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پرسشهای اولین و آخرین
خاموش بودیم. چشم گشودیم و خود را در این گوشهٔ کیهان یافتیم. ضروریست که کیستی خود و چیستی جهانی را که در آن زندگی میکنیم، فهم کنیم. مهم است که بدانیم چگونه زندگی کنیم و چگونه با مرگ مواجه شویم.
عقل در این مسیر دور و دراز راهبر ما بوده است، اما معما همچنان باقیست. بهنظر میرسد آنگاه که سرگشتگی بر ذهن و حواس ما چیره میشود، ایمان دلیلی موجّه مییابد، اما ایمان دانش نیست. و آیا دانش کافی است؟
براین مگی در پرسشهای اولین و آخرین بهطریقی برانگیزاننده و مستدل اعلام میکند که راهی نیست و ما به هیچ روی نمیتوانیم چیستی خود را درک کنیم و پاسخی قطعی به پرسشهای بزرگ بدهیم. او بر آن است که با نظر کردن به معمای هستی میتوانیم یا شاید بتوانیم به زندگی خود غنای بیشتری ببخشیم و درکمان را از مخمصۀ بشری دگرگون کنیم. تفاوت عظیم است: در روز گم شدن یا در تاریکی گم شدن؟
عقل در این مسیر دور و دراز راهبر ما بوده است، اما معما همچنان باقیست. بهنظر میرسد آنگاه که سرگشتگی بر ذهن و حواس ما چیره میشود، ایمان دلیلی موجّه مییابد، اما ایمان دانش نیست. و آیا دانش کافی است؟
براین مگی در پرسشهای اولین و آخرین بهطریقی برانگیزاننده و مستدل اعلام میکند که راهی نیست و ما به هیچ روی نمیتوانیم چیستی خود را درک کنیم و پاسخی قطعی به پرسشهای بزرگ بدهیم. او بر آن است که با نظر کردن به معمای هستی میتوانیم یا شاید بتوانیم به زندگی خود غنای بیشتری ببخشیم و درکمان را از مخمصۀ بشری دگرگون کنیم. تفاوت عظیم است: در روز گم شدن یا در تاریکی گم شدن؟
151 pages, Paperback
First published February 22, 2016
76 people are currently reading
768 people want to read
About the author
Bryan Magee
54 books231 followersBryan Edgar Magee was a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, poet, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.
He attended Keble College, Oxford where he studied History as an undergraduate and then Philosophy, Politics and Economics in one year. He also spent a year studying philosophy at Yale University on a post-graduate fellowship.
Magee's most important influence on society remains his efforts to make philosophy accessible to the layman. Transcripts of his television series "Men of Ideas" are available in published form in the book Talking Philosophy. This book provides a readable and wide-ranging introduction to modern Anglo-American philosophy.
He attended Keble College, Oxford where he studied History as an undergraduate and then Philosophy, Politics and Economics in one year. He also spent a year studying philosophy at Yale University on a post-graduate fellowship.
Magee's most important influence on society remains his efforts to make philosophy accessible to the layman. Transcripts of his television series "Men of Ideas" are available in published form in the book Talking Philosophy. This book provides a readable and wide-ranging introduction to modern Anglo-American philosophy.
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March 4, 2023
شاهزاده در لحظهای از نمایشنامه هملت این ابیات را میگوید (یا میخواند):
آه ای سزار مغرور،
اینک مردهای و همه خاکی،
تا سوراخی را بپوشانی، و نگذاری باد به درون آید.
آه، آن خاک، که جهانی به هیبتش تعظیم میکرد،
اینک باید وصلهی دیواری باشد
تا کوران زمستان را دور کند!
پیشاز آن هملت به شاه کلودیوس میگوید: «میتوان با کرمی که جسد پادشاهی را خورده است ماهی گرفت، و ماهیای را خورد که غذایش آن کرم بودهاست.» شاه، آگاه از آنکه طعنهها همه به اوست، میگوید: «منظورت از اینهمه چیست؟» و هملت پاسخ میدهد: «هیچ، تنها به تو نشان دهم چگونه پادشاهی میتواند به امعاء و احشای گدایی راه یابد.» صفحات ۳۹-۴۰ کتاب
ایمان در سلطهی ارادهی آگاه نیست. بسیاری اوقات اتفاق میافتد که مایلیم به چیزهایی باور و ایمان داشته باشیم، و حتی ممکن است بکوشیم خود را وادار به انجام آن بکنیم، ولی میبینیم که قادر به انجام این کار نیستیم. صفحهی ۵۰ کتاب
عقل میتواند دستاوردهایی بسیار بیش از آنچه تاکنون داشته است به بار آورد، و من اطمینان دارم که چنین خواهد کرد… عقل میتواند در خطر انسداد، آلودگی، انحراف، یا حتی توقف قرار گیرد اگر که ما دخالتهای دین و مذهب را در آن بپذیریم. تنها یک قاشق از دین و مذهب در فلسفه همچون قاشقی شکر در فنجانی قهوه عمل میکند: قدرت و مزه آن را میگیرد و به آرامی نوعی بی خاصیتی و بی مزگی به آن وارد میکند. صفحهی ۷۸ کتاب
همیشه احساس کردهام که زنده بودن شگفت انگیزه است. آگاهانه از بودنم لذت بردهام. تا دررسیدن سالخوردگی وابستگیام به زندگی چنان شدید بود که این را مفروض و بی برو برگرد میپنداشتم که زندگی در هر شرایطی بر مرگ رجحان دارد. خواننده ممکن است به حق به این فکر کند که آیا من اگر دچار یک بیماری دردناک مزمن و علاج ناپذیر شده بودم یا خود را در اردوگاه آشویتس مییافتم باز هم همین رویه را حفظ میکردم یا نه، ولی صادقانه فکر میکنم که چنین میکردم. … در طول مدتی که عملاً زندگی کردهام همواره بنا بر طبع پرشوری که داشتهام بر آن بودهام که دنیا فوقالعاده زیباست، و زنده بودن هیجانانگیز. زندگی حتی در سادهترین شکلش بسیار رضایتبخش است: همان راه رفتن در دوروبر و نگاه کردن به چیزها، دیدن مردم، این طرف و آن طرف نشستن، خوردن، نوشیدن، حرف زدن. برخی از برجستهترین لحظات زندگی من چیزی جز شدت و حدت بخشیدن بههمین کارها نبوده است: سفر به خارج از کشور، دیدن دنیا در زیباترین لحظاتش، گشت و گذار در شهرهای بزرگ و بینظیر، ملاقات با افراد جالب. این احساس اعجازانگیز و جادویی بودن زندگی واکنشی به این جنبه یا آن جنبه از آن نیست، بلکه واکنشی است به اینکه اصلاً چنین زندگیای وجود دارد. هستی حیرتآور است. صفحهی ۱۱۸ کتاب
وقتی که چنین است از مرگ میهراسم. آنچه مرا میترساند دورنمای فراموشی ابدی است. نیاز ندارم برایم توضیح دهند که فراموشی لایتغیر، بهخودیخود، ترسناک نیست، چرا که نمیتواند چیزی باشد. نکته این است که دورنمای آن ترسناک است. تمام عمر من را ترسانده است. اینکه به من بگویند وضعیت همان خواهد بود که قبل از متولد شدن تو بود، دروغ است. صفحهی ۱۲۱ کتاب
اگر با همین جهل و نادانیام، ناگزیر بودم همه چیزم را بر سر اینکه وقتی بمیرم چه بر سر من خواهد آمد قمار کنم، در سوی فراموشی میایستادم، در سوی نابودی و نیستی. اگر این اشتباه است، که ممکن است چنین باشد، فکر میکنم معنادار ترین و مهمترین حقیقت باید در کلمات شوپنهاور باشد: «پشت هستی ما چیزی نهفته است که تنها زمانی میتوانیم به آن دست یابیم که رخت از این جهان بر بندیم.» صفحهی ۱۲۳ کتاب
