men’s employment, as tutors to the wealthy and secretaries to politically well-connected diplomats and other government officials. They both eventually settled down to bucolic lives working as professors in their universities, Hume in Edinburgh and Smith in Glasgow. While the discussion of Hume’s famously anti-religious arguments, The Infidel in the book title referred to Hume, versus Smith’s perceived acquiescence to the religious orthodoxy was very revealing in this recounting: the author states that even though Smith was less overt with his questions regarding the religious orthodoxy of the time – it would be difficult to be as overt as Hume in his opposition to the church – he apparently had more points of agreements with Hume than differences, even though he took pains to ameliorated it to avoid being reviled by those other men of letters at the time. Hume had no such compunctions, indeed, he seemed to delight in tweaking the religious in his irreligiosity It cost him dearly as he was denied employment as professor early on. What is fascinating is the description of how they two friends helped each other in sharpening and developing their arguments represented by their written works. The author patiently and painstakingly traced the discussions between the two friends as they composed their philosophical works over their lifetimes. It is a fascinating intellectual history recounted for our sake. The arguments were recreated through citations and expert interpretations, it presented the points of agreements and disagreements closely and in an unadorned fashion. Even though the explanations were sometimes complex, as all philosophical explanations can be, it was never boring. The discussion of Hume’s work wound its way from his less than enthusiastically received A Treatise of Human Nature to the two enquiries: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals through his Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, and to his most famous work, although it was a work of history rather than philosophy: The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. The narrative of their friendship continued until Hume passed and proceeded beyond that as Smith acted as more or less Hume’s philosophical and literary executor, as he defended his friends’ beliefs after his passing. He did not allow the gossip of the day to distort or misrepresent Hume’s staunch irreligiosity. He made sure that Hume’s brief, but final autobiography, David Hume: My Life, be published posthumously as Hume had wanted. That was a testament to a true friendship, representing a friend as he wanted to be represented. The story presented in this book also did not shortchange Smith. The author took pains to present the entirety of Smith’s works and did not try to sequester his thoughts to his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, as many others have previously tried to do. The author did well in tracing the thread of Smith’s thought and described how The Theory of Moral Sentiment made The Wealth of Nation possible. Indeed, this book was a revelation to someone like me, a dilettante in philosophy and history, it served as an excellent introduction to the genre and it made my intellectual life so much better.

The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments by Peter Catapano, Simon Critchley (Editor)

This is a fantastic compilation of The Stone Reader column that is published in the New York Times for the last few years.

I read the columns on occasion and the level of discourse is uneven but when the article is good, it is fantastic. 

This compilation is a worthy collection of the varied and disarmingly charming topics that the column had elicited over the years. 

It is a book that does not call for being read in one sitting, it is however,a tome to be savored, dissected, and analyzed repeatedly in order to entertain one's mind. A most welcomed series for those time that we need to let our minds reach into the nether reaches of our thoughts and replenish our mental energies while getting away from the daily grind.

It is, a most welcomed respite.