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What I aim to provide here is an insider's guide to philosophy from a perspective that is both humanistic and rationalistic. If you want to find answers to the sort of questions that most of us have entertained at one time or another about life purpose, or truth, or the nature of the just political state, or the nature of reality, you'll almost certainly find them faster by consulting the resources provided here than you will anywhere else on the web — or just about any place else, for that matter. I've been reading philosophy since I was 15 years of age (that was a LONG time ago), and have formal educational background in philosophy, too. What follows is the best of what I've encountered along the way.
First, however, let's have a quick look at that very common form of anxiety I've come to think of as "Fear of Philosophy," or just "foffy" for short.
I am acquainted with a very bright individual, the possessor of a doctorate in physics, who was so intimidated by one of the clearest introductions to philosophy available that he flatly refused to read it. (At the time, he was a member of a group that read a different book each month and then debated its pros and cons.)
Why did so intelligent a person suffer from such a severe form of "foffy"?
Probably because he felt that philosophy was foreign turf — a strange place, without any familiar points of reference. And so it is, for the vast majority of Americans, anyway. It's not their fault. Nothing in their educational experience prepares them for an understanding of philosophy. Unfortunately, however, to say this is much like saying that nothing in their educational experience teaches them to think for themselves about issues of fundamental importance.
Fortunately, though, acquiring reference points isn't as hard as he imagined. Anything is foreign the first time we encounter it.
One Good Point of Entry: Existentialism
As a school of philosophy, the Existentialists have probably done the best job of making some of the problems of philosophy accessible; and of the Existentialists, the upbeat British Existentialist Colin Wilson has probably done the best job of all. (Among philosophers the British are known for their endearing love of clarity.)
His science fiction novels The Mind Parasites and The Philosopher's Stone are fast-paced, fascinating, and very readable introductions to some of the problems of ethics and the philosophy of mind (a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of consciousness). Though containing a good bit of wild speculation, both books also convey something of the fun and fascination of philosophy. (And both, unfortunately, are out of print, so you'll have to either borrow them from your library or else contact a rare book dealer.)
But if you've read these and want to move on, or perhaps don't like science fiction, where should you go next? The answer to that question depends upon the individual reader's inclinations. A reader who has become comfortable with Wilson courtesy of his novels could go on to his Introduction to the New Existentialism. This would have the further benefit of introducing him or her to a number of other philosophers.
Those who do like the science fictional approach could try any number of other novels. Among them:
More Than Human (Theodore Sturgeon), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Leguin), or Triton (Samuel Delaney) all of which are concerned in various ways with questions of identity.
The Lathe of Heaven (Leguin), which is concerned with metaphysics (the nature of reality).
The Languages of Pao (Jack Vance) which deals with the influence of conceptual frameworks or worldviews (see below).
Beyond This Horizon (Robert Heinlein) or A Voyage to Arcturus (David Lindsay), both of which deal with the proper ends of life.
And a play with something of a science fictional flavor is Man and Superman, by George Bernard Shaw, which sets forth a human ideal.
However, literature can only take
you so far with philosophy. Sooner or later, you'll have to take the plunge
and read works that are more overtly philosophical. The single best way to continue
would be with a good introduction to philosophy. Although the ideal first introduction
remains to be written, Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy
is at least clear, interesting, and occasionally amusing. Unfortunately, it's
also disappointingly superficial, at least where the subject of ethics is concerned.
By now it's become a little outdated, and it omits a number of important philosophers,
while paying undue heed to others. It's rather long, too, so the wit and clarity
are much needed. Still, most of the other introductions available are generally
either too flip and superficial or too boring.
The one exception is, perhaps, Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy",
which is shorter than Russell's study. It is warmly remembered by his many readers
as a book that rendered the apparently incomprehensible abstractions of philosophy
of vital human interest. While it shares some of the flaws of Russell's book,
I can say it is indeed written accessibly, and is especially good in the philosophy
of politics (while being weak in the area of epistemology). The interested reader
will find a link in the web resources below that gives something of the flavor
of the book.
