Against Method

This book by Paul Feyerabend is one of the most important and certainly the most radical books of philosophy of science to come out of the twentieth century. It forms almost a perfect sequel to Thomas Kuhn's book in the same field - only, where Kuhn gave us an objective "what happens and how" of revolutions in scientific fields, Feyerabend here gives us a more subjective "what could maybe happen, and how to do it". To use a comparative metaphor, Kuhn wrote of scientific revolution like Marx wrote of its socio-economic equivalent, while Feyerabend writes of it like Che Guevara, chock full of grassroots incitement to properly-informed action and ample tactical advice (using Galileo's career as prime example).

   I won't go into depth with a summary of what he talks about in this book as it spans a huge arena of the history of science, its present and future capacities, and the dynamics at play in determining what we may consider progress in all of this. To give a very brief summary of the main point of the text though, I will say that Feyerabend sees the only sustainably trustworthy epistemological approach to science as that of anarchism. That is to say, when approaching theory, fact, experiment, and so on, the only reasonable guideline to guarantee that progress can intuit itself into the field's grasp on its object is: "anything goes." I like this a lot. It's a healthy reminder that even the most open-minded empiricists can, and do, get bogged down in the accumulation of the best thinking of all the open-minded empiricists who came before them, and thus often cease being effective open-minded empiricists. Epistemological anarchism is an approach that rightly inspires terror in the hearts of academics who have devoted their careers to the minutiae of issues under particular paradigms; however as an approach deigning to liberate and guarantee the continual advancement of any kind of knowledge, it's very difficult to argue with given how unpredictable are the paradigm shifts in any given field of study.

   If you're interested in the philosophy of science I'm going to assume that you've already read this, but if you're merely a scientist who has given relatively little thought to the epistemological conditions of your work, I'd highly recommend this if you want a revolutionary energising shock.

the Structure of Scientific Revolutions

This book by Thomas Kuhn is probably the most significant work in the philosophy of science to come out of the twentieth century. In it, Kuhn skips around the history of scientific endeavour to sketch a theory of how progress in these fields happens. Science of a particular era subsists in what he calls a paradigm, a collectively-agreed-upon web of assumptions, problems and techniques that define the scope and limits of the field at that time. It is only when a particular paradigm begins to encounter anomalies that it is unequipped to explain, and thus enters a period of crisis, that hitherto unthought-of methods and speculations emerge, and thus a scientific revolution (think Copernicus overturning the Ptolemaic astronomical system, or Einstein going so far beyond Newton that the previously accepted physics became a redundant rump) takes place - the paradigm shifts, and new modes of understanding become possible, new questions become salient, and new experiments become required to continue advancing the frontiers of knowledge. I was pleasantly surprised by how readable this book was - I'm interested in science but don't read much of it as I find myself either feeling alienated by the abundance of jargon or patronized by the author's obvious overcompensations in avoiding jargon, but Kuhn avoids both extremes and explores this whole nest of topics in an accessible and enlightening way. Absolutely highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the history and philosophy of science.

Logic

This book by Wilfrid Hodges is an introduction to the field of elementary logic. I bought a copy of this way back in 2012 after my interview at Oxford university, having found out that this was the standard textbook for first year logic in the philosophy strand of PPE that I had applied for - then I didn't get in, so I never got round to reading it.* Until now. Formal logic straddles that bizarre border between philosophical and mathematical kinds of thinking, but despite maths being far from my best subject I found Hodges's distillation of the core principles, methods, and tools at play to be well-paced, accessible, and engaging.

   We start off with the very basics - sentences as expressions of beliefs, how we determine whether one of these is true or not, ambiguities and borderline cases entailed herein, how these simple constituents of thought can be built up into more complex forms, and how one can test these for logical consistency and validity. Moving onto the next level up, we are introduced to logical analysis and its truth-functors, the process of converting sentences into tableaux, and the formal language of propositional calculus. Then we work through designators, identity, relations, and quantifiers, all the while relating all of this back to everything we've learnt so far. The penultimate section puts it all together in predicate logic, before finally ending on a section that considers the problems that logicians are still wrestling with (as despite having been an established field of philosophy/mathematics since at least Aristotle, most of the major advancements have been made only in the last three or four centuries and there are still areas displaying niggling room for improvements to be made) and where these may, or may not logically be able to, go in the future.

   Aside from being an extremely user-friendly introductory text, never assuming you to be familiar with a term or concept or technique not already covered by Hodges himself, this book really cements itself as of academic value by its inclusion in every section of several exercises relating to what you've just read. I tried to do most** of these throughout my reading, and was pleasantly surprised to note that I got on the whole (unsurprisingly with the margins slipping the closer to the end of the book I got) about 60-65% of my answers (all the correct answers are included in a very lengthy appendix) correct - which in university terms is a 2:1 so I'm pretty chuffed about that.

