Timothy Snyder - On Freedom (Crown, 2024) ****

What is more valuable than freedom? What is the incredible joy to be allowed to think, to express, to move, to engage, to write, to create, to act ... in total freedom and with respect for the freedom of other beings? Roughly around 80% of the World's population does not have access to this high good. Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specialising in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He recently joined the University of Toronto for an indefinite time.

In this preface he introduces the structure of his book as well as the five forms of freedom that he will elaborate on: 

"The five forms are: sovereignty, or the learned capacity to make choices; unpredictability, the power to adapt physical regularities to personal purposes; mobility, the capacity to move through space and time following values; factuality, the grip on the world that allows us to change it; and solidarity, the recognition that freedom is for everyone." (Preface)

Snyder's book is timely, considering the current situation in the world, with its increasing levels of ignorance, its evolution towards totalitarianism and autocracy, and a gradual decline in tolerance and wisdom. 

"We tend to think of freedom just as freedom from as negative. But conceiving of freedom as an escape or an evasion does not tell us what freedom is nor how it would be brought into the world. Freedom to as a positive freedom, involves thinking about who we want to become. What do we value? How do we realize our values in the world? If we don't think of freedom as positive, we won't even get freedom in the negative sense, since we will be unable to tell what is in fact a barrier, how barriers can be taken in hand and become tools, and how tools extend our freedom. 

Freedom from is a conceptual trap. It is also a political trap, in that it involves self-deception, contains no program for its own realization, and offers opportunities to tyrants. Both a philosophy and a politics of freedom have to begin with freedom to. Freedom is positive. It is about holding virtues in mind and having some power to realize them." (p. 31)

I like his comparison to our situation in which we are often blind for the context that we live in, the automatic responses that we have without truly understanding that there is something outside of the box that we are trapped in, like animals in a behavioural test that our current digital technology could well be:

"The first brain hack is experimental isolation, getting you alone, out of bodily contact with your fellow creatures. It generates an artifi­cial loneliness that enables four more brain hacks, four more kinds of manipulation. In the experiments, the isolated rat or pigeon works one end of the tool but does not see its other end, nor the actions and intentions of the experimenters. We similarly set our eyes on the display of a com­puter or a phone. We are ignorant of what lies on the other side: the tangle of algorithms, the vacuum of purpose. Fingertips on a keyboard, we fall into a trap. We speak of "my computer" or "my phone," but these objects are not ours, any more than the lab belongs to the rat­unless we figure out how they work on us." (p. 101)

 The deliberate intention of people behind the scenes to create algorithms that determine your thoughts and behaviour may seem paranoid but as we're currently witnessing in real life, and many Western politicians and intelligence services seem very naive in this context: 

"Our fears are cultivated to conform to what others in our catego­ries fear. If you are a middle-aged white male and you fear exactly what other middle-aged white males fear, you have been had. When your fears are predictable, then so are you, which means that you (and your digital demographic) are ripe for manipulation. When you are predictable, you predictably bring your country down. 

Conforming, you are easily led. Having withdrawn from the rugged borderland of the unpredictable into the cozy cove of your digital demographic, you await orders, or nudges. You have exposed your buttons, and you wait for them to be stroked and pushed. Anyone (or anything) that caresses your naked anxieties will also be arousing those of the legion of cowards in which you have enlisted. The more people there are who fear the same things, the easier tyranny becomes. Unfreedom is efficient." (p. 105)

The autocrats like Putin and others are real masters at this: taking advantage of the weaknesses and isolation of individuals to rally them for a great sense of historical community: 

"Politicians of inevitability are fake economists who lull us to sleep with the idea that larger forces will always bring us back to equilib­rium. Politicians of eternity are real entertainers who assuage our sense of loss with an appealing tale about the past. They gain our confidence by circling us back to a mythical era when we as a nation were (supposedly) innocent. These time-looping con artists nudge us away from democracy and toward their own feeling that they should rule forever and never be sent to prison (a motive especially apparent in the case of Trump and also Benjamin Netanyahu). Deprived of his­torical knowledge and of the habit of ethical thinking by the politics of inevitability, we are easy marks. Rising authoritarians succeed in this century not by proposing futures but by making any conversation about them seem pointless or absurd. 

"Vladimir Putin was the most important politician of eternity. His Russia drew directly from Brezhnev's 1970s, a time of nostalgia for the victory of 1945. Putin and his generation were raised with the idea that the supposed innocence of an older generation justified any action by a younger one. He looped back to Brezhnev's 1970s, and from the 1970s to an imagined 1945, and then to a baptism a thousand years before that, which supposedly joined Russia with Ukraine for­ever and made Russians eternally innocent. Russia was always the vic­tim and always the victor. Russians had the right to determine whether or not Ukraine and Ukrainians existed; anyone who denied that right was an enemy. A Russian fascist tradition that spoke in just this way was discovered and celebrated." (p. 156)

Yet he is equally severe for libertarianism, where everything is left to market forces.  

"According to the libertarians, the "free market" defends freedom. If the market does not defend something, it follows, that thing is not freedom. If the market does not protect a certain right, then we are expected to concede that it is not a right. When libertarians argue that markets defend freedom, they really mean that humans have a duty to defend markets. In a "free market," freedom is defined as the right of things to move around unhindered by humans, who are defined as barriers, or as entities with duties toward things. Human beings must be denied the freedom to change how capitalism works, and that denial must be labeled "freedom." Thus in a "free market," politics begins from Orwellian oppression. The "free market" only exists as a slogan covering senseless contra­dictions and justifying political bullying. There is no such thing as a "free market" in the world, nor can there be. Capitalism minus norms and laws is murderous conquest. If someone invades your country, seizes your house, enslaves your children, and puts your kidneys up for sale, that is the magic of the unregulated market at work.  Markets cannot be free. Only people can be free. Freedom is a human value. It can be recognized and pursued only by humans. There is no substitute for freedom, no way to delegate it. The moment we delegate freedom, to the market or anything else, it becomes submis­sion. When people surrender the word free, freedom vanishes from their lives." (p. 215)

For us Europeans, who live in a free world where we can do and act as we please, all this seems pretty obvious. My assessment is that many Americans do not understand what freedom means, and they are definitely not the Leaders of the Free World. Obama made this claim, and many presidents before him, but the US is not and has never been this Leader. I think it's up to us Europeans to step up and show to the rest of the world that real population happiness and prosperity are the result of deep democracy, with rule of law, human rights, press freedom, solidarity and a socially corrected free market. 

