Jean’s Page
Tag: #philosophy
The Divine Within — Aldous Huxley
1 – The Minimum Working Hypothesis (1944)
2 – Seven Meditations (1943)
3 – Religion and Temperament (1943)
4 – Who Are We? (1955)
5 – The Philosophy of the Saints (1944)
6 – Religion and Time (1943)
7 – Some Reflections on Time (1946)
8 – On a Sentence from Shakespeare (1944)
9 – Man and Reality (1942)
10 – Reflections on Progress (1947)
11 – Further Reflections on Progress (1947)
12 – Substitutes for Liberation (1952)
13 – Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer—I (1942)
14 – Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer—II (1942)
15 – Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer—III (1942)
16 – Distractions—I (1941)
17 – Distractions—II (1941)
18 – Idolatry (1943)
19 – Action and Contemplation (1941)
20 – Knowledge and Understanding (1956)
21 – The Sixth Patriarch (1946)
22 – Notes on Zen (1947)
23 – The “Inanimate” Is Alive (1957)
24 – Readings in Mysticism (1942)
25 – Symbol and Immediate Experience (1960)
26 – Shakespeare and Religion (1964)
27 – The Yellow Mustard
28 – Lines
Aldous’ Page
#philosophy #aldoushuxley
Complete Works of Aldous Huxley — Aldous Huxley
This is hardly “The Complete Works”. See Aldous’ page for a more complete list.
The Novels
Crome Yellow
Antic Hay
Those Barren Leaves
Point Counter Point
Brave New World
Eyeless in Gaza
After Many a Summer
Time Must Have a Stop
Ape and Essence
The Genius and the Goddess
Island
The Translation
A Virgin Heart by Remy de Gourmont
The Shorter Fiction
Limbo
Mortal Coils
Little Mexican
Two or Three Graces
Brief Candles
Miscellaneous Short Stories
The Short Stories
List of Short Stories in Chronological Order
List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order
The Poetry Collections
The Burning Wheel
The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems
Leda
The Cicadas and Other Poems
The Poems
List of Poems in Chronological Order
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
Selected Non-Fiction
The Olive Tree and Other Essays
What are You Going to Do About it?
The Perennial Philosophy
Science, Liberty and Peace
The Devils of Loudun
The Doors of Perception
Heaven and Hell
Brave New World Revisited
The Memoir
The Art of Seeing
Aldous’ Page
#delphicompleteworks #philosophy #aldoushuxley
The Art of Asking — Amanda Palmer
Socrates Cafe — Christopher Phillips
Six Questions of Socrates — Christopher Phillips
Socrates in Love — Christopher Phillips
Constitution Café — Christopher Phillips
Walden — Henry David Thoreau
After reading Into the Wild, where this book gets a fair bit of mentioning, one just had to see what all the fuss was about.
It certainly starts off incredibly well with the first 25% of the book — being mostly one chapter titled, “Economy” — explaining the ins and outs of what leads Thoreau to Walden Pond and away from a normal life and the cost of doing so. And it is very clear in this first quarter that Thoreau is a very capable writer who can get straight to the heart of the matter and keep the reader’s attention.
But then we begin the second chapter, “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”, and thus the tedium begins: word after word of pointless, boring tedium. Was it so utterly dull for him sitting by the pond, day after day after day with no one to talk to, that he just sat and wrote words for hour upon hour and simply spewed them forth upon pages enough to make up a reasonable amount to call it a book in order to sell it so he didn’t have to get a real job?
I just found myself reading paragraph after paragraph with a totally numbed out mind, noticing only a few words of interest here and there but mostly it’s just babble: babble, babble, babble, babble, blah, blah, blah. I tried, i really did, but i just cannot see why people so rave about this book.
Maybe chapter 3 onwards is back to the standard of chapter 1, but i simply could not get through chapter 2.
So, inevitably, it got …
… Deleted.
Henry’s Page
#philosophy #henrydavidthoreau #whataloadofcrap
On Anarchism – Noam Chomsky
In all my years i’ve never gotten around to reading any of Noam’s stuff, so when a load of his books got put on offer for 99p i thought i’d give this a go at some time in the future, paid my pennies and threw it on ‘The Pile’.
You never know, i just may learn something i didn’t know i didn’t know.
Noam’s Page
#philosophy #noamchomsky
The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell — Aldous Huxley
One day i’ll get around to reading this again, it’s been nearly 30 years and it just popped up in Kindle Daily Deals for 99p so i couldn’t turn it down.
I’m hoping to digitally rebuild my Aldous Huxley collection that i used to have years ago in real books – maybe when i’ve got a load i’ll have a good Huxley binge, but until then they can sit and gather some digital dust.
Aldous’ Page
#philosophy #aldoushuxley
A Child at Heart — Christopher Phillips
Those of us interested in longevity and remaining young, fit and healthy as long as possible, realise early on that it all begins in the mind. If the mind is not on board for an extended lifespan then the brain and body simply isn’t going to go there.
While this book doesn’t look specifically into the longevity benefits of a youthful mind it still has plenty to teach us. This book is a wonderfully detailed look at the minds of all stages and ages of life and how we interact with each other — and Christopher isn’t shy of giving plenty of thoughts on what is wrong with our current view and treatment of young people and how that is impacting on adults and society as a whole. As Christopher is a parent himself this book does give a few thoughts on parenting without being preachy about anything and i would definitely recommend it for parents or aspiring parents.
But Christopher is also very clearly a Socratic philosopher, and this book, i feel, continues the ideas of Socrates in how society, not just parents, should relate to and listen to young people. I do find it incredibly disheartening that after more than 2000 years since Socrates execution for simply doing what Christopher prescribes in this book that adults still aren’t engaging with young people and giving them their rightful place within society. And then adult society has the audacity to blame young people for causing the problems.
Whether you’re a parent, a philosopher, a youth worker, or someone simply interested in creating a better world, this book is a very good read and well worth getting a copy.
Christopher’s Page
#philosophy #christopherphillips
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Robert M. Pirsig
It’s one of those ubiquitous books that’s kept turning up on library shelves, charity shop shelves and bookshop shelves throughout my life and yet i’ve always walked away from it, until now.
I’ve always had quite a deep interest in Zen and it always seemed to me that putting it with motorcycle maintenance just wasn’t something i wanted to know about. But now i have a motorbike that needs some maintenance, and this book turned up in a “Kindle Deal” for 99p, i thought the time was right.
But oh, how wrong i’ve been all these years. It’s not a book about Zen, or how to fix a motorbike while practising Zen, it’s a wholly different thing altogether.
In fact, it’s a road trip book where our narrator takes his son on a road trip on an old motorbike across the USA. But it’s a road trip with a difference.
At it’s heart it’s a book about insanity, the condition of society and its relationship to technology, and a fair bit of Greek philosophy as well; and it’s all broken up with the story of the road trip. And it’s simply, awesome.
With hindsight, i’m happy that i’ve never read it until now as i’m much older and it really blended nicely with my own life experiences: having dropped out of a Philosophy degree course for much the same reasons and now many years later i can look back and see things more clearly.
This is the 40th Anniversary Edition and the ending in the “Afterword” is what truly completes this book. It really is a masterpiece of writing, so make sure you buy this edition.
Robert’s Page
#philosophy #robertmpirsig
Other Minds — Peter Godfrey-Smith
One incredibly interesting book for anyone who enjoys learning about evolution — and cephalopods, of course.
Written by a philosopher, the writing is really accessible and really engages the reader: unlike a lot of scientists’ approach to this subject. It dives deep into the world of the evolution of large brains and intelligence and how they have evolved along completely different evolutionary paths.
It also explores the world and habits of cephalopods, particularly octopuses, but a fair bit about cuttlefish as well. These really are the most incredible creatures.
Well worth a read.
And here’s something that’s worth a watch:
Peter’s Page
#philosophy #petergodfreysmith
Night Train to Lisbon — Pascal Mercier
As someone who totally enjoys philosophy Huxley style, i found this book absolutely wonderful and incredibly thought provoking.
I really do love good philosophers who are able to place deep philosophical discourse into novels that can either be read just as stories and/or as works of philosophy. Aldous Huxley was a master at this after becoming annoyed that only academia would ever read his philosophy papers and went in search of a much broader demographic — which Huxley certainly achieved. Peter Bieri, AKA Pascal Mercier, while not having written as much as Huxley, certainly matches him, IMHO, for depth of thinking and skill of writing.
What i really enjoy about the philosophical novel is that, to my mind, it frees up the thinking of the philosopher to say much, much more than if they were simply writing an academic paper. In a novel the philosopher can ascribe thoughts and ideas to fictional characters and not then have to carry any burden for holding such a view point themselves, whether they do or not, they can simply blame it upon the character and distance themselves from it entirely; while in academic philosophy what is written is pretty much always blamed on the philosopher. History is littered with examples of people punished, tortured and/or killed simply for writing or saying the wrong thing, and has shown that philosophers are more than willing to whore themselves to whatever views the ruling classes, peers and/or academia hold at the time. You only have to go to universities where future philosophers are trained to write what their professors want else they don’t get their degrees.
The philosophical novel, therefore, can be far more honest and express a much broader scope of ideas than any academic paper.
Anyways, get your thinking cap on if you want to read this one. It’ll certainly get the neurons fired up.
Pascal’s Page