   Formal logic is not a field that being good at means you're going to be right all the time. That's not what logic is or does. Formal logic is a field that being good at does, however, mean that you're going to be secure in the validity and consistency of your own truth claims in the context of their premises as your beliefs. Logic is not an answer - not does it supply these; it is a tool for working out whether any given answer is commensurate with the questions being asked. Halfway through a complex debate it's hardly reasonable to hold up a finger to request a pause in the discourse while you break down every sentence uttered thus far in the established context into a predicate tableaux to make sure that both sides are debating logically. But the more familiar you get with the linguistic and Obvious elements at play in logical analysis the easier it will be for you to spot and avoid invalid or inconsistent sets of claims. Truth is Obvious when it is so, but why then does argumentation exist? Let beliefs be what they subjectively will be, and let logic never supersede itself to determine those but only govern its own realm - that is, of thinking well. And this book will help you get better at that.

* I went on to study philosophy and economics for my undergraduate in Sheffield, then a Masters in politics - so I got to do PPE after all, screw you Oxford... that said, I still wish I'd read this sooner after acquiring this, as it may well have helped me boost my grades anyway.

** Anything that could be answered by pencil scribbling in the margins of the book itself I devoted my full effort to - but a fair few of the exercises demanded a reader to construct truth tables or sentence tableaux or what have you, which are not the kind of things you can fit in the margins of an A5 textbook, and though I did attempt some of these properly, I didn't always have both scrap paper to hand AND the mental wherewithal to bother, so in these cases I simply read the correct answer in the appendix and then re-read the exercise and worked through it in my head until I was confident I understood why the answer was what it was.

Think

This book by Simon Blackburn is a general, broad, accessible introduction of some of the key areas in philosophy. I had read it before, but shortly before I started my undergraduate in philosophy and therefore before I started this blog - but decided to re-read it because my youngest brother is currently studying philosophy for his A-levels and I want to give it him for his birthday but also make sure that it was an appropriate text for his level.

   Blackburn writes well, as eruditely as accessibly - he never introduces jargon terms without pre-empting them in common sense language, he never presumes that his readers are familiar with any particular thinkers or concepts, etc. Anyway, throughout the bitesize-enough-but-still-meaty eight chapters of the book he deals with: knowledge, mind, free will, the self, God, reasoning, the world, and 'what to do'. Across the brief sketches of philosophical history he outlines in these chapters he does manage to convey a largely helpful picture of some of the key themes that philosophers have been wrestling with for millennia, as well as diving somewhat deeper into particular thinkers who seem to shed further insight (though if you ask me, Blackburn has a bit too much of a hard-on for Hume).

   I'm confident that this book will be helpful to my brother - and in saying such, I'm saying I would probably recommend it as an introductory text for anyone of the age of fifteen or up starting to study philosophy from scratch. One small gripe I have is that this book barely deals with ethics, that being only around half of the final chapter - but Blackburn has written a whole other book similar to this one on that topic, my copy of which I am also re-reading to see if it's worth gifting to my brother, so watch this space.

the Corpus Hermeticum

This book is one I've read before and thus blogged about before, see prior post - although this text is very easily available for free online, I've not included links either there or here as maintaining an air of mystery seems key for me in these kinds of cryptic ancient documents. I can't really say I got much new out of it on a second reading - it still feels like wisdom farting in your face for fun. To discern anything meaningful from these writings would either take a lifetime of arcane study or an unthought-out kneejerk series of seemingly-brilliant hunches, neither of which I really have time for. As lurid and enjoyable as the Corpus Hermeticum is, I really don't think it has, or arguably has ever had, really that much to offer philosophy, science, or faith. So, yeh. Don't take my word for it - give it a google and read the .pdf of the thing. It will confuse you and illuminate you in equal measure, ultimately leading nowhere special.

History of Western Philosophy

This book by Bertrand Russell is pretty much what it says on the tin,* being in itself one of the most famous and influential academic works of the twentieth century. Russell being a thinker of incredible stature in his own right, this more broadly germane outline of the key figures and trends in the history of western philosophical thought never fails to be an insightful, illuminating, and surprisingly easy-to-read book.

    To give a coherently satisfactory summary of this weighty tome is far beyond the scope of a blogpost, so I will merely list out the figures and trends covered, and then give a few reflections of my own on the text as a whole. Russell divides the history of philosophy in the west into three broad chunks - ancient, Catholic, and modern.

