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All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
An inspirational book that is “a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy. Important for the way it illuminates life today and for the controversial advice it offers on how to live” ( The New York Times ).
“What constitutes human excellence?” and “What is the best way to live a life?” These are questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning of time. In their critically acclaimed book, All Things Shining , Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly argue that our search for meaning was once fulfilled by our responsiveness to forces greater than ourselves, whether one God or many. These forces drew us in and imbued the ordinary moments of life with wonder and gratitude. Dreyfus and Kelly argue in this thought-provoking work that as we began to rely on the power of our own independent will we lost our skill for encountering the sacred.
Through their original and transformative discussion of some of the greatest works of Western literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Melville’s Moby Dick, Dreyfus and Kelly reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with the things that gave our lives purpose, and show how, by reading our culture’s classics anew, we can once again be drawn into intense involvement with the wonder and beauty of the world.
Well on its way to becoming a classic itself, this inspirational book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves.
“What constitutes human excellence?” and “What is the best way to live a life?” These are questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning of time. In their critically acclaimed book, All Things Shining , Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly argue that our search for meaning was once fulfilled by our responsiveness to forces greater than ourselves, whether one God or many. These forces drew us in and imbued the ordinary moments of life with wonder and gratitude. Dreyfus and Kelly argue in this thought-provoking work that as we began to rely on the power of our own independent will we lost our skill for encountering the sacred.
Through their original and transformative discussion of some of the greatest works of Western literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Melville’s Moby Dick, Dreyfus and Kelly reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with the things that gave our lives purpose, and show how, by reading our culture’s classics anew, we can once again be drawn into intense involvement with the wonder and beauty of the world.
Well on its way to becoming a classic itself, this inspirational book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 4, 2010
300 people are currently reading
5674 people want to read
About the author
Hubert L. Dreyfus
48 books192 followersHubert Lederer Dreyfus was professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where his interests include phenomenology, existentialism, the philosophy of psychology and literature, and the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews
October 28, 2016
This is the first book I’ve read as a direct result of reading Cal Newport’s excellent book Deep Work.
The problem All Things Shining addresses is that the more choice of thought and actions we have, the more we are prone to nihilistic tendencies. This is counter-intuitive but in many ways, it's true. Being free from the shackles of religion, superstition, fate, and god-ordained kings should be empowering and joyful. But it's not that simple. Freedom can be whatever we make it which, it turns out, is a problem. The paradox of so much choice can lead to paralysis. Not knowing with certainty what our role in society is, or what the future of the universe and humanity might be can leave us conflicted, anxious, and worried about wasting time and energy. As Dostoyevsky’s observed, “when nothing matters, everything is okay.”
All Things Shining implicates everyone from Descartes and Kant to Luther and St Augustine, luminaries usually spared much criticism, in the unfortunate spread of nihilism and existential angst in modern society.
Fortunately though, we're not left to wallow in our discontent. The authors suggest that rather than endless speculation about things we can't know, or fretting over things we can't change, we should focus on the shining things. Their examples of finding the shining things come from the Greeks and their gods, the last professional full time wheelwright, Herman Melville, whose white whale graces the cover of the book, David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert
When the Greeks were blessed with good fortune, cursed with bad, or captivated by whatever passion the gods brought them, they fully embraced it, allowing it to consume their attention until, like all shining things, it passed. There was no question about where the feeling came from, only acceptance.
Today we can't blind ourselves to the fact that the Greek gods don't exist, but we can occasionally allow ourselves to be carried away in the passion of a crowd watching football or dancing together or joined in awe of any human accomplishment.
We can master skills and crafts and find the hidden value in working with materials in the physical world. As we master these skills, we can enter flow states, and find lasting passion in our craftsmanship.
We can feel the meditative bliss of being caught up in a moment of gratitude or acceptance. We can allow the creative muses work within us or simply appreciate the creativity of others.
In short, we can find pleasure, joy, and even meaning in the realm of human action. If we work at it, enough pleasure to forget the trap of nihilism and flourish, confident in our place in the world and in the skills we've mastered.
For me, this was a new way of thinking about meaning. I love the idea and I’m excited to keep going down the path of books Cal Newport mentions.Rapt is next.
The problem All Things Shining addresses is that the more choice of thought and actions we have, the more we are prone to nihilistic tendencies. This is counter-intuitive but in many ways, it's true. Being free from the shackles of religion, superstition, fate, and god-ordained kings should be empowering and joyful. But it's not that simple. Freedom can be whatever we make it which, it turns out, is a problem. The paradox of so much choice can lead to paralysis. Not knowing with certainty what our role in society is, or what the future of the universe and humanity might be can leave us conflicted, anxious, and worried about wasting time and energy. As Dostoyevsky’s observed, “when nothing matters, everything is okay.”
All Things Shining implicates everyone from Descartes and Kant to Luther and St Augustine, luminaries usually spared much criticism, in the unfortunate spread of nihilism and existential angst in modern society.
Fortunately though, we're not left to wallow in our discontent. The authors suggest that rather than endless speculation about things we can't know, or fretting over things we can't change, we should focus on the shining things. Their examples of finding the shining things come from the Greeks and their gods, the last professional full time wheelwright, Herman Melville, whose white whale graces the cover of the book, David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert
When the Greeks were blessed with good fortune, cursed with bad, or captivated by whatever passion the gods brought them, they fully embraced it, allowing it to consume their attention until, like all shining things, it passed. There was no question about where the feeling came from, only acceptance.
Today we can't blind ourselves to the fact that the Greek gods don't exist, but we can occasionally allow ourselves to be carried away in the passion of a crowd watching football or dancing together or joined in awe of any human accomplishment.
We can master skills and crafts and find the hidden value in working with materials in the physical world. As we master these skills, we can enter flow states, and find lasting passion in our craftsmanship.
We can feel the meditative bliss of being caught up in a moment of gratitude or acceptance. We can allow the creative muses work within us or simply appreciate the creativity of others.
In short, we can find pleasure, joy, and even meaning in the realm of human action. If we work at it, enough pleasure to forget the trap of nihilism and flourish, confident in our place in the world and in the skills we've mastered.
For me, this was a new way of thinking about meaning. I love the idea and I’m excited to keep going down the path of books Cal Newport mentions.Rapt is next.
June 29, 2011
I'm so grateful to the friend who sent me this book, and someday when I have more time I'd love to write a full review of it, especially as it has garnered so much praise. On the one hand, it was a pleasure to read a book length essay about the books I teach and some I don't (Eat, Pray, Love?!) It was also enjoyable to read authors I disagree with who say things like, whatever diety or system of belief one's gratitude is directed toward is totally irrelevent. The gratitude is the point. This sounds good, but of course, no one actually believes that ANY god or system of belief is equally benign as long as one is grateful to it. If someone was a white supremicist, for example, and worshiped a god that shared that worldview, his gratitude to said god would be quite different in kind from the gratitude practiced by an egalitarian. Even the authors don't think this is true, as they spend the entire book decrying Judeo-Christian monotheism while at the same time saying that no set of ritual practices is any better or worse than any other set . . . For example, "When Christianity accounts itself the one true faith, when it claims a total, unique, and transcendent truth it leads to isolation and lack of community. For in its search for some transcendent Divine it forsakes the multiple, communal goods that are to be found here on earth." Which brings up the author's view that Chrisitians hate the body and see life as merely waiting for death and the opportunity to be disembodied . . . So many problems so little time . . .