Snyder's book gives a good analysis, food for thought and also a framework from which to design this freedom we all crave. 

Julian Baggini - How To Think Like A Philosopher (Granta, 2024) ****½

Excellent book on the clarity of thinking for philosophers. The title is somewhat misleading, in the sense that it gives the false impression that the book is addressed to a lay audience wishing to think like a philosopher, whereas the book is more written for philosphers or aspirant philosophers than for lay audiences. The content could be of interest to all of us in our daily lives, yet the book itself is full of references to philosophers and today's - mainly anglosaxon - community of philosophy, and as such primarily addressed to insiders of that community. 

His thoughts are refreshing, and especially on how to use philosophy in our everyday world, asking the right questions, making the goals of thought more important than the formal logic underlying it (which has of course its own limits), discussing things to come closer to the truth instead of winning the argument, being generous with your feelings when people make judgments because they may have formulated things not correctly, ...

I am happy that he makes a reference to Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", the book about which I wrote my Master's degree dissertation, and I agree that this book is much better than Pirsig's next book "Lila: an Inquiry into Morals". 

One of the more surprising facts in the book is the isolation of the philosopher in his or her thinking. He compares this to the more collective thinking in the East vs the "isolated islands" that individuals represent in the West. This may be true for philosophy, but in most other disciplines, whether research or corporate decision-making, collective reasoning with clear processes requiring expert input from various disciplines is the standard. It is odd that philosophy remains a kind of individual sport instead of a team sport.

I also like his balanced views on how to think: 

"Both gratuitious iconoclasm and slavish conformity are to be avoided. Just as we need to relinquish a sense of ownership of our ideas, we need to give up misguided feelings of loyalty to a particular thinker, theory or school. We need to be non-partisan. Reasoning well is not about taking sides". (p. 219)

At the end of the book, he adds a number of essential points: Attend, Clarify, Deconstruct, Connect. I give you a short view on "Clarify", because I think it essential to understand the value of uncertainty in the context of rational thought: 

"Time and again we find that the yearning for certainties, for universal validity, for principles that will cover all eventualities, turns out to be quixotic. Take the philosophy of science. Pretty much every scientist agrees that no description of 'the scientific method' captures all that scientists actually do. 'I'm sceptical that there can ever be a complete overarching theory [of sci­entific method] simply because science is about rationality,' says physicist Alan Sokal. 'Rationality is always adaptation to unforeseen circumstances - how can you possibly codify that?' Philosophers who believe they can fully prescribe the scientific method fail to recognise that 'the world is just extremely com- plicated.' They project their ways of thinking on to scientists so there is 'too much formal logic and too little reasoning that is close to what scientists actually do in practice'. Some are disappointed that a rational life leaves so much uncertain and so many loose ends. The dream of enlightenment turns out to be the reality of a bit less darkness. But disillusion is often the result of starting out expecting too much. A. C. Grayling says there is often a false assumption that 'If reason was so wonderful, things should be perfect.' No wonder that "hen things evidently aren't perfect, the conclusion drawn is that reason is not so wonderful" (p. 262)

One thing that disturbs me in his book, is the author's own prejudices and generalisations about industry. Without any evidence, he puts all pharmaceutical and food companies in the same basket of intentionally lying and robbing people of their money. Why this sloppy approach when he is so rigorous and open-minded on other topics? 

But let me end with a positive note. Almost everything Baggini writes and discusses is both excellent and useful. As he writes, thinging correctly is hard work: 

"If this sounds like hard work, that's because it is. Rigorous thinking is largely a matter of effort and application. We have evolved to be 'cognitive misers' using as little mental energy as we need to get us the next meal and the next offspring. It's easier not to think and if we must, it's more fun if we do so lacka­daisically, tossing off opinions around a boozy dinner table or spitting out hot takes on social media. No one is blameless, but there is an important difference between those who strive to do better and those who don't, those who push their intelligence to the limits and those who stay within them." (p. 277)

... and this makes his book all the more relevant. He summarises the key take-aways after every chapter, which makes it easy to return to when needed. Because everything he writes is so relevant for our daily struggles and the many mistakes in clear thinking we encounter in science, in policy-making, in journalism and other societal activities that it would be absolutely fantastic to write the same material for the lay person, and to integrate it in the curriculum of secondary schools. 

Lucas Bracco - A World Of Fallacies (Prometheus, 2023) ***

I have always been a keen fan of formal and informal logic. Every single day, you can hear and read people with high functions in politics, goverment, industry or other influential places to say things are logically incorrect. When debating their points, they easily fall back on an ingroup vs outgroup position, or claiming that they have other views on society, even if these responses are beside the point, because my comment had nothing to do with the content of their utterances, but everything with the technical aspects of reasoning. 

Lists of all fallacies exist, on Wikipedia, or the Cognitive Bias Codex with its great visual representation. 

This little book is also of interest, with a lot of quotes from everyday life to explain why some statements and reasonings are biased or wrong. Many of the fallacies presented were familiar to me, so I assume the book is more addressed to people without prior knowledge, although I wonder if any of them would spend money on a book on the topic. Nevertheless, it's an nice introduction. 

I never understood why logic is not part of our education system, since it is essential for critical thinking in everyday life, for policy and for science. It appears so vital for the quality of our society and democracy. 