While tackling a first introduction to philosophy, it can be helpful to have a good philosophical dictionary at hand. The best is probably The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich. Part of the feeling of being in a foreign country can come from hearing a lot of foreign language spoken, though Russell, and Durant, try hard to avoid this.
Perhaps the greatest danger in reading philosophy is met when the reader begins to feel a creeping sense of disorientation. So many of the reader's fundamental certainties may be challenged, and so many conflicting viewpoints encountered, that he or she may come away bewildered, with a sense that almost any point of view can be made to seem plausible, or, worse, that there's no such thing as the truth at all. This is the point at which a reliable guide is indispensable.
The other problem with reading philosophy is that many of the professional philosophers address very technical problems, and so don't provide much insight that will seem relevant to the average reader. With these potholes in mind, I'll indicate which books I believe put forward views that are more or less true, and also of more general interest. Similarly, I'll say clearly which philosophers I regard as misleading, false or confused, and who are therefore better avoided, at least at the beginning.
However, I'm a little uncomfortable about providing this sort of guidance. For one thing, philosophy should be about ensuring that all ideas get a fair hearing, and I undoubtedly have blind spots. I have always found it difficult to read much of the work of philosophers whose ideas I think are seriously mistaken. The reader should also be aware that others would sharply disagree with many of the judgments I've made here. For example, many professional philosophers regard the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as the greatest of the twentieth century, while my opinion is that his work has little merit and still less appeal. On the other hand, if pressed to identify the most important philosopher of the twentieth century (no easy matter) I would probably nominate Brand Blanshard — a professional philosopher many other professional philosophers have never even heard of. So if you feel you'd like to sample outside of my guidance, by all means do so. At least some of the tools for that are here, too.
As I noted above, the reader interested in philosophy may sooner or later find him- or herself wondering whether philosophers ever make any progress, or whether, instead, philosophy is simply a collection of opinions, no opinion better than any other. Philosophers themselves have wrestled with this question, some fruitfully, some not. Overall, the best examination of this issue is probably that of Mortimer Adler in The 4 Dimensions of Philosophy ( which he takes to be the "metaphysical, moral, objective, and categorical"). Adler can also be found tackling two other important tasks here: first, laying out a reasonably good definition of what philosophy is (this is surprisingly difficult to do), and second explaining why philosophy is of such immense importance.
Perhaps the most interesting suggestion that Adler has to make is this: philosophy must, like science, be a cooperative venture; and in order to be a venture of this nature, philosophers must first of all be clear what questions they are trying to answer. Also valuable here would be a systematic effort to sort out the various answers that have already been offered, as well as the points at which philosophers differ.
Adler suggests all this can be accomplished by what amounts to a new discipline, dialectics, which has as its aim precisely the clearest possible exposition of philosophical questions together with an account of the principal answers.
A book dealing with the philosophy of philosophy probably isn't the sort of thing that will be of great initial interest; yet it is the sort of book that everyone with a serious interest in the subject will want to have a look at sooner or later. When that time arrives, Adler's The 4 Dimensions of Philosophy is the place to go.
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you want."
—Mark Twain
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that tries to determine what makes beliefs — religious, political, scientific, or otherwise — true or false. Questions about evidence and logic are central to it. Although epistemology is one of the most important subjects of all, most serious books concerning it are unfortunately rather dry and technical. However, I'm happy to say that's not true of any of the books recommended here, providing you enjoy reading about ideas in the first place. On the other hand, none of them would qualify as light entertainment, either. But just as you can't hope to become fit by lying inert on your couch ("no pain, no gain"), you can't hope to cultivate your mind by watching TV and reading newspapers. Some effort is needed.
The main technical controversy in epistemology has been between Rationalists, who believe that there are concepts and knowledge not given in experience, and Empiricists, who think that all concepts and knowledge are grounded in experience alone. I think Rationalists have the better arguments (so, yes, I'm a Rationalist).