حقیقت هرچه که میخواهد باشد، این را درمییابم، و همیشه دریافتهام، که ناگزیر بودن ترک این جهان امری است که نمیتوان با آن کنار آمد. من جهان را با عشقی در وصف نیامدنی دوست داشتهام. صرف تصور جدا شدن از آن، بیهیچ بازگشتی، بهسختی تحملپذیر است. و هرچند درک اندکی از مرگ دارم، یک چیز بهنظر همان قدر نزدیک به یقین مینماید که هر چیز دیگری در آینده -یعنی وقتی من میمیرم دیگر در این جهان نخواهم بود. وقتی دراین باره تفکر و تأمل میکنم، آنچه احساس میکنم نه حس ترحم و دلسوزی نسبت به خودم، که احساس اشتیاق و دلتنگی حسرتبار نسبت به دنیاست، حسرت و اشتیاق تداوم آن. جدایی ابدی از زندگی در این دنیا میتواند نزدیک به احساس مفارقت از هر چیزی باشد. چند سال قبل وقتی چیزی را تجربه کردم، که در زمان وقوعش برای چند ثانیه احساس کردم یک سکته است و برای چند ثانیه باور داشتم درحال مرگم، احساسی که مرا فرو گرفته بود بیش و پیش از هر چیز ترس نبود: در درجه نخست اندوه نسبت به جامعیت یک فقدان بود- اندوه از دست دادن همهچیز. صفحهی ۱۲۳ کتاب
این متداول بود، و قرنها چنین بود، که مردم را بهخاطر قدرت و استواری ایمانشان تهنیت میگفتند، اما هیچ زمینهی دیگری [جز جهل] به فکرم نمیرسد که بتوان از افراد بهخاطر استواری باورهایشان وقتی که هیچ شاهد و دلیلی برای آن نیست تعریف و تمجید کرد. چیزی برای تهنیت گفتن وجود ندارد. اما البته رهبران فرقهها، از هر نوع و دستهای، سیاسی و نیز مذهبی، پیروانی از این دست را میطلبند. صفحهی ۱۲۸ کتاب
آه ای سزار مغرور،
اینک مردهای و همه خاکی،
تا سوراخی را بپوشانی، و نگذاری باد به درون آید.
آه، آن خاک، که جهانی به هیبتش تعظیم میکرد،
اینک باید وصلهی دیواری باشد
تا کوران زمستان را دور کند!
پیشاز آن هملت به شاه کلودیوس میگوید: «میتوان با کرمی که جسد پادشاهی را خورده است ماهی گرفت، و ماهیای را خورد که غذایش آن کرم بودهاست.» شاه، آگاه از آنکه طعنهها همه به اوست، میگوید: «منظورت از اینهمه چیست؟» و هملت پاسخ میدهد: «هیچ، تنها به تو نشان دهم چگونه پادشاهی میتواند به امعاء و احشای گدایی راه یابد.» صفحات ۳۹-۴۰ کتاب
ایمان در سلطهی ارادهی آگاه نیست. بسیاری اوقات اتفاق میافتد که مایلیم به چیزهایی باور و ایمان داشته باشیم، و حتی ممکن است بکوشیم خود را وادار به انجام آن بکنیم، ولی میبینیم که قادر به انجام این کار نیستیم. صفحهی ۵۰ کتاب
عقل میتواند دستاوردهایی بسیار بیش از آنچه تاکنون داشته است به بار آورد، و من اطمینان دارم که چنین خواهد کرد… عقل میتواند در خطر انسداد، آلودگی، انحراف، یا حتی توقف قرار گیرد اگر که ما دخالتهای دین و مذهب را در آن بپذیریم. تنها یک قاشق از دین و مذهب در فلسفه همچون قاشقی شکر در فنجانی قهوه عمل میکند: قدرت و مزه آن را میگیرد و به آرامی نوعی بی خاصیتی و بی مزگی به آن وارد میکند. صفحهی ۷۸ کتاب
همیشه احساس کردهام که زنده بودن شگفت انگیزه است. آگاهانه از بودنم لذت بردهام. تا دررسیدن سالخوردگی وابستگیام به زندگی چنان شدید بود که این را مفروض و بی برو برگرد میپنداشتم که زندگی در هر شرایطی بر مرگ رجحان دارد. خواننده ممکن است به حق به این فکر کند که آیا من اگر دچار یک بیماری دردناک مزمن و علاج ناپذیر شده بودم یا خود را در اردوگاه آشویتس مییافتم باز هم همین رویه را حفظ میکردم یا نه، ولی صادقانه فکر میکنم که چنین میکردم. … در طول مدتی که عملاً زندگی کردهام همواره بنا بر طبع پرشوری که داشتهام بر آن بودهام که دنیا فوقالعاده زیباست، و زنده بودن هیجانانگیز. زندگی حتی در سادهترین شکلش بسیار رضایتبخش است: همان راه رفتن در دوروبر و نگاه کردن به چیزها، دیدن مردم، این طرف و آن طرف نشستن، خوردن، نوشیدن، حرف زدن. برخی از برجستهترین لحظات زندگی من چیزی جز شدت و حدت بخشیدن بههمین کارها نبوده است: سفر به خارج از کشور، دیدن دنیا در زیباترین لحظاتش، گشت و گذار در شهرهای بزرگ و بینظیر، ملاقات با افراد جالب. این احساس اعجازانگیز و جادویی بودن زندگی واکنشی به این جنبه یا آن جنبه از آن نیست، بلکه واکنشی است به اینکه اصلاً چنین زندگیای وجود دارد. هستی حیرتآور است. صفحهی ۱۱۸ کتاب
وقتی که چنین است از مرگ میهراسم. آنچه مرا میترساند دورنمای فراموشی ابدی است. نیاز ندارم برایم توضیح دهند که فراموشی لایتغیر، بهخودیخود، ترسناک نیست، چرا که نمیتواند چیزی باشد. نکته این است که دورنمای آن ترسناک است. تمام عمر من را ترسانده است. اینکه به من بگویند وضعیت همان خواهد بود که قبل از متولد شدن تو بود، دروغ است. صفحهی ۱۲۱ کتاب
اگر با همین جهل و نادانیام، ناگزیر بودم همه چیزم را بر سر اینکه وقتی بمیرم چه بر سر من خواهد آمد قمار کنم، در سوی فراموشی میایستادم، در سوی نابودی و نیستی. اگر این اشتباه است، که ممکن است چنین باشد، فکر میکنم معنادار ترین و مهمترین حقیقت باید در کلمات شوپنهاور باشد: «پشت هستی ما چیزی نهفته است که تنها زمانی میتوانیم به آن دست یابیم که رخت از این جهان بر بندیم.» صفحهی ۱۲۳ کتاب
حقیقت هرچه که میخواهد باشد، این را درمییابم، و همیشه دریافتهام، که ناگزیر بودن ترک این جهان امری است که نمیتوان با آن کنار آمد. من جهان را با عشقی در وصف نیامدنی دوست داشتهام. صرف تصور جدا شدن از آن، بیهیچ بازگشتی، بهسختی تحملپذیر است. و هرچند درک اندکی از مرگ دارم، یک چیز بهنظر همان قدر نزدیک به یقین مینماید که هر چیز دیگری در آینده -یعنی وقتی من میمیرم دیگر در این جهان نخواهم بود. وقتی دراین باره تفکر و تأمل میکنم، آنچه احساس میکنم نه حس ترحم و دلسوزی نسبت به خودم، که احساس اشتیاق و دلتنگی حسرتبار نسبت به دنیاست، حسرت و اشتیاق تداوم آن. جدایی ابدی از زندگی در این دنیا میتواند نزدیک به احساس مفارقت از هر چیزی باشد. چند سال قبل وقتی چیزی را تجربه کردم، که در زمان وقوعش برای چند ثانیه احساس کردم یک سکته است و برای چند ثانیه باور داشتم درحال مرگم، احساسی که مرا فرو گرفته بود بیش و پیش از هر چیز ترس نبود: در درجه نخست اندوه نسبت به جامعیت یک فقدان بود- اندوه از دست دادن همهچیز. صفحهی ۱۲۳ کتاب
این متداول بود، و قرنها چنین بود، که مردم را بهخاطر قدرت و استواری ایمانشان تهنیت میگفتند، اما هیچ زمینهی دیگری [جز جهل] به فکرم نمیرسد که بتوان از افراد بهخاطر استواری باورهایشان وقتی که هیچ شاهد و دلیلی برای آن نیست تعریف و تمجید کرد. چیزی برای تهنیت گفتن وجود ندارد. اما البته رهبران فرقهها، از هر نوع و دستهای، سیاسی و نیز مذهبی، پیروانی از این دست را میطلبند. صفحهی ۱۲۸ کتاب
October 28, 2020
موضوعی که براین مگی تو این کتاب بهش میپردازه، فلسفه لاادریگریه. اینکه بزرگترین پرسشهای بشریت، جوابی ندارند و هیچوقت نمیشه به جواب مطمئن و قاطعی درموردشون رسید و این موضوع رو خیلی قشنگ بسط میده و به مخاطب میفهمونه که جایگاه این "نمیدونم" ها و "ندوستن" ها تو زندگی کجاست و قراره مارو به کجا بکشونه.