Basically, I'm sad to report that, after reading All Things Shining, I think Gary Wills was actually being more than fair in his review. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
Dreyfus and Kelly over-simplify and often flat out misrepresent the Greek and Christian authors they use to prop up their paper thin vision of a life well lived. It's all warm fuzzy feelings of "community" at sporting events and coffee shops, without any real obligations or responisbilities to one's neighbor or one's self, because those would mean competing truth claims and self-sacrifice without reward. The authors want the readers to be swept up in whoosh moments which "give life meaning" and yet recognize that people must discern the difference between an MLK rally and a Hitler rally, and yet they think any system of belief which would allow one to discern the difference between those two events would be problematic since their is no ultimate truth about the universe that is ultimately discernable. They're not so much into polytheism, which is itself a worldview that is totalizing as they are into "polytheistic truth claims", by which, I think they mean dabbling in this and that and enjoying it. Fair enough.
Basically, I'm sad to report that, after reading All Things Shining, I think Gary Wills was actually being more than fair in his review. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
Dreyfus and Kelly over-simplify and often flat out misrepresent the Greek and Christian authors they use to prop up their paper thin vision of a life well lived. It's all warm fuzzy feelings of "community" at sporting events and coffee shops, without any real obligations or responisbilities to one's neighbor or one's self, because those would mean competing truth claims and self-sacrifice without reward. The authors want the readers to be swept up in whoosh moments which "give life meaning" and yet recognize that people must discern the difference between an MLK rally and a Hitler rally, and yet they think any system of belief which would allow one to discern the difference between those two events would be problematic since their is no ultimate truth about the universe that is ultimately discernable. They're not so much into polytheism, which is itself a worldview that is totalizing as they are into "polytheistic truth claims", by which, I think they mean dabbling in this and that and enjoying it. Fair enough.
September 28, 2024
این کتاب رو وقتی شروع کردم که تقریبا ۱۰۰ صفحه از موبی دیک رو خونده بودم، بنظرم قبل از خوندن کتاب موبی دیک خوندنش خالی از لطف نیست، هم با کلیت موضوع آشنا میشید و اینکه آیا آمادهاید سراغ یکی از غول های ادبیات برید یا نه.
موبی دیک کتابی سمبلیک است که بیشترین الهام خود را از کتب مقدس گرفته و شخصیت های خلق شده توسط ملویل تک تک شخصیت هایی از داستان های عهد عتیق هستند، همچنین با خوندن این تفسیر نیمنگاهی به جهان بینی ملویل نیز خواهید داشت، هرچند ملویل قصدی بر فلسفی کردن گتاب خود نداشته، اما با توجه به موضوعاتی که از آن ها در کتاب خود یاد کرده خواه یا ناخواه به آن جنبه های فلسفی عمیقی نیز داده است.
گاها در کتاب با صفحاتی مملو از زیاده گویی که ابدا مربوط به داستان نیز مواجه میشویم که تفاسیری جالب در بطن آن ها نهان شده که نه تنها دریفوس در این کتاب بل افراد برجسته دیگری نیز به آن پرداختهاند.
موبی دیک کتابی سمبلیک است که بیشترین الهام خود را از کتب مقدس گرفته و شخصیت های خلق شده توسط ملویل تک تک شخصیت هایی از داستان های عهد عتیق هستند، همچنین با خوندن این تفسیر نیمنگاهی به جهان بینی ملویل نیز خواهید داشت، هرچند ملویل قصدی بر فلسفی کردن گتاب خود نداشته، اما با توجه به موضوعاتی که از آن ها در کتاب خود یاد کرده خواه یا ناخواه به آن جنبه های فلسفی عمیقی نیز داده است.
گاها در کتاب با صفحاتی مملو از زیاده گویی که ابدا مربوط به داستان نیز مواجه میشویم که تفاسیری جالب در بطن آن ها نهان شده که نه تنها دریفوس در این کتاب بل افراد برجسته دیگری نیز به آن پرداختهاند.
February 17, 2012
I think over the past couple years, without being aware directly of what I was doing, I was testing the authors' hypothosis. I was looking for a way to innoculate myself against the gravity of a postmodern despair. I started to carve a life that included the classics. I started to look for a positive beauty within and near the Western Cannon. Anyway, this book was a nice framework to continue my 'experiment' with the classics.
Favorite part of this book was the chapter on Melville. I think this book really shines in the descriptive, but falls short on the proscriptive. But, then again, most everything and everyperson on the planet has fallen short in the proscriptive attempt to find the shinning.
Favorite part of this book was the chapter on Melville. I think this book really shines in the descriptive, but falls short on the proscriptive. But, then again, most everything and everyperson on the planet has fallen short in the proscriptive attempt to find the shinning.
April 7, 2012
The highest praise that I can give this book is that it makes me want to reread the classics, particularly Homer's ILIAD and ODYSSEY and MOBY DICK, the latter of which the authors regard as crucial in understanding what 21st century western humanity believes in, or doesn't. As well, it makes me want to read, for the first time, the contemporary writings of David Foster Wallace which are at the heart of our existential questioning.
At just over 200 pages this is a short book but packed with provocative thoughts. The authors see 20th and 21st century culture as a series of responses to the "death of God", that is, a lack of a religious dimension which began with the enlightenment, especially Descartes, followed by Kant's elaborations on the idea of the "self" as the determiner of all meaning. David Foster Wallace's characters torture themselves trying to create meaning in an essentially meaningless universe.
In contrast to this grim self-direction are the Greeks whose gods (it's irrelevant how much the Greeks literally believed in their existence)reflect a "phenomena of gratitude and wonder." In contrast to the modern view that we are entirely responsible for our own behavior is the Homeric idea that we act best when we open ourselves to being drawn from without by this multitude of polytheistic gods, however arbitrary and capricious they might be.
With brief stops to discuss Christ, Augustine, and Dante in their contributions to the rise of monotheism, the bulk of the book is devoted to Melville's MOBY DICK, especially Ahab's obsessive urge to "strike through the mask". In his pursuit of the whale, he is trying to determine whether any montheistic and transcendent meaning of the universe exists. Ahab is a weird mixture of Kant's autonomy and Dante's vision of eternity, and of course, he fails to resolve much of anything. Interestingly, the author sees Pip, the black cabin boy who, while considered insane, as the figure who is able to hold multiple and conflicting view of reality at the same time - a reality which truly is "in-sane", or more accurately, "ex-sane." That's to say that his vision goes beyond what we consider rational thought processes.
The conclusions the authors reach are particularly interesting - we feel most alive when we are engaging in an activity which lifts us beyond ourselves. This often occurs in sports, with the sensation of what the authors call "whooshing." The dangers of modern technology are too often that they drive us inward and dull our sense of making distinctions. The "gods" (in modern or ancient terms) call us to "cultivate our sensitivity", the sense of wonder and surprise that is too often missing in our lives.