Best
Introduction/Most Practical: Clear
Thinking, by Hy Ruchlis
Some
Representative Quotations
Remarks: Easy to understand, and suitable even for high school students, this book should be required reading in all secondary schools everywhere. Ruchlis explains how well-justified views are arrived at in simple language, and shows how false views are advanced, too. Fail a course on this book and you shouldn't graduate from High School. Neither should you be able to vote, hold public office, or enter the military or police. If you can't think clearly, you can't act responsibly. Elitist? No. Anybody can tackle Hy Ruchlis. And everybody should.
Best
Advanced Book: Reason and Analysis,
by Brand Blanshard
Some
Representative Quotations
R&A was oOut of print for a while, which was about as silly as, say, Shakespeare being out of print. Blanshard's book is technical (though only in the sense of dealing with advanced topics, not in the sense of using a technical vocabulary), yet extremely clear and concise. This book provides an almost inhumanly fair and balanced — but also highly critical — account of the epistemological ideas of the most influential school of thought of the twentieth century (Analytic philosophy). This might not sound interesting, but it is, because in the end Blanshard's real purpose is to provide a spirited and persuasive defense of human reason against the many assaults that have been made upon it. Above all, subjectivism, the idea that all beliefs are really just matters of personal opinion, is so exhaustively and fairly critiqued, and so completely exposed as nonsense that you'll probably never again be able to hear somebody make subjectivistic arguments again without wincing. This is a timeless classic and a tremendous pleasure to read.
Runner-up
(Advanced): Personal Knowledge,
by Michael Polanyi
Some Representative Quotations
Remarks: Like Blanshard's book, this one is technical but clear and concise, and intensely interesting. Polanyi uncovers the "personal" pole of knowledge (as opposed to the usual starting point: objects "out there" in the world), and in the process lays the foundation of a very sophisticated theory of knowledge and belief. This book deals in a fascinating way with with a number of fascinating subjects that are usually confined to the borders of epistemology when they're discussed at all. Indeed, much of the merit of the book lies in Polyani's discussion of topics somewhat beyond the borders of epistemology proper.
Honorable
mention (Intermediate): Exploring
Phenomenology, by David Stewart and Algis Mickunas.
Some Representative Quotations
Remarks: Along with Blanshard and Polanyi, perhaps the most important writer on the subject of epistemology in the twentieth century was the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, the founder of a discipline known as "phenomenology." Husserl's motto was "to the things themselves." That is, if you want to study some phenomenon, any phenomenon, go look at it — carefully, being sure to take fully into account your own, often unnoticed, prejudices. Unfortunately, Husserl himself is so dry as to be almost unreadable. Stewart and Mickunas make this rather difficult but important approach to philosophy accessible. Anyone interested in Existentialism will especially profit from a reading of this book since the best Existentialists were well-grounded in Husserl.
Honorable
mention (Intermediate): The Elements
and Structure of the Physical Sciences, by Julien A. Ripley, Jr.
Some
Representative Quotations
Ripley's book is technical but clear. After many years of looking at books on science, this remains the standout. It might seem a little strange to find an introductory text on science listed among books concerning epistemology, but much of our knowledge is derived from science; and at the foundations of science there lie a number of crucial, and fascinating, epistemological issues. Unfortunately, most Americans have no understanding whatsoever of these ideas lying at the foundation of the physical sciences, nor do they understand scientific method, or what makes for a good scientific theory. (In fact, some readers may well find this book advanced.) Though it's now a bit dated, Ripley's book is both an excellent introductory text for the physical sciences and a good account of the more philosophical side of science. (Ripley was a student of one of the best American philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead.) It also includes a lot of the historical context for scientific discovery, which makes for a more humanly interesting read, as well as good discussions of mathematics in the physical sciences to help keep you from getting lost.
Not Recommended
Not recommended (initially, but you'll probably want to read them eventually): any work by the "Logical Positivists" or their intellectual cousins. This includes anything by Bertrand Russell on the subject of knowledge, anything by A. J. Ayer, anything by Rudolf Carnap, and anything by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The problems with these thinkers are ably explained by Brand Blanshard (and, to a lesser degree, Michael Polanyi). Briefly, they tended to be slavish acolytes of science, and leaned toward a rather simplistic view of knowledge. However, if you have time, you might read one or two of them after reading Blanshard. Be aware that they're all pretty dry and technical. Once again the most accessible is Russell.