 

Richard Whatmore - The End Of Enlightenment (Allen Lane, 2023) ****

In the back cover I read: "Richard Whatmore carefully reconstructs the historical context (of the Englightenment) and presents it as a powerful echo chamber for our own troubled times", and "This intellectually exhilarating book is particularly relevant today, when liberal democracy us facing new dangers, which threaten to drag us back into the darkness once more". These quotes gave me the wrong idea that Whatmore would make the link between 18th century enlightenment philosophy and liberal democracy today. 

That is not the case. He reviews the - primarily British - Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume, Shelburne, Macaulay, Gibbon, Burke, Brissot, Paine and finally Mary Wollstonecraft, all the subject of a chapter each. Whatmore explains the context for their philosophies and ideas, their reception, and the ensuing debates in the historical setting of the French Revolution, the American constitution and other political game-changers. 

Despite all the years of philosophy at university, and my subsequent reading of philosophy books, this book requires quite some knowledge to grasp everything and is clearly written for specialists, rather than for the interested lay person like myself. 

The real references to our time only come at the end of the book, which is aptly called "And By Confusion Stand": 

"The assumotion is that eighteenth century authrs, would, if they were beamed across time into the present, recognize and appreciate that many of their hopes and dreams about politics had been realized. They would praise the creation of democracies defending human rights. They would applaud the extent of toleration and the break­up of empire, even if the latter had been largely within living memory. They might accept that war remained part of the human condition, but the extent of social and technological progress would no doubt overwhelm them. Many of our intellectuals would seek to congratulate their ancestors on establishing the foundations of our world: many global traditions of revolution, we might tell them, can be charted from their historical moment, and so too can tradi­tions of gradual reform, the basis of breathtaking technological and social progress that deserves to be lauded" (p. 310)

"Those battling to prevent the end of enlightenment worried about the loss of cultural diversity, the loss of alternative political or economic systems, and the identification of happiness with the 

ever-growing consumption of luxury goods. They worried that their own world was a return to the past: to times of division, tur­bulence, sacrifice, war and death. Enlightenment figures saw what we call modern politics largely in religious terms, with politicians in free states presenting themselves as latter-day priests. They were concerned that fanatics had won the day, with enthusiasm the most powerful force in social intercourse. Political puritanism, they believed, had defeated enlightenment". (p. 312)

Indeed, I am one of those baffled and perplexed citizens who follow what's happening in the world almost by the minute, shocked by the lack of fact-based rationality, of social and legal justice, of human rights and the freedom of speech. We are witnessing a regression into darkness, with intolerance, brutal nationalism, imperialism and greed running politics. If only for this reason, every little brick that can help to bring society a step closer to real Enlightenment is welcome. Whatmore gave us the foundations again.

 

Hannah Arendt - The Freedom To Be Free (Penguin Books, 2018) ***

In this little book, actually a compilation of three lectures, philosopher Hannah Arendt explores the value of freedom. She distinguishes throughout the lectures on various forms of freedom, negative freedom (to be free from oppression, to be free from want, to be free from fear) and positive freedom (to be free to participate in democratic society). 

Even if I can appreciate her conclusions and general vision on freedom, the way she presents it, with little evidence or substantiation other than what other philosophers wrote on the topic, makes it a little old-fashioned, while the subject is of course very relevant in today's context. Many of her statements are just statements, without any link to earlier premises and without connection to earlier steps in her reasoning. Or sentences such as : "Where everyone does the same, nobody acts in freedom, even when nobody is directly coerced or compelled" are hard to understand without any examples. A counter-example could be a rave party for instance. Why would the dancers not act in freedom? 

Nevertheless, despite the somewhat aged style and the lack of substantiation - it is after all just a lecture and not a scientific article - her thoughts remain of interest in today's world, where freedom is still far from being achieved for the large majority of the population, and certainly not the freedom to be free. 

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (Penguin, 2006) ***

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a philosopher. He wrote his "Meditations" on an almost daily basis while campaigning somewhere in his empire. His personal musings on life were never intended for publication, but eventually they were bundled into the 12 books that became the "Meditations". 

His philosophy is stoic - sobriety, humility, courage, strength of character, the power of reason. His meditations are also influenced by the naturaly philosophy of the Greeks, with a cosmic perspective on the broad universe and the tiny atoms that make all things. The relativity of human life is one of his key topics as well as the need to live a rational and moral life. Many of his sentences raise questions more than answering them. And often they are messages to himself: instructions on how to live. Some examples: 

• "No more roundabout discussion of what makes a good man. Be one!"
• "Keep constantly in your mind an impression of the whole of time and the whole of existence - and the thought that each individual thing is, on the scale of existence, a mere fig-seed, on the scale of time, one turn of a drill". 
• What dies does not pass out of the universe. If it remains here and is changed, then here too it is resolved into the everlasting constituents, which are the elements of the universe and of you yourself. These too change, and make no complaint of it. 
• 'If you want to be happy', says Democritus, 'do little.' May it not be better to do what is necessary, what the reason of a naturally social being demands, and the way reason demands it done? This brings the happiness both of right action and of little action. Most of what we say and do is unnecessary: remove the superfluity, and you will have more time and less bother. So in every case one should prompt oneself: 'Is this, or is it not, something necessary?' And the removal of the unnecessary should apply not only to actions but to thoughts also: then no redundant actions either will follow".
• Either an ordered universe, or a stew of mixed ingredients, yet still coherent order. Otherwise how could a sort of private order subsist within you, if there is disorder in the Whole? Especially given that all things, distinct as they are, nevertheless permeate and respond to each other."

Even if many of his reflections are outdated, many are equally still fresh today, with practical or spiritual questions that are worthy of thought for us now. In that sense, his "Meditations" are more than just a historical report of what the emperor wrote, but also still meaningful for people living today. 

