Being Good

This book by Simon Blackburn (author of Think) is, as was his other book, a general introduction to some key philosophical issues and themes; it's also one that I had already read before I started this blog but I'm re-reading it now to see whether it's worth giving to my youngest brother who has just started studying philosophy for his A-levels.

   Anyway - Blackburn, in three large chunks, covers:

• Threats to ethics
• The death of God
• Egoism
• Evolutionary theory
• Determinism & futility
• Unreasonable demands
• False consciousness
• Some ethical ideas
• Birth
• Death
• Desire & the meaning of life
• Pleasure
• The greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Freedom from the bad
• Freedom & paternalism
• Rights & natural rights
• Foundations of ethics
• Reasons & foundations
• Being good & living well
• The categorical imperative
• Contracts & discourse
• The common point of view
• Confidence restored

   And that's the book.

   Though I have a lot of nits to pick with Blackburn in the minutiae, every philosopher has to come to their own conclusions, and he does to be fair present the things he discusses with a certain detachedness that enables the reader to continue their own explorations without being too bogged down with any of the biases found in what may well be their introductory text. A good book to kick off a habit of thinking about ethics with.

Just Living

This book by Ruth Valerio is a brilliant resource for furnishing a Christianity-shaped thought train about social, economic and environmental justice. Its ideas are presented with ample but not suffocating explanation, and plenty of pragmatic but not exhaustive pointers for further consideration or praxis.

   The first third of the book explores the fields of the issues at hand; the nature and complexities of both globalisation and consumerism, and then the specific economic-cultural context the modern Church finds itself in when relating to these - hegemonic as they are.

   The middle third is the meaty theory section, where we really dig into theological and philosophical groundings for the origin and trajectory of applicable ethics: Valerio first looks at how simply neglecting the Church's relationship to socioeconomic justice leads to a Christianity that is merely therapeutic and basically capitulates to consumer capitalism; next we consider how the Church should relate to money and property, with a look at the ascetic monastic traditions (with St Benedict and St Francis especially focused on); then finally how Aristotle conceived and Thomas Aquinas developed notions of the interrelation of justice and temperance as virtues, and how these uphold human flourishing when rightly understood and practiced.

   The final third of the book is given over to practical exhortation - prompting the reader to think of what they can do to put these ideas into practice, and making the case for doing so. This includes: reorienting our perspectives to be more cognizant of socioeconomic and environmental injustice; aligning our attitudes toward money and material goods to Biblical ethics, and following on from that seeking to consume as ethically as we plausibly can; engaging fruitfully with our local communities; stepping into activism to provoke change in unsustainable & unjust structures; and lastly making prayerful & fruitful use of the time that is given to us.

   I have to say, as someone who has already put a great deal of thought into the nature & necessity of Christian work for ethical, justice-oriented living, I didn't personally learn a lot from this book. However I did find it edifying & encouraging, and it helped strengthen & deepen my understanding of the shared space my faith & my social/political inclinations occupy. Valerio's credentials as a theologian are just as valid as her credentials as an activist and from reading this book you will be left with an indelible sense of engaging with the wisdom & insight of someone who really does their best to walk the walk they talk. It is also highly readable, and though dealing with some relatively complex topics (especially in chapter six) it skilfully explains everything with minimal jargon, of both the theological & the socio-political kinds. I'd highly recommend this as a book to give to Christians who take following Jesus seriously but don't seem all that fussed about justice; it might serve to tip them over the fence.

Self-Constitution

This book, which I have already read since the beginning of this blog hence the link above and the shortness of this entry, is, as I stated before, easily in the top few philosophy books I've read to date. I stand by everything I said about it last time, and have nothing in particular of reflective note to add, but I will say, going through a period of my life at the moment where I have been struggling with being an effective agent in both doing and/or not doing the things that I know to be best for me, the calm, rational train of thought Korsgaard carries throughout here was a real blessing to help me reassert some semblance of control over my habits. As I said before I'd recommend this book to anyone looking to know themselves better and become a better person, regardless of how familiar you are with philosophy - though her arguments are intensely academic in nature the way she writes should be largely accessible to anyone with an above-American vocabulary.

Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity & Integrity

This book by Christine Korsgaard is quite possibly in my top three or four philosophical books I've read, period. I had read sections of it alongside this a few years ago when I was doing an undergraduate essay on conceptions of agency in practical reason, earmarking it as a book to revisit and properly digest later on - this time not for mere academicalism but to properly imbibe of and benefit from the potency of insights she makes herein.

   Synthesizing ideas from Plato, Aristotle and Kant, alongside her own formidable weight of intellectual reflective handling of such diverse themes of psychological behaviouralism, the questions of what makes a person effective at being a person, how we respond at all to things like goodness or rightness; the ground covered here is incredibly holistic in scope and yet holds together into a cohesive train of argument that never dithers on the fences of empty philosophizing but consistently returns to the fertile soil of pragmatic, day-to-day human lived application - which is what all true philosophy should be and do, imho. I'm not going to pretend a cogent synthetic summary of the ideas contained herein is at all within either the intentional or possible parameters of my writing this post, but to give a roughly hazarded breakdown of what I think she's getting at in this book - it is the very question of what it means to live well, how a human person can conceptualize themselves in practical ways in relation to ideas about goodness and reason in a world so often devoid of either in the immediate circumstances; and how constantly choosing to cultivate one's own identity in line with notions of goodness, rational truth and whatnot ultimately shape the meaningful essence of our identities - how well we do this developing what she refers to as our integrity. She does shine some excellently critical lights into the murkier what-if corners of our failures to do this as well - with such problematic elements of human being as ignorance, moral failure, and incoherent aspects of our constituted beings all being dealt with generously and in my opinion rather satisfactorily. One small gripe I would take with it is that she deals primarily with autonomy and agency in these senses with regard to the individual, and so much of the kind of organic intersubjectivity that shapes, for good or ill, our capacities and efficacies in the pursuits talked about in this book aren't given the scrutiny I would have been keen to hear her delve into - but this is a small trifle when one considers how much truly helpful ground she has otherwise covered - no doubt that side of things is something she has talked about elsewhere,* or may someday.

   As you'd probably guess from an Oxford University Press book, it is pretty dense reading and though Korsgaard writes excellently and this is much more accessible than a majority I think of typical books in this kind of ballpark, it would still be a bit of a hard go for those who haven't delved previously into the mindfields of psychological philosophy - but I'd say probably most people seriously willing to give their brains a bit of a workout could handle this book relatively easily, so long as you don't expect it to be the kind of thing you can just bash out in a few afternoons, and are happy to google the occasional word. And yes, I would very much recommend this book to basically anyone as the insights contained in it are so life-givingly pragmatic and reasonable that it would be an excellent book to anyone - so if you'd like to take the plunge and give your own grasp at being a coherent person a long hard thought-stare, I heartily recommend Christine Korsgaard's work as a springboard - and though I can't say I'm a scholar I'm confident enough this is a good starting point.

* I am speculating here - sadly, as I am no longer a student of any university, my access to philosophy books is now considerably more limited, as they're bloody expensive, and they won't let me in the student libraries with quite the same degree of welcome as I once had.