    The "ancient" section starts with the pre-Socratics: after an initial chapter about the rise of Greek civilisation, we look into the Milesian school, and then more closely at Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, and Protagoras; we also have chapters on the relation of Athens to cultural developments and the influence of Sparta. Following this we get onto the Big Three Boys of classical thought - elusive as he is we only have the only chapter on Socrates, but then Plato has distinct chapters covering the source of his opinions, his notion of utopia, his theory of ideas, his ideas around immortality, his cosmogony, and his thoughts regarding knowledge and perception - Aristotle has almost as many chapters too, covering his metaphysics, politics, ethics, logic, and physics. A supplementary chapter details ancient Greek developments in mathematics and astronomy. The final section of this first third of the book ties up the ancient period with a brief consideration of Hellenism's impact more broadly, then covering the cynics and skeptics, the Epicureans, the stoics, the changes culturally wrought by the Roman Empire, and finally the only individual thinker in this part to get his own chapter, Plotinus.

    The "Catholic" section is divided between the older Fathers of the Church and the latter scholastics. We begin with a broad sketch of the history of Judaism and its evolution into Christianity, then tracing intellectual currents within the first four centuries of Church history. A particularly meaty chapter then lumps together three 'doctors' of the Church - saints Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine; the last of which gets an extra following chapter diving into his theology and philosophy more intensively. A vaguer but still fascinating chapter covers the dark days of the fifth and sixth centuries, and then the influences of St Benedict and Gregory the Great, before we consider the impact of the Papacy within the dark ages. John the Scot gets his own chapter, before we zoom back out for a wider take on ecclesiastical reforms in the eleventh century, as well as the multifarious impacts of Islam, and then the general trends of things in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. While no individual thinker is predominant in these looser historical chapters there were still many profoundly interesting people discussed who I'd never heard of. St Thomas Aquinas gets his own chapter, unsurprisingly, before the section is finished off with discussions of Franciscan schoolmen and the eclipse of the Papacy towards the end of the medieval era.

    The final third of the book, concerned with "modern" philosophy, opens with a double-barrel of general characteristics of the Renaissance and then how this manifested in Italy specifically. After smaller chapters on Machiavelli, and Erasmus and More, we plunge back into more broad historical analysis, as both the Reformation and its counter-Reformation were taking place against a backdrop of the rising tides of scientific inquiry and achievement. Most of the rest of the chapters in this part concern individual thinkers; Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, after a preamble-chapter discussing the wider tendencies toward a growing liberalism Locke gets three chapters detailing his theory of knowledge, his political theory, and his influence; then we have Berkeley, Hume, a slight tangent discussing the cultural challenges and changes wrought by the romantic movement and later a broader consideration of deeper trends in the nineteenth century particularly, then Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Byron, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the utilitarian school (John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham and their ilk), Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey - and finally closing out on the most modern trend in western philosophy at the time of this book's writing** being logical analysis.

    I am obviously not going to dissect his presentation of all of this content in detail. What I will say is that he clearly knows what he is talking about to an immensely intimate degree, and even when presenting thinkers with whom he disagrees strongly (a fact he will always let the reader know, often in great detail and with sparklingly dry logically-witty remarks) he is careful to present the general details of what they thought and, most probably, why, insofar as one can surmise this from a historical perspective, with a generous degree of goodwill. Russell never shrinks from decrying what he thinks is wrong but he will never misrepresent it to make his doing so easier - in fact some of the densest writing in this book appears when he is well into the hedges of having to contend with particularly messy or convoluted ideas to unwrap just what a thinker originally thought in order to judge how much veracity it likely has. He is also always very good at situating systems of thought in their historical context, so that cultural and political influences as well as the personal circumstances of these ideas' originators can all be taken into account when we are brought to judge the evolving steps in the development of the western modes of thought.

    Russell is a superlative academic and I think anyone would get a huge amount of benefit from reading this book. It will be inordinately eye-opening for anyone who has ever wondered where our ideas have come from and how they have been shaped and reshaped over the millennia-long story of western civilisation. While I do not personally agree with Russell on everything, I cannot refute him as a keen and penetrating thinker with a sharp and soft and strong set of moral sentiments - and what is more, despite the potentially off-putting nature perhaps inherent in a book of such scale and ambition, he is remarkably easy to read, never needlessly academic for its own sake, and delightfully largely free from that habit all-too-common in professional philosophers and theologians to dump random Latin or Greek phrases at you with no translatory footnotes. Overall I think this book is well worth a visit from any reader with a general curiosity - if you're looking for a solid text on the history of western philosophy, this is almost certainly IT - and if you're just a casual reader who'd like to get their teeth stuck into something highly educational and world-broadening, this might take you a while to get all the way through but I guarantee you'll get a great deal out of the experience.