June 24, 2016
As soon as I had finished this book I turned back and read it a second time. Although I love to re-read books after a gap in time, before this I cannot remember ever doing so immediately. It was for sheer pleasure: Ultimate Questions didn’t challenge me or make me inquire further, it simply expressed my own awareness of what it means to be a human confronting an unknowable universe, but expressed it much better than I could myself.
I first encountered Bryan Magee in the eighties, when I had grown curious about Arthur Schopenhauer. Magee’s book The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983) struck me so forcefully that I spent some hard-earned cash to buy it for a friend (it was expensive). The friend never responded to my gift. Perhaps no-one will share my response this time either. But this little book will be a treasure for me as long as I live.
People who believe that science is the only way to attain certainty about anything won’t like Magee, unless they are open-minded enough to follow his ideas despite their belief. People who see religion as the best or only alternative to science won’t like him either. In fact belief in science and belief in religion are both no more nor less than beliefs. The opponents on the divide between these two beliefs have more in common than either recognise. So, who does that leave? Agnostics perhaps. If agnosticism is defined as an awareness that human experience is too limited to answer all the questions we would like to have answered, then yes: that awareness is as close to a one-sentence description of Magee’s complex ideas as one is likely to find.
For although the book is short and the language clear to the point of simplicity, the ideas are complex. They are the distillation of decades of industrious research and profound thought. The ‘ultimate questions’ are also the fundamental questions; the questions inquiring children ask are those that preoccupy old age. The snake bites its tail. Now in his eighties, Bryan Magee has achieved a linguistic concision – not an unnecessary word – and a clarity of thought that only a lifetime of discipline could hope to reach. And he is startlingly honest. He does not pretend to have answers when he has none.
Human beings are strange, perhaps even alien, in the cosmos: they share the physical and chemical qualities of other cosmic compositions, but they have reached a higher level of consciousness than any others we know of. Consciousness is an anomaly. On the whole it does not exist, but on this planet it does. However, even here consciousness is far from complete. We are not even conscious of many things inside our own bodies, and things outside them are even more mysterious. We are conscious only of whatever is accessible to our senses and have the ability to build up a world-view based on that.
But our senses are limited. Even people with exceptional hearing cannot hear everything that is on the sound spectrum. As most people realise, dogs, for example, can hear things that no human can. More strangely, there are creatures who have senses unlike our own – not hearing, not vision, not touch, not taste, not smell nor even such perceptions as a sense of location, weight and so forth but an ability to take in other aspects of the world. We know that there are things around us not perceptible to our senses – we need only turn on the radio to find certain waves translated into ones within our range of perception. When we switch the radio off the ‘sounds’ are still around us; we just can’t take them in. And there are many more examples of this kind. In short, we are surrounded by all manner of things that our senses can’t perceive.
Just this year scientists confirmed the existence of cosmic gravity – waves of motion predicted by Einstein but not available to anyone’s senses until delicate instruments were constructed and placed far apart – thousands of kilometres – and then shown to move simultaneously, infinitesimally, in ways not relatable to any more local phenomena than those of the gravitational waves that began when the cosmos itself was born.
There is clearly much more in the universe than our senses feed to our consciousness. This means that the world-view we construct on the data that do reach consciousness is based on incomplete information. There are things we know nothing of and there is no rational basis for calling any of them God.
This awareness should defeat the arrogance of ‘intellectuals’ – for they have no more knowledge of the unknowable than any of us. And language can cover only a part of what we are aware of, so that those who believe simply in the spoken or written word are also guilty of arrogance.
Consider this quotation from Magee’s book:
‘Uniquely specific, direct, non-linguistic experience is the element in which we live, and it is radically different from conceptual thinking, which can go on only in universals. This is why works of art, embodying as they do unique particulars and insights that cannot be conveyed in words, and cannot be mirrored in conceptual thought, have their roots in lived life and also cannot be translated. It is why, if someone responds to a work of art predominantly with his intellect, he has already misunderstood it.’
These three sentences crystallise more than many pages of other writer’s work. They deserve to be thought about long and hard, and yet once comprehended they are plain and simple. The focus on what is unique immediately distinguishes this thinking from science (which Magee would consider ‘conceptual’) because science demands proof of its propositions and proof is only possible by means of repetition. If results achieved in an experiment cannot be replicated in further experiments, science rejects them. But art is concerned with ‘unique particulars’ which by definition are unrepeatable. Each artwork is characterised by its uniqueness.
Another issue that arises from this brief quotation is the possibility of literary art. For the ‘particulars and insights’ of art ‘cannot be conveyed in words.’ But if words are seen as the material from which art is made, like the wood of carving, the paint of painting or the sounds of music, the difficulty is resolved. It is not the information ‘conveyed’ by the words, but ‘their roots in lived life’ that distinguish literary art from other uses of language. This understanding is at the core of the ‘show’ and ‘tell’ distinction in creative writing theory and of poets’ declarations that their poems do not ‘do’ something but ‘are’ something.
One of the writers I most admire is Robert Musil. He began his adult life with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, grew unsatisfied with that and turned to psychology and philosophy, grew unsatisfied with those as well and finally turned to writing novels. This activity gave him the openness and creativity he had missed in his more ‘conceptual’ studies. Bryan Magee doesn’t mention Musil but would understand him perfectly.
I first encountered Bryan Magee in the eighties, when I had grown curious about Arthur Schopenhauer. Magee’s book The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983) struck me so forcefully that I spent some hard-earned cash to buy it for a friend (it was expensive). The friend never responded to my gift. Perhaps no-one will share my response this time either. But this little book will be a treasure for me as long as I live.
People who believe that science is the only way to attain certainty about anything won’t like Magee, unless they are open-minded enough to follow his ideas despite their belief. People who see religion as the best or only alternative to science won’t like him either. In fact belief in science and belief in religion are both no more nor less than beliefs. The opponents on the divide between these two beliefs have more in common than either recognise. So, who does that leave? Agnostics perhaps. If agnosticism is defined as an awareness that human experience is too limited to answer all the questions we would like to have answered, then yes: that awareness is as close to a one-sentence description of Magee’s complex ideas as one is likely to find.