At just over 200 pages this is a short book but packed with provocative thoughts. The authors see 20th and 21st century culture as a series of responses to the "death of God", that is, a lack of a religious dimension which began with the enlightenment, especially Descartes, followed by Kant's elaborations on the idea of the "self" as the determiner of all meaning. David Foster Wallace's characters torture themselves trying to create meaning in an essentially meaningless universe.
In contrast to this grim self-direction are the Greeks whose gods (it's irrelevant how much the Greeks literally believed in their existence)reflect a "phenomena of gratitude and wonder." In contrast to the modern view that we are entirely responsible for our own behavior is the Homeric idea that we act best when we open ourselves to being drawn from without by this multitude of polytheistic gods, however arbitrary and capricious they might be.
With brief stops to discuss Christ, Augustine, and Dante in their contributions to the rise of monotheism, the bulk of the book is devoted to Melville's MOBY DICK, especially Ahab's obsessive urge to "strike through the mask". In his pursuit of the whale, he is trying to determine whether any montheistic and transcendent meaning of the universe exists. Ahab is a weird mixture of Kant's autonomy and Dante's vision of eternity, and of course, he fails to resolve much of anything. Interestingly, the author sees Pip, the black cabin boy who, while considered insane, as the figure who is able to hold multiple and conflicting view of reality at the same time - a reality which truly is "in-sane", or more accurately, "ex-sane." That's to say that his vision goes beyond what we consider rational thought processes.
The conclusions the authors reach are particularly interesting - we feel most alive when we are engaging in an activity which lifts us beyond ourselves. This often occurs in sports, with the sensation of what the authors call "whooshing." The dangers of modern technology are too often that they drive us inward and dull our sense of making distinctions. The "gods" (in modern or ancient terms) call us to "cultivate our sensitivity", the sense of wonder and surprise that is too often missing in our lives.
February 25, 2016
One possible summary: don't look for a unifying intelligence or purpose to life, the universe, and everything. Instead, develop an attentiveness, intelligence, and craft that aligns with what you care about, and be receptive to the emergence of opportunities to apply these things. This worldview corresponds less with scientific reductionism and with monotheism than with the ancient polytheism, and we would be wise to investigate how this polytheism worked and may work for us again in some form.
May 27, 2019
Terribly biased, unfounded and poorly argued.
Fundamental errors in the concepts with which he tries to explain cultures and religions. Quite uninformed on most religious doctrines with an incredible ability to put everything out of its context. Not to mention his extremely subjective interpretation of most philosophical claims.
I couldn't be more disappointed.
Fundamental errors in the concepts with which he tries to explain cultures and religions. Quite uninformed on most religious doctrines with an incredible ability to put everything out of its context. Not to mention his extremely subjective interpretation of most philosophical claims.
I couldn't be more disappointed.
November 12, 2018
The message of the book is to advocate for a return of our feelings of gratitude and awe in this disenchanted world and insist that nihilism is misplaced while advocating openness to the moods that surround us and trust our feelings towards the divine.
The authors know the problem with ‘whooshing up’ (what the Greeks called ‘physis’ for nature, aka a revealing of the presence in the present as truth but what the authors call ('whoosh up’). Donald Trump with his Nuremburg rallies wants nothing more than for his followers to ‘stop thinking and follow me, since only I know the truth and trust your feelings as I tell you who to hate’ even if it means one of his sycophantic fans will murder a dozen or so Jews in a synagogue because they blame George Soros for financing the ‘caravan’ to sneak in ‘terrorist’, all of which can only make sense in the fevered imagination of people who irrationally trust the ‘wooshing up’ of a mad man rather than their own reason. The book was written in 2007 or so and the authors are explicitly aware of the potential problems with how they want to bring back enchantment into a secular world. They obviously were referring to the fascist past of Nazi Germany, not the hate mongers of today as exemplified by Donald Trump who says that ‘all news that goes contra to the lies I spread is ‘fake news’”, but the authors are aware of the problem their 'wooshing up’, gratitude and awe could lead to.
Dante put homosexuals and people who commit suicide into a seventh level of hell because one of the greatest wrongs according to him is to go against God’s nature and Love in a divine universe where everything must have a reason and serves God’s purpose and to go against that is a sin, according to Dante as explained by the authors. To me, that phrase, ‘everything happens for a reason’ wreaks of vacuity because within it exist a tacit teleology since it makes the individual seem special and as if we were ordained to exist because we currently exist. By that way of thinking our existence makes for specialness because we exist and thus becomes a tautology, nothing more. The authors’ want us to give thanks by way of gratitude for the universe when it smiles on us because they think ‘everything happens for a reason’ and the world must have a meaning since they want to reintroduce enchantment back into the world, at least that’s what they say.
Charles Taylor’s take of the inner self in a secular age as advocated by these authors who definitely appeal to Taylor will lead to an inverted form of identity politics as exemplified by Fukuyama’s latest book ‘Identity: The Demand for Dignity’ (as if my claim for self dignity justifies the privileging of the privilege because of my privileged identity, or as the bigot will always say ‘I don’t want to take rights away from others, I just want to safe guard my own rights (at their expense)’)’ Fukuyama made Taylor’s books his template for his book. Steven Pinker’s ‘Enlightenment Now’ has an inverted ‘anti-identity and anti-political correctness’ tone to it also, and seemed to me to be written myopically with a specialness of being special post hoc rationalization while losing sight of the fact that not everyone is as privileged as the author pretends to be. I found each book loathsome, manipulative and unenlightening. I’d even say that each author really did not like and in Pinker’s case understand the Age of Enlightenment. To be clear, this book is not odious in those ways and the authors are aware of the fine line they tread and go to pains to warn against identity politics being inverted wrongly which the above sited books did not.
I despise the spiritual take these authors advocate. I knew my wife would love it and I recommended she read this book because of the sections on Jesus, David Foster Wallace, Homeric Greeks, Stoics, Dante, and Moby Dick. The pieces all get intelligently tied together. Those parts of the book I really appreciated. The overall theme was nauseating to me, though, but I can appreciate other peoples’ perspectives especially if I learn something worthwhile and get to see the world through somebody else’s paradigm. Even if, as with the last part of the book, the authors call for reassessing our reliance on technologies such as the GPS, because they say it makes us lose our gratitude and awe of the now. I want my GPS in my car regardless and I’ll give my gratitude to Einstein and his General Theory of Relativity which accounts for the slowing time of time because of the mass of the earth verse the satellites in space thus making a GPS possible. I’m always most in awe when I understand the science and I see disenchantment as the elimination of magic and superstition, clearly a good thing not something to bemoan.
I do love ‘Infinite Jest’ by Wallace and the authors’ detailed description of it reminded me why I think it’s such a great book. I would suggest that ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, by Pynchon is a counter perspective to that book, ‘there is not extinction only transformation’, and I think it’s the better book by far, but they don’t mention it in this book but I would recommend that for those have not read it yet. The authors of this book want to show the line of nihilism that starts after the Homeric Greeks goes through Luther and culminates in Nietzsche and is expressed by the post-modernist writer such as Wallace and according to them as infested our current culture.
The authors seem to be more than happy to create meaning when none may be present, and will advocate gratitude and awe in the everyday even when nothing but time and chance explains the world. I will quote from my favorite book of the bible, Ecclesiastes: ‘The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all’.
