Naming and Necessity by Saul A. Kripke My rating: 4 of 5 stars It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It’s wrong. You may suspect me of proposing another theory in its place; but I hope not, because I’m sure it’s wrong too if it is a theory. Like many other works of philosophy (and those of other subjects, for that matter), Naming and Necessity will likely be perplexing if you do not know what the author is arguing against. At the time that Kripke gave these lectures, the dominant theory in the philosophy of language was ..read more

What We Owe to Each Other by T.M. Scanlon My rating: 3 of 5 stars Like many readers of this book, I was led here by the show The Good Place—though my path was indirect. A friend of mine spent months trying to convince me to watch it, arguing that it was “made for me.” But I very rarely watch TV and I never felt compelled to make an exception for the show, however brilliant it may have been. About a year after my friend moved away, however, I received this book in the mail. Apparently, this relatively obscure philosophy text was referred to multiple times in the show, as the protagonist slow ..read more

Three Zen Sutras: The Heart, The Diamond, and The Platform Sutras by Red Pine My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a lamp, a cataract, a shooting star an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning view all created things like this. This is a fascinating group of texts. The first in the book is the very brief Heart Sutra. It is short enough to be memorized and recited, like the Lord’s Prayer; and true to its name, it contains the “heart” of much Buddhist teaching, specifically with the famous lines “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” The sutra is, in essence, a giant neg ..read more

From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays by Willard Van Orman Quine My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is difficult for me to review, mainly because there were so many parts of it that I did not fully understand. Quine is not writing for the general reader; he is writing for professional philosophers—a category that excludes people such as myself, who have not taken a single course in formal logic. Nevertheless, there are some parts of this book—particularly the first two essays, “On What There Is” and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”—which can be understood by the persistent ..read more

Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty My rating: 3 of 5 stars There are few things more unpleasant than reading a book that you do not understand. One is writing a review of one. But as this is the life I have chosen, I must come to terms with the hardship. There are various strategies for this predicament, none perfect. You can admit that you do not understand (embarrassing), pretend that you understand (risky), or try even harder to understand (exhausting). I have found that the surest method is usually to mix all three, hopefully keeping the reader guessing as to which stra ..read more

The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 by Arthur Schopenhauer My rating: 3 of 5 stars To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial. Arthur Schopenhauer is possibly the Western philosopher most admired by non-philosophers. Revered by figures as diverse as Richard Wagner, Albert Einstein, and Jorge Luis Borges, Schopenhauer’s influence within philosophy has been comparatively muted. True, Nietzsche absorbed and then repudiated Schopenhauer, while Wittgenstein and Ryle took kerne ..read more

Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre My rating: 3 of 5 stars Slime is the agony of water. I first heard of this book from my dad. “I had to read this in college,” he told me. “We looked at every type of being. Being-in-myself, being-for-myself, being-of-myself, being-across-myself, being-by-myself. I went crazy trying to read that thing.” Ever since that memorable description, this book has held a special allure for me. It has everything to attract a self-styled intellectual: a reputation for difficulty, a hefty bulk, a pompous title, and the imprimatur of a famous name. Clearly I had ..read more

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus My rating: 4 of 5 stars I still vividly remember my writing class in my first semester of college. Our professor was a lover of paradoxes. She had us read Kafka and Borges, whom none of us could understand. And she had a habit of asking impossible questions—such as “What does it mean to be infinitely finite?”—and savoring the uncomfortable silences that followed. Once, she even scared us half to death by asking one of these questions, and than yelping like a banshee half a minute later. Quite a good professor. The final section of this ..read more

Basic Writings by Martin Heidegger My rating: 4 of 5 stars Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a subjectivizing. It does not let things: be. A Gentle Warning In matters philosophical, it is wise to be skeptical of interpretations. An interpretation can be reasonable or unreasonable, interesting or uninteresting, compelling or uncompelling; but an interpretation, by its very nature, can never be false or true. Thus, we must be very careful when relying on secondary literature; for what is secondary literature but a collection of interpretations? Personally, I don’t like anybo ..read more

Pensées by Blaise Pascal My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pascal seems to have been born for greatness. At a young age he displayed an intense talent for mathematics, apparently deducing a few propositions of Euclid by himself; and he matured into one of the great mathematical minds of Europe, making fundamental contributions to the science of probability. While he was at it, he invented an adding machine: the beginning of our adventures in computing. Later on in his short life, after narrowly escaping a carriage accident, the young man had an intense conversion experience; and he devoted the rest o ..read more