* I'm reading it as I'm in the process of planning an application for a PhD in philosophy and not only has it been a few years since I've been involved in direct academia but I am painfully aware of my own blind spots, and this seems like a good place to start broadly rectifying those. In close tandem with reading through this I've also been watching my way through Arthur Holmes's own history of philosophy course, which is all on YouTube - Holmes deals immediately with fewer key philosophers than Russell does, but goes into far greater detail on each, and in my opinion it's a much more helpful introduction to those thinkers he does cover, as his commentary is more concerned with explaining the intricacies of each rather than, as is Russell's wont, going into somewhat opinionated digressions about why so-and-so is wrong. The comparison of these two also highlights a couple of interesting lacunas - while Holmes gives almost zero air-time to the pre-Socratics, which Russell has an entire part of the book dedicated to, Russell mentions Kierkegaard (inarguably an immensely important figure for modern philosophy) exactly zero times, and while Holmes has a full two hour-long lectures on A. N. Whitehead (whom one would expect Russell to talk about at least a bit given that Whitehead was his professor when he was just starting out in philosophy, and they wrote the Principia Mathematica together) Russell barely mentions his mentor.

** The manuscript was originally composed over the course of World War Two, which makes the occasional passing remarks about Hitler and Stalin all the more striking.

the Concept of Anxiety

This book is "a simple psychologically oriented deliberation in view of the dogmatic problem of hereditary sin" (according to its official subtitle) by Søren Kierkegaard, the grandfather of existential philosophy. I can only say that the inclusion of "simple" in aforementioned subtitle is wholly undeserved; this was a very difficult book to read. You know those kinds of books where you know every word the author is using but have no idea how they seem to be fitting together to make the points they seem to think they are? For me, this was one of those. I would love to have some insights to make about this book but I have to admit I simply didn't understand most of it. The language is simple enough, enjoyable in places, but the trains of thought at the core of this text's argument are horribly tough knots to unravel. Maybe I will revisit this in a few years when I have more hard philosophy and theology under my belt and it might unveil something to me; but for now, unless my recitation of this book's subtitle grabbed your attention like nothing else ever has, I don't think I can recommend this book to anyone. Profound? Probably. Important? Almost certainly. Difficult? Most certainly.

Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro & Crito

This collection of texts attributed to Plato are perhaps some of the most significant blobs of words in the history of western philosophy. Honestly - having never actually read anything by Plato before, when working my way through these (which only actually took a couple of days as I found them so gripping) I was seized with a sense of spiritual reverence that I have never felt in reading anything but holy texts. There is a specialness in these ancient dialogues.

   In reverse order then:

• Crito: this is a dialogue with Socrates, having been condemned and now languishing in prison, debating with someone attempting to release him what exactly is the proper relationship between an individual and the state in the moral order.
• Euthyphro: this is a dialogue between Socrates and a young aristocrat about what is the proper obligation of a human being to the gods; where morality comes from, whether we could ever owe it to the gods to do something evil, or if they would be gods were they to demand such a thing.
• Defence of Socrates: in here Socrates, accused of atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens, stands trial amongst his peers, and has to offer a coherent rational defence of his thinking, behaviours, ideas and their impacts on wider society - he knows he will be put to death should this trial not go his way, but he is not concerned with self-defence so much as he is with pursuit of absolute truth.

   I know these summaries are barely scratching the surface. If the Socrates that Plato sketches in these texts is half as wise as the real man they were based on then I must agree he was probably the wisest man in history. Anyway. So that's the book. Exactly who determined that these three should be collated together I do not know - certainly not Socrates, and probably not Plato, but it cannot be denied there is a pure and sheer brilliance of deep overlap between the ideas herein. If you like philosophy and you've not read these, you must. If you don't like philosophy but you wonder why philosophers think you should - you should read these.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

This book is both the first publication and enduring masterwork of eminent logical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; and it took me a very long time to read it, even while making diligent notes. This is a relatively short book about the relationship between language, logic, ideas and truth. And I would like to think that I understood at least most of it. But not wanting to embarrass myself in front of any potentially-superior philosophy-readers who may be perusing this blog, I will sum up my final thoughts on the book thus - yes, it makes perfect sense! "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" - especially once one has climbed up and thrown away the ladder.

