by which I mean the 7 I wrote yesterday. To whit:
Why read the Library of Living Philosophers?
Not a real inspiring question, but the answer (ideas and personalities) will be useful to me. See the Library of Living Philosoophers is a series of heavy (though not necessarily dense) volumes, each dedicated to an important living philosopher (hence the name).
The most obvious reasons to read these volumes are that they provide a summary of the philosopher’s important ideas. Even if you can’t get too far into a philosopher’s arguments by looking at one of these books, you cant get a good idea of the important places to start. For readers who are already familiar with at least part of a philosopher’s work, the LLP promises to provide access to the philosopher as a complete thinker, even as an intellectual personality.
On a more difficult level, reading multiple volumes gives some important insights into how different ideas work in different contexts.
Finally, the distinction actually gets at an important, and neglected, difference in how philosophy is done. On the one hand we have philosophy as a problem oriented enterprise devoted to discovering and testing ideas. On the otherhand, there’s been a position, going back to Plato at least, that argues philosophy is not about building theories or expanding knowledge, its about forming philosophers. Plato called it preparation for death. Since not everyone receives a proper education and not everyone is capable of getting the same things out of an education when it it provided, this notion seems distasteful to modern democratic sensibilities.
Both tendencies are represented in the LLP, so watching them compete provides a reason to read the LLP. Indeed, taken as a whole, the LLP provides a ‘how-to’ volume for contemporary philosophy.
In particular, I’m finding the volume on Seyyed Hossein Nasr most fascinating. In addition to propunding an esoteric position, he’s also an observant shiite muslim and anti-modernist. From my perspective, he’s a truly alien thinker, and thus worth a serious read.