The authors know the problem with ‘whooshing up’ (what the Greeks called ‘physis’ for nature, aka a revealing of the presence in the present as truth but what the authors call ('whoosh up’). Donald Trump with his Nuremburg rallies wants nothing more than for his followers to ‘stop thinking and follow me, since only I know the truth and trust your feelings as I tell you who to hate’ even if it means one of his sycophantic fans will murder a dozen or so Jews in a synagogue because they blame George Soros for financing the ‘caravan’ to sneak in ‘terrorist’, all of which can only make sense in the fevered imagination of people who irrationally trust the ‘wooshing up’ of a mad man rather than their own reason. The book was written in 2007 or so and the authors are explicitly aware of the potential problems with how they want to bring back enchantment into a secular world. They obviously were referring to the fascist past of Nazi Germany, not the hate mongers of today as exemplified by Donald Trump who says that ‘all news that goes contra to the lies I spread is ‘fake news’”, but the authors are aware of the problem their 'wooshing up’, gratitude and awe could lead to.
Dante put homosexuals and people who commit suicide into a seventh level of hell because one of the greatest wrongs according to him is to go against God’s nature and Love in a divine universe where everything must have a reason and serves God’s purpose and to go against that is a sin, according to Dante as explained by the authors. To me, that phrase, ‘everything happens for a reason’ wreaks of vacuity because within it exist a tacit teleology since it makes the individual seem special and as if we were ordained to exist because we currently exist. By that way of thinking our existence makes for specialness because we exist and thus becomes a tautology, nothing more. The authors’ want us to give thanks by way of gratitude for the universe when it smiles on us because they think ‘everything happens for a reason’ and the world must have a meaning since they want to reintroduce enchantment back into the world, at least that’s what they say.
Charles Taylor’s take of the inner self in a secular age as advocated by these authors who definitely appeal to Taylor will lead to an inverted form of identity politics as exemplified by Fukuyama’s latest book ‘Identity: The Demand for Dignity’ (as if my claim for self dignity justifies the privileging of the privilege because of my privileged identity, or as the bigot will always say ‘I don’t want to take rights away from others, I just want to safe guard my own rights (at their expense)’)’ Fukuyama made Taylor’s books his template for his book. Steven Pinker’s ‘Enlightenment Now’ has an inverted ‘anti-identity and anti-political correctness’ tone to it also, and seemed to me to be written myopically with a specialness of being special post hoc rationalization while losing sight of the fact that not everyone is as privileged as the author pretends to be. I found each book loathsome, manipulative and unenlightening. I’d even say that each author really did not like and in Pinker’s case understand the Age of Enlightenment. To be clear, this book is not odious in those ways and the authors are aware of the fine line they tread and go to pains to warn against identity politics being inverted wrongly which the above sited books did not.
I despise the spiritual take these authors advocate. I knew my wife would love it and I recommended she read this book because of the sections on Jesus, David Foster Wallace, Homeric Greeks, Stoics, Dante, and Moby Dick. The pieces all get intelligently tied together. Those parts of the book I really appreciated. The overall theme was nauseating to me, though, but I can appreciate other peoples’ perspectives especially if I learn something worthwhile and get to see the world through somebody else’s paradigm. Even if, as with the last part of the book, the authors call for reassessing our reliance on technologies such as the GPS, because they say it makes us lose our gratitude and awe of the now. I want my GPS in my car regardless and I’ll give my gratitude to Einstein and his General Theory of Relativity which accounts for the slowing time of time because of the mass of the earth verse the satellites in space thus making a GPS possible. I’m always most in awe when I understand the science and I see disenchantment as the elimination of magic and superstition, clearly a good thing not something to bemoan.
I do love ‘Infinite Jest’ by Wallace and the authors’ detailed description of it reminded me why I think it’s such a great book. I would suggest that ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, by Pynchon is a counter perspective to that book, ‘there is not extinction only transformation’, and I think it’s the better book by far, but they don’t mention it in this book but I would recommend that for those have not read it yet. The authors of this book want to show the line of nihilism that starts after the Homeric Greeks goes through Luther and culminates in Nietzsche and is expressed by the post-modernist writer such as Wallace and according to them as infested our current culture.
The authors seem to be more than happy to create meaning when none may be present, and will advocate gratitude and awe in the everyday even when nothing but time and chance explains the world. I will quote from my favorite book of the bible, Ecclesiastes: ‘The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all’.
March 15, 2012
In the beginning of this book, a premise/opinion is presented as a fact. Most of the rest of the book tries to prop up that opinion. That makes alot of what comes after weak and one-sided. The authors attempt to make their case for nihilism in every chapter with little or no balance to be found. The chapter regarding Herman Melville again makes assumptions presented as fact. Regarding the books cover illustration; Moby Dick appears to be smiling.
March 14, 2014
I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.
David Foster Wallace
Somewhere in the digital ether I'm sure an NSA surveillance bot is concerned that I'm having an existential crisis. Last week I read Man's Search for Meaning and now this week, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. I promise, I'm not having an existential crisis. Last week I was in Seattle's seductive Elliot Bay Books where I stumbled on All Things Shining and was immediately drawn to its opening essay on David Foster Wallace's nihilism as representative of our society's "gut-level sadness." On a whim I decided to take it with me.
Really, All Things Shining is two books written by two eminent philosophers from two different generations and with two very different writing styles. Sean Dorrance Kelly, the chair of Harvard's philosophy department, tackles the first two introductory chapters on contemporary nihilism and David Foster Wallace. He also writes most of the final two chapters on Melville's Moby Dick and then concludes by returning to David Foster Wallace. Hubert Dreyfus, a widely respected philosopher of existentialism and artificial intelligence who was Kelly's teacher and mentor at UC Berkeley, tackles the middle chapters on the philosophical implications of the Western classics. Kelly is a clear, engaging writer and should publish his own work of non-fiction for a general audience. Dreyfus belongs to an older generation of academics. He struggles to connect with his audience in a way that transcends lecturing behind the podium. Too often the middle of the book feels like sitting through a boring secular sermon.
Much like Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday , which explores what contemporary Western civilization can learn from traditional societies, All Things Shining looks back to the classics to explore how we can address the "indecision and sadness" that characterize contemporary life. Unlike past generations, whose lives, beliefs and identities were defined by religion, ideology and hierarchy (a firm sense of one's place in the world), today we suffer the "burden of choice." Even those who are avidly religious must make choices that did not burden their ancestors. Most Christians in the US today must choose whether they support gay marriage, whereas their grandparents simply assumed that to be gay was to sin because the bible says so. Similarly, we are inclined to reflect on our every behavior through the lens of psychology and cognitive biases, whereas our grandparents could behave with the freedom of not questioning the why behind each action.
This burden of choice wears us down. Unlike our ancestors, we must choose our beliefs, our identity, our work, our ethical justifications. We are each responsible for developing our own toolkit to lead our lives and evaluate the lives of others. The hit HBO show Girls can be interpreted as a struggle to find meaning in a modern New York City that offers no guidance as to how we should make decisions. The protagonists address meaninglessness with a combination of sarcasm, sadness, and sex.