Seriously though, this book is mental torture. It makes so much sense that it makes none. And yet it makes all. Wittgenstein famously said upon completing this work that he had solved the essential problems of all philosophy. Bit humble, right. And then he turned his back on that less than two decades later and started playing around with pragmatic linguistic theories, which if anything seems a step down from Solving Everything... but no, reading this book does feel like everything is being slowly solved; the axiomatic arrangement of its arguments, the dense interconnections of its lexicon... I was genuinely sad when I finished reading it that I couldn't see into a new dimension or something. Don't read this book ever - unless you really really REALLY enjoy problematic logical philosophy, and are happy to have your brain mangled for several weeks or months. Or years, if you try to devote serious study time to it instead of just reading it recreationally - in which case, WHY WOULD YOU DO - not even Bertrand Russell completely understood this steaming diamond of nonsense. Don't bother. Read it for its beauty, and if it illuminates very little, take that as the meaning it is - that really, philosophy illuminates very little, given that the sun exists and we all have eyes regardless of what the clever people are thinking today or tomorrow.

the Art of War

This book, the ancient Chinese classic by Sun Tzu, available for free online from that link, is one I've read before - and I don't really have anything new to say about it. I'm just re-reading to allow its insights to percolate a bit. Sorry for the disappointing post.

A Guide for the Perplexed

This book by E. F. Schumacher is an attempt to develop a simple, cohesive, holistic philosophy that anyone can access and use in their own thought and life. While I don't think his proposed system necessarily achieves all that much in terms of engaging with actual philosophical issues and questions, it certainly does achieve its goal of putting forward a simple, cohesive, holistic system, so props to Fritz for that - especially given that he isn't building academically on ideas from previous philosophers, but developing an entirely new "map" (as he calls them) for inquiry.

   I will only extremely briefly give an overview of the book: he starts with the conception of philosophy as the provision of maps for thought, then discusses levels of being within the natural order, then considers that everything in its own teleological context must be "adequate" to its aim or goal, then treats in turn the four fields of knowledge and how we best engage them, then finally closing on an examination of the two distinct kinds of philosophical problem/question. Schumacher's writing is as non-scholarly and accessible as it is lively and engaging, and his actual system of thought has a great spirit of generosity to it - though ethics and politics aren't directly treated in his book, there are clear linkages between his metaphysical, epistemic and methodological sections that if taken seriously and followed would lead one into a far humbler (and therefore may we assume) more morally-integrated kind of life.

   I would recommend this book to anyone, even those uninterested in philosophy, as it functions not so much as a treatise on this or that particular arcane issue but as an orientation to systemic thinking along the same lines as Schumacher himself, and while I obviously never knew the man and so cannot say exactly to what degree he was right about everything, he is clearly (going also from Small is Beautiful, another book of his on economics) a man who thinks deeply, well, and with a great optimism for what humankind may be capable of were we only to slow down once in a while.

the Book of Chuang Tzu

This book, along with the Tao Te Ching, is one of the foundational texts of the ancient Chinese religion/philosophy called Taoism; traditionally credited to Chuang Tzu*, though in actuality he is unlikely to have written more than the first seven chapters of its thirty-three.

   When I read Lao Tzu's work I reflected that I could no longer in the spirit of intellectual honesty consider myself anymore only a Christian - but that I must be some kind of Taoist as well: and on reading Chuang Tzu's philosophy now too, I wholeheartedly embrace this polyreligious side to my own life and mind. The work presented in this book is utterly unlike any philosophical system or idealized religion anywhere else - it performs its functions through extended usage of parable, often humourous** and somewhat absurd, never less than thrillingly thought-provoking. Many of his little stories revolve around natural phenomena and processes and how they relate to the Tao; many are to do with governance or management and the follies of humanity in regard to these; quite a few are simply sideways (generous but still) jabs at Confucianism, which are among the most radical in their philosophical position. I will make no bones about the fact that this book is one I am completely unequipped to be able to summarize or even overview to any degree that really does it justice - I can only say that this text has stuck in my brain and fundamentally altered my perceptive attitudinal modes of being in ways that very few other things have, perhaps nothing other than the Bible itself. Which is odd, considering that while it has a great deal to imply about the nature of faith, goodness, transcendence, etc - Chuang Tzu says virtually nothing about what Western thought would call God. Instead focus is given to the lived experience of humans as creatures, in their quest for meaning and purpose, failing to find it anywhere they do not surrender themselves to the overriding principles of the Tao - and though "wu wei"*** is a core concept in the work, much of what the thinkers who composed this book have to say is actually of a deep and profound practicality in reference to activity, thought and spirituality.

   I absolutely loved this book. It challenged me throughout, while also liberating me into a bigger sensitivity toward the world and its contents and contradictions. It made me think, made me laugh, made me aware of my smallness as well as my potentialities - all the while being nothing less than a superbly well-written series of supremely idiosyncratic anecdotal little happenings, ponderings, reflections and recollections. If you are the least bit interested in Chinese history and culture, in philosophy or spirituality more generally - I cannot recommend this book enough. Chuang Tzu may not have written the whole thing but his spirit pervades it, and in truth he has become one of my few favourite thinkers from across all time and space.