Not recommended (initially): anything by W. V. O. Quine, an influential latter-day Positivist (mostly) and a student of Carnap. If you major in philosophy, you'll probably have to read Quine sooner or later. Again, I'd suggest that you read Blanshard first. Like Wittgenstein, Quine was a bright enough fellow, but, again like Wittgenstein, I think his reputation is largely undeserved.
Not recommended (ever): any work propounding Postmodernism (which self-contradictorily denies the possibility of any sort of substantive truth). The founder of Postmodernism was the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard. I regard Postmodernism as a kind of intellectual quicksand. The ground may look firm enough, but once you've stepped in you may never come back out again.
Not recommended (ever): any work by Jacques Derrida, another French philosopher. In my opinion, the generation of French philosophers now passing away was mostly pretty awful. While they've exercised considerable influence among academics, very little of the resulting body of work strikes me as being meaningful or productive, while a lot of it is foggy and pretentious.
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that tries to determine the characteristics of both the physical world and the mind (or as the religiously-inclined call it, the soul). Thus, metaphysical issues underlie science, psychology, and religion. Some specific issues in this arena are questions concerning life after death, freedom of the will, the nature of consciousness, the nature of causation, the nature of the physical world, and the nature of living things. Weighty issues, all, to be sure, but hardly anything is more interesting.
Before jumping into the more detailed material provided below, you may first wish to read Dr. Richard DeTar's essay "A Brief History of Western Worldviews," which does an excellent job of presenting the metaphysical essentials of the basic intellectual frameworks that have defined western thought for some two and a half millennia. In his essay, Dr. DeTar identifies two primary, and two secondary frameworks. The primary frameworks are the material, or scientific, and the spiritual, or religious. The two others are derived, in a sense, from these. One of these secondary worldviews attempts to combine and reconcile the two primary frameworks, while the other treats them as being "separate but equal."
Dr. DeTar's essay, written especially for Progressive Living readers, may be found here.
If you really want to understand the nature of physical reality, you've got to tackle quantum physics (at a minimum). Doing this in a serious way requires a good bit of mathematical preparation; but if you don't have enough math background you can still read good popularizations, one of which we'll review here. (Much of theoretical physics is, in reality—no pun intended—metaphysics; and quantum physics is very theoretical indeed. That accounts for the inclusion of some science books here.)
Best Introduction: Quantum Reality, by Nick Herbert
Remarks: Be aware that there are now a number of popularizations of quantum physics available. John Gribbin's book In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is often recommended, and does indeed do a good job of providing the historical background. Much more interesting, however, is Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality. It's also a somewhat harder read than Gribbin. At a high level the news is that physicists aren't at all sure how reality is put together. Of the eight leading theories, the one that holds the most water for me (but please bear in mind that I am no authority on quantum physics) is David Bohm's notion that reality is an indivisible whole. You can hear more about that theory directly from Bohm (at a fairly popular level) in Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Quantum physics is very weird and counter-intuitive stuff, and makes for rather disquieting reading. After all, we're talking about the fundamental nature of reality here, and it's almost certainly quite different from what we ordinarily think of it as being.
If you're the type who enjoys the speculative boundaries or foundations of science, you should also acquaint yourself with thermodynamics, the science of "heat" or, more generally, energy. The problems here are just as interesting as those in quantum physics, and are equally important, if not more so. Also extremely interesting is the theory of communication, which deals with information (in a rather special, technical sense, at least so far).
Why bother with such stuff? Because not only is it fundamental to the nature of physical reality, it even turns out to have played an important role in the evolutionary process. The universe started out hot and disorderly (so far as we know), and will end up cold and inert (again, so far as we know). Thermodynamics traces the flow of energy in between this alpha and omega (beginning and end).
