No comments about On Lao Tzu (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

2 comments about Rosa Luxemburg Speaks.

1. Rosa Luxemburg was a revolutionary born in a Poland, which had been divided up amongst Germany, Austria, and Russia. This historical accident enabled her to be a participant in the working class movement in Poland, Russia, and Germany. She was a member of Germany's massive Social Democratic Party for the bulk of her life. This collection includes writings on subjects ranging from the German socialist leadership's betrayal of its working class following, capitalism and war, why workers can and should understand economics, and the new road to social justice opened by the Russian revolution.
   
   It is no wonder that the German ruling class, anxious to hold the line against the rising tide of workers and farmers revolution, murdered this fighter in 1919.



2. This collection is worth it for the article "What is economics" alone. You'll never feel the need to plough through another tedious economics tome again. She applies her razor-sharp wit to ripping apart conventional economists' dronings. Explaining how early 19th century economists really tried to elucidate the workings of the system, she lays out how, once they'd realized that they were exposing a class system of exploitation that had no future, the whole lot just dissolved into obscurantist ramblings in order to befuddle the rest of us. Her exposé certainly makes Greenspan and his ilk look like either benighted fools or not-very-sophisticated snake oil peddlers. I loved it. No wonder I flunked Economics 101 - it didn't seem to make any sense because it doesn't. You'll never feel like a fool reading the Business section again.

No comments about On Leibniz (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

No comments about Jean Piaget and Neuchâtel: The Learner and the Scholar.

1 comments about Owl of Minerva.

1. I believe that when the philosophical dust from the 20th century finally settles, Mary Midgley will be regarded as among the more important philosophical writers (not just professors of philosophy) of the latter portion of the century. She wrote polemically but perspicaciously about animal rights, as in her work BEAST AND MAN, on many scientific questions (as in her work THE MYTHS WE LIVE BY), and on numerous other subjects.
   
   Her autobiography contains fascinating portraits of her family, such as her husband, Geoffrey, who was an inspiring teacher, and her famous friends, such as Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Anscombe, but many readers will perhaps find most interesting her comments on the philosophical luminaries she encountered, such as Wittgeinstein, whose inimitable philosophical manner she describes thus:
   
   **
   The extraordinary thing about Wittgenstein is that he succeeded in making crucial things clear in philosophy in spite of his fearful communication difficulties. These difficulties seem to have been more or less of the kind that is now discussed under the heading of Aspberger's Syndrome, and though such classifications can be slick and misleading, I think the central point does seem right. There was surely a kind of emotional remoteness that shut him off in many ways from those around him. But perhaps it was the terror induced by that very sense of remoteness that made him able to stress our social nature so powerfully. Having been very close to real solipsism he rebounded from it with tremendous violence. Thus he was able to break away from the conviction of individual isolation produced by [Descartes's] _Cogito_ and to replant us in our proper soil as social beings.
   **
   
   She also emphasizes that Wittgenstein's ideas about the world-beyond-language have eluded many of his interpreters:
   
   **
   . . . far from believing that everything outside science is nonsense, Wittgenstein himself thought (even then) that what could not be said was far more importannt than the relatively trifling things that were sayable. What lay beyond speech was, he said, the _mystical_, by which he did _not_ mean nonsense but the profound, the true stuff of our lives. . . of course the TRACTATUS is so obscurely written that there was nothing very surprising in its being misinterpreted. In fact, Wittgenstein might be said to have proved his own depressing proposition. The TRACTATUS, after all, was only words, and words alone, not fully back up by explanation in a suitable form of life, do indeed often prove inadequate for human communication.
   **
   
   Her descriptions of her philosophical life at the University of Reading make us consider the virtues of an earlier age, in which British philosophical discussion was not only the province of specialists in the Oxbridge constellation:
   
   **
   What did strike me was that it was possible to talk freely. Dons openly admitted that they were interested in subjects other than their own, and were willing to talk about them without looking round to see if the expert was going to confute them. If someone said, `That's really a biological question,' this did not lead to an anguish-ridden silence, but to finding a biologist at once and asking him about it. Nobody seemed frightened of having their reputation destroyed; nobody considered that a chance question over a coffee cup demanded an _ex cathedra_ pronouncement. The state of being unable to say or write anything for fear that one might get it slightly wrong was not common, and where it existed it was not held in honour. I cannot express how much I liked this. When I had anything to write, I began to be able to write it, and so to work my way past mistakes. For Oxford, though it has never managed to stop my mouth, had come very near to freezing up my pen.
   **
   