* For an excellent all-age accessible introduction to this dynamic historic personality, check out this delightfully and appropriately idiosyncratic Chinese (with English subtitles fortunately) cartoon series documenting his life, work and influence.

** I shit you not, in places it is actually hilarious. You'd never laugh this much reading, say, the Talmud, were you to approach them even with the same spirit of openness.

*** Wu wei means "actionless action", "non-action" or something like that - it's a complex phrase to translate, but essentially means not striving toward a pre-determined goal, instead merely being content to follow the natural flow of events and things as they are in themselves, and acting only when spontaneous context compels you to act freely. I think, anyway. If you're a Taoist sage reading this and want to correct me please do so in the comments, though given the inherent notion within the Tao of not contending, I recognize you are unlikely to do so.

How to Argue with a Cat

This book by Jan Heinrichs claims to be "a human's guide to the art of persuasion", to such extremes that you might not only be able to win arguments against other real people but even cats. Even cats!

   The principles of rhetoric, psychology, context sensitivity and body language discussed in this book are the direct claims of a professional in his field and they make tons of common sense. You will come away from this book feeling empowered to try out your newfound skills of persuasion on any human or cat you can - I did, and it didn't work, because I'm a rat at heart and struggled to get to grips with a lot of the theory. But I'd strongly recommend this one for anyone wishing to become a more persuasive, more effective person.

The Path

This book by Christine Gross-Loh and Michaell Puett is an unacademic, but unflinching in its acerbic accuracy of phrasal gutpunching to the Western mind; short introduction to the range and content of (an initially-seeming-somewhat-disingenuous but explored with real nuance) ancient Chinese philosophies.

   As readers of this blog will know, while my life is still in Christ Jesus the Tao has helped me walk with God through His crazy-at-times world - and there is a notable lack of talk of God, especially in the kind of personal terms monotheists often attribute to They Who Transcend All Thought - which is to say, this can be safely read by any agnostic on any fence and it will probably help you out in some form or other. We're walked through the as-if ritualization practices of Confucian living; the staunch disciplines and Chuang Zhi and the raw spontaneous whimsy of Lao Tzu clashing in midair as arguments around the Tao fail eternally to Pin it Down; Mencius helps us simplify anxiety-causing choices we have to make in the modern world; while Xunzi keeps the pattern of ethical humanity very much at the core of everyday living. There is a lot in here that a lot of people would find extremely salubrious to their mental health if they drank it in and tried to get it, not by striving to fully understand; but by submitting in ignorance to the mysterious nature of Nature and Humanity itself as we shamble about beneath the Heavens - and obeying. It is not idolatry to comply with ancient wisdoms about how our own bodies and minds work. And if it is, then that might be a jealously too far for whatever that god is - because the God I believe in made Everything for a Reason, and the Tao wouldn't be floating about in the real-spacetime arcane umbra without some kind of purpose.

   The book's subtitle; a new way to think about everything - one could, being generously cynical, argue is the case for pretty much any book assuming it has contents that would seriously affect the contents of the heads of its readers. For me it has not fundamentally altered my worldview - only helped flesh out the carpet a bit better, and vaguely try to grab snatched memories of whatever the wallpaper in Purgatory looked like.

the Corpus Hermeticum

This book, for which I'm not going to provide a link because the whole point of alchemy is to send unexpecting overcurious readers down their own rabbit-holes and where would the fun of that be if I just gave you it that easily?* is probably the foundational text, or at least one of the key foundational texts, for the Western Hermetic tradition by which a true alchemical practice is derived. It takes the shape of a conversation between Hermes and Thoth, on a range of matters - but dealing in considerable depth the natures of Cosmos, Mind, Being, God and Goodness; the language is potently symbolic but not such that it, I don't think anyway, obscures the underlying metaphysical things it is trying to talk about - though the very nature of alchemy means that what I have derived from the text might not necessarily be what any other reader might clearly be able to infer from the words alone; as such, I would not recommend this text with much gusto - despite feeling personally that it has an abundance of Truth contained therein - because for that truth to shine through in a proper way to the Imaginations of its readers they must have been prepared through the cosmic trip of their own life-inner-journeys - but if you have, as I was, been led to the discovery of this text through your own questings, then read it with generous discernment - as I sense this far down the rabbit-hole things do start getting strange, and those who read out of an intellectual voracity and a desire to Fully Comprehend risk dragging their minds and souls into the truly abstract and/or occult which are less than life-giving; but if you have been led here out of a humble expectancy, spiritual curiousity and openness - it may very likely have much of merit to say, but let me say here - nothing which has not been said elsewhere, in many forms and occasions, as the true & proper ground of any alchemical "fact" can only be known exactly as and where it is - which may well be just about everywhere, and if you do not already see that then reading a text like this might not necessarily help you do so, instead just furnishing the strangeness of your mind-soul's quest-loot with an additional bunglage to its burden, which will only be shed when you properly grasp what it's about. God is not gnosis. Nor is gnosis necessary for salvation: only Christ - but the Gnosis spoken about in this text, that is the gnosis of, and in, for and through such things as the mind-soul's Life in Jesus-God; is a real thing impossible to lose when it is found, for it is the truest surest ground of a mind-soul that can be known, felt or said to exist - all of which is to say, be honest in your self-examinations, and quest carefully.