Works of Love

This book, a series of in-depth philosophical-theological-social-ethical meditations on the nature of Christian love by the great Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard, is one of the most rewarding, challenging, and uplifting books I've ever read. I started reading it way back in October 2014 as it was one of the recommended readings for a philosophy module I was doing - I used it as one of the foundations of my mini-dissertation but never actually finished it, despite finding it thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating. This was probably because it's very long and very dense, and I prefer reading shortish easyish books so I can finish more sooner so my blog racks up more posts (only half-jesting here): but in the last months of 2015, given a particular prolonged mindset that came over me, I returned to Søren's work and it has genuinely helped me keep my mind and heart oriented in joy toward God who is love. The blurb of my copy proclaims boldly how 'LIFE CHANGING' a 'SEMINAL WORK' this is, and it is, but like Emily Dickinson (another writer whose work in recent months helped me continue to know God, love and joy), Kierkegaard's life is not as fondly celebrated as his works, because it was also often characterised by loneliness, illness, and sadness.* What I find brilliant about these two, American poet and Danish philosopher, is that their work does tell of this misery - but refuses to let it define it (or them) by being the ending: both resolutely turn to God, to love, to joy, and adroitly display what a complete comfort that is. So yes, for a struggling Christian, this book probably would be life-changing, for the depth, breadth and persistence of its complaints, rebukes and encouragements.

   I should probably discuss the book's content a bit.

   This is easier said than done: Kierkegaard is a highly analytical but far from a systematic philosopher, and the subject matter lends itself to deep idiosyncratic meditations on a particular aspect, angle, or argument. It's not just random reflections bundled into chapters though: coherent structures to his thought are evident throughout, and every point he makes or conclusion he reaches is, with some thought (or, thankfully, more often, his own continued explanation) consistent with the overarching pictures he paints about what love is and how it works. I won't really go into these, as they run very broad and deep. The first half of the book tackles the meta-nature of love: how Christians understand God as being love, how God's eminence as the primary and defining being therefore makes love the primary and defining force and essence of all reality and how this should upend everything we think we know about goodness, since human ideas about 'love' are minute, immature, corrupt and skewed compared to the actuality of God-as-love. He also explores the notion of commanded love, how there is no contradiction in love being a compulsory facet of human activity, questions of who our neighbours are (hint: everyone) and why human nature's relationship to God's nature compels the loving-each-other-as-ourselves core of Christian ethics.

   The second half of the book is applications of this radical conception of Christian love to various active aspects of life: encouraging people, trusting people, being hopeful, seeking others' good, forgiving and forgetting, remaining loving, being merciful, winning over the unloving to the cause of love, mourning the dead, and praising love itself. Kierkegaard examines each of these facets of how we live in love, building from the conceptual base of the first part. One point that he frequently restates I will mention because it's a brilliant realisation: if God is love, then in any functional relationship between humans, all feelings and actions between those humans is irrelevant, as a functional relationship is a loving one, which necessarily includes God as a third element in that relationship, and God in perfection necessarily flattens all non-perfectly-loving elements of each of the two persons as they are no longer just relating to each other but to God. This holds for any two persons, be they friends, enemies, you and some homeless guy you'd really rather not feel compelled to buy a sandwich. Of course, such relationships, in our broken and sinful world, do not de facto occur, but by the grace of God and the uplifting work of his loving Spirit, we can (should) strive to emulate them.

   If I've made it sound complicated please forgive/disregard me (or leave an angry comment if you're so inclined, goodness knows it'll be nice to at least know that I've got readers). Søren is a philosopher but this is not a philosophy book: he's not developing complex theoretical structures or proposing grand intricate maps of reality: he's a Christian, using his ability as a philosopher to walk the reader in wisdom through his many thoughts about the most important thing a Christian thinks there is - God-as-love. And yes, these thoughts are extremely deep at points, yes, at points he goes into a lot of detail to argue for a particular point and so the prose becomes difficult and dense, but stick with these passages, because he uses them to connect thoughts that bring you to a realisation of some truly beautiful things, some intensely challenging things, some immeasurably encouraging works of love.
   For a Christian reader, this book is now one of the first I would ever recommend someone read - it is supremely uplifting, and you genuinely feel you are discovering more about how to know, serve and emulate God. Non-Christian readers might also enjoy it but I would expect they'd find it confusing: the active reality of Christian love is so counter-intuitive, so against the grain of our modern cultural sensible individualism, that Kierkegaard's conclusions would just come across as mad. And in a way they are - I certainly felt that - but that's why it's such a refreshing challenge, because humans are built to know God, to know love, but we are so distant from its reality that hearing extensive in-depth truths about what it is and how it works and how we fit into it doesn't immediately feel like good news. But, of course, it is. [I was going to find a quote from the book to lend this concluding sentence a bit more oomph, but there's just too many good ones, and I can't be bothered to comb back through the whole thing. Anyway; absolutely worth a read.]

