Timothy Chambers, Review Of "the Little Philosophy Book," By Robert Solomon

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exercises found in many other informal logic and critical thinking texts. (Some—but not enough—are to be found on a companion website for the textbook at: www.clearthinking.nelson.com/student/test.html.) An instructor using this text can find or construct these for his or her students. And making them available to other instructors would benefit many of us who have the same learning goals for our critical thinking or informal logic courses as this textbook has. But without these extra resources using this textbook is unlikely to produce students who have reached its learning goals. Leslie Burkholder, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall E370, Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z1; [email protected]

The Little Philosophy Book Robert C. Solomon New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 112pp., $29.95 hc., 978-0-19-531113-6., $16.95 pbk. 978-0-19-531114-3.

TIMOTHY CHAMBERS “I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder!” —Richard Feynman1

“[H]owever abstract and formidable our questions,” declared the late Robert Solomon, philosophers should remain mindful of how these questions bear upon “‘personal’ concerns and questions about how to live and live well” (2). Solomon remained true to his advice; throughout his career, his writings treated a varied host of human concerns, including emotions, trust, and even slapstick comedy.2 A similar spirit guides Solomon’s effort in this delightful primer in philosophy, whose aim is to assist “each student [to enter] into the dialogue and think about . . . the classic questions on his or her own” (1). Indeed, Solomon’s style demands that a reader invest further thought into the issues he discusses. In the First Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously cites the view that some books would be “much shorter” (in terms time required to master them) if they “were not so short” (in pages). Solomon’s slender volume is “short” in just this way. Each paragraph could be singled out for fruitful scrutiny. Each chapter could be supplemented with readings that elaborate on the themes Solomon treats. (I’ve made some suggestions in the endnotes.) Philosophy is said to begin in wonder, but it is human consciousness that makes such wonder possible (23). So, after a tour of philosophy’s earliest Eastern and Western glimmers (chap. 1), Solomon’s first topic is conscious-

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ness (chap. 2), with a special focus on “reflective self-consciousness”—i.e., our ability to contemplate such thoughts as “I am thinking” or, more dramatically, Feynman’s “I wonder why I wonder why!” Reflection on this capacity prompts a number of puzzles. Given that we are conscious of the world [e.g., thinking “There’s a cat”], how does this lead to our consciousness of our being conscious of the world [thinking “I see a cat there”] (19–23)? Solomon dispenses with the suggestion that others’ minds are inferred from knowledge of my own; instead, with a nod towards Sartre’s “gaze” (le regard), Solomon offers the opposite view: that “we become aware of [others’] being aware of us, and that in turn causes us to become aware of ourselves” (21–22).3 Reflective consciousness also animates our “rationality, that remarkable ability to think beyond the immediately given” (51). Lower animals might be said to bear beliefs; but rationality inspires us to wonder about our evidence for such beliefs (54). Such wondering is the beginning of epistemology (chap. 4). Solomon reminds readers that critical reflection is embedded in everyday personal concerns, as illustrated by “healthy skepticism”—our practice of “corrobor[ating] what one learns by checking it with other, varied sources” of knowledge, including other media, expert testimony, and the scientific method (54–55). But what if our suspicion were cast, not on a particular deduction or perception, but on the very faculties of reasoning and perceiving in toto? Solomon thus recounts Descartes’ “bold experiment” and subsequent project to overcome the “global skepticism” which threatens (55–57). But should we feel threatened by such skepticism? Solomon draws a more constructive moral: that “[s]kepticism . . . is ultimately taking responsibility for your own consciousness” (58–59). One guiding theme of Solomon’s text is how many philosophical perplexities find their origins in the tension between first-person “subjective” accounts of experience (29–32) and third-person accounts of what, “objectively,” lies behind and causes these first-person experiences (43–48).4 This tension provides the backdrop, not only for understanding the puzzle of free will (chap. 5), but also for Solomon’s discussion of ethics (chap. 6). One aim of Western ethical traditions is premised on the hope that we can ground moral judgments objectively—i.e., prove them via demonstrations that are compelling to everyone’s rational faculties. Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle exemplify this ambition (84–88). And yet, some claim that it is psychologically impossible to make moral judgments without being influenced by our personal perspectives; where one stands, as the aphorism goes, can’t help but depend on where one sits. This idea scaffolds Nietzsche’s account of morality (90–91). Yet, by Solomon’s own definition, we are capable of objective judgment only “insofar as we can eliminate . . . our various opinions, perspectives, and subjective preferences” (44). The latter two italicized premises are in tension with the first; taken to the extreme, these two premises threaten to push us in the direction