* That said, you do have my assurance that PDFs of it are available online, or it in book form. I read the translation by G.R.S. Mead, if you're interested.

Poetic Diction

This book by Owen Barfield (see this about his Christological work expanded upon); and it is immediately up there with my top twelve books of all time for sheer nonfictional grandeur of scope, efficacy and implication.

   It's a study in meaning, which is pretty complicated from the off - but I reckon with a bit of effort getting into his philological boots and throwing your imaginary Poeting Hat into the air a few times so you can really practice catching it on the way back down - this book does for poetry what the Necronomicon presumably does for necromancers. I don't touch that stuff personally. Or this for vegans. You get my gist? I hope you do, because I think I've got Owen's but it's hard to tell, because he will just lump a Latin or Greek or French or Aramaic quote at you like "OOF" with no subtitle translation. Editors take note.

   But still, I feel loath to even write a blogpost about it in case my fellow poets read it and surpass me in my dark powers of understanding. Jokes. Great book.

Living Dangerously

This book, edited by Alan Jacobs, is a collection of extracts from the speeches & teaches of Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh - a man who were it not for this excellent netflix documentary series I wouldn't have heard of probably. As you'll know if you've seen the doc - things got strange; but as you'll know if you're read this blog much - I love it when things get strange, and I'm always happy to suspend disbelief a bit when the lines between genuine wisdom & odd cultic dogma seem to be blurry. So, without making any judgments whatsoever - I decided it wasn't worth only having an impression of the man's life and/or philosophy without actually exploring some of it directly rather than just via a probably-somewhat-dramatized retelling of all the juiciest highlights. And my verdict is - I mean, my personal jury's still out on the nature of the cultic community his ashram turned into, but in terms of his actual outlook and ideas? The man makes some excellent points, which are highly uncomfortable to hear for anyone from settled ideological perspectives: his reflections on the nature of meditation, modernity & the mishap-overlap in-betweens therein are some of the most striking new poignancies I've heard from any thinker on the subjects of mindfulness and modernism, and much of the rest of his philosophy in my view does bear striking similarity to the clarity of insight and quasi-prophetic character of properly, dangerously enlightened thinking. That's not to say I necessarily agree with him about all the things he said - far less endorse all the things that happened under his watch - but you know, shit happens when you start trying to fundamentally question & uplift the human consciousness beyond the boundaries of convention, so I'm not gonna throw stones. Think for yourself if you want to dare to try to.

[edit - June: I've lent this book to a colleague of mine who's into spiritual mysticism and all that after we had a conversation about the documentary. He's still very skeptical which is totally fair enough - they did have those pink police people...]

Truth and Authority in Modernity

This book is a fantastic little submachine-gun-magazine of pragmatic ecumenical twenty-first century theology done as close to perfectly as we're likely to get - by Lesslie Newbigin, who I definitely need to check out more by. I'm going to hammer this one out really briefly because Newbigin is so kindly deft a writer that even a work as philosophically insightful as this 83-page banger can, I'd hazard to think, be summarized properly in a post short enough that I won't even need to scroll down during its composition. Though I've thought that before...

   Enough rambling!

   In part one, we are walked through the theological basics of God's authoritativeness; as well as various factors in modernity's suspicion of this. He then further explicates the external and internal means by which authority can be 'knowingly' affirmed; as well as linking concepts, faith, and grace - and by far the best Christian perspective on postmodernism that I have seen or read anywhere, hands down.

   In part two, he takes us through the conceptual & actual mediation of divine authority, which happens through four chief channels: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience; none of these can be fully ignored through conglomerations of the others, nor can anyone rightly expect divine authority mediated only through one or two to hold much sway.

   So then in part three, he finishes with some reflections on how Christians can attest to the truths of Christianity by mediating God's divine authority through these four channels, with some fantastically practical pointers given as to how to do this effectively in our post/modern contexts.

   Hey! I did it! A post that thought it would be short and was short! Seriously though, this should be compulsory reading for all pastors, preachers, Christian thought-leaders and whoever else. It's just jam-packed with applicable truth, and you can read it in a couple of hours. So you may as well take the full afternoon, and read it thrice.