That the book is not meant to be read as a whole, will be quickly obvious to the reader: there are endless repetitions on the same or similar thoughts. There is obviously no structure or build-up, let alone a coherent essay on his philosophy.  So it should be seen as a resource for little ideas to read and juggle with once in a while. 

Jean-Paul Van Bendegem - Abecedarium (Houtekiet, 2025) ***

Een beminnelijk en luchtig boekje over denken in onze tijd, over contradicties, paradoxen, wiskunde en humor. Elke letter van ons alfabet is een insteek voor filosoof Jean-Paul Van Bendeghem om ons aan het denken te zetten, vaak met frisse ideeën van hemzelf, of weetjes uit onze geschiedenis of feiten uit onze realiteit. Licht verteerbaar en met humor gebracht. Het boekje is een bundeling van teksten die oorspronkelijk in De Geus zijn verschenen. Een heerlijk tussendoortje. 

Sarah Bakewell - Humanly Possible (Penguin, 2023) *****

When reading the short description of the book's content, I was hesitant. I am already convinced of the value of its contents. Second, I have read already so much on the subject that I wondered whether it would convey anything new. The reality of reading proved me wrong. Even if you consider yourself a 'humanist', and maybe because you are, you should read this book. It is extremely well-documented and extremely well-written. Bakewell starts the book with the 'credo' of humanism, as penned by Robert G. Ingersoll in the 19th Century: 

Happiness is the only good. 

The time to be happy is now. 

The place to be happy is here. 

The way to be happy is to make others so. 

Even if I was well aware or vaguely aware of the content of the thinkers and authors that she describes in this book, the real novelty is how these thoughts were received in society and how they evolved to become part of broader political and philosophical thinking. 

Her journey starts in the early 14th Century with the writings of Petrarch and Boccacio ("When his father contemplated training him for the church as 'a good way to get rich' it turned out he had no liking or aptitude for that either"). Both authors raided libraries to re-discover the ancient Latin authors, revived them, wrote about them. Bakewell mentioned that Bocaccio at one stage considered abandoning his literary endeavours because "a monk, Pietro Petroni of Sienna, warned him in 1632 that he would imminently die if he did not get rid of all the non-Christian books in his library and stop writing books himself. This had been revealed to him in a vision". Luckily, Petrarch used smarter arguments to convince him of the opposite: 'ignorance is not the path to virtue". He advocated for knowledge and learning, of a healthy abundance in words and ideas. 

We take it for granted today that we have immediate access to the works of Cicero, Epicurus, Terentius and Democritus, but that is of course not the case. Very few scholars even spoke Greek, so they had no way of understanding or valuing whatever Greek texts still existed in hidden libraries across Italy or elsewhere. The geneaology goes further: Poggio rediscovered Lucretius' "On The Nature of Things". Printing was invented and became a great power to share old and new ideas about broader groups of people. Lorenzo Valla is the next in line. 

"His name was Lorenzo Valla, and his 1440 treatise On the Donation of Constantine is one of the great humanist achievements. It combines a precise scholarly assault with the high rhetorical techniques learned from the ancients, served up with a sauce of hot chutzpah. All these assets were necessary to Valla, because he was daring to attack one of the church's central modern claims: its justification for having complete power over all of western Europe. It could be a short step from that to questioning its other claims to authority, too, including the authority it held over peo­ple's minds. Valla seems to have been a man who had no fear and could never be persuaded to keep quiet. He traveled all over Italy, working for a series of patrons and supporters-at this point he was living in Naples-but he made enemies everywhere as well. The poet Maffeo Vegio had already warned him to seek advice before writing things that would hurt people's feelings, and generally to restrain his "intellectual violence." (p.87)

It takes courage to have intellectual curiosity, to be open to ideas that challenge beliefs and established authority: "Dispute and contradiction, not veneration and obedience, are the essence of intellectual life. And crucially, Valla did not merely tell people they were wrong, he gave the reasons why they were wrong" (p.93). 

On Vesalius: 

"He blamed both himself and other anatomists for having been too Galen-reliant: "I shall say noth­ing more about these others; instead I shall marvel more at my own stu­pidity and blind faith in the writings of Galen and other anatomists." He ends the section by urging students to rely on their own careful examina­tions, taking no one's word for anything, not even his own. This was a good warning, since Vesalius himself did not get every­thing right. One error was that he failed to identify the clitoris cor­rectly, misdescribing it as part of the labia. It took another Padua anatomist, Realdo Colombo, to correct him. Realdo even knew what it was for, which implies that he had noticed it in contexts other than the dissection table. He named it ''amor Veneris, vel dulcedo" ("love of Venus, or thing of pleasure"), gave details of its role in women's sexual experiences, and remarked, "It cannot be said how astonished I am that so many famous anatomists had not even an inkling of such a lovely thing, perfected with such art for the sake of such utility." (p. 130)

On education and Erasmus schooling in a monastery: 

Instead, the effect on Erasmus was to implant in him a lifelong aver­sion to cruelty or intimidation of any kind. He would have agreed with a remark made centuries later by E. M. Forster in describing the miseries of his own public-school education: "The worst trick it ever played me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible." That was another reason Erasmus took a poor view of his schooling: the unworldliness and irrelevance to real life of the monks' attitudes. It was a common humanist complaint to say that such institutions were old-fashioned, pedantic, and out of touch with reality. For Erasmus, as for Agricola, and later for Forster, a young mind needs to be liberated from meaningless, useless systems of knowledge as taught by unenlight­ened masters of an outmoded stamp who themselves have no idea how to live." (p. 142) 

Other luminaries who are part of the genealogy: Pico della Mirandola, Leon Battista Alberti, Andreas Vesalius, Desiderius Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Diderot, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Paine, David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, Jeremy Bentham, Frederick Douglas ("There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him"), Oscar Wilde, John Stuart Mill, Wilhelm von Humboldt ("The State that enforces a particular belief is denying people the right to be fully human"), Matthew Arnold. Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Ernest Renan, Auguste Comte, Bertrand Russell, ...