   In her book, Midgley details the puffed pretensions of some British philosophy dons, even as she relies on the idea of philosophical fear, which was first expressed by Iris Murdoch, to explain the character of some philosophers: "What is this philosopher afraid of?" Murdoch asked as she examined the works of 20th century philosophers. As Midgley writes:
   
   **
   It is indeed important to ask what any particular philosopher is afraid of. . . . what really frightened analytic philosophers was the danger of being though _weak_ -- vague, credulous, sentimental, superstitious or simply too wide in their sympathies. Unlike their forebears in William James's time, they were much more afraid of looking weak than they were of missing something unexpected and important. They were not at all afraid (on the other hand) of being thought too narrow. So they were happy to exclude all topics that could expose them to that central danger.
   **
   
   Her general comments on the narrowness of academe seem particularly apt at present:
   
   **
   In fact, the whole habit of dividing academic study into fixed disciplines is much more a matter of adminstrative convenience than of intellectual necessity. The ways in which subjects are divided often change and original thinkers constantly move between them. The demand for strict monoculture does not come from scholars (though any set of academics who are told that they constitute a centre of excellence will probably not reject the idea). The real demand for segregation comes from the administrators and, above all, from the accountants.
   **
   
   She also questions whether we are justified in espousing techno-optimism about the future:
   
   **
   Fantasies about the future therefore grow like mushrooms in our imaginations. At present, for many people these tend to take two forms. There are hopes concerned with technical miracles such as articial intelligence, space travel and genetic engineering. There are also economic hopes based on a faith in market forces.
   
   Both these kinds of proposal deal in means, not ends. They make no suggestion about what we should be trying to do, only about how cleverly we are going to do it. They aim to increase our power, not to make us use it differently. However, destruction being easier than construction, an increase in power can always do more harm than good unless real efforts are made to prevent its doing so. . . . We need somehow to get it into our heads that most of our troubles do not come from lack of power but from our own abuse of it.
   **
   
   Her excellent autobiography reveals that a productive philosophical life need not be expressed only in the writing of books and articles, and in discussions with professors of philosophy: Mary Midgley speaks to the philosophical impulse in each of us, and we may all benefit from listening to her.

No comments about Lancelot Hogben: Scientific Humanist: An unauthorized autobiography.

No comments about In Memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

1 comments about Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher.

1. Overall an interesting and informative work, "Scientist and Philosopher" sets expectations is can't fully fufill. The book is mostly "review" of Polanyi's works, with personal info tossed in somewhat at random. "Scientist and Philosopher" leaves the reader desiring a more personal and articulate picture (Polanyi's bother Karl's death is explained in a four sentence paragraph, made even more problematic by the fact that a clear picture of their relationship was never fully provided), as well as more detailed accounts of Polanyi's philosophical encounters. Instead, it is content with simply providing a somewhat shallow context to different scientific publications and philosophical works.
   Yet "Scientist and Philospher" is an interesting and read and according to experts far more knowledgable than I, it is currently "the' work on Polanyi: there is no denying the hard work and research put into writing it. The last chapter of the book is the best, filled with the book's best writing and most personally informative details regarding Polanyi's religious views. This excellent chapter leaves the reader wondering why the entire book couldn't have been held to that same standard. The account of Polanyi's philosophy and how it grew is informative but not completely satisfying: descriptions are often short and don't give justice to its nuances and relation to the current ideas of the time.
   I give this book 3 and 3/4 stars with the knowledge it could have easily been five with more personality and lore.

5 comments about Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902-1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna.

1. I read this book after Caldwell's excellent "Hayek's Challenge". I don't normally read biographies, but that was so good I hunted around for related material (and found this).
   
   Unfortunately, this suffers in comparison. Caldwell is much better at signposting and structuring the argument. In contrast, Hacohen jumps around, often covering the same period in different contexts. And his hand is too heavy - the authorial opinions are often forced (or even plain odd - what on earth does he have against Popper's wife?).
   
