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Title: EXAMINED LIFE by Robert Nozick ISBN: 0-671-72501-7 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 15 December, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great book for the romantic philosopher
Comment: There being so few reviews here on this work I thought I would read them all before adding my own, afterall if I would just be repeating the others why bother. I was very impressed by the general knowledge of Nozick and the philosophical sophistication of the reviewers. But I belive that same sophistication made them miss the boat on this one.
This is not hard analytic philosophy. This is an examination of everyday concerns about life that apply to everyone and it is written for everyone, not just those of us with degrees in philosophy. For the lay person, it provides a glimps at how a philosopher might approach a problem, even one where a straight answer may not be possible. The nature of "Love's bond" for example may do little more than create a framework for how to think about one's intimate relationship, but it does it in such a way as to expose the reader to the economic analysis of human motivation and also to such things as the motivations that keep people ( or political groups ) from even offering conditional statements. Even his use of parenthetical digressions encourage the reader to go beyond what he is presenting and apply their own analysis to the sub-issue. True, things like the difference between making love and f...king may not be of great philosophical importance at university but his distinction is insightful and fun and the sort of subject matter that tittilates the neophyte in to wondering why they never looked at it that way. Then that neophyte might also wonder what else they should examine in that light.
These days the only political philosophy that seems to rule the land is pragmatism, the only debate on ethics is between relativism and absolutism, and the only exposure to epistomology is via cyberpunk and "the matrix." Academic philosophers in the U.S. have made themselves invisible to the people by excessive analysis of the minutia of language, the nature of the mind, and other things that have no bearing on the common persons life. Nozick has, like Socrates, used this book to reach out to the common people in a way that demonstates that philosophy can still be relavent to them. This book encourages all to open their minds and to look at things in new ways. ( I have often lent it to other lawyers in my office only to hear things like " I never that of it that way.")
To sum it up, this is not Socrates closeted with plato discussing the nature of ultimate reality, this is Socrates, with a drink in his hand, reclining at the symposium and talking to his freinds.
Rating: 3
Summary: Nozick and his clone Nozick* write a book.
Comment: This was a tricky book to read. At first I thought it was very uneven, but it turned out there was an odd type of systematic flaw that would reappear here and there; namely, that Nozick tries too often to quantify the unquantifiable. Let me explain that nebulous charge. The move from metaphor to math to metaphysics just doesn't work. It actually runs the other way. Metaphors are merely pedagogical devices to explain in very simplistic short hand what would otherwise take careful analytical methods to communicate. Now at first, it looks like Nozick is doing just that, trying to incorporate analytical methods where "they ain't been incorporated by nobody else," as some of my rural friends might put it. But it turns out that any time he talks of "proportionality" or "more reality" etc., he enters into a very peculiar type of confusion - call it "quantified metaphor." Now if you think that phrase makes little sense, then I believe you'll likewise find the book constantly recycling this irritating flaw. Yet if you think that phrase is perfectly legit, then you'll probably think there's something really deep going on here. If it were virtually anybody else writing the book, I'd say, "no way." But it's Nozick, for heaven's sake! Fortunately, the "more real" Nozick does come to visit occasionally: his sections on Wisdom and on The Holocaust put the Harvard heavyweight headlock on my soul. Well, they knocked me out, anyway. Maybe you'll think different. So keep your eye open for Nozick when he wanders in and out of the book. But skip over Nozick*, the quantified metaphor clone.
Rating: 3
Summary: Readers of Nozick will be delighted and a bit disappointed
Comment: I admire Nozick greatly, and he is one of the only philosophers I continue to read now that I've graduated college. This book is probably his best book to read "for pleasure," and as there are few contemporary philosophy books that fall into this category, this one seems like an important buy for that reason alone. Unfortunately, the ideas for most of the essays here are quite a bit more interesting than how they actually turn out. Some topics promised real intrigue, only to degenerate into mush (some) or academic gobbledygook (others). (The essay on the Holocaust is, however, a real gem.) I subtract a second star because this book is also infamous for Nozick's recanting of quite a bit of his philosophy from _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_, his most important book. He was more convincing his first time around. After spending years and years being one of the only philosophers in the universities to defend libertarianism, Nozick appears to have let his colleagues bully him into selling himself out. This might earn him a few more friends in the People's Republic of Cambridge, but long-time admirers have been seriously let down. Nevertheless, the book is very ambitious. It falls a bit short of its promise, but really gets one thinking and expands the scope of what philosophy offers. On balance, not bad at all.
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Title: Philosophical Explanations by Robert Nozick ISBN: 0674664795 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1983 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Invariances : The Structure of the Objective World by Robert Nozick ISBN: 0674012453 Publisher: Belknap Pr Pub. Date: 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Nature of Rationality by Robert Nozick ISBN: 0691020965 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 29 November, 1994 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: Socratic Puzzles by Robert Nozick ISBN: 0674816544 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
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Title: Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick ISBN: 0465097200 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: October, 1977 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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