"What's sacred is whatever you’re not allowed to laugh at in a given culture," write Dreyfus and Kelly paraphrasing Nietzsche. There is an aspect of meta-hilarity to see Kelly tell this to Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report, the show that is perhaps most representative of our culture's inability to treat anything as sacred.
Ultimately the authors and David Foster Wallace find contemporary sacredness in sports, citing Foster Wallace's New York Times Magazine essay on "Federer as Religious Experience." Colbert pokes fun: "We're trading in Jesus for football? But Kelly responds with a straight face that sports is one of the few common domains that the majority of society treats as sacred. It allows us to get lost in the ecstasy of the crowd at the enjoyment of superhuman performance, whether it's Roger Federer's tennis, Michael Jordan's pull away jumpshot or Lou Gherig's unbelievable perseverance.
"Getting lost in the excitement of the crowd" is one of the authors' prescriptions to reclaim meaning, though they are cognizant that the fervor of the crowd can also lead to mob violence and conformity. We must first develop a strong ethical backbone to distinguish between a crowd calling for vigilante justice and a crowd experiencing the thrill of collective rhapsody. For too many of us, our knee-jerk reaction is to either always join the crowd or never join the crowd. The most challenging suggestion by the authors is to craft an image of who we would like to one day become in order to develop the craftsmanship necessary to dedicate our lives to becoming that person. We can appreciate the freedom of choice while still basing our decisions on a framework that guides us to become our better selves. With a clear idea of who we are and who we aspire to become, the authors argue, we can cultivate the same awareness in life that Bill Bradley exhibited on the basketball court. At our best, we are never frozen by indecision and yet we are always aware of the why behind each decision we make.
January 7, 2023
To overcome the lack of meaning in our secular and nihilistic societies, the book advocates the replacement of monotheism with polytheism. However, monotheism stands not just for the Judaic, Christian religion, or for God; but for Enlightenment, sciences, technology, reason, progress, or any similar metaphysical understanding of the world where the real meaning is behind nature/physics and is unique. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Taylor, and so on stand behind the general perspective presented in this book; but the approach is American, popular, academic, and similar. The recommendation to go to a basketball or tennis match and by letting yourself fall in tune with your fellow spectators as a way to overcome modern nihilism – even if for a few hours – seems way too cheap. The inclusion of Wallace with the likes of Homer, Jesus, Dante, and Melville seems to me quite forced and out of place.
September 22, 2025
Most of this book descends into literary analysis of various classic works.* Literary analysis is fine, but he doesn't tie it all together.
There's some church history thrown in. Dreyfus characterizes Luther's reformation as partly a discovery that "the reborn Christian... does not need the mediation of popes and priests," which is just flatly untrue. Luther held a high regard for the pastoral office and thought it necessary for the proclamation of the gospel and the life of the church. Dreyfus also categorizes Luther's understanding of a "theology of the cross" as primarily a rejection of Aristotelian philosophy. While in one sense this may be true, it misses the main point of the simul. See On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518.
The last chapter, which tries to convince us that sports are sacred somehow, fell flat for me. See my struggle with sports in my review of How Football Explains America.
The audiobook narrator pronounces agape love as "uh-gay-p," which tells me neither the producer nor the narrator had heard of the term before and couldn't be bothered to look it up. And this also bothered me.
*plus David Foster Wallace, who I refuse to acknowledge as a classic author
There's some church history thrown in. Dreyfus characterizes Luther's reformation as partly a discovery that "the reborn Christian... does not need the mediation of popes and priests," which is just flatly untrue. Luther held a high regard for the pastoral office and thought it necessary for the proclamation of the gospel and the life of the church. Dreyfus also categorizes Luther's understanding of a "theology of the cross" as primarily a rejection of Aristotelian philosophy. While in one sense this may be true, it misses the main point of the simul. See On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518.
The last chapter, which tries to convince us that sports are sacred somehow, fell flat for me. See my struggle with sports in my review of How Football Explains America.
The audiobook narrator pronounces agape love as "uh-gay-p," which tells me neither the producer nor the narrator had heard of the term before and couldn't be bothered to look it up. And this also bothered me.
*plus David Foster Wallace, who I refuse to acknowledge as a classic author
February 7, 2011
Polytheism. Greek polytheism. That's the solution to modern nihilism, according to the two very clever philosophers who have written this book, a quick overview of the highlights of Western Civilization as interpreted by literary and religious figures.
Sounds pretty dull but it's actually crackling with electricity. I would have said it was not humanly possible to write a chapter entitled, "From Dante to Kant: The Dangers and Attractions of Autonomy" and keep me on the edge of my chair but Dreyfus and Kelly have done so.
Their theory is that the Greeks, who thought people were "whooshed" away by the gods, taken out of themselves and motivated to do things they did not choose on their own to do, have provided the best explanation for our behavior at its best. Moderated by the Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason, this provides a world in which people are grateful to the gods (or whatever) for the shining things that happen to them: a sunset, being delighted by music, even acting in a heroic manner, as did Wesley Autrey, the man who, seeing another man waiting on a subway platform fall onto the tracks, jumped down, threw himself on top of the other man, and held him safe until the train stopped, on top of them with only a few inches to spare.
When asked why he did it, Mr Autrey said he didn't know, he just saw someone who needed help and he helped him. This, say the authord of All Things Shining, is the kind of unthinking action that sports figures talk about when they perform exceptionally well, and that surgeons perform in emergency situations.
The Renaissance emphasis on humanism has destroyed religion in the West, say the authors. God is, indeed, dead. When there is no God, everything is, indeed, permitted, as Dostoyevsky said. And we are now in a world of nihilism. To escape from this we must cultivate a sense of wonder and sacrifice to the gods in thanks. Not by slaughtering hecatombs of oxen but by creating our own small rituals that recognize that we are not always (perhaps not usually) responsible for what happens to us.
I disagree entirely with the philosphy here but if these guys have backed up everything with clear enterpretation, footnotes, and cross references. A chapter on Melville's polytheism in Moby Dick is brilliant and if they wrote this as a term paper in my sophomore English class I would give them an A.
Not a book for everyone but for amateur philosophers and lovers of literary criticism and Moby Dick, it's terrific.
2011 No 24 Coming soon: Envious Casca
Sounds pretty dull but it's actually crackling with electricity. I would have said it was not humanly possible to write a chapter entitled, "From Dante to Kant: The Dangers and Attractions of Autonomy" and keep me on the edge of my chair but Dreyfus and Kelly have done so.
Their theory is that the Greeks, who thought people were "whooshed" away by the gods, taken out of themselves and motivated to do things they did not choose on their own to do, have provided the best explanation for our behavior at its best. Moderated by the Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason, this provides a world in which people are grateful to the gods (or whatever) for the shining things that happen to them: a sunset, being delighted by music, even acting in a heroic manner, as did Wesley Autrey, the man who, seeing another man waiting on a subway platform fall onto the tracks, jumped down, threw himself on top of the other man, and held him safe until the train stopped, on top of them with only a few inches to spare.
When asked why he did it, Mr Autrey said he didn't know, he just saw someone who needed help and he helped him. This, say the authord of All Things Shining, is the kind of unthinking action that sports figures talk about when they perform exceptionally well, and that surgeons perform in emergency situations.