For although the book is short and the language clear to the point of simplicity, the ideas are complex. They are the distillation of decades of industrious research and profound thought. The ‘ultimate questions’ are also the fundamental questions; the questions inquiring children ask are those that preoccupy old age. The snake bites its tail. Now in his eighties, Bryan Magee has achieved a linguistic concision – not an unnecessary word – and a clarity of thought that only a lifetime of discipline could hope to reach. And he is startlingly honest. He does not pretend to have answers when he has none.
Human beings are strange, perhaps even alien, in the cosmos: they share the physical and chemical qualities of other cosmic compositions, but they have reached a higher level of consciousness than any others we know of. Consciousness is an anomaly. On the whole it does not exist, but on this planet it does. However, even here consciousness is far from complete. We are not even conscious of many things inside our own bodies, and things outside them are even more mysterious. We are conscious only of whatever is accessible to our senses and have the ability to build up a world-view based on that.
But our senses are limited. Even people with exceptional hearing cannot hear everything that is on the sound spectrum. As most people realise, dogs, for example, can hear things that no human can. More strangely, there are creatures who have senses unlike our own – not hearing, not vision, not touch, not taste, not smell nor even such perceptions as a sense of location, weight and so forth but an ability to take in other aspects of the world. We know that there are things around us not perceptible to our senses – we need only turn on the radio to find certain waves translated into ones within our range of perception. When we switch the radio off the ‘sounds’ are still around us; we just can’t take them in. And there are many more examples of this kind. In short, we are surrounded by all manner of things that our senses can’t perceive.
Just this year scientists confirmed the existence of cosmic gravity – waves of motion predicted by Einstein but not available to anyone’s senses until delicate instruments were constructed and placed far apart – thousands of kilometres – and then shown to move simultaneously, infinitesimally, in ways not relatable to any more local phenomena than those of the gravitational waves that began when the cosmos itself was born.
There is clearly much more in the universe than our senses feed to our consciousness. This means that the world-view we construct on the data that do reach consciousness is based on incomplete information. There are things we know nothing of and there is no rational basis for calling any of them God.
This awareness should defeat the arrogance of ‘intellectuals’ – for they have no more knowledge of the unknowable than any of us. And language can cover only a part of what we are aware of, so that those who believe simply in the spoken or written word are also guilty of arrogance.
Consider this quotation from Magee’s book:
‘Uniquely specific, direct, non-linguistic experience is the element in which we live, and it is radically different from conceptual thinking, which can go on only in universals. This is why works of art, embodying as they do unique particulars and insights that cannot be conveyed in words, and cannot be mirrored in conceptual thought, have their roots in lived life and also cannot be translated. It is why, if someone responds to a work of art predominantly with his intellect, he has already misunderstood it.’
These three sentences crystallise more than many pages of other writer’s work. They deserve to be thought about long and hard, and yet once comprehended they are plain and simple. The focus on what is unique immediately distinguishes this thinking from science (which Magee would consider ‘conceptual’) because science demands proof of its propositions and proof is only possible by means of repetition. If results achieved in an experiment cannot be replicated in further experiments, science rejects them. But art is concerned with ‘unique particulars’ which by definition are unrepeatable. Each artwork is characterised by its uniqueness.
Another issue that arises from this brief quotation is the possibility of literary art. For the ‘particulars and insights’ of art ‘cannot be conveyed in words.’ But if words are seen as the material from which art is made, like the wood of carving, the paint of painting or the sounds of music, the difficulty is resolved. It is not the information ‘conveyed’ by the words, but ‘their roots in lived life’ that distinguish literary art from other uses of language. This understanding is at the core of the ‘show’ and ‘tell’ distinction in creative writing theory and of poets’ declarations that their poems do not ‘do’ something but ‘are’ something.
One of the writers I most admire is Robert Musil. He began his adult life with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, grew unsatisfied with that and turned to psychology and philosophy, grew unsatisfied with those as well and finally turned to writing novels. This activity gave him the openness and creativity he had missed in his more ‘conceptual’ studies. Bryan Magee doesn’t mention Musil but would understand him perfectly.
March 15, 2016
Do the English have some special reason to hate religion? Has it been worse to them than it is to other peoples? Are they smarter than us? Is it the weather over there?
Gerardo, a high schooler with whom I work, bought a bunch of philosophical books at Barnes & Noble recently, and Bryan Magee's Ultimate Questions was among them. I've been reading through the canon of western philosophy lately, an exploration from which I could use a break, and this one looked accessible and interesting enough to take in. I borrowed it.
I'm a deeply religious person whose life is built on religious principles who does religious work in a church and in a neighborhood. One of Magee's central arguments is directed against religion. For that reason, I didn't expect to like his book as much as I did. But I did.
Magee does a great job of describing the human predicament and navigating tight spots between popularly-held positions (skepticism and faith, analytic and continental philosophy, empiricism and mysticism).
As a reader who jumped from Boethius to this guy, I'm not sure I'm qualified to handle his arguments yet, but I will say this: I appreciate his posture of granting that certain arenas common to man are beyond rational certainty (aesthetics, morality, metaphysics), but still doggedly exploring them and believing in possible progress.
I do feel like his rejection of religion is at least tonally inconsistent with much of what he argues here, and that he grants room to art and morality room that he refuses religion. He explains the distinction, but his explanation makes me wonder if he assumes a different definition of religion than the one in which I live.
Either way, I was grateful for this book, and I found much of it wise and moving. The chapter "Personal Reflections" was particularly rich for me, as I'm most prone to enjoy narrative work, and ideas seem much more potent to me when I perceive them as lived.
Gerardo, a high schooler with whom I work, bought a bunch of philosophical books at Barnes & Noble recently, and Bryan Magee's Ultimate Questions was among them. I've been reading through the canon of western philosophy lately, an exploration from which I could use a break, and this one looked accessible and interesting enough to take in. I borrowed it.
I'm a deeply religious person whose life is built on religious principles who does religious work in a church and in a neighborhood. One of Magee's central arguments is directed against religion. For that reason, I didn't expect to like his book as much as I did. But I did.
Magee does a great job of describing the human predicament and navigating tight spots between popularly-held positions (skepticism and faith, analytic and continental philosophy, empiricism and mysticism).
As a reader who jumped from Boethius to this guy, I'm not sure I'm qualified to handle his arguments yet, but I will say this: I appreciate his posture of granting that certain arenas common to man are beyond rational certainty (aesthetics, morality, metaphysics), but still doggedly exploring them and believing in possible progress.
I do feel like his rejection of religion is at least tonally inconsistent with much of what he argues here, and that he grants room to art and morality room that he refuses religion. He explains the distinction, but his explanation makes me wonder if he assumes a different definition of religion than the one in which I live.
Either way, I was grateful for this book, and I found much of it wise and moving. The chapter "Personal Reflections" was particularly rich for me, as I'm most prone to enjoy narrative work, and ideas seem much more potent to me when I perceive them as lived.