Bakewell is also very conscious of the value of humanism to all humans and not only to the male part of it. 

"Pericles (told) Athenian free men in 430 BCE that they are excel­lent because they are harmonious, responsible, and politically active - only to add that this does not apply to women, whose only virtue is never to be mentioned by anyone at all. That continued to be the norm for millennia: instead of the mainstream of human excellence, women were offered a rivulet of negative side virtues: modesty, silence, placidity, innocence, chastity. Each of these is characterized by the absence of some positive quality (confidence, eloquence, active responsibility, experience, and - well, I'll leave it to you to decide what the virtuous opposite of chastity is, but whatever we call it, it is surely more fun)." (p.203) 

There

"Connections, communications, moral and intellectual links of all kinds, as well as the recognition of difference and the questioning of ar­bitrary rules: these all go to form the web of humanity. They enable each of us to live a fulfilling life on Earth, in whichever cultural context we are at home, and also to try to understand each other the best we can. They are more likely to encourage an ethics of worldly flourishing, in contrast with belief systems that picture each frustrated soul waiting hopefully for a correction of fortunes in the afterlife. The modern humanist will always prefer to say, with Robert G. Ingersoll, that the place to be happy is here, in this world, and the way to be happy is to try to make others so.  The old Golden Rule, associated with several religions as well as with secular morality, has much to offer here: "Do as you would be done by." Or, in the more modest, reversed form that is more hospitable to diver­sity: Don't do something to others if you wouldn't like it yourself. It is not perfect, but a good rule of the humanist thumb is to say that, if you don't like being told to stay silent and invisible, or being enslaved and abused, or being unable to get into buildings because no one thought to install a ramp, or being considered less than human, then the chances are that other people are not fond of it, either. Or, as Kongzi said: "The Master's way consists of doing one's best to fulfill one's humanity and treating others with an awareness that they, too, are alive with humanity." (p 218, 219)

This book is a great overview of humanist thought: inquisitive, inclusive, caring, ethical, motivated by a happiness for all, in diversity of thought and the right of each individual to personal freedom and fullfilment and happiness. For me this overview is the absolute hope and despair of humanity. Hope because it offers a clear perspective and a way of thinking, despair because over the centuries of expanded thinking on the subject, we have not moved significantly further at a global level. Our technology has advanced exponentially over the last two centuries, mainstreaming it across the globe, yet humanist thinking has despite its obvious value and benefits barely created strong understanding and use in most of the world. 

Bakewell is an excellent guide, erudite and entertaining and truly committed. 

Not to be missed. 

Ignaas Devisch - Een Kleine Filosofie Van Grote Emoties (Pelckmans, 2023) ***

In dit korte en frisje boekje schrijft filosoof Ignaas Devisch over het belang van onze 'grote emoties'. En dit kunnen vele soorten emoties zijn: als iets wat je raakt als individu, als iets dat je kan delen met anderen, als een sterkte om je te kunnen uitdrukken. Hij wijs echter ook op de gevaren van het gebruik van emoties op de juiste plaats en het juiste moment. Het moet relevant en authentiek zijn, en geen vorm van zelfzuchtige zelfpromotie.

"Een gesprek met een journalist of een bekende per­soon gaat al gauw over de mens achter de functie en hoe die in het leven staat, welke donkere pe­riodes die heeft meegemaakt en wat hem of haar drijft. Niet hoe de wereld is staat centraal, maar hoe we die ervaren en met die ervaring naar bui­ten komen. En het is maar de vraag of we hier niet doorslaan en stilaan terecht zijn gekomen in een opbod aan getuigenissen." (blz 31)

Of nog:  

"De Nederlandse filosoof Theo de Wit het stelt kan slachtofferschap een aantrekkelijke manier wor­den om jezelf op de kaart te zetten en aandacht te eisen, maar gaat die aandacht gepaard met een ranzig kantje. Zeker 'in een postideologische wereld waar 'waar­heid' vooral gevoelsmatig beleefde waarheid aan het worden is. Respect voor anderen is dan vooral respect voor andermans beleving van de waarheid. De kritische vraag naar de feiten achter die beleving kan dan als uiterst ongewenst worden ervaren; over gevoelens is het namelijk moeilijk discussieren.' Wanneer emoties een wapen worden om ons ge­drag niet langer ter discussie voor te willen leg­gen, wordt het lastig om met elkaar samen te leven. Zoals Plato dacht dat je emoties kan uit­schakelen om goed te kunnen nadenken, zo pro­beert men hier het omgekeerde: de gevoelens worden aan het gesprek of het debat onttrokken zodat ze de status van vastliggende waarheid ver­krijgen en anderen er geen toegang of zelfs geen verhouding tot hebben." (blz 73)

Als iemand die de belangen van patiënten behartigt, kan ik het alleen maar eens zijn met volgende paragraaf: de mens is meer dan een klinisch gegeven, en behandelingen zijn meestal pas succesvol als ze echt rekening houden met de volledige mens. 

"Wie daarentegen met mensen omgaat - denk aan artsen die patiënten ontmoeten - heeft wel de­gelijk andere kennis nodig dan alleen klinische gegevens. Weten hoe iemand eraan toe is en wat een ingreep met hem of haar doet, is allemaal bij­zonder relevant en noodzakelijk voor een goeie omgang met elkaar. Dan gaat het vaak om erva­ringskennis waar emoties een grote rol in spelen, en minder het louter cijfermatige of in formules om te zetten data. " (blz 56)

 Niet alle emoties komen evenveel aan bod, en misschien is emotie als drijfveer tot handelen misschien de grootste misbedeelde in dit overzicht. We doen wat we doen omdat we ergens door gepassioneerd zijn, nieuwsgierig zijn, moreel geschokt zijn. Deze diepe emotie dat de wereld beter kan zijn, lukt enkel dankzij de energie die deze emoties tot stand brengen. Als Plato zijn figuurlijke paarden met de ratio in bedwang denkt te houden en de emoties naar de achtergrond wil brengen, dan stopt hij ook het draaien van onze wereld. Zelfs de grootste wetenschapper - die uiteraard geen persoonlijke gevoelens in haar methode toelaat -  doet haar onderzoek gedreven door een diepe persoonlijke overtuiging en emotie. 