Life as we know it occupies the zone between the two extremes, and must constantly swim upstream against the tendencies of the universe at large to lose energy, and for that which is organized to become disorganized (which tendencies are aspects of what is known to physicists as entropy). Living things do this by capturing and using information, and by constantly sucking in energy. In fact, these capacities are among the things that most fundamentally characterize living things, and are therefore among the features that most clearly set them apart from the inorganic realm. So I'm afraid if you really want to understand the nature of living things in any sort of deep way, you've got to wrestle with thermodynamics and information theory. Amazingly enough, it's really not so bad.
Best Technical Introduction: Understanding Thermodynamics, by H. C. Van Ness
Remarks: This book is technical, and doesn't shy away from statistics and calculus, though at a pretty basic level (and is reasonably understandable even if you don't grasp the equations). Quite lucid and concise, but not the best place for the average reader to start. For that, see the next book.
Best Popularization: The Refrigerator and the Universe, by Martin Goldstein and Inge F. Goldstein
Remarks: R&U is almost devoid of math and reasonably readable. This is about as good as it's probably ever going to get where this discipline is involved, since it's just not an easy subject. Read the Goldsteins before the Van Ness book, and, amazingly enough, you'll have a pretty good grasp of the elements of thermodynamics.
Best Technical Introduction: The Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver
Technical, with a healthy amount of calculus and statistics, but the early chapters, at least, can be pretty readily understood. Shannon is the father figure of this discipline, and this is his seminal work. Definitely not the best place for the average reader to start, however.
Best Technical Popularization: An Introduction to Information Theory, by John R. Pierce
Remarks: Takes a lot of chewing, and it helps if you've got math aptitude (otherwise it's a bit of a slog), but it's all here; still, this is also not the best place for the average reader to start. For that, see the next book.
Best General Popularization:
Grammatical Man, by Jeremy Campbell
Some
Representative Quotations
Martin Gardner, the friendly native guide to mathematics at Scientific American for so many years, called this book "An intellectual adventure of the highest sort."
So it is.
Campbell's book is intensely interesting, very readable, and packed full of rewarding insights. Start here, especially if you don't have much math aptitude.
Implications for Evolution: Evolution, Thermodynamics and Information, by Jeffrey S. Wicken
Remarks: One of the best attempts to move beyond the genetics-dominated — or perhaps more accurately, genetics-bound — paradigm of neo-Darwinism (the "received" view of the theory of evolution among many scientists). A lot of fiber here, but it's well worth the chew. Read Campbell and the Goldsteins first, though, or you won't have a clue what Wicken is talking about.
Implications for Consciousness: Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind, by Kenneth Sayre
Remarks: Information theory shades off in one direction into cybernetics, the study of self-regulating systems. Sayre picks up the story where Wicken leaves off, which is to say, at the point at which biology transitions to consciousness. For that reason, this would be an interesting place to come after reading Wicken (the function of consciousness, for Sayre, is self-regulation). Some very compelling arguments against reductionistic materialism (see below, also) are found here.
A little less unsettling than quantum physics, and easier to grasp than information theory or thermodynamics (though in the end these subjects are very intimately related, and good background to have), are questions concerning the nature of parts versus wholes, living things, and the mind. Since Galileo, who borrowed some of the ideas of the Greek philosopher Democritus, orthodox science has been materialistic, believing that the only things that are ultimately real are the tiniest components of matter. This view is known as materialism.
Unfortunately, the implications of the reductionistic view of materialism are extremely destructive of everything that most human beings would consider important: for example, consciousness, values, and life itself go out the window on this view, since these aren't properties of individual atoms (or still less quanta). However, scientific developments throughout the twentieth century dealt one blow after another to reductionistic materialism. First, quantum physics eliminated the notion of hard, independent little blocks of matter. Then Tektology and General System Theory dealt a body blow to the idea that only tiny little things can have unique properties (rather, wholes frequently have properties that parts don't exhibit). And Edmund Husserl and others argued convincingly that mind isn't reducible to matter. The old linear, billiard-ball view of causation (aka, "clockworks") had to be thrown out the window, too. And physicist Erwin Schrodinger demonstrated beyond any doubt that living things really are different from non-living things. In our view, nothing much is left of reductionistic materialism any more, at least in its original forms, but many traditionalists remain, and would strenuously disagree.
