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philofox's reviews
301 reviews
Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats by Jürgen Habermas
4.0
Perhaps an uncommon view, but this may be my favorite of Habermas' works (in general, I tend to have a very "meh" attitude to Habermas. I neither find him earth-shatteringly great nor do I think someone like Geuss' critiques are fair).
The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by Alex Rosenberg
3.5
This very much falls in my "frustrating books" category. On the one hand, I tend not to agree with a lot of Rosenberg's first-order positions. I'm not a radical eliminativist about meaning or content (or even folk psychology for that matter), I err against reductionism in biology (although I think it's more plausible than the former), I'm a compatibilist, and so on.
In general I think this is downstream of metaphilosophical orientation: Rosenberg has a strong, straightforwardly realist metaphysics. At least notionally, our best natural science gives us the content of this metaphysics. Insofar as the Sellarsian manifest image doesn't match that metaphysics, too bad. By contrast, I think this way of approaching things is way too metaphysical in a pejorative sense, ironically one that relies far too much on pre-scientific intuitions rather than the details of our best science. I tend to be much more skeptical of this kind of "strong" metaphysics, in a way that weirdly makes me sympathetic to both a more Carnap-esque position and some of the more "continental" critiques of metaphysics (I think Heidegger and Deleuze are at least onto something with ontotheology and the image of thought, respectively, for example).
However, all this being said, the critiques of the book in the middlebrow media when it came out were so bad that I felt compelled to come to Rosenberg's defense. This led to us having a pretty interesting correspondence for a few years.
I will also give the book credit for really following its premises through, it makes for a great exercise to wrestle with.
In general I think this is downstream of metaphilosophical orientation: Rosenberg has a strong, straightforwardly realist metaphysics. At least notionally, our best natural science gives us the content of this metaphysics. Insofar as the Sellarsian manifest image doesn't match that metaphysics, too bad. By contrast, I think this way of approaching things is way too metaphysical in a pejorative sense, ironically one that relies far too much on pre-scientific intuitions rather than the details of our best science. I tend to be much more skeptical of this kind of "strong" metaphysics, in a way that weirdly makes me sympathetic to both a more Carnap-esque position and some of the more "continental" critiques of metaphysics (I think Heidegger and Deleuze are at least onto something with ontotheology and the image of thought, respectively, for example).
However, all this being said, the critiques of the book in the middlebrow media when it came out were so bad that I felt compelled to come to Rosenberg's defense. This led to us having a pretty interesting correspondence for a few years.
I will also give the book credit for really following its premises through, it makes for a great exercise to wrestle with.
De l'ésprit: Heidegger et la question by Jacques Derrida
4.5
Still my favorite book "reading Heidegger against Heidegger."
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty
5.0
Sometimes frustrating, sometimes fast and loose with the history and interpretations of specific philosophers, but at the end of the day extremely profound. Permanently changed my thinking when a teacher gave this to me near the end of high school.