* A fact that is better reflected in his other philosophical works, most of which are about irony, despair, godlessness, and so on. Also, this hasn't got much to do with anything I've mentioned in this post but I want to include a link to it anyway because it's hilarious: follow this twitter account for a superb feed of Kierkegaardian thinking combined with the everyday lifestyle reflections of Kim Kardashian. You're welcome.

Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting It Right

This book, a compilation of Harry Frankfurt's 2004 Tanner Lectures,* was one of my selected secondary readings for an excruciatingly difficult philosophy mini-dissertation which I completed last week (sorry - yes, this post, other than book-specific details and links, is a copy-paste of the last post about Christine Korsgaard's similar book). It was the most intellectually strenuous thing I've ever worked on, but was also really interesting, so despite having handed in the final draft last Wednesday, I've still got my student library card until June 13th so am making the most of it by reading through the texts more thoroughly - it's an important topic and I want to actually understand it somewhat! The book contains two lectures by Frankfurt himself, then critical replies by Christine Korsgaard, Michael Bratman and Meir Dan-Cohen. I only skimmed these reply bits because the bulk of the original idea material is found in the main section and to be honest I've read far too much academic philosophy in the last two months to plough through an extra 51 pages of stuff that didn't fascinate me.

   Anyway, sorry, what's it about? To explain it to someone already familiar with moral philosophy and practical reason would be superfluous as the lectures are quite short and available free online (see link at bottom); to explain it to someone not already quite closely familiar with these topics would be an endeavour far beyond the capacity of time I want to spend on this post. But I'll try, and if it sounds interesting, give it a read below.

   He explores the nature of human agency and practical reasoning, which he argues are dependent on the volitional necessities of reason (as in our faculty of rationally deliberating between ends to decide on courses of action and then working out how to take means to our ends) and love (as in our capacity to care about ends in themselves in the first place, so that we have something as an object capable of propelling us to need to reason practically at all). By 'volitional necessity' I mean aspects of a person's function, as directed by their will, that are completely essential in being able to function in a way recognisable as a person: without the capacities for 'loving' anything we would be unable to adopt anything as ends, which would reduce us to merely being shunted around by whatever instantaneous exogenous desires and impulses assailed us; and without the capacity for rationality we would be unable to weight up and decisively pursue any of the ends that we claim to have, making us inefficacious. The overall model we're left with is considerably more haphazard and than most of the good-sounding ones in theories of practical reason, but this is because Frankfurt has pushed it to include the reality of love as something indispensable to human functioning; and this means that on the whole it comes across as making a great deal of sense.

   I've literally read so many chapters and articles about practical reason and moral psychology recently. It was quite refreshing to sit down and go directly through one book on the topic, especially one that as far as I can see is pretty much right on all points as this one. I feel like I'm actually learning helpful applicable things about what goodness and persons are from philosophy, which does happen sometimes. As I said, this was my last ever essay, so I'm no longer a student of the subject, which is a shame, but my interest will live on - I'll be one of those weird postgrads who takes books from someone else's course out of the library for personal interest reading. But yeh, Harry Frankfurt is a top philosopher, and if my hashed attempt to explain what this book is about hasn't completely put you off, particularly if you're already interested in theories of why people do what they do and how we could rationalise it in a good coherent way, check out these fantastic lectures from the pdf link below.