GST tries to get at the all-important differences between parts and wholes. (It was anticipated by Tektology, which was developed by the Russian medical researcher Alexander Bogdanov — but Bogdanov's books aren't generally available.) As a discipline, it has recently been somewhat eclipsed by the (supposedly) more glamorous investigations of "chaos" and "complexity." These topics are, however, subsets of the phenomena properly investigated by GST and should eventually be integrated within it — or at least complexity theory should.
Why is this difference between parts and wholes all-important? Again, because nothing of ultimate value — personality, love, truth, understanding — exists at the atomic or subatomic levels. And if only things at those levels are "real", then nothing of ultimate value exists at all. The implications of reductionistic materialism are all mechanistic and utterly destructive. (I should point out that scientists have no more interest in being destructive than anyone else, but many have felt obligated to defend this type of materialism because they felt that it was true — and also because early critics of materialism were often vague or fell back upon discredited ideas.)
GST isn't especially hard to understand, and there are many extremely interesting books dealing with the subject.
Best Introduction: The Web of Life, by Fritjof Capra
Remarks: Capra's book is a lively, reasonably up to date (1996) treatment of the whole range of systems issues. It gets a bit vague and speculative at times, but this is, after all, a book about an intellectual frontier. A fascinating and fairly easy read.
Runner-Up: The Ghost in the Machine, by Arthur Koestler
Remarks: There was a time when Koestler seemed to be a voice crying in the wilderness. No more, thankfully. Yet he's never been given his due by "professional" philosophers (often a jealous and rather prickly crowd), nor has anyone stepped in to bring his thinking more up to date. A pity, as he remains both readable and relevant. This book is a summation of years of Koestler's reflections upon the problem of the difference (and connections) between parts and wholes, and provides an explanation of why that difference is so important. A masterwork.
Runner-Up: The Self-Organizing Universe, by Erich Jantsch
Remarks: A good book to read as a follow-on to Capra's book, as it contains a much more detailed — and deeper — account of the fundamental concepts. It's also more technical than Capra, though.
The philosophy of mind tries to make sense out of consciousness, which is so very different from the rest of the universe. Though there have been many theories concerning the nature of consciousness, in the end most try to answer this question: is the mind really more or less illusory, and in fact nothing more than brain, or does the mind have distinctive properties all its own; and if so, how is that possible?
Best Introduction: Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction, by George Graham
Remarks: Well written, lucid, and does a good job of covering the whole range of problems within the borders of philosophy of mind, including a number that often aren't discussed in an introductory text, such as after-death experiences, the minds of animals, and weakness of will. I've read several introductory texts in this field, and no other was nearly as good as this one.
Best Advanced Book: The Nature of Thought (in two volulmes), by Brand Blanshard
Remarks: Blanshard doesn't tackle philosophy of mind in the usual way. (Most philosophers get all tangled up in problems about the interaction — or non-interaction — of a supposedly immaterial mind with a "material" body. This is known as the problem of "dualism.") Instead, he gets right down to work, looking at what the mind actually is, and how it actually works — and why. Blanshard canvasses virtually every significant theory put forward up to the time of publication of NOT, and carefully notes strengths and weaknesses. Like nearly everything Blanshard ever wrote, this is a genuine masterwork, and should be read by every psychologist and philosopher of mind.
Honorable Mention: A History of the Mind, by Nicholas Humphrey
Remarks: Humphrey tries to trace the origins of the mind from the phenomena of feeling and sensation. This is really fascinating stuff, and Humphrey's argument is very persuasive.
The field of ethics is concerned with the foundations of morality — standards of right and wrong — and with the meaning of life. (I use the phrase 'Ethics of Proper Conduct' to reference issues of morality, and 'Ethics of Proper Ends' to refer to issues concerned with the meaning of life.)