The Renaissance emphasis on humanism has destroyed religion in the West, say the authors. God is, indeed, dead. When there is no God, everything is, indeed, permitted, as Dostoyevsky said. And we are now in a world of nihilism. To escape from this we must cultivate a sense of wonder and sacrifice to the gods in thanks. Not by slaughtering hecatombs of oxen but by creating our own small rituals that recognize that we are not always (perhaps not usually) responsible for what happens to us.
I disagree entirely with the philosphy here but if these guys have backed up everything with clear enterpretation, footnotes, and cross references. A chapter on Melville's polytheism in Moby Dick is brilliant and if they wrote this as a term paper in my sophomore English class I would give them an A.
Not a book for everyone but for amateur philosophers and lovers of literary criticism and Moby Dick, it's terrific.
2011 No 24 Coming soon: Envious Casca
Read
November 25, 2021This was a bit of a disappointment, which sucks because I've long admired Hubert Dreyfus as a thinker and was curious what he'd say on the concept of meaning. There's very much a bowtie'd professor tone throughout which can get awfully grating in popular-audience texts and while he writes about Melville, especially, with charm and wit, a lot of this volume is just a tedium, and not particularly enlightening. I'm reminded of how Richard Rorty, another towering figure of 20th Century American philosophy, wanted to revive left thought in America through the poetry of Walt Whitman. Which is to say it's a bit much.
March 29, 2019
Too often this reads like an undergraduate's final paper being padded for word count. But I can't fault the enthusiasm. And there are a number of inspiring quotes amid a few warm and fuzzy passages.
3 stars.
3 stars.
July 26, 2021
All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, but a more accurate subtitle would be: Reading a lot into Some Books We Like, and Confirmation-Bias-ing Bits to Fit Our Very Specific Worldview That We Made Up.
Picked this up on a whim, it pulled me in with mentions of Homer, Foster Wallace and Moby Dick (you know, the stuff that makes white boys froth at the mouth (cheap but hey).
If nothing else, (and it may well be nothing else), at least this book has taught me to be wary of trusting the words and ideas of highly decorated people with lots of accolades.
Basically, these two are worried about nihilism, which has been worsened in recent years due to en-masse abandoning of religion and abundance of choice. So they open their 5 fave books and read into all of them wildly and recklessly to come up with witless self help maxims that will help you.
Stuff such as, 'in The Odyssey, Odysseus doesnt worry about stuff because its in the hands of the gods! The greeks didnt worry about anything, you know'. Really? What an oversimplification, I'm pretty sure I could open up the odyssey and pull out 10 quotes that provide an equally compelling narrative that odysseus is a deeply troubled, flawed hero absolutely brimming with inner conflict and self doubt.
The authors also have an alarming habit of making unfounded assessments of an entire period or people based on one book. For example, they take the divine comedy as indisputable evidence that the omnipresence of christianity in medieval times suffused life with meaning and meant less existential worrying about purpose. Having read, at uni, the writings of the mystics who basically sat and worried constantly about how they could trust god in a deeply painful and seemingly godless world i deem this another oversimplification!
The conclusion encapsulates the whole thing, not in that it summarises and clarifies the argument, but lurches about telling the reader about;
how we like to watch sports, how sportspeople enjoy a mode of existence they name 'wooshing', which i am none the wiser about, how you'd better to be careful if youre going to woosh because, as a philosopher friend of theirs pointed out, the followers of hitler sure were caught up in a 'whooshy' kind of moment, how best to enjoy your coffee in the morning, if you like the blackness of it? drink it from a white mug! if you like the cosiness of it? pop a blanket on your legs! (quite what this had to do with moby dick i cant remember). Well done, chaps, you figured out how to solve 21st century malaise!
Picked this up on a whim, it pulled me in with mentions of Homer, Foster Wallace and Moby Dick (you know, the stuff that makes white boys froth at the mouth (cheap but hey).
If nothing else, (and it may well be nothing else), at least this book has taught me to be wary of trusting the words and ideas of highly decorated people with lots of accolades.
Basically, these two are worried about nihilism, which has been worsened in recent years due to en-masse abandoning of religion and abundance of choice. So they open their 5 fave books and read into all of them wildly and recklessly to come up with witless self help maxims that will help you.
Stuff such as, 'in The Odyssey, Odysseus doesnt worry about stuff because its in the hands of the gods! The greeks didnt worry about anything, you know'. Really? What an oversimplification, I'm pretty sure I could open up the odyssey and pull out 10 quotes that provide an equally compelling narrative that odysseus is a deeply troubled, flawed hero absolutely brimming with inner conflict and self doubt.
The authors also have an alarming habit of making unfounded assessments of an entire period or people based on one book. For example, they take the divine comedy as indisputable evidence that the omnipresence of christianity in medieval times suffused life with meaning and meant less existential worrying about purpose. Having read, at uni, the writings of the mystics who basically sat and worried constantly about how they could trust god in a deeply painful and seemingly godless world i deem this another oversimplification!
The conclusion encapsulates the whole thing, not in that it summarises and clarifies the argument, but lurches about telling the reader about;
how we like to watch sports, how sportspeople enjoy a mode of existence they name 'wooshing', which i am none the wiser about, how you'd better to be careful if youre going to woosh because, as a philosopher friend of theirs pointed out, the followers of hitler sure were caught up in a 'whooshy' kind of moment, how best to enjoy your coffee in the morning, if you like the blackness of it? drink it from a white mug! if you like the cosiness of it? pop a blanket on your legs! (quite what this had to do with moby dick i cant remember). Well done, chaps, you figured out how to solve 21st century malaise!
March 14, 2011
I very much enjoyed the literary criticism parts of this book, but was less enchanted with the final "self-help" chapters. (But then, I wasn't looking for a self-help sort of book...) The authors are philosophy professors and the book is at its best when they relate ideas of philosophers to their chosen literary texts. The western classics explored at length are Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey", works of Aeschylus, Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Melville's "Moby Dick". I only read Homer fairly recently, as an adult and with the guidance of a wonderful teacher, so this discussion was very interesting to me. I never finished reading "Moby Dick", even though it was an assignment for a high school English class. It seemed painfully boring to me all those years ago. The authors' remarks about the book made it quite interesting and also made me think the ideas were probably far above my young head as a teen. "Moby Dick", as with many classics, is probably one of those books that should be revisited at different points in one's life, as wisdom grows. For me, time with this book is well-spent if you stick to the central chapters that discuss some of the Western classics. There were no big "ah-ha" moments; rather, there were many times when I murmured "how interesting" and kept reading.
January 3, 2017
The book in sum: why we're cynics, and what we can do about it. Dreyfus and Kelly spell out the why in a succinct and incisive survey of key moments in the evolution of western civ (as filtered through the lens of a number of its most cherished texts) -- with the aim of explaining how it is that we, as a many-society-ed culture, progressed from a state of wonder-in-the-world, in Classical Greek times, by stages (some more direct than others) to a prevailing state of nihilism today. Their sketch analysis is persuasive and compelling. It's also quite sobering. But though the authors mean not just to educate but to inspire as well, the weakest part of their book (its closing chapter) has precious too little of the advice they promise for the wonder-lorn. Like so many books that purport to both describe and prescribe, All Things Shiny falls disappointingly short on useful prescription. But the rest of the book I thought was first rate. And the story it tells -- and the alarms it raises -- couldn't be more pertinent today. I highly recommend this book.