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of moral relativism, with its “intolerable idea that alternative values such as cruelty, mass murder, and torture might be acceptable” (89). Solomon offers no quick answers here, but that is a virtue, rather than a fault. In fact, Solomon recognizes that his text never offers easy answers—“you might think that philosophy,” he closes, “far from answering these questions, has just made a mess out of all this” (100). This concession will no doubt provoke the obvious undergraduate challenge: Why bother? A noteworthy point of Solomon’s text is how often he pauses to answer this natural question. For one, reflection enhances our actions’ freedom, for “[d]oing what you want is free if and only if you want to want what you want,” and this condition calls for the self-conscious ability to “be conscious of what we want [and] evaluate the desirability of that desire” (72). For another, living philosophically enhances our ability to live truly to our avowed ethos; reflecting upon our values “may well serve as both a blueprint for what to do and a reminder of what one knows one ought to do” and a preparation for what to do when worldly pressures will urge us to act on undesirable desires, rather than considered values (77–78, 87). Lastly, living philosophically enhances our chance at a meaningful life—a life which manifests worthy values— since “it is only by [our choices’] being appreciated, by understanding the significance of what we are doing,” that our choices stand the best chance of reflecting ourselves at our reflective best (95). And yet—surprise!—Solomon hints that it is possible to live too “philosophically.” Self-conscious “reflection allows us to distance ourselves from our own perceptions, emotions, and desires.” Such “distance” is fortunate when it allows us to, as we say, take a step back and evaluate whether acting on a questionable desire is advisable. At the same time, though, Solomon observes that “[m]any [philosophical] problems have to do with when to stop distancing ourselves” (23)—when, so to speak, philosophy risks missing the trees for the forest. Solomon does not elaborate on this tantalizing point. But his very airing of this idea, that there are times we should reconsider whether it is advisable to take (or remain) a “step back,”5 is part of what makes his text at once challenging and rewarding.

Notes 1. Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 48. 2. See, respectively, Solomon’s True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Building Trust—In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2003); and “Are the Three Stooges Funny? Soitenly!” in Aesthetics in Perspective, ed. Kathleen Higgins (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), 604–10. 3. For a helpful elaboration on le regard, including observations from empirical psychology, see George J. Stack and Robert W. Plant, “The Phenomenon of ‘The Look,’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42:3 (1982): 359–73.

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4. In this way, Solomon’s approach is reminiscent of Thomas Nagel. It might be a helpful exercise for students to compare Solomon’s topics with Nagel’s treatments in his own primer, What Does It All Mean? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 5. Hamlet comes to mind here. Another literary source, illustrating the folly of ignoring the subjective in the name of “objectivity,” is Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale, “A Physiologist’s Wife,” in Doyle’s collection Round the Red Lamp (London: D. Appleton and Co., 1894), 111–43. Timothy Chambers, Department of Philosophy, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT 06117, [email protected]

Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy Lawrence Hass Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008, xi+254 pp., $25 pbk.978– 0–253–21973–2

WILLIAM J. DEVLIN In Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy, Lawrence Hass “aims to help readers— profession and lay philosophers alike—understand why Maurice MerleauPonty’s thought continues to remain vital and productive for so many contemporary philosophers around the world” (2). The impetus behind Hass’ aim is that Merleau-Ponty, as a philosopher, is more often than not either ignored or misunderstood. Though he points out that Merleau-Ponty remains influential even in some Anglo-American circles of philosophy (in reference to philosophy of mind and aesthetics), I agree with Hass’ motivating belief that a book like this needs to be written to help the audience of philosophers to understand not only Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy itself, but also the impact it has on philosophy today. In his introduction, Hass points out that, according to Merleau-Ponty, philosophy is a task of “singing the world” in the sense of renewing our connections to the world, and celebrating our creative abilities in our thoughts and language. As such, Hass makes it clear that his method in this book is not to simply re-present Merleau-Ponty’s writings; instead, his method is to let Merleau-Ponty’s writings “sing” in such a way so that his ideas are illuminated, challenged, and applied to important contemporary issues and debates in philosophy. Hass’ book contains a prelude, seven chapters, and a concluding section. But the book, itself, is best construed as being divided into two fundamental parts. Part 1 (prelude through chapter five) focuses on providing a systematic presentation of the central ontological ideas found in Merleau-Ponty’s lifeworks as encapsulating his phenomenology of living experience. In chapter one, Hass analyzes Merleau-Ponty’s account of sensations and perceptual experience in light of two competing philosophical positions on perception, empiricism and physicalism, ultimately arguing that Merleau-Ponty belongs