Best Classic Work: Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
Remarks: If you've ever wondered about the meaning of life, this is the place to start. You might think that after 2,500 years a book of this nature would be so dated as to be worthless. Rather incredibly, that's just not so. And the style is surprisingly accessible, at least in the translation of J. A. K. Thomson. Much of what has been written since on this topic owes a heavy debt to Aristotle. The text is available on the web. (See Web Resources, below.)
Those who do find NE a little steep will find a wonderful introduction in J. O. Urmson's Aristotle's Ethics.
Next Best Classic Work: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
Remarks: Heavy going, like nearly everything Kant wrote, so you might consider reading a more popular introduction first. (Try Roger J. Sullivan's "Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory." It's not really an especially light read, either, but it's certainly a lot easier to digest than Kant himself.) Still, FMM is one of the most seminal of all works on ethics. The emphasis here is on morality (the Ethics of Social Conduct) rather than on the meaning of life (the Ethics of Proper Ends). The text of FMM is available on web (see Web Resources below).
Best Modern Works (Tie): Reason and Goodness, by Brand Blanshard and Perfectionism, by Thomas Hurka.
Blanshard's book is so accessible, so well written, so incredibly intelligent that nothing else ever said on the subject of ethics quite compares for my money. Blanshard patiently and judiciously bulldozes all of the nonsense written on the subject throughout the twentieth century, including all forms of relativism and subjectivism, and steadily constructs his own highly persuasive alternative. Hurka's book is considerably more technical, but extends and elaborates the same sort of position advocated by Blanshard, and even explores some of the political ramifications. If I could make any two books required reading, it would be these two. So get them (from a library or really good antiquarian book store in Blanshard's case), read them, and feel the fog lift.
In many ways, the existentialists provide the best introductory reading in philosophy. Their concerns are the concerns that confront all of us, and for this reason the best of them have things to say that everyone can profit from. Unfortunately, two features of the existentialist literature are apt to put the average reader off. First, many of these philosophers just don't write clearly. Second, as a life philosophy, existentialism offers comparatively little comfort. The tenor of existentialist thought tends to range from gloomy and pessimistic to stoical. An optimistic existentialist would strike many as an oddity indeed.
And yet there have been existentialists who both wrote clearly and who provided grounds for a more optimistic outlook. There are three existentialists of this type we can commend to the reader.
The first, and most important, of these is the American philosopher, John Wild.
The Challenge of Existentialism, by John Wild
Wild's The Challenge of Existentialism is perhaps the best single introduction to existentialism, although it's not the easiest. He does an admirable job of identifying the most important insights of the most important philosophers and of presenting these in a clear and orderly fashion. While being careful to provide an unbiased account of almost the whole gamut of major existentialists, Wild nevertheless maintains a critical perspective, and does a first-rate job of identifying the chief flaws of existential thought, as well as analyzing the grounds for their pessimism. Some of the latter are not to be minimized or rationalized away, as they're an inescapable part of the human condition; and yet others rest upon philosophical error.
Wild first touches upon the flaws in Chapter 6, in a section entitled "Some Weaknesses of Existentialist Thought", which addresses such areas as philosophical methodology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. It seems to us that every one of his criticisms finds its mark. However, it's in the concluding chaper of the book, "Realistic Ethics", that Wild clearly points the way beyond the pessimism and ethical inadequacies of much existentialism, and provides a persuasive alternative of his own, grounded in the classical ethics of Plato.
A reader who finds in Wild's alternative the vista of an ethics unencumbered with the worst philosophical errors of the existentialists will certainly want to go on to read what is perhaps his most interesting book, Plato's Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law. This study, which is far more exciting than it sounds, is probably the single most capable exposition of Natural Law ethics ever written, and it does much to address the serious and almost universal misunderstanding ethics of this nature have fallen into. But more importantly, it shows the way out of the worst of the existentialist dead ends.