October 29, 2023
Philosophers do pseudo-religious self-help. The idea we can find sacredness in our moods is silly. The distinction between good and bad moods is flimsy.
December 3, 2018
From Polytheism to (Chrisitan) Monotheism and back again.
Dreyfus and Kelly find the pervasive nihilism of modern people as the inevitable outcome of the West's progress towards monotheism. Instead of situating persons in an enchanted universe where the gods charge reality with meaning, Christian monotheism, as articulated by the Apostle Paul and Saint Augustine, inaugurated the West on its decline towards a desacralized universe (the authors admit that much of their thought is influenced by C. Taylor's work, but they see Christianity as something to "get over" instead of a means of reenchanting reality).
Melville, like the prophets of old, stands as somewhat of a hero in this book because he proclaims the end of the West's monotheism in "Moby Dick". The Sperm Whale is a new form of deity: unapproachable, apophatic, and open to a variety of interpretations.
The authors encourage readers to reorient their experience of the sacred away from monotheism and its totalitarian metaphysical claims. Instead, they offer Sport as the modern experience of the divine. It is in Sport that moderns are exposed to heroic acts of super-human abilities. In sports, there are moments of ecstasy that overflow with meaning. The Greeks would attribute such moments to work of the gods. For Dreyfus and Kelly, moderns, with a proclivity towards nihilism, would do well to seek such moments. This is the antidote to an otherwise meaningless universe.
Dreyfus and Kelly find the pervasive nihilism of modern people as the inevitable outcome of the West's progress towards monotheism. Instead of situating persons in an enchanted universe where the gods charge reality with meaning, Christian monotheism, as articulated by the Apostle Paul and Saint Augustine, inaugurated the West on its decline towards a desacralized universe (the authors admit that much of their thought is influenced by C. Taylor's work, but they see Christianity as something to "get over" instead of a means of reenchanting reality).
Melville, like the prophets of old, stands as somewhat of a hero in this book because he proclaims the end of the West's monotheism in "Moby Dick". The Sperm Whale is a new form of deity: unapproachable, apophatic, and open to a variety of interpretations.
The authors encourage readers to reorient their experience of the sacred away from monotheism and its totalitarian metaphysical claims. Instead, they offer Sport as the modern experience of the divine. It is in Sport that moderns are exposed to heroic acts of super-human abilities. In sports, there are moments of ecstasy that overflow with meaning. The Greeks would attribute such moments to work of the gods. For Dreyfus and Kelly, moderns, with a proclivity towards nihilism, would do well to seek such moments. This is the antidote to an otherwise meaningless universe.
September 19, 2017
A truly valuable book to read bringing philosophy, metaphysics, and literature together.
April 8, 2023
I do get the necessity of an ethical and moral foundation for a functioning western mindset. I also have a polytheistic tendency. But the book completely lost me with using Moby Dick (the cover should have raised my suspicions), as it's one of the few plots I utterly hate, and the service like rituals of attending sports events. The psychological effect of mass conventions could also be found in Nazi propaganda.
June 22, 2011
This book was interesting, although I was not sure I liked it until I got all the way through it. It came to my attention in a joint review with "Examined Lives" about books that look at ethics and morality through the point of view of the classics. The intended punch line seemed to be a reaffirmation of the liberal arts perspective and the generalist approach to dealing with the big questions of life. There was an early chapter on David Foster Wallace that really whetted my appetite. But then it turned more into a general overlook of the western intellectual tradition from Homeric Greeks through the classical Greeks through the Hebrews and Christianity and into the moderns, including Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, and Melville. Get the idea?? A broad survey!
But there was a point and the authors kept at it. The idea is that our meaning in life comes from sources outside of us that we respect and follow - that our value comes from how we fit into a broader set of values, rules, and relationships - provided in different ways by different cultures throughout history. Modernity, in this view, involves the destruction of these outside sources of meaning such that we are left on our own and have no way of achieving the meaning that we need as part of our makeup. Our extreme and subjective independence is touted as a positive development but in this view it is the end of the road in which values and meaning have been taken away and we have nothing with which to replace them. So far, so good. . . . and the book is interesting for clarifying how Homeric Greek, Classical Greek (Plato), Christianity, and modern philosophy fit together (or not as the case may be). The book outlines the same bankruptcy of modern man that was chronicled by others and it is done so clearly. You may or may not buy the argument, but it is an accessible argument. Compare this to the later work of Philip Rieff, who outlined the modern death of the sacred (God is dead and all that) but is very hard to work through.
The point is what to do about it. The authors make a good try and note a variety of situations that permit the possibility of encountering "sacred" experiences and meaning. While they spend too much time on sports metaphors, the authors clear note the downside of losing oneself in the crowd. Much more interesting to me was the chapter on craft as a mode of interacting with and experiencing sacred value in the world. It reminded me of Richard Sennett's work on craftsmanship. Ultimately, however, the authors have written one chapter too many and end up dodging the issue of sacred value. Why its all around us and all we need to do is notice it! That is a cop out! Even worse, the perspective is "phenomenological" meaning it focuses on our experience of the sacred. What that sacred order is and where it comes from is not addressed (how could it be?). The problem is that if the moderns have done their work and killed God and morality, then what is to be put in its place. The authors suggest nothing - it is already there of course and we just need to notice it. This strikes me as a too facile answer that dodges more questions than it addresses.
Then again, it they acknowledged that they don't have a solution, the next question is why they should be paid attention to, since they are not adding anything new. And it they had a real solution to this modern human condition, then wouldn't that be special? Overall, the book was sufficiently thought provoking but in the end comes across as what you would expect from two liberal arts professors.
Still, on the whole a fine and useful book that is well worth the day or two it takes to read it.
But there was a point and the authors kept at it. The idea is that our meaning in life comes from sources outside of us that we respect and follow - that our value comes from how we fit into a broader set of values, rules, and relationships - provided in different ways by different cultures throughout history. Modernity, in this view, involves the destruction of these outside sources of meaning such that we are left on our own and have no way of achieving the meaning that we need as part of our makeup. Our extreme and subjective independence is touted as a positive development but in this view it is the end of the road in which values and meaning have been taken away and we have nothing with which to replace them. So far, so good. . . . and the book is interesting for clarifying how Homeric Greek, Classical Greek (Plato), Christianity, and modern philosophy fit together (or not as the case may be). The book outlines the same bankruptcy of modern man that was chronicled by others and it is done so clearly. You may or may not buy the argument, but it is an accessible argument. Compare this to the later work of Philip Rieff, who outlined the modern death of the sacred (God is dead and all that) but is very hard to work through.