Maar ik kan het iedereen aanraden. Denken over emoties met Devisch als gids, biedt veel inzichten en stof tot nadenken. Het is geen wetenschappelijk werk uiteraard, maar een persoonlijke mijmering die zeer laagdrempelig en zelfs een tikje persoonlijk. 

Daniel C. Dennett - Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Penguin, 1995) ****

Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett passed away earlier this year. He is one the four riders of the apocalypse, together with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, called like that for their outspoken and often militant atheism. This was a good reason to read one of Dennett's initial books on Darwin's theory of evolution. 

Thirty years after publication, the book is somewhat outdated, luckily, but unfortunately also very actual. Many of his references about genetics, quantum physics and artificial intelligence are of course no longer entirely correct, and would have been presented in a very different way today, considering the incredible progress that was made in the last decade and years. But the essence of what he writes is still valid. The idea that life is the result of random chance events, with some basic rules that continue to be subjected to chance, and the organsism's fitness to survive in an often hostile environment, is something that - my guess - roughly 90% of the world's population would still reject today. 

"Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. 

Right from the beginning, the cost of doing something is running the risk of doing it wrong; of making a mistake. Our slogan could be: No taking without mistaking. The first error that ever was made was a typographical error, a copying mistake that then became the opportunity for creating a new task environment (or fitness landscape) with a new criterion of right and wrong, better and worse. A copying error "counts" as an error here only because there is a cost to getting it wrong: termination of the reproductive line at worst, or a diminution in the capacity to replicate. These are all objective matters, differences that are there whether or not we look at them, or care about them, but they bring in their train a new perspective. Before that moment, no opportunity for error existed. However things went, they went neither right nor wrong. Before that moment, there was no stable, predictive way of exercising the option of adopting the perspective from which errors might be discerned, and every mistake anybody or any­thing has ever made since is dependent on that original error-making pro­cess. In fact, there is strong selection pressure for making the genetic copying process as high-fidelity as possible, minimizing the likelihood of error. Fortunately, it cannot quite achieve perfection, for if it did, evolution would grind to a halt. This is Original Sin, in scientifically respectable guise. Like the Biblical version, it purports to explain something: the emergence of a new level of phenomena with special characteristics ( meaners in one case, sinners in the other). Unlike the Biblical version, it provides an explanation that makes sense; it does not proclaim itself to be a mysterious fact that one has to take on faith, and it has testable implications. (p. 203)

This core idea cannot be repeated enough. It's a message of humility. It's a message that requires collaboration and pragmatic solutions among people for the complex problemas that we are confronted with, instead of relying on age-old and unworkable rigid ethical concepts. 

A large part of the book consists in refuting concepts of other academics whose writings and viewpoints are no longer a point of discussion today. If you can live with this, the book is still easy to recommend, and Dennett's knowledge of various scientific disciplines and the rigour of his approach are an absolute pleasure to read. 

Our world has lost a great mind. 

Ignaas Devisch - En Nog Een Goede Gezondheid (VUBPress, 2023) ***½

Het is altijd verfrissend om filosofen een diepgaandere analyse te maken van de zaken waar we dagelijks mee bezig zijn, in mijn geval de belangen van patiënten te behartigen. 

Hij probeert volgende twee vragen te beantwoorden in dit ongeveer tachtig bladzijden dikke boekje: 

1. Welk gezondheidsbegrip overheerst in onze samenleving en hoe bepaalt dat ons individuele handelen? 
2. Hoe kunnen we de relaties begrijpen tussen dat gezondheidsbegrip, politieke macht en de individuele verantwoordelijkheid in deze context? 

Hij analyseert het spanningsveld en de vele paradoxen die er zijn in de context van onze gezondheid, zoals het belang van preventie kennen, maar er niet naar handelen, of gezondheid zo belangrijk vinden dat het een prestatiegericht doel wordt, of de maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid en financiële bijdrage van iemand die rookt versus iemand die zijn been breekt bij het sporten, of nog het verschil in toegankelijkheid en gelijkheid. Hij brengt ons, met de hulp van vele andere filosofen, van Aristoteles over Nietzsche tot meer hedendaagse denkers, tot de grenzen van onze gezondheidsvraag. 

Hij legt fijn uit hoe het concept van gezondheid 'vloeibaar' is, en wat we nu belangrijk vinden verschilt doorheen de tijd en dat we binnen vijf jaar waarschijnlijk al weer een heel andere maatstaf gaan hebben. 

Gelukkig hebben we vandaag - en dat is mijn mening - een sociaal en solidair systeem vanuit de organisatie van de zorg, toegankelijk voor iedereen, dat tegelijk ook zeer liberaal is, want iedereen heeft de vrijheid van handelen en keuzes te maken (burger, patiënt, arts, ...). Deze beide peilers behouden lijkt me essentieel. Het is wel nodig om de patiënten meer en beter te wapenen om hun keuzes te maken. 

Niemand kiest ervoor om ziek te worden. Ziekte is dus iets waar mensen niet mee bezig willen zijn en liefst zo weinig mogelijk geld aan willen besteden, dit in tegenstelling tot zaken die hen wel onmiddellijk genot of aanzien verschaffen. Ook daar kan mijn inziens een verschuiving plaatsvinden. 

