BOOK REVIEWS

‘Against Happiness’. I liked the differentiation between prettiness and beauty. Prettiness is shallow, picturesque and worth nothing. Beauty is embracing things as they are. Without melancholy, we’d have been deprived of many great things.

‘Buddhism Declined in India: How and Why’, DC Ahir (2005). A proofreader either wasn’t used or wasn’t qualified and it’s evident in each chapter. A vehemently anti-Brahmanic explanation of how Hinduism managed to destroy Buddhism through deceit, violence, discrimination and cunning. If only half of it’s true, it’s still shocking and important for anyone interested in historic Buddhism.

‘The Denial of Death’, Earnest Becker. The book speaks for itself. One of the few books I will buy having already read a library copy.

‘Philosophers Behaving Badly’, . Proof that a life dedicated reason does not result in an enlightened, a reasonable, or even a positive life. 8 philosophers with their own flaws, eccentrictrities and philosophical outlooks on about 25 pages each. I find it easier to understand their philosophy when I understand them by their personalities with all their failings. It’s also uplifting to see intellectual giants so prone to frailties like contemplation of suicide (Wittgenstein), arrogance (Sartre), stinginess, grumpiness and isolation (Schopenhauer) etc. Truly, the search for wisdom doesn’t seem to include the search to be a good human being for some philosophers (and their admirers).

‘Philosophy: The Great Thinkers’, Philip Stokes (2007). An A-Z of 112 Philosophers of 2-3 pages each. My first book on philosophy.

‘God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’, Christopher Hitchens & ‘The God Delusion’, Richard Dawkins. Both are interesting reads. Dawkins is more scientific, more in depth, more psychological. Hitchens is more like a journalist and related to current events. We’re not talking about Judaism and Christianity here, so you can actually read and agree with both of them.

‘Introducing Mind & Brain’, Angus Gellatly & Oscar Zarate. Short, easy-to-read introduction to neuroscience (but still complicated. Lays out the main areas of the brain, what is ‘mind’, and various dysfunctions of the mind and why they are.

‘The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction’, Terry Eagleton (2007). A hundred intense pages of how philosophers address the meaning of life. Modernists, post-modernists, existentialists, theists, anarchists, dramatists and others are thrown in to essentially the meaning of ‘meaning’. A few highly insightful thoughts, some which never came to my mind before (eg. perhaps the meaning of life is neither to do with god nor ourselves, but a third thing that we haven’t realised yet). Helps to think about it but doesn’t answer the question, if it’s even a valid question to begin with or even meant to have an answer.

‘Staring at the Sun’. Irvin Yalom. Not really worth reading. I did like his references to Epicurus as I didn’t know of them before, and it helped show how what some might consider ’sinful’ thoughts like lusting over someone can essentially be the product of a deep-seated alternative fear like that of unresolved anxiousness of death.