   Still, his intentions are generally honourable (not always; there's a blind spot as far as Zionism goes) and the final chapter, which places Popper's thought within the current(ish) left-wing context, is interesting.



2. Prof. Hacohen gives us an eminent look at the personal, political and scientific antecedents of Karl Popper's main scientific and political publications.
   His book is also an excellent and concise economical and social panorama of Austria in the first half of the 20th century.

   It is a realistic portrait of Popper as an individual: irascible and arrogant, an eternal dissenter, intellectual loner, not without a certain persecution mania.
   It shows clearly how Popper's main philosophical contributions, 'testing and falsification', came into being, as well as his political defense of 'The Open society'. It is all the more surprising how great the difficulties were to publish his books, although they constituted a crucial and fundamental philosophical breakthrough.

   Although, for me, Popper is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, some of his positions are flawed. He is a dualist (mind/body). His defence of Socrates is also much contested. The Dutch classicist G. Koolschijn pretends that Socrates was not a democrat. He was probably condemned for pleading against democracy in his teachings.
   Particularly interesting is Popper's struggle with Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle, where he lost the battle with Heisenberg.
   I also agree with the author's essential remark that 'socially disadvantaged groups do not have a fair chance of being heard, let alone prevailing, in the so-called democratic political process. Organized elites and corporate interest block, manipulate, and circumvent the channels ... a fairly egalitarian socioeconomic structure and public control of corporations are preconditions to effective democratic dialogue.' (p.543)

   This book contains an excellent presentation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Popper's critique of it. It runs the defenders of Otto Neurath (Cartwright & Co) into the ground.

   All in all, a fascinating book for those who are interested in modern philosophy and more particularly in Popper's work.

   Newcomers should first read the works of Popper himself, or the excellent introduction by Bryan Magee in his small book 'Popper'.




3. There are two standard evaluations of Popper's importance. The first sees Popper as an important figure in the philosophy of science, one whose work is now passe, but whose influence cannot be denied. The other sees Popper as one of the great geniuses of the twentieth century, a polymath who gave us new paradigms of scientific and political thinking. This second view, while still the view of the minority, is gaining support in a new millennium where Popper is enjoying something of a renaissance. This is the view that has inspired both Bryan Magee and Antony Flew to pen histories of philosophy subtitled (surely not just for the sake of alliteration) "From Plato to Popper." And this is the view that inspires Malachi Haim Hacohen to give Popper a central place in what, despite its title, is an intellectual history of inter-war Vienna.

   If Popper's importance has not been properly appreciated, suggests Hacohen, that is because we try to situate him in the Anglo-American tradition that appropriated him after the Second World War and in which he became famous. Instead, Hacohen traces the genealogy of Popper's philosophy through the currents of thought in inter-war Vienna, showing how they shaped Popper and how Popper responded to them within this context. We see how his principle of falsification evolved as a response to the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, and how his critique of historicism and promulgation of the Open Society--though published in and appropriated by a Cold War West--were in fact inspired responses to the socio-political debates of 1930's Vienna.

   Hacohen's primary aim is to give us a greater understanding, and hence a greater appreciation, of Popper's achievement. But in tracing inter-war Viennese culture more broadly, he also shows the extent to which that culture's set of concerns has shaped our own intellectual outlook thanks to the diaspora of Viennese intellectuals--many of them Jewish--in the face of the Nazi threat. The Vienna Circle influenced a generation of philosophers, Hayek has become a champion for libertarians, and Gombrich has changed the way we look at art. In all of these cases, but none more so than in philosophy, these thinkers have found success in England and America by adapting ideas born out of uniquely Viennese debates to contexts that these debates never reached.

   Inevitably, our reception of these ideas on foreign shores distorted their intent. For instance, we tend to understand the Vienna Circle as Ayer understood it without appreciating how the tools and methods these philosophers developed were meant to settle the debates on the nature of science that had divided an earlier generation of Viennese thinkers, the likes of Boltzmann and Mach. Like the Vienna Circle, Popper is too often read as his English-speaking contemporaries interpreted him, and Hacohen's book gives us a rich sense of the problems and debates that shaped Popper's distinctive outlook. Hacohen has labored tirelessly in the archives, and while his preference for completeness and transparency of research over readability makes it a laborious slog, both the depth, breadth, and originality of Hacohen's scholarship is exceptional. He is more at home discussing the social sciences than the natural sciences, but he is more at home in both of these fields than most of us can ever expect to be.