The point is what to do about it. The authors make a good try and note a variety of situations that permit the possibility of encountering "sacred" experiences and meaning. While they spend too much time on sports metaphors, the authors clear note the downside of losing oneself in the crowd. Much more interesting to me was the chapter on craft as a mode of interacting with and experiencing sacred value in the world. It reminded me of Richard Sennett's work on craftsmanship. Ultimately, however, the authors have written one chapter too many and end up dodging the issue of sacred value. Why its all around us and all we need to do is notice it! That is a cop out! Even worse, the perspective is "phenomenological" meaning it focuses on our experience of the sacred. What that sacred order is and where it comes from is not addressed (how could it be?). The problem is that if the moderns have done their work and killed God and morality, then what is to be put in its place. The authors suggest nothing - it is already there of course and we just need to notice it. This strikes me as a too facile answer that dodges more questions than it addresses.
Then again, it they acknowledged that they don't have a solution, the next question is why they should be paid attention to, since they are not adding anything new. And it they had a real solution to this modern human condition, then wouldn't that be special? Overall, the book was sufficiently thought provoking but in the end comes across as what you would expect from two liberal arts professors.
Still, on the whole a fine and useful book that is well worth the day or two it takes to read it.
September 6, 2011
THE GUIDING THEME of the book can be stated in a series of questions.
First, what understanding of being human has shaped the various epochs in the history of the West?
Second, how did these accounts of human being, and of the sacred, keep the problem of nihilism at bay?
Third is there anything in these self-understandings from our history that we can use to combat the nihilism of our secular age?
I don't think the authors really drew any real conclusions in this book that made much sense to me. They explored religion and nihilism throughout from varying perspectives from Augustine up through Melville and contemporary authors David Foster Wallace & Elizabeth Gilbert. The authors seemed to be on the verge of making discoveries that I would have agreed with but then always landed off base in my opinion.
There were parts that provided interesting analysis, information that was helpful as a Christian to see how empty a life lived apart from God can be, whether the person acts happy and lives the supposed good life, they most likely are dying inside in every instance, medicating with some form of pleasure seeking or drug until God calls them to him or they die.
The books authors look at how writers of great literary works dealt with the Human Being and its relationship to that cultures morality, the cultures view of self and God. If you read this through bible believing eyes you will see the disconnect clearly I think and maybe find it rather dull overall. 2.5 stars
First, what understanding of being human has shaped the various epochs in the history of the West?
Second, how did these accounts of human being, and of the sacred, keep the problem of nihilism at bay?
Third is there anything in these self-understandings from our history that we can use to combat the nihilism of our secular age?
I don't think the authors really drew any real conclusions in this book that made much sense to me. They explored religion and nihilism throughout from varying perspectives from Augustine up through Melville and contemporary authors David Foster Wallace & Elizabeth Gilbert. The authors seemed to be on the verge of making discoveries that I would have agreed with but then always landed off base in my opinion.
There were parts that provided interesting analysis, information that was helpful as a Christian to see how empty a life lived apart from God can be, whether the person acts happy and lives the supposed good life, they most likely are dying inside in every instance, medicating with some form of pleasure seeking or drug until God calls them to him or they die.
The books authors look at how writers of great literary works dealt with the Human Being and its relationship to that cultures morality, the cultures view of self and God. If you read this through bible believing eyes you will see the disconnect clearly I think and maybe find it rather dull overall. 2.5 stars
August 13, 2011
It was the title that attracted me: All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. I felt that the authors were making two assumptions outright: 1) that we dwell in a fallen age devoid of the intensely passionate lives that our ancestors enjoyed and 2) that great books can cure this.
Sure enough, the authors suppose that the overarching zeigeist of our time is nihilism, marked by a loneliness and alienation familiar to us all. They also take for granted that the people of, say, Homer's world lived a rich existence connected to an otherworldly sphere of gods that made their days deeper and more meaningful.
If you can swallow these assumptions, then this book may be for you. Follow the authors as they trace the fall of Western humanity's mind from the passionate heights of Homer to the lonely depths of David Foster Wallace. The main milestones along the way are Dante's Divine Commedia and Melville's "Moby Dick."
The journey is thrilling, but the final chapter is weak. The authors attempt to find sources of transcendence in our current age. Their anwsers, the "whoosing up" emotion of a crowd, the intense study of craft, seem...easily arrived at.
Sure enough, the authors suppose that the overarching zeigeist of our time is nihilism, marked by a loneliness and alienation familiar to us all. They also take for granted that the people of, say, Homer's world lived a rich existence connected to an otherworldly sphere of gods that made their days deeper and more meaningful.
If you can swallow these assumptions, then this book may be for you. Follow the authors as they trace the fall of Western humanity's mind from the passionate heights of Homer to the lonely depths of David Foster Wallace. The main milestones along the way are Dante's Divine Commedia and Melville's "Moby Dick."
The journey is thrilling, but the final chapter is weak. The authors attempt to find sources of transcendence in our current age. Their anwsers, the "whoosing up" emotion of a crowd, the intense study of craft, seem...easily arrived at.
June 30, 2025
این مجموعه صحبت های دریفوس که زانیار ابراهیمی به کتاب تبدیل کرده رو خیلیها کتابسازی و نالازم میدونند اما به نظر من حرکت ارزنده و مثبتی هست. حس میکنم در قالب متن راحتتر بشه بر این گفتارها تعمق کرد و واقعا مطالب ارزشمندی دارند.
نخست تفسیری که بر ترس و لرز کیرکگور منتشر شده بود را خواندم که کمنظیر بود و چون دیدم تفسیر موبی دیک هم هست تصمیم گرفتم شروع به خواندن این کلاسیک
پرسروصدا کنم. این تفسیر را همگام با مطالعه متن اصلی خواندم و واقعا لذت بردم.
شاید اگر این کتاب نبود هیچوقت موبی دیک را نمیخواندم، نه به خاطر قطور بودن و نیاز به تفسیر داشتن آن، بلکه به این دلیل که دریفوس دست بر روی اثری میانمایه یا معمولی نمیگذارد...
نخست تفسیری که بر ترس و لرز کیرکگور منتشر شده بود را خواندم که کمنظیر بود و چون دیدم تفسیر موبی دیک هم هست تصمیم گرفتم شروع به خواندن این کلاسیک
پرسروصدا کنم. این تفسیر را همگام با مطالعه متن اصلی خواندم و واقعا لذت بردم.
شاید اگر این کتاب نبود هیچوقت موبی دیک را نمیخواندم، نه به خاطر قطور بودن و نیاز به تفسیر داشتن آن، بلکه به این دلیل که دریفوس دست بر روی اثری میانمایه یا معمولی نمیگذارد...
May 20, 2011
Interesting and thought-provoking literary criticism, although the last self-help-esque chapter can easily fall short of expectations. This book doesn't do much in terms of telling you what you should do, but it has changed the way I think about certain things.
April 13, 2020
Reprehensible use of DFW’s suicide to prove his thesis. Wallace’s suicide had everything to do with a neurochemical imbalance in his brain and nothing to fo with his supposedly “nihilistic” world view. Some mildly interesting discussions otherwise.
May 26, 2011
"Rubbish" is the best word to describe this book. It's too bad, given how good Dreyfus' work on Heidegger is.
July 31, 2025
Very flawed book that runs out of steam at the half way point.
They pose an interesting question, in a post-God world what
really matters? They fail to answer the question.
They pose an interesting question, in a post-God world what
really matters? They fail to answer the question.
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