* The lectures themselves, effectively comprising the entirety of the book, are available for free online here:

http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/f/frankfurt_2005.pdf

The Sources of Normativity

This book, a compilation of Christine Korsgaard's 1996 Tanner Lectures,* was one of my selected core readings for an excruciatingly difficult philosophy mini-dissertation which I completed last week. It was the most intellectually strenuous thing I've ever worked on, but was also really interesting, so despite having handed in the final draft last Wednesday, I've still got my student library card until June 13th so am making the most of it by reading through the texts more thoroughly - it's an important topic and I want to actually understand it somewhat! The book contains four lectures by Korsgaard herself, then critical replies by G.A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and finally a reply to these replies from Korsgaard again. I only skimmed these reply bits because the bulk of the original idea material is found in the main section and to be honest I've read far too much academic philosophy in the last two months to plough through an extra 92 pages of stuff that didn't fascinate me.

   Anyway, sorry, what's it about? To explain it to someone already familiar with moral philosophy and practical reason would be superfluous as the lectures are quite short and available free online (see link at bottom); to explain it to someone not already quite closely familiar with these topics would be an endeavour far beyond the capacity of time I want to spend on this post. But I'll try, and if it sounds interesting, give it a read below.

   Normativity is that realm of reality comprised of oughts, shoulds, goods, rights, and so on; conceptual, social, ethical, psychological and philosophical structures that lend purpose and direction to our lives as rational will-directed beings. We're more than mere biological animals following instincts, we have the capability to step back in reflection from our activities and assess our desires, reasons that apply to actions that we could take in given circumstances, and so on, and we assert our self-constituted identity by committing our will to endorsing any of these given reasons for action and acting accordingly. But where do these 'reasons' come from? Korsgaard presents the four main cases that have emerged most plausibly throughout the history of moral philosophy: voluntarism (we are obligated by a legislator whose authority in relationship to us can prompt us to follow their commands), realism (we are obligated by the embeddedness-in-reality of values that give us reasons to act in particular ways), reflective endorsement (we are obligated to act by ourselves when we rationally assess external conditions' relation to our own mental activity to see what we consider would be good for us to do), and Kantian rational autonomy - which she argues emerges as a synthesis of the true aspects of the other three. Her arguments for this are extensive, deep, and compelling. Once having established her slightly-modified interpretation of Kant's model, she discusses how we may consider this to apply and function with our perception of values, our intrinsic value of human and animal life, our rational faculties, and our constitution of ourselves as agents with integrity in our identities based on our conduct - all very interesting and too complex for me to summarise.

   I've literally read so many chapters and articles about practical reason and moral psychology recently. It was quite refreshing to sit down and go directly through one book on the topic, especially one that as far as I can see is pretty much right on all points as this one. I feel like I'm actually learning helpful applicable things about what goodness and persons are from philosophy, which does happen sometimes. As I said, this was my last ever essay, so I'm no longer a student of the subject, which is a shame, but my interest will live on - I'll be one of those weird postgrads who takes books from someone else's course out of the library for personal interest reading. But yeh, Christine Korsgaard is a top philosopher, and if my hashed attempt to explain what this book is about hasn't completely put you off, particularly if you're already interested in theories of why people do what they do and how we could rationalise it in a good coherent way, check out these fantastic lectures from the pdf link below.

* The lectures themselves, effectively comprising the entirety of the book, are available for free online here:

http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaard94.pdf

Finite and Infinite Goods

This book, an incredible work of philosophy/theology by Robert Merrihew Adams, has been the core of my educational reading for the last month. I'm writing a philosophy essay on the christian concept of love and how it links to the meta-ethics of motivation in a variety of theories of moral obligation (yeh it's a genuinely fun topic), and this has been my bulk inspiration book. I've been struggling to get it finished over the last couple of weeks because it's christmas-season and I've moved home, hence my reading of several less strenuous materials (see every other post this December), but have been thoroughly enjoyed it with interest nonetheless. I don't say this about many academic sources, but it's awesome.
   Adams has attempted to construct a framework for ethics centred around the Platonic concept of a transcendent Good and our relation to it. Strongly compatible with theism, especially christian belief systems, Adams takes this Good to be God. As the transcendent Good, all "good" things in the world can therefore be said to in some way resemble God in their intrinsic properties (which he calls "excellences") and are therefore appealing to a rational well-oriented human mind, because the universe was made by God in his nature as Good and so goodness is a naturally-diffuse characteristic of recognisable creation; that aspect specifically which lends value and rightness to it by affirming its unity and coherence. All excellences, especially morality, are good in that they are God-like and are to be encouraged, enjoyed, exercised, treasured. Evil then is not an equatable opposite power, simply an absence of or opposition to the Good.
   I am far too unskilled a philosophy-abstractioner to do justice in summarising Adams' book properly here, particularly because I myself so deeply enjoyed and agreed with it. I've ended up with several thousand pages of wrist-crampingly handwritten notes on it which at some point, bugger everything as a I now realise, I will have to transcribe onto a computer are they to have any use for my essay. However I hope the rough overview I've just given has made it sound interesting. If it hasn't, here's a very brief description of the topic of each chapter:

1. God as the Good - why is the metaphysical/theological person of a God the best fit for his central concept of transcendent Good?
2. the Transcendence of the Good - what are the implications of this Good's being better and definitive of other goods?
3. Well-being and Excellence - how are we to judge good outcomes in human lives?
4. the Sacred and the Bad - what significance does the Good lend to this that do (or don't) resemble it, and what does this imply for right attitudes towards them?
5. Eros - how does God (and do we) love things for their own sake?
6. Grace - how does God (and do we) love things for the Good's sake?
7. Devotion - how do/should we organise our motivational structures in making decisions involving goodness?
8. Idolatry - what happens what the Good is not the centre of the motivational structures discussed in the previous chapter?
9. Symbolic Value - is there a place in relating to the Good for acts that proclaim but do not effectively serve it?
10. Obligation - given systematic social use of guilt as a structure for obligating certain behaviours, how does this apply here?
11. Divine Commands - how do social-style obligations work when it is the Good (i.e. God) themselves that obligates certain behaviours?
12. Abraham's Dilemma - are the obliged commands of the Good always good?
13. Vocation - are there particular decisions or behaviours specific to individuals that we can take to be obligatory goods but not universals?
14. Politics and the Good - what are the implications of everything discussed so far for how we approach political systems and concepts?
15. Revelation of the Good - how do we even find out what goodness is in the first place, or relate it to a Good?
16. Moral Faith - is a certain trusting leap required to accept any system of morality, including this one?

   What struck me hard from the book is how coherent his system of ideas is, though drawing so deeply on academic philosophy and on sets of ideas completely alien to it. Adams has refashioned the divine command theory of moral obligation (hardly a popular theory anyway) in a way that is bold, efficient, edifying, and makes a lot of sense; it doesn't depend upon assuming but fits perfectly well with vast chunks of theist thinking, mostly christian theology, especially given the primacy of love as an importance in our relation to the Good.
   Robert Merrihew Adams, to me, has gone from being being a name on the module's recommended reading list (when I first heard of him) to being a world-famous eminent philosopher on theological ethics and metaphysics (when I googled him later) to being a supremely agreeable and intelligent man with whom I find immense common ground and cannot commend for his excellences enough (when I finished his book). This book meshed with and enhanced my own thinking really well: so much of what I have always vaguely felt but never articulated philosophically about ethics he outlines with casual accuracy; so much of what I have given much intense thought to about theology, politics, metaphysics and faith he adroitly encompasses in a cogent intelligible system that helps justify and unify my own thinking about these things.
   Anyone who is interested in ethics, anyone who is a thinking christian, and especially anyone who is both, I wholeheartedly exhort you to put this, my last book of 2014, on your reading lists for next year.