December 18, 2020
«جهان، ابهامِ ذاتی دارد»
جان هیک
اگر بنا باشد آخرین کتاب براین مگی با عنوان «پرسشهای اولین و آخرین» را در یک جمله کوتاه خلاصه کرد، باید همانی را گفت که پیش از او کارل پوپر درباره خود نوشته بود و از آن پیشتر هم دیگرانی در تاریخ فلسفه به کنایت یا صراحت گفته بودند؛ سخنی که دستکم ردّ آن را میتوان تا گفتههایی که از سقراط بر جای مانده است، دنبال کرد. جملهای که گویی درک آن برای آشنایان خُرد و کوچک فلسفه نیز چندان دشوار نیست و بیان و درک متقابل آن میتواند حاکی از اشتراک فهم میان یک نوآموز فلسفه تا بزرگترین چهرههای تاریخ فلسفه باشد. آن جمله کلیدی عبارت است از همین چهار کلمه: «میدانم که هیچ نمیدانم»! البته اذعان به هیچندانستن میان یک نوآموز فلسفه با پژوهشگران جدی این عرصه و استادان آن - و به طریق اولی نظریهپردازان و کسانی که اسم و رسمی در میان فیلسوفان و نام و نشانی در جهان دارند - تفاوت از زمین تا آسمان است و بلکه بیش و بیشتر از آن. حتی در میان اظهارات و تألیفات یک فیلسوف – یا پژوهشگر فلسفه- این مهم است که چه زمانی یا در چه دورهای از زندگی علمی و فکریاش این نکته را اذعان یا بیان آن را تکرار کرده است؛ اذعان و تکراری که نه از سر تواضعی نمایشی؛ بلکه در عین صداقت، با شهامت، به جهل و نادانی خویش شهادت داده باشد.
براین مگی هرچند در مقام یک فیلسوف قرار نداشت - و خود بارها به این مسئله تأکید میکند- اما در میان فلسفهپژوهان معاصر به واسطه آثارش نام و نشانی نیک از خود بر جای گذاشت و نقشی جدی در آموزش فلسفه ایفا کرد. نقشی که برخی فیلسوفان معاصر – نظیر چامسکی و کواین- خلاصهترین و عامهفهمترین ورژن فلسفه خود را در بین سطوری یافتهاند که حاصل گفتوگوی مگی با آنها بوده است.
✍️ عظیم محمودآبادی
جان هیک
اگر بنا باشد آخرین کتاب براین مگی با عنوان «پرسشهای اولین و آخرین» را در یک جمله کوتاه خلاصه کرد، باید همانی را گفت که پیش از او کارل پوپر درباره خود نوشته بود و از آن پیشتر هم دیگرانی در تاریخ فلسفه به کنایت یا صراحت گفته بودند؛ سخنی که دستکم ردّ آن را میتوان تا گفتههایی که از سقراط بر جای مانده است، دنبال کرد. جملهای که گویی درک آن برای آشنایان خُرد و کوچک فلسفه نیز چندان دشوار نیست و بیان و درک متقابل آن میتواند حاکی از اشتراک فهم میان یک نوآموز فلسفه تا بزرگترین چهرههای تاریخ فلسفه باشد. آن جمله کلیدی عبارت است از همین چهار کلمه: «میدانم که هیچ نمیدانم»! البته اذعان به هیچندانستن میان یک نوآموز فلسفه با پژوهشگران جدی این عرصه و استادان آن - و به طریق اولی نظریهپردازان و کسانی که اسم و رسمی در میان فیلسوفان و نام و نشانی در جهان دارند - تفاوت از زمین تا آسمان است و بلکه بیش و بیشتر از آن. حتی در میان اظهارات و تألیفات یک فیلسوف – یا پژوهشگر فلسفه- این مهم است که چه زمانی یا در چه دورهای از زندگی علمی و فکریاش این نکته را اذعان یا بیان آن را تکرار کرده است؛ اذعان و تکراری که نه از سر تواضعی نمایشی؛ بلکه در عین صداقت، با شهامت، به جهل و نادانی خویش شهادت داده باشد.
براین مگی هرچند در مقام یک فیلسوف قرار نداشت - و خود بارها به این مسئله تأکید میکند- اما در میان فلسفهپژوهان معاصر به واسطه آثارش نام و نشانی نیک از خود بر جای گذاشت و نقشی جدی در آموزش فلسفه ایفا کرد. نقشی که برخی فیلسوفان معاصر – نظیر چامسکی و کواین- خلاصهترین و عامهفهمترین ورژن فلسفه خود را در بین سطوری یافتهاند که حاصل گفتوگوی مگی با آنها بوده است.
✍️ عظیم محمودآبادی
May 10, 2021
Bryan Magee put it out there quite simply and clearly the ultimate questions. It was a good read until I had to attend a funeral in between which made this book special for me. Would this have been so if I had to attend a birth in between? I don't think so. In short: we don't know shit and we die. Get off your high horses. (This moral imperative is my own, not the author's)
February 19, 2016
I received a copy of Ultimate Questions from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
At some point in our lives, we all have the same questions pop into our minds: why are we here? Who are we? What happens when we die? Is there more than what meets the eye?
For some of us, we'll make progress in answering some of those questions. We may find out what we're on this earth for, but we won't find out why we, as a species, are actually here on earth. Like Mr. Magee says, we just happened to appear on earth with no rhyme or reason why. We just are here. We may find out who we are as a person (I'm someone who loves books and animals, is madly in love with my husband Sean, and allergic to peanut butter), but who we are as a species, we may never know.
A lot of people don't like thinking about the big questions; they revolve around existence, God, death and beyond. It's hard to attempt to wrap our minds around such things so we choose not to. And quite frankly, those are scary questions for a lot of people. It seems it go with individual experience - the more tragedy in life, the scarier those questions are, even if that person comes to terms with them. I know for myself, I've come to terms with death, but the question of what happens at death and after still scares me. The fear of the unknown; knowing that those questions are things we may never know, and each of us only finds out when we die. We can't really write home about it. People have had near death experiences, out of body experiences, and have died and been revived, but the first two can't be proven, so we truly do not know, and we can prove that someone flat-lined and then their heart started beating again, but beyond that... we can't prove that they saw the white light, or walked through the cave of life, or saw a loved one. We can choose to believe those things, but we can't prove those things.
I like to believe that my pets that have gone before me are waiting at the Rainbow Bridge for my arrival. We'll all be reunited in the end and live in eternity together. That belief gives my heart great comfort, especially when I think about losing my beloved twin Siamese cats, Rhett and Diesel. I know that is incredibly unlikely - that there is a bridge made of a rainbow that all pets wait at for their humans. I am able to separate that in my mind - the comfort of my believe vs the fact that it is probably a cool story and nothing more. My belief in the Rainbow Bridge gives my heart comfort and peace, but the rational side of me is able to separate that belief from the probable reality.
Sean and I both believe in the soul. Our connection is so deep that it is hard to find words for it. We believe we aren't on our first rodeo, that we've been together in past lives and keep finding each other. The way we came together in this life makes no sense at all, and it's a long story for another review. We also both know that the soul has not been proven and there is a high chance it never will be proven. Our feelings for each other and our experiences aren't proof, and as science lovers, we know what the brain does when it's high on love of a neurological standpoint.
We also happen to be people who believe in God. I went through a long period of being Atheist, and something happened in my life that did a 180 on my belief system. Sean is a Combat Veteran, so his idea of God has been challenged very deeply. We are now a non-denominational Christian and very at peace with our religious belief.
However, I can't prove that God exists or doesn't exist, and I would never try. Sure, I can tell you about my personal experience in life and how I got here, but it's just that - personal experience. It's not proof, nor could it ever be proof. That's where Ultimate Questions comes in.
A passion of mine is learning about other religions and non-religions. I want to know how they work, what brought someone to believe what they do, what their life has been like. I read about them, or listen, with a childlike curiosity and soak it up like sponge. I also do the same with science, and actively take online courses in various scientific disciplines. All of this has lead me down some amazing paths, taught me things that I consider invaluable, and introduced me to many new (to me) schools of thought.
