Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
by David Eagleman
Written by neuroscientist David Eagleman, Sum is an interesting collection of forty short vignettes, each with a different take on the afterlife. Imaginative, clever, and sometimes funny, each story serves as a modern day parable on existence.
While I found it an enjoyable read, Sum doesn't really address weighty philosophical topics such as human suffering, poverty, violence, or justice. It reminded me more of an episode of "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits" than a serious attempt to come to terms with the human condition.
Sum's central insight is perhaps this: imagining the afterlife is like a Rorschach inkblot test. How we envision the afterlife can tell us something about ourselves, and can serve as a jumping off point to deeper reflection.
Hardcover: 107 pages
Publisher: Pantheon (February 10, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307377342
ISBN-13: 978-0307377340
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
The Book of Tea
|
16.6.06
The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura
Reading and drinking tea have been connected in my mind for a few years now. My introduction to teas began quite accidentally. I was looking for a nice quiet neighborhood coffee shop with comfortable chairs as a place to escape family life for the occasional evening, and catch up on my reading. This search brought me to a tea shop, where I immediately fell in love with the different blends of green tea. I've been hooked ever since!
The Book of Tea is a short work that traces the history and development of tea drinking and the tea ceremony as it came from China to Japan in the 9th century, became tied to Zen Buddhism, and survives to this day. In one interesting quote that reminded me of my own favorite tea shop, "The tea room or tea house avoids any note of ostentation. It is made of common materials. The tools, the table, the teapot, and the ornament --all must be humble and harmonious." (p. xiii) Okakura goes on to tie tea drinking to a balanced, non-elitist sensibility. "It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocao." (p. 12).
Yet he can't just leave it at that. Okakura reminds me of more modern marketing for green tea (what hasn't green tea been claimed to cure?) when he ties tea drinking to philosophy, aesthetics, religion --even hygiene. "The philosophy of tea is not mere aetheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry; inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste." (p. 4)
"Lao-tzu himself, with his quaint humor, says, 'If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it.'" (p. 29)
Maybe tea really is "all that." Maybe it isn't. Either way, I enjoy a good bracing mug of gunpowder green tea in the morning, a lighter green tea with mango for the afternoon, and a low caffeine China white in the evening.
PUBLISHER: Shambhala. Boston and London. 2001. (originally written around 1904) ISBN: 0-87773-918-8
Reading and drinking tea have been connected in my mind for a few years now. My introduction to teas began quite accidentally. I was looking for a nice quiet neighborhood coffee shop with comfortable chairs as a place to escape family life for the occasional evening, and catch up on my reading. This search brought me to a tea shop, where I immediately fell in love with the different blends of green tea. I've been hooked ever since!
The Book of Tea is a short work that traces the history and development of tea drinking and the tea ceremony as it came from China to Japan in the 9th century, became tied to Zen Buddhism, and survives to this day. In one interesting quote that reminded me of my own favorite tea shop, "The tea room or tea house avoids any note of ostentation. It is made of common materials. The tools, the table, the teapot, and the ornament --all must be humble and harmonious." (p. xiii) Okakura goes on to tie tea drinking to a balanced, non-elitist sensibility. "It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocao." (p. 12).
Yet he can't just leave it at that. Okakura reminds me of more modern marketing for green tea (what hasn't green tea been claimed to cure?) when he ties tea drinking to philosophy, aesthetics, religion --even hygiene. "The philosophy of tea is not mere aetheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry; inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste." (p. 4)
"Lao-tzu himself, with his quaint humor, says, 'If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it.'" (p. 29)
Maybe tea really is "all that." Maybe it isn't. Either way, I enjoy a good bracing mug of gunpowder green tea in the morning, a lighter green tea with mango for the afternoon, and a low caffeine China white in the evening.
PUBLISHER: Shambhala. Boston and London. 2001. (originally written around 1904) ISBN: 0-87773-918-8
Making Sense
|
14.6.06
Making Sense: Philosophy in the Headlines, by Julian Baggini
I was originally drawn to this book because of the title, "Making Sense" with its constructionist overtones. While the book is more an overview of philosophical thinking and how it can be applied to understanding current events, I still think it was well worth my time.