   The problem, then, is whether Popper is the central figure of the intellectual history of inter-war Vienna, which is how Hacohen portrays him, or if he is only one of a number of bright minds to emerge from that context, and neither the brightest nor the most influential. He was a marginal figure at that time, and his contemporaries in the Vienna Circle, though respectful, seemed not as convinced as he was that he had delivered the deathblow to logical positivism. The philosophical world more generally tends to give the role of death-dealer to Quine for his 1951 paper, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Hacohen might reply that we inflate Quine's importance to Popper's detriment because we come to logical positivism from an Anglo-American perspective, and that in failing to appreciate its original context, we fail to appreciate that Popper had buried logical positivism by 1934. There is some merit in this argument, and perhaps if Popper had arrived in London before 1946 and if the Logic of Scientific Discovery had been published in English before 1956, things would be different. But whether a result of historical mischance or of Popper's work not being as decisive as he thought, he has failed to have an impact on English-speaking philosophy that rivals the Vienna Circle. Or Quine, for that matter.

   Hacohen makes an excellent case for the tremendous, and too-often unnoticed, influence of inter-war Vienna on post-war scholarship in the English-speaking world, but he is less convincing in situating Popper as the central figure of this influence. Popper certainly developed interesting and fertile responses to the problems of his intellectual milieu, but it seems a bit of an exaggeration to claim that he solved these problems, or even that his solutions are more compelling than those of any of his contemporaries. Hacohen does not simply state his allegiance to Popper baldly; he provides arguments, but these arguments are not likely to convince those of us who are not already Popperians.

   Popper has never been fully embraced by the mainstream of Anglo-American philosophy, and this may be connected with his having been shaped by a different set of concerns than his English-speaking contemporaries. With these concerns in clearer focus, he still doesn't emerge as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, but Hacohen's effort to give him his due does shed valuable light on an interesting period. Though his emphasis on Popper's importance may be misplaced, Hacohen's book nonetheless makes for engaging intellectual history.




4. Malachi Hacohen as written a great biography that both covers the personal has well as the philosphical development of one of the 20th century's greatest minds. This is a big book in every sense of the word, big in ideas, big in scope. One of the by products of reading this book was to discover the immense impact that intellectuals from 1920's Austria and non germanic Central Europe had upon, not just philosphy, but also economic and political developments in the Anglo Saxon world. People such as Hayek, Drucker, Polyani, Tarski, Neurath, Mises and many more have had a profound effect upon the thinking of both the Right and the Left in the US and Britain. One of those books which one can honestly say the reader will be much wiser after finishing it.



5. The book has several different aspects, all of absorbing interest, including the detailed reconstruction of Popper's intellectual career and the depiction of the social and political milieu of Vienna between the wars.

   Popper was the archetypal workaholic. Hacohen reports that he worked for 360 days of the year, all day, without the distraction of newspapers, radio or TV. Several times a month, even in old age, he worked all night and friends such as Bryan Magee would get an early morning call from Popper, bubbling with excitement to report on his latest ideas. Popper lived well out of London near High Wycombe and when Magee gained Popper's confidence he was invited to visit, taking the train to "Havercombe" (in Popper's heavily accented English). When I made the trip to Havercombe, Popper arranged to meet me at the station, carrying a copy of the BBC Listener, presumably to pick him out from all the other elderly gentlemen of middle-European extraction who might be thronging the platform at 2.00 on a Wednesday afternoon. In the event, he left the magazine at home and the kiosk had sold out so he had to buy The Times and fold it to the size of the Listener. Of course he was the only person in sight apart from the Station Master. Popper, then aged 70, had what his research assistant tactfully described as a "very positive" attitude to driving. Fortunately it was not far to his home and there were few other cars on the road. Safely home, our conversation laboured, and he frequently pushed a tray of choc-chip cookies towards me. Later he lamented to his assistant that I had eaten a whole weeks supply of his favorite cookies in one afternoon. These aspects of Popper are the other face of the man who some described as "the totalitarian liberal".