An Existentialist Ethics, by Hazel E. Barnes
American existentialist Hazel Barnes was the English translator of Jean- Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, but she's a formidable philosopher in her own right. (I've had the pleasure of meeting her, and can say that I've rarely encountered a keener mind.)
I've heard it said anecdotally that Barnes once asked Sartre when he was going to write his long promised study of ethics, and that he suggested that she write such a study herself. True or not, An Existentialist Ethics is perhaps the closest thing to a humanistic ethics grounded in Sartrean existentialism that we will ever have.
In addition to setting forth her own persuasive ethic, Barnes subjects a number of other thinkers to critical scrutiny. It's a bit curious now to think that this analysis was published in 1967, as many of the writers and trends she singled out for criticism then remain influential today. Among these are Ayn Rand, Heidegger, such exponents of Zen Buddhism as Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki, and Vedanta. Included also is a discussion of the thought of such disciples of drug-enhanced consciousness as Aldous Huxley. I don't know of a more cogent evaluation of these writers than that provided by Barnes.
In addition, her chapter on mortality is among the most valuable I've ever encountered, and makes highly worthwhile reading for those inclined to doubt the likelihood of an afterlife, or for those grieving the loss of loved ones.
The Outsider, by Colin Wilson
Wilson is something of a curiosity among the existentialist philosophers. He has consistently written interesting and readily accessible books, full of interesting insights; and he has served as something of a philosophical mentor for thousands of his readers, who have often gone on from Wilson to read the many writers he so seductively discusses. Disappointingly, however, there seem to be two Wilsons: the writer of popular, yet fundamentally serious, studies such as The Outsider and New Pathways in Psychology, and the Wilson who writes embarrassing books about Atlantis and UFOs. Wilson himself maintains that his underlying themes and goals in both sorts of books are much the same. And sometimes there's some truth in this. The Occult provides one example, perhaps the best, of a reasonably sober treatment of sensational material. But in correspondence with me Wilson has acknowledged that an important temptation to write such books has been the money he's made on them. This is understandable, certainly: Wilson is no tenured philosopher, comfortably retired; and even today he writes from finanacial necessity. Yet one cannot help but wish that Wilson had made better use of his time.
The Outsider, Wilson's first book, was first published in 1956, but it remains an astonishing performance even today, particularly when one reflects that it was written in his early twenties. It's virtually packed with the sort of erudition one might expect in, say, a professor of literature in his sixties.
Its focus is what Wilson calls "the Outsider"—the individual who has seen beneath the facade of civilization to the intellectual and moral shambles it rests upon. Having glimpsed its superficiality and underlying lack of direction, he can't go back to ordinary life; and yet he isn't entirely sure what to go on to instead. His position is something like that of the child who has discovered to his dismay that there is no Santa Claus; and yet his position is enormously worse, because not only is his insight of far more serious import—it may look suspiciously as though there's nothing important or meaningful to be done in life at all—he also finds himself surrounded by other adults who have never shaken off their complacent, and mistaken, certainties. To make matters worse, he may well find that there is no place for him in a society made up predominantly of people caught up in mundane practicalities.
In the years since The Outsider first appeared, Wilson has returned to his central preoccupations again and again; and yet he has never satisfactorily resolved the problems he set himself. Fairly early on he came to feel that human consciousness itself is defective, given to marooning us in a world devoid of significance, not because the significance isn't there, but rather because ordinary consciousness too often fails to do its job of keeping us aware, even subsidiarily, of that significance. While this is undoubtedly true, there's probably little of a practical nature to be done about it beyond "feeding our heads" with meaningful experiences. Certainly, his many forays into psychic phenomena are on the whole unpersuasive and are all but devoid of concrete suggestions. Wilson might have done much better had he tackled the nature of significance—that is, of meaningful values—head-on, rather than spending so much of his time noting the vagaries of consciousness in dealing with it.
Ultimately it is Wild, and even more successfully than Wild, Hurka (discussed above) who deal most successfully with the topic of meaningful values (though much work remains to be done).
Still, The Outsider remains profitable and engaging reading both in its own right and as an introduction to existential thought.