Tao Te Ching

This book* is a collection of eighty-one short poem-chapters about life, the universe, and everything. Purportedly written by Lao-Tzu, who himself may or may not have been a real dude (although if he was real he was definitely a dude), it is an extremely ancient text and forms the basis of the philosophy-religion known as Taoism, which was of immensely influential stature in the development of much Chinese culture and thought.

   This is the first time any of the books I've reviewed on here has actually been any core religious texts, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it clearly hasn't stopped my try to write some kind of thunk. Maybe not? So much could be said that would be pointless in this case. You should read this whole book and maybe meditate for five minutes after each chapter - they're only very short. You could read the whole thing in an hour. But you might never understand what it was talking about unless you are already open to the Tao; that is the essentially mysterious ridiculousness of what I am currently doing, an endeavor to "explain" what this book is "about"...

   Let me just say this: having read and pondered this book,** I do no longer in full or clear conscience think I can consider myself to be, in the religious sense, *only* Christian, but that I must be at least somewhat a Taoist also, and further that if any readers of this are confused or enraged by this heretical presupposition - I would suggest it is because your mental faculties are too familiar with the ways of errant human civilization above the Tao which is the eternal Way of Nature, under and above all, compatible with and containing of all, the fundamental explanation and essence of what is***: how do I know? Like this!

* That link leads to a website which supplies seven different translations of the whole text - although the one I read was Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo's translation. Given the nature of ancient Chinese's linguistic differences to English, and the consistent levels of ambiguity present in the poetic-philosophic text itself, the perfect translation has been elusive, even though this little book is the world's second-most-translated text in history after the Bible.

** I must admit also that initially when I started reading this I found its sheer evasiveness offputting, and ran away to get a beginner's introduction to the underlying philosophy in the manner of examples with A. A. Milne characters, and frankly I'm glad I did, it really helped, and I was able to approach this text with a deeper appreciation of the gists which underlied and animated the nuanced flow of the book itself.

*** If you're "so Christian" that Lao Tzu and Winnie the Pooh can't convince you, then how about C. S. Lewis?

"Safe Metamorphosis!!"

This book is the first full poetry collection from Otis Mensah, himself Sheffield's esteemed Poet Laureate and an incomparable jazz-rapper. His words (which I'll get to) are bolstered with an enigmatic series of illustrations by George William Stewart, Luke Featherstone, and Miroslav Kiss.

   Okay - the title, what's that about? Imagine there's a spacestation, and everyone on it has never left it but knows they need to - how terrifying! So, once the moments inevitably come for people to be shuttled onto their capsules and shot out into the inky void, a few cheery veterans of this process, who know the pains and processes of going from embryo to Full Moth or Whatever - shout sarcastically as these pods fly past "[title]!" Which is a weird image but a comforting one when you know who's shouting it and why, and Mensah's book fulfils that role perfectly.

   The poems in here are profound meditations on identity, change, anxiety, technology, trust, creativity, race, class, loss, love, and so much more. A few of them genuinely have prompted more genuine philosophical questing in myself than many full books of "Actual Philosophy", and do so with a readableness and perspicuity that gave me pang after pang of poet envy** for the skill with which he spins vivid metaphors off their own axes again and again in truly an alchemical application of uncluttered language. Just rereading that sentence I am not in the slightest shocked that I envied this skill [that of uncluttrdness] LOL.

   Poems to be read aloud - for sure, as each quivers to their brims with audible zigzags wordplay and little resonances that bring even more life from the verses penned. Though if you want to hear them in full fat you'd do no better than to see this brilliant artist*** live. His book, like mine and Raluca's, was initially a self-publication, so unless we're in a fortunate future where this has been picked up for mass-distribution, you may struggle to get you hands on a copy, in which case I can only apologize for now for getting you all excited about how bloody good this collection is.

* Check out his hiphop on soundcloud - he's a bona-fide lyrical genius, and his backdrop beats are sick to boot. Also to make a completely unnecessary claim-to-fame I feature very briefly in one of his music videos, and do somewhat regret the mustard cardigan as it may have been too loud for the surrounding colour scheme. Liam, if you're reading this, sorry for over-yellowing the aesthetic.

** Difficult to pick an overall fave - but 'Speak Light into the Dark', the untitled one [signed no name], and 'No-one Here Hears Me' are just unfetteredly incredible & spoke to me with so much poignancy that I got paranoid I was misreading certain lines because it seemed too close to certain trains of thought I'd been trying not to own.

*** And an absolutely lovely man, I'm not name-dropping I genuinely know him through Sheffield poet life stuff