   Hacohen has provided sufficient background to explain why Popper's ideas were so exciting for some people, and so threatening for others, though it was left to Bill Bartley in the 1960s to articulate the way that Popper had challenged the unstated and uncriticised assumption of "justificationism" which is the glue that holds together the ideas of the positivists and other "true belief" philosophers. Popper's lack of progress in the community of professional philosophers needs to be understood against the persisting background of justificationism, subjectivism and determinism which he has criticised in favour of critical rationalism, conjectural objective knowledge and non-determinism.

   Hacohen has assembled a massive amount of material and a lesser talent in organization would have lost the plot among the details. Helped by a liberal quantity of headings sub-headings and his very clear exposition, he has kept his material under control and kept several balls in the air with superb aplomb. The several balls are Popper's diverse interests and the chaotic events that were going on around him in Vienna, not only among the intellectuals but also in Austrian politics.

   These events forced Popper to flee to the other side of the world, to New Zealand, surely the antithesis of Vienna in most cultural, intellectual and political respects. There, his campaign for critical rationalism, objectivism and non-determinism was waged in political philosophy. His achievement in writing the two large volumes of "The Open Society and its Enemies" can be compared with the Battle of Britain, where young pilots held Hitler at bay in the skies over the English Channel. Popper daily patrolled the intellectual stratosphere, challenging Hitler's intellectual henchmen from Plato to modern times. This work would have been an amazing achievement under any circumstances, as it was it had to be done in the face of dreadful news from home (fourteen relatives died in the Holocaust), under the threat of Japanese invasion and against the resistance of his Professor who regarded his research and writing as theft to teaching time.

   To conclude, this book is a wonderful piece of scholarship and its deserves to be read with close attention by anyone with a shred of interest in the ideas that have shaped the world today. With any luck Popper's ideas will help to shape the world tomorrow. I dissent from Hocohen's reading of Popper's ideas as a prop for social democracy, but anyone imbued with the spirit of critical rationalism can make up their own mind on that.

   This book is actually worth six stars, so buy two copies, one for your local library.

3 comments about Lady of the Lotus-Born.

1. Once again the Padmakara Translation Group does an exemplary job of translating this fascinating life story of Tibet's most famous and influential master (yes, she was a female from Tibet born over 1200 years ago, who was renowned as the great Indian yogi Padmasambhava's main Tibetan disciple/consort, and responsible for spreading his teachings through the planting of termas or "hidden treasures").
   
   This tale is a traditional "namthar" or spiritual biography which is meant to teach on many levels. Sometimes these kinds of stories are a bit too fantastic for the modern (literal-minded) reader, but this translation does a good job of presenting Yeshe Tsogyal as both humane (intimate and familiar) and fantastic (divine consort of Padmasambhva and mother of Buddhism in Tibet). It is a fun, lively story (full of joys and sorrows, intrigue, struggle and liberation), and not a dry retelling of an old tale.
   
   As good as the story is, my favorite part is the introductory chapter where the translators put the Lady's life and tradition into perspective. They give one of the clearest explainations of how our Buddha Nature (ever present and unchanging in all beings) is obscured by ignorance and revealed through the accumulation of merit and pointing out instructions of a genuine master (Padmasambhava and then Yeshe Tsogyal in this case).
   
   This is a remarkably complete and complex story of personal liberation, Tibetan history, direct and symbolic spiritual instructions and some might say, an early feminist statement, but I tend to disregard her gender, and even her nationality-cultural identity. What matters is how she served her master, and what she accomplished and disseminated... a practice legacy we are still directly benefiting from today.



2. Yeshe Tsogyal, or White Tara, was a rare example of a female buddha. She has walked the earth many times but her 200+ years here with Padmasambhava left a legacy for all mankind that we are still learning from. She left behind many treasures and teachings for us to use as we grow. Some treasures are still to be found.

   To understand Yeshe Tsogyal is to understand the true meaning of compassion and detached giving. These are lessons for all time.




3. it seems the tradition of retelling life-stories in tibet was largely for teaching purposes. this book does that part well. a valuable support for the depressed yogini.