Anthony Gottlieb - The Dream Of Enlightenment (Penguin, 2016) ***

Despite having studied philosophy every year at university, few details remain about the learnings of the great philosophers apart from some big picture ideas, so it's good to go back to many of the philosophers who largely shaped the world we live in today. If people sometimes wonder about the impact of philosophy on real life, I can only recommend this book, if only because it shows the gigantic divide between general common sense today, and the clear lack of knowledge and even rationality among thinkers in the 18th Century, let alone if compared to the less educated people with power.

Gottlieb starts with Descartes, and his narrow evidence-less thinking about the world, starting with his own personal ego as the basis to understand the world. The comes Hobbes, the Monster of Malmesbury, whose Leviathan designed the ideal state, that in today's view appears very much to be a dictatorship, even if Hobbes believes in the righteousness of the sole leader to whom everybody should report. Then he moves on to Spinoza, the Dutch ex-communicated jew who questioned everything and defined concepts. What people think is their own private affair, he says, and the role of the state should be limited to create a secure place in which individuals can enjoy their liberty, and no church should be given any legal powers.

Then comes the great John Locke, whose concept of the tabula rasa, the fact that humans are born without any preconceived knowledge and notions, shocked the world even more. Then comes Leibniz with his "best of all possible worlds", who at the same time tried to make a synthesis of all things, using calculus and evidence. He rejected the idea even suggested by Newton that God could intervene in things and course-correct trajectories of planets to make them match the math. From Hume we move to the French philosophers and Voltaire, who gave broader appeal to the ideas of the enlightenment, and not hesitating to criticise each other's thoughts and ideas. Good examples are Voltaire's attacks on Leibniz and Rousseau.

When you learn about these philosophers when you're eighteen or nineteen, you are baffled by their knowledge and the subtletly and nuance of their thinking. When you read them today, some of their concepts are risible and totally alien for most educated people living today. Nobody would take Descartes or Hobbes seriously, but then again, they paved the way to get us where we are today.

We really have to appreciate how our views of the world has changed. Unfortunately, the enlightenment has still not reached some so-called civilised countries.

This book is easy to read, with interesting biographical and historical anecdotes that help us frame where some of the ideas came from, and written with deep interest and appreciation.

An easy book to recommend to readers interested in one of the greatest moments in western philosophy.

Maarten Boudry - Waarom De Wereld Niet Naar De Knoppen Gaat (Polis, 2019) ****

Wie Stephen Pinker's 'The Better Angels Of Our Nature' en het meer recente 'Englightenment Now' heeft gelezen, of nog Hans Rosslings "Factfulness" of Bob Duffy's "The Perils Of Perception" zal één en ander herkennen in dit boek van filosoof Maarten Boudry. De thesis is dezelfde: het gaat beter met onze wereld dan in het verleden, en alle feiten ondersteunen deze vaststelling. Alleen staat onze gebrekkige perceptie in de weg om dat te zien.

Mijn vakterrein is de gezondheidszorg, en wat we op dat gebied in de voorbije decennia hebben gezien als vooruitgang, zouden mensen zelfs dertig jaar geleden niet hebben kunnen geloven, en niet alleen bij ons, maar ook in ontwikkelingslanden.

Boudry vertrekt vanuit eenzelfde bezorgdheid voor het kennen van de juiste feiten en die ook correct te interpreteren. Hij richt zich tegen de intellectuelen (en anderen) die een positieve houding tegenover de vooruitgang als te snel wegwuiven als een naïef gebrek aan kritische zin. Boudry verdeelt deze vooruitgangscritici in vier groepen: de nostalgische pessimisten, de doemdenkers van de 'wacht maar'-school, de cyclische pessimisten en tenslotte de tredmolendenkers.

Hij behandelt de grote thema's van vandaag: ongelijkheid, racisme, islam, de globalisering van de media, ons milieu, en de grote boeman: het neoliberalisme. Zijn ontwarring van deze thema's is verfrissend (waarschijnlijk omdat ze ook sterk aanleunen bij mijn standpunt hierover).

Mijn opinie hierover: mensen hebben vaak een verkeerd beeld over de grote onderwerpen als ze die moeten evalueren op een abstract niveau. Maar als je aan mensen vraagt hoe hun leven er vandaag uitziet, wat ze doen, of ze doen wat ze willen, of ze zien wie ze willen, enz, dan merk je al snel dat het heel goed gaat met de mensen. We kunnen vandaag waar onze grootouders nog niet aan dachten te kunnen doen. Ze leefden in een uiterst bekrompen wereld van kleine dorpen met versmachtende sociale controle, pestgedrag en machtsmisbruik, een verstikkende godsdienst en als je het slecht had ook geen enkel perspectief om het ooit beter te hebben.

Boudry geeft een brede en diepe analyse van onze wereld, zowel internationaal als in Vlaanderen en Nederland.

Een aanrader!

Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now (Allen Lane, 2018) ****

We know Pinker, we love Pinker. "Enlightenment Now" is subtitled "The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress", and that's exactly what the book does. The good thing is that Pinker gives a very high level overview of the progress that's been made in the last centuries, thanks to the insights of the enlightenment philosophers, scientists and politicians who radically put evidence and democracy at the heart of society. This led to better science, better understanding, but also better justice and well-being to many.

This book is a kind of sequel to "The Better Angels of our Nature", in which he describes how society has become less violent over the millennia.

He tackles the big picture topics of wealth, equality, happiness, peace, safety, terrorism, democracy, equal rights, the environment, ... and he is right: based on all evidence, things are getting better, despite the growth of the population.

His appeal to reason and democracy are a deep cry from an entire intellectual community who sees populism on the rise across the world, with 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' increasingly dominating our news and social media.

As with so many books, this one will also be preaching to the converted. Its main advantage is that it give the converted a very strong overview of facts to support their arguments. Nothing new here, just very well presented and documented.

If I had his skills and knowledge, this is the book I would write.

Julian Baggini - A Short History Of Truth (Quercus, 2017) ***

Julian Baggini is the founding editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. He has a PhD on the philosophy of personal identity and is the author, co-author or editor of over twenty books.