First, this was a great book for explaining philosophical concepts and critical thinking without getting weighed down in big terms. I took one philosophy class in college. We read Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and others. My mind quickly glazed over in that way that only philosophy can make a young mind glaze over. Baggini, on the other hand, is very practical in his approach to philosophy. In this book philosophy is a means to an end; used to think clearly and help unravel the assumptions behind the issues for major news stories of our day. Of course the fact that utilitarianism seems to be Baggini's core philosophical assumption doesn't hurt his presentation!
Most of the book is devoted to taking specific examples and thinking through them in a rational manner. The Clinton sex scandal, the war on terrorism, stem cell research, abortion, and genetically modified foods are just a few of the issues he tackles. In each case he carefully asks questions aimed to deconstruct the arguments used for and against. Disassembled in this way, the reader can take a look at the various pieces that make up an argument and decide for themselves what is compelling and what is not. Even when you don't agree with Baggini's conclusions on the matter (and often I did not) his process helped me think through issues in a more reasoned way.
The strongest part of the book was Baggini's contrast between rhetoric and reasoned argument. Watch closely the next time you see a politician speak on TV. Do they assume their conclusion (rhetoric) or do they provide evidence to support drawing their conclusion (reasoned argument)? If every voter could make the distinction between reason and rhetoric there would be a revolution in the way people think about issues! While it may not end up affecting the outcome of elections (for I think reasoned arguments can often be made on many sides of an issue) I think it would inoculate us against some of the more extreme positions out there, and foster better domestic and foreign policy.
Baggini's treatment of religion, on the other hand, was somewhat weak. I was raised as a fundamentalist and trained to see reason and faith to be in strict opposition; now I'm an Episcopalian who sees reason and faith as complementing each other. Baggini critiques the fundamentalist view of religion, but seems unaware of any alternatives to this other than atheism. Most people of faith lie somewhere in the middle, and it was disappointing to read Baggini paint them with such a broad brush.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 15, 2004); ISBN: 0192805061
I was originally drawn to this book because of the title, "Making Sense" with its constructionist overtones. While the book is more an overview of philosophical thinking and how it can be applied to understanding current events, I still think it was well worth my time.
First, this was a great book for explaining philosophical concepts and critical thinking without getting weighed down in big terms. I took one philosophy class in college. We read Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and others. My mind quickly glazed over in that way that only philosophy can make a young mind glaze over. Baggini, on the other hand, is very practical in his approach to philosophy. In this book philosophy is a means to an end; used to think clearly and help unravel the assumptions behind the issues for major news stories of our day. Of course the fact that utilitarianism seems to be Baggini's core philosophical assumption doesn't hurt his presentation!
Most of the book is devoted to taking specific examples and thinking through them in a rational manner. The Clinton sex scandal, the war on terrorism, stem cell research, abortion, and genetically modified foods are just a few of the issues he tackles. In each case he carefully asks questions aimed to deconstruct the arguments used for and against. Disassembled in this way, the reader can take a look at the various pieces that make up an argument and decide for themselves what is compelling and what is not. Even when you don't agree with Baggini's conclusions on the matter (and often I did not) his process helped me think through issues in a more reasoned way.
The strongest part of the book was Baggini's contrast between rhetoric and reasoned argument. Watch closely the next time you see a politician speak on TV. Do they assume their conclusion (rhetoric) or do they provide evidence to support drawing their conclusion (reasoned argument)? If every voter could make the distinction between reason and rhetoric there would be a revolution in the way people think about issues! While it may not end up affecting the outcome of elections (for I think reasoned arguments can often be made on many sides of an issue) I think it would inoculate us against some of the more extreme positions out there, and foster better domestic and foreign policy.
Baggini's treatment of religion, on the other hand, was somewhat weak. I was raised as a fundamentalist and trained to see reason and faith to be in strict opposition; now I'm an Episcopalian who sees reason and faith as complementing each other. Baggini critiques the fundamentalist view of religion, but seems unaware of any alternatives to this other than atheism. Most people of faith lie somewhere in the middle, and it was disappointing to read Baggini paint them with such a broad brush.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 15, 2004); ISBN: 0192805061
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