I found a love of philosophy when I bravely took a class on the philosophy of science. I figured that since I'd been studying my favorite areas of science my entire life (I bought my first encyclopedia when I was 6; it was about cats) and I knew a small amount about philosophy, I could handle this class.
I handled it, alright. I found myself studying late into the night and saw the sun rise on several occasions. I was introduced to concepts that at first, made my head spin in circles. Sean and I spent countless hours discussing things and trying to make sense of things. I was lost a lot but carried on. Today, I am so proud of that class and that it was my real introduction to philosophy and science. Without it, I doubt I would have had the courage to read Ultimate Questions.
I have always been an observer and a thinker. I never take things at face value and rarely accept the common answer. Sounds strange for a Christian, I know. I want to know the how, the why and the what if's. If there is no answer, I want to know that too. Sometimes, there really isn't an answer. What happens when we die? We really don't know, and there is a chance we never will. Mr. Magee makes that evident in this book, and he explains why that is.
I'm sure you've heard by now the saying that we're all stardust. Since matter cannot be created or destroyed, that saying is mostly true. Mr. Magee goes over how we're all connected in that way, with the how and why, but also explains that that is something we may never fully understand and have knowledge of.
The world is always in an argument over who is right, who is wrong, what is true and what is false. Mr. Magee explains how it's possible that none of us are right, maybe some of us are right, but not all of us are right. Our consciousness only goes so far, but how far does it go? What can we truly know and understand? Can we ever understand everything, know everything, to the point where there is nothing left to know? All of that is explained in Ultimate Questions.
What about time? With Einstein and his theories being everywhere these days, the concept of time has gained a new popularity. What, though is time, exactly? We all know what Einstein said about time, but how does that measure up in a philosophical viewpoint? You will find out in Ultimate Questions, with an explanation that makes sense and is explained clearly.
The only problem I see with Ultimate Questions is an obvious one: it could offend people with strict religious beliefs. I encourage you to read this with your mind as open as you can make it. Ultimate Questions has a lot to offer the reader, regardless of where you are in your life. A lot can be taken away from this book. As humans, we are all free to believe what we choose to believe, think our own thoughts and make our own paths. I would suggest that if you are someone with strict beliefs and you choose to read this, you remember that your beliefs are your own, and it is up to you alone if you change them. Consider your time with Ultimate Questions as a learning experience about something that isn't in your realm of knowing. Walk away with a greater knowledge of what you'll find between the pages, staying who you are but with a greater sense of understanding where Mr. Magee and others are coming from. That is how I do it, and it has been an amazing journey, one I wouldn't trade for anything.
If you want answers, which I'm sure you do (because don't we all?) then I recommend Ultimate Questions. You will get some answers but you will also walk away with questions: questions about life, your personal journey and the bigger picture. If you are examining things from a higher perspective, this is the book for you. While it is short at 144 pages, it is as full as it can get. There is no fluff or filler in this one, every word has something to do with the content of the book. You may find yourself stopping as you go and just staring into space as you think. If you are a thinker, an observer or just curious, I recommend Ultimate Questions. Mr. Magee is a phenomenal writer, one that I'm happy I had the pleasure to read.
At some point in our lives, we all have the same questions pop into our minds: why are we here? Who are we? What happens when we die? Is there more than what meets the eye?
For some of us, we'll make progress in answering some of those questions. We may find out what we're on this earth for, but we won't find out why we, as a species, are actually here on earth. Like Mr. Magee says, we just happened to appear on earth with no rhyme or reason why. We just are here. We may find out who we are as a person (I'm someone who loves books and animals, is madly in love with my husband Sean, and allergic to peanut butter), but who we are as a species, we may never know.
A lot of people don't like thinking about the big questions; they revolve around existence, God, death and beyond. It's hard to attempt to wrap our minds around such things so we choose not to. And quite frankly, those are scary questions for a lot of people. It seems it go with individual experience - the more tragedy in life, the scarier those questions are, even if that person comes to terms with them. I know for myself, I've come to terms with death, but the question of what happens at death and after still scares me. The fear of the unknown; knowing that those questions are things we may never know, and each of us only finds out when we die. We can't really write home about it. People have had near death experiences, out of body experiences, and have died and been revived, but the first two can't be proven, so we truly do not know, and we can prove that someone flat-lined and then their heart started beating again, but beyond that... we can't prove that they saw the white light, or walked through the cave of life, or saw a loved one. We can choose to believe those things, but we can't prove those things.
I like to believe that my pets that have gone before me are waiting at the Rainbow Bridge for my arrival. We'll all be reunited in the end and live in eternity together. That belief gives my heart great comfort, especially when I think about losing my beloved twin Siamese cats, Rhett and Diesel. I know that is incredibly unlikely - that there is a bridge made of a rainbow that all pets wait at for their humans. I am able to separate that in my mind - the comfort of my believe vs the fact that it is probably a cool story and nothing more. My belief in the Rainbow Bridge gives my heart comfort and peace, but the rational side of me is able to separate that belief from the probable reality.
Sean and I both believe in the soul. Our connection is so deep that it is hard to find words for it. We believe we aren't on our first rodeo, that we've been together in past lives and keep finding each other. The way we came together in this life makes no sense at all, and it's a long story for another review. We also both know that the soul has not been proven and there is a high chance it never will be proven. Our feelings for each other and our experiences aren't proof, and as science lovers, we know what the brain does when it's high on love of a neurological standpoint.
We also happen to be people who believe in God. I went through a long period of being Atheist, and something happened in my life that did a 180 on my belief system. Sean is a Combat Veteran, so his idea of God has been challenged very deeply. We are now a non-denominational Christian and very at peace with our religious belief.
However, I can't prove that God exists or doesn't exist, and I would never try. Sure, I can tell you about my personal experience in life and how I got here, but it's just that - personal experience. It's not proof, nor could it ever be proof. That's where Ultimate Questions comes in.
A passion of mine is learning about other religions and non-religions. I want to know how they work, what brought someone to believe what they do, what their life has been like. I read about them, or listen, with a childlike curiosity and soak it up like sponge. I also do the same with science, and actively take online courses in various scientific disciplines. All of this has lead me down some amazing paths, taught me things that I consider invaluable, and introduced me to many new (to me) schools of thought.
I found a love of philosophy when I bravely took a class on the philosophy of science. I figured that since I'd been studying my favorite areas of science my entire life (I bought my first encyclopedia when I was 6; it was about cats) and I knew a small amount about philosophy, I could handle this class.
I handled it, alright. I found myself studying late into the night and saw the sun rise on several occasions. I was introduced to concepts that at first, made my head spin in circles. Sean and I spent countless hours discussing things and trying to make sense of things. I was lost a lot but carried on. Today, I am so proud of that class and that it was my real introduction to philosophy and science. Without it, I doubt I would have had the courage to read Ultimate Questions.
I have always been an observer and a thinker. I never take things at face value and rarely accept the common answer. Sounds strange for a Christian, I know. I want to know the how, the why and the what if's. If there is no answer, I want to know that too. Sometimes, there really isn't an answer. What happens when we die? We really don't know, and there is a chance we never will. Mr. Magee makes that evident in this book, and he explains why that is.
I'm sure you've heard by now the saying that we're all stardust. Since matter cannot be created or destroyed, that saying is mostly true. Mr. Magee goes over how we're all connected in that way, with the how and why, but also explains that that is something we may never fully understand and have knowledge of.
The world is always in an argument over who is right, who is wrong, what is true and what is false. Mr. Magee explains how it's possible that none of us are right, maybe some of us are right, but not all of us are right. Our consciousness only goes so far, but how far does it go? What can we truly know and understand? Can we ever understand everything, know everything, to the point where there is nothing left to know? All of that is explained in Ultimate Questions.
What about time? With Einstein and his theories being everywhere these days, the concept of time has gained a new popularity. What, though is time, exactly? We all know what Einstein said about time, but how does that measure up in a philosophical viewpoint? You will find out in Ultimate Questions, with an explanation that makes sense and is explained clearly.
The only problem I see with Ultimate Questions is an obvious one: it could offend people with strict religious beliefs. I encourage you to read this with your mind as open as you can make it. Ultimate Questions has a lot to offer the reader, regardless of where you are in your life. A lot can be taken away from this book. As humans, we are all free to believe what we choose to believe, think our own thoughts and make our own paths. I would suggest that if you are someone with strict beliefs and you choose to read this, you remember that your beliefs are your own, and it is up to you alone if you change them. Consider your time with Ultimate Questions as a learning experience about something that isn't in your realm of knowing. Walk away with a greater knowledge of what you'll find between the pages, staying who you are but with a greater sense of understanding where Mr. Magee and others are coming from. That is how I do it, and it has been an amazing journey, one I wouldn't trade for anything.
If you want answers, which I'm sure you do (because don't we all?) then I recommend Ultimate Questions. You will get some answers but you will also walk away with questions: questions about life, your personal journey and the bigger picture. If you are examining things from a higher perspective, this is the book for you. While it is short at 144 pages, it is as full as it can get. There is no fluff or filler in this one, every word has something to do with the content of the book. You may find yourself stopping as you go and just staring into space as you think. If you are a thinker, an observer or just curious, I recommend Ultimate Questions. Mr. Magee is a phenomenal writer, one that I'm happy I had the pleasure to read.
July 21, 2018
Reading in a review that this book is something like "The World of Sophie" (a book explaining philosophy in a narrative form for young teenagers), it sparked my interest. As a teacher, I usually find it quite useful to read accesible introductions in philosophy, in order to help me improve my explanatory skills. This book turned out to be a dissapointment, alas, and could not help me with the above purpose.
In the book Magee argues that intellectual rigour requires us to realize and investigate the limits to our knowledge. In this extent, Magee makes a few compelling, albeit no original arguments. The position he defends is a form of Kantianism and realism. He claims that we can only have knowledge of how the world appears to us, meaning we can only understand phenomena through our perceptions, concepts, imaginations, language, theories and imagination. Subsequently, we cannot now how the world is in itself. With this he is claiming nothing new.
What surprised me in a bad way is that Magee on the one hand modestly and intellectually honestly says his knowledge to be limited and that he remains agnostic about the truth, he on the other hand refutes alot of different claims and position, the falseness of which he claims to be sure of. Also, the way in which he refutes those claims in terms of tone and formulation make me feel like he doesn't really take other positions seriously and regards himself as above them. With this he gives the impression he thinks them to be too mistaken (and intellectually poor) to consider them even worthy of any attention. He uses arguments to strenghten his debuking, but not in an intellectual honest way, if you ask me. He uses almost no footnotes, giving the impression he is conveying his own philosophy. My impression, however, was that he is simply repeating alot of philosophers he happens to agree with, such as Kant, Locke, Hume and Schopenhauer. It would be more intellectually honest to be transparant about where his views stem from.
Maybe other reads would like this more as an introduction to philosophy, but to me it was a very narrow introduction in some basic epistemology where not all important views of the discipline are sufficiently taken into consideration.
In the book Magee argues that intellectual rigour requires us to realize and investigate the limits to our knowledge. In this extent, Magee makes a few compelling, albeit no original arguments. The position he defends is a form of Kantianism and realism. He claims that we can only have knowledge of how the world appears to us, meaning we can only understand phenomena through our perceptions, concepts, imaginations, language, theories and imagination. Subsequently, we cannot now how the world is in itself. With this he is claiming nothing new.
What surprised me in a bad way is that Magee on the one hand modestly and intellectually honestly says his knowledge to be limited and that he remains agnostic about the truth, he on the other hand refutes alot of different claims and position, the falseness of which he claims to be sure of. Also, the way in which he refutes those claims in terms of tone and formulation make me feel like he doesn't really take other positions seriously and regards himself as above them. With this he gives the impression he thinks them to be too mistaken (and intellectually poor) to consider them even worthy of any attention. He uses arguments to strenghten his debuking, but not in an intellectual honest way, if you ask me. He uses almost no footnotes, giving the impression he is conveying his own philosophy. My impression, however, was that he is simply repeating alot of philosophers he happens to agree with, such as Kant, Locke, Hume and Schopenhauer. It would be more intellectually honest to be transparant about where his views stem from.
Maybe other reads would like this more as an introduction to philosophy, but to me it was a very narrow introduction in some basic epistemology where not all important views of the discipline are sufficiently taken into consideration.
November 24, 2021
⭐ 10/5
کتاب را بینهایت دوست داشتم. شاید آنقدر که «جهش اجتماعی» را دوست داشتم!
کتاب عامهفهم است، دشوارخوان نیست اما؛ نیاز به تأمل و اندیشیدن دارد.
فصل سوم با عنوان «مخمصهی بشری» فصل موردعلاقهام از این کتاب بود.
احتمال میدهم که کتاب را در آینده بازخوانی کنم، اگر چنین شد حکما این نوشته را بازنگری میکنم.
کتاب را بینهایت دوست داشتم. شاید آنقدر که «جهش اجتماعی» را دوست داشتم!
کتاب عامهفهم است، دشوارخوان نیست اما؛ نیاز به تأمل و اندیشیدن دارد.
فصل سوم با عنوان «مخمصهی بشری» فصل موردعلاقهام از این کتاب بود.
احتمال میدهم که کتاب را در آینده بازخوانی کنم، اگر چنین شد حکما این نوشته را بازنگری میکنم.
December 26, 2022
«وجود خدا را نمیتوان با وجود خدا ثابت کرد.»
نظرات شخصی مگی در باب لاادری گری و برخی مسائل فلسفی دیگر. کتاب جمع و جوری بود اما نکتهی خاصی هم نداشت. دغدغههای آخر عمریِ مگی بود انگار.
نظرات شخصی مگی در باب لاادری گری و برخی مسائل فلسفی دیگر. کتاب جمع و جوری بود اما نکتهی خاصی هم نداشت. دغدغههای آخر عمریِ مگی بود انگار.
July 17, 2025
در پایان کتاب فهمیدم چقدر گاهی زندگی رو به خودم در راه دست یابی به حقیقتی که شاید حتی نسبیه سخت کردم. این کتاب باعث شد دیدم تغییر کنه نسبت به پدیده هایی که در آنها خرد و کوچکیم برای فهم.
October 23, 2021
Het Engelse origineel van dit boek verscheen in 2016. Bryan Magee (1930-2019) schreef dit boek dus als hij al in de tachtig was, tijdens zijn laatste levensjaren dus. Het is beetje een filosofisch testament, met als ondertitel 'Kleine filosofie van leven en dood'. De Brit Magee is bij ons welllicht niet zo bekend, maar in het Verenigd Koninkrijk was hij dat wel, met name doordat hij op BBC-radio en -televisie filosofische programma's maakte voor een breed publiek. Dat was vaak in de vorm van interviews met filosofen, waarvan dan later een resultaat in boekvorm verscheen. Magee maakte ooit een introductie tot de filosofie in de Dorling-Kindersly-reeks. Hij schreef ook andere boeken, zoals over Schopenhauer, Popper en Wagner. Een tijdlang was hij parlementariër voor Labour. Eerder las ik van hem 'Bekentenissen van een filosoof'.
In dit laatste boek roept hij de grote filosofische levensvragen op. Het is geen gemakkelijke lectuur, ondanks het feit dat Magee een heldere taal hanteert. Daarin verschilt hij van bijvoorbeeld de Franse, postmoderne filosofen die bewust een moeilijk verstaanbaar en hermetisch proza afleveren, dat een bewijs moet zijn van hun diepzinnigheid. Ondanks deze stijlkwaliteit van Magee is het niet gemakkelijk dit boek samen te vatten. Eén van de rode draden is zijn overtuiging dat de mens beperkt is in zijn begripsvermogen, door de beperkingen van de zintuigen en onze verstandelijke beperking. Via filosofie en wetenschap trachten we de wereld en het mens-zijn te begrijpen, maar altijd zullen we stoten op onze beperkingen. Er blijft een deel van de werkelijkheid dat we nog niet begrijpen en dat we misschien nooit zullen begrijpen. Voor sommigen zet zo'n gedachte de deur open naar het goddelijke en het bovennatuurlijke. Niet zo voor Magee, hij verwerpt de weg van het geloof en beschouwt dit als een dwaalweg Hij blijft bij de filosofie en aanvaardt de idee van onze beperktheid. Zo gebruikt hij soms het beeld van de blind geborene die nooit zal weten wat kleur betekent, dat is eigenlijk voor hem het beeld van de menselijke conditie. Het besef van het ondoorgrondelijke, het raadsel maakt daar deel van uit.
In dit laatste boek roept hij de grote filosofische levensvragen op. Het is geen gemakkelijke lectuur, ondanks het feit dat Magee een heldere taal hanteert. Daarin verschilt hij van bijvoorbeeld de Franse, postmoderne filosofen die bewust een moeilijk verstaanbaar en hermetisch proza afleveren, dat een bewijs moet zijn van hun diepzinnigheid. Ondanks deze stijlkwaliteit van Magee is het niet gemakkelijk dit boek samen te vatten. Eén van de rode draden is zijn overtuiging dat de mens beperkt is in zijn begripsvermogen, door de beperkingen van de zintuigen en onze verstandelijke beperking. Via filosofie en wetenschap trachten we de wereld en het mens-zijn te begrijpen, maar altijd zullen we stoten op onze beperkingen. Er blijft een deel van de werkelijkheid dat we nog niet begrijpen en dat we misschien nooit zullen begrijpen. Voor sommigen zet zo'n gedachte de deur open naar het goddelijke en het bovennatuurlijke. Niet zo voor Magee, hij verwerpt de weg van het geloof en beschouwt dit als een dwaalweg Hij blijft bij de filosofie en aanvaardt de idee van onze beperktheid. Zo gebruikt hij soms het beeld van de blind geborene die nooit zal weten wat kleur betekent, dat is eigenlijk voor hem het beeld van de menselijke conditie. Het besef van het ondoorgrondelijke, het raadsel maakt daar deel van uit.
September 26, 2018
Magee states that we should be modest in our assertions about what we know. So much changes over so little time. What we know now will be quickly out of date. We are inherently provincial in time and space. For the aesthetic values, he says that much of what we know is not material at all (“life, like consciousness,” he states, “transcends matter”). And, he puts in a plug for the Kantian thing-in-itself concept – that the empirical world we see and think about every day is mediated by our mind and thus, removed from us. The world we want to envisage is not, in fact, “envisageable.”
Taking this from the top, Magee has built another world, a world that has been framed for him by Plato. Knowledge of this world is transitory. The stuff of mind transcends the transitory world. It’s a world of Forms that can be apprehended by intuition. It is removed from language and it is immune from an argument that it does not exist. In this series of reflections on the “ultimate questions,” Magee could be on the level, being humble in a good way, yet there’s a good amount of possible dissembling in the way he puts his thoughts down and there are his negative critiques of those who do not see the world his way. For example, if one doesn’t acknowledge the existence of a world outside of experience, he’s not content to make that obvious point without adding, “Anyone who protests ‘but of course the empirical world could go on existing without us in it’ has radically failed to understand what is being said. He is not about to agree with what is being said, but it represents a coherent and formidable view of such immense intellectual power that there cannot be any ‘of course.’” Why such strong language? Is he asserting the world of Forms?
This may not be where he’s going but, within the overall context of the book, it seems this could be what he’s really about. His discussion of art comes across as the province of the initiated. You can appreciate art’s truth only if you are properly prepared. Appreciation is distinctively intuitive. If, he writes, “someone responds to a work of art predominantly with his intellect, he has already misunderstood it.” If this is a plug for Gestalt-like non-thinking, I might agree, but here again, Magee seems like he’s after something more. Is it about Beauty? As to the possibility of another world, where he might exist after death, Magee is agnostic. But even if he’s doubtful, the fact that he even admits it as a possibility suggests he still has the world of Forms -- Permanence, Certainty and Truth – to grace his existence.*
Magee says that Socrates “did more than any other individual in the history of Western civilization to encourage radical self-questioning, which is the opposite of fanaticism….Being as he was, surpassingly rational, he seems to have seen ultimate moral sanctions as transcending both self and rationality.” That’s the world of Forms and being “rational” is to apprehend it. It’ the standard reading of Plato, but it’s also possible to see Socrates as pushing an agenda, via monologue masked as dialogue, and as being anything but “rational” the way most understand that word. Seen this way, Socrates is the guy in the room that no one wants to be around.
Magee is a Schopenhauer fan, which is a good sign in my book, but he characterizes Schopenhauer’s so-called “determinism and pessimism” as his “two greatest mistakes.” Schopenhauer saw the world, and ourselves, as being driven by the impersonal Will. At the end of his book, Magee says he loves life and doesn’t want it to leave him behind. He is being real. He nails down an existential truth. He loves life and wants to live, but knows that death determines his fate regardless of what he wants. That’s the impersonal reality of Schopenhauer’s Will at work. That kind of world means there is no Isle of the Blest. It means that our vaunted free choice is driven by underlying forces that deal with our survival and well-being. We are human in spite of ourselves. This is less than a rosy picture of reality so of course, Magee is going to see Schopenhauer as a determinist and pessimist. But, to go back to his opening chapter when he discusses the transitory nature of knowledge, Magee is after Knowledge when it’s only knowledge we get. For ourselves, Schopenhauer says that our Will-driven natures are anything but transitory phenomena. With a modicum of self-reflection, they reveal universal patterns, expressed daily, everywhere and throughout history. They are not out there, but inside. The “knowing thyself” mantra is about this world, not the world that Plato, through Socrates, tried so hard to get us to see.
*With the two quotes that follow, it could be that Magee is simply acknowledging that reality exists regardless of our powers to know. But this “of course” observation is not simply stated. It is a major theme throughout his book. In the first quote, Magee writes that “to conclude that nothing inconceivable can exist is an error. What can be conceived depends on our powers of conceiving, but what can exist does not depend on our powers of conceiving. The fact that we can apprehend only what the apparatus we have for apprehending can mediate is a fact about us and our powers of apprehension, not a fact about what exists independently of us. It means only that we can apprehend nothing else, not that nothing else can exist. Anything else may exist. But we have no means of contact with it.” In the second quote, Magee writes that “however difficult it may be for us to grasp, most of reality is unknowable by us, and – because beyond all possibility of apprehension – unconceptualizable.” Stated in these ways, is he positing the world of Forms?
Taking this from the top, Magee has built another world, a world that has been framed for him by Plato. Knowledge of this world is transitory. The stuff of mind transcends the transitory world. It’s a world of Forms that can be apprehended by intuition. It is removed from language and it is immune from an argument that it does not exist. In this series of reflections on the “ultimate questions,” Magee could be on the level, being humble in a good way, yet there’s a good amount of possible dissembling in the way he puts his thoughts down and there are his negative critiques of those who do not see the world his way. For example, if one doesn’t acknowledge the existence of a world outside of experience