In "A Short History Of Truth", he touches in a very light and welcoming style the different types of truth that exist out there, including the truths that are claimed to be eternal, authoritative, esoteric, reasoned, empirical, creative, relative, powerful, moral or holistic. He explains all of them with their inherent challenges and paradoxes, the way they have been used and abused. All this in about 100 pages of easy to read philosophy. 

Getting to know the truth is a question of attitude. "Establishing the truth requires epistemic virtues like modesty, scepticism, openness to other perspectives, a spirit of collective enquiry, a readiness to confront power, a desire to create better truths, a willingness to let our morals be guided by the facts". 

It sounds so simple, this question of attitude. If it is so simple, why is it so difficult?

Carlo Rovelli - Reality Is Not What It Seems (Penguin, 2017) ****

In this great book, physicist Carlo Rovelli explains what we know about reality, and how it can be interpreted. It's a wonderful journey into the nature of science itself, about what we know and don't know, and about what we can know. In our universe there are one billion galaxies with each around 1 billion stars, and our world is just one planet of those stars. In the middle of our galaxy, there is a black hole that is one million times the size of our sun, and that swallows up entire "solar systems" like a whale eats little fish (I checked this, and they do eat small fish, and not only plankton, which I thought).

He gives an overview of a number of theories that are currently used to describe the facts and findings of modern physics. What comes out loud and clear is that our universe is finite.

Rovelli gives a historic overview of theories about our world, and how they involved over time. He does this in a very readable and accessible way, often using anecdotes and discussions from the life of the physicists who shaped our current thinking.

Rovelli ends the book with some musings on the nature of science. He says that the only thing that's infinite is our ignorance. And that's maybe a good thing too. "Science is not reliable because it provides certainty. It's reliable because it provides us with the best answers we have at present. Science is the most we know so far about the problems confronting us. It is precisely this openness, the fact that it constantly calls current knowledge into question, which guarantees that the answers it offers are the best so far available."

There is a lot we don't know yet. And that's a message which still offers mystery and humility.

Lawrence Krauss - A Universe From Nothing (Simon & Schuster, 2012) ****

Why is there something rather than nothing? The major question that has been driving philosophical thought and theology for thousands of years.

Lawrence Krauss tries to give a glimpse of what might look like an answer. And if anybody can know, it's him. With degrees of physics of MIT and Harvard, he is now professor of cosmology at the University of Arizona.

He gives many examples of things that come to existence from nothing, which is really common at the level of the smallest components of our quantum world. And because the big universe out there is only an assembly of these small particles, there is no need for a cause to exist. That is just the way it is. "Ultimately, this question may not be more significant or profound than asking why some flowers are red and some are blue".

Obviously, before getting there, Krauss takes us on an interesting - and often personal - journey, creating a big picture of insights from quantum physics to the consequences of this weird world for a better understanding of our universe. He explains it in a layman's language, without any need for prior understanding of mathematics or physics. Nevertheless, it remains quite a feat to grasp the latest theories, for the simple reason that it's impossible for us to picture them with our macro-world perspective. How can you understand what a "multiverse" might look like. Or how can you understand a closed universe, one in which if you could see far enough, you would be looking at the back of your own head? How can you understand anti-matter?

One thing is certain for him. Even if we do not understand all aspects of our world and universe, there is no need for a "god" to have created it. There is not only no need for it, it would make the whole even more complex and more unlikely.

Interesting reading if you're interested in the most profound question of our existence.

David J. Hand - The Improbability Principle (Scientific American, 2015) ***

David Hand is a professor of mathematics at Imperial College in London. In "The Improbability Principle", he gives a very readable overview of things that on the surface look like improbabilities, yet for a variety of reasons are fully to be expected.

He guides us through the Law of Inevitability, the Law of Truly Large Numbers, the Law of Selection, the Law of the Probability Lever, the Law of Near Enough, all laws that are active on a daily basis and may at times give the impression that miracles occur, when only the statistics of chance play their game.

At the same time he fiercely attacks quacks and paranormal entertainers for deceiving people. He accuses our education for not helping us understand everyday fallacies better than we do.

And that's why I would recommend this book to anybody with an educational role: it is easy to read, yet filled with examples that at first sight look totally impossible, yet when you listen to Hand's explanation, become totally understandable, like a magician explaining his tricks.

Simon Blackburn - Lust (Oxford University Press, 2004) ***

I was so thrilled with Simon Blackburn's "Trust", that I also bought "Lust", one book in a series by various philosophers on the seven deadly sins.

The British philosophy professor gives us his best: short chapters each looking at one aspect of 'lust', each time with a different approach, as the essay is a collection of lectures given on the subject. He talks about Plato's view, about Diogenes' public copulations, or the Christian panic of Augustine, who  so abhorred of physical lust that "he preferred the idea that in paradise children might have begotten by purely spiritual love", but he also talks about the biology of lust, and the surprising ways of nature, as well as about the evolutionary aspects of it and the pyschological ones. He compares desire to lust, he discusses prostitution and pornography, skimming through the books of literature and philosophy, illustrating the whole with drawings, paintings and statues, quoting famous philosophers such as Hume and Hobbes, as well as a whole panoply of unknown authors, moralists, feminists and other people with an opinion, in an overall erudite, literate and amusing book.

Simon Blackburn - Truth (Penguin, 2006) ***

In this post-truth era, it is good to understand what 'Truth' is, and how it has been looked upon by all great philosophers. Simon Blackburn is a great guide. First, because even if he gives some insights into the history of philosophy, this is not a historical overview. Blackburn tries to identify within history what might be relevant for us today. He guides us through the concepts of absolute versus relative truths, with Protagoras and Nietsche proponents of the latter, and Plato and religions of the former. He ends with his views on realism and pragmatic truth, based on empirical evidence and success in real life.

Like all books by Blackburn, this one is easy to read and follow. He style is light and non-academic.