Read in 2020 and 2023.

1. Read from 25 to 29 December 2020
Rating: 3/5

The first two chapters were really very good. I was nodding to myself, agreeing with what was being argued, and there were insights into e.g. why scientists do their job (because they really enjoy it) that were spot on. After these, later chapters tended to get rather bogged down in heavy detail, of cross-arguments and of quotations that there difficult to follow. But on the whole I'm glad I read this 160 page book.
I heard about this author and book while watching the lecture series on YouTube given by Holmes, about a History of Philosophy.

2. Read from 21 to March 2023 ( )

12/8/21

Begins with Kierkegaard's interest in "existence", appllies Aristotle's efforts to formulate proper life. History and argument in nontheistic manner, defends rationalism.

I have had this book since high school, as an andidote to William Barrett's Irrational Man It dates from the philosophy seminar I took at Yale, in Pierson College, as a high school student. I was very seriously interested in existentialism then, and remember the days discussing philosophy in the common room at Pierson vividly. Veatch bases his arguments on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, a book that I am currently struggling through as well. Ethics, the argument goes, grows out of the rational attempt to determine the best course to ensure one's happiness. It is the examined and selfaware life that is to be desired, and clung to even in th worst of circumstances. The book at first argues that professors of many fields are knowledgeable but they would never claim to have found a way to understand how life is to be lived. All ethical thinking seems to be grounded in relativism, and non one is willing to offer a guide to the good life, for fear of sounding dogmatic. Veatch argues that that ought to be the goal of education, and the goal of philosophy. His arguments are very persuasive. I believe in the power of rational thought in medicine, and think that understanding of brain function may lead to better living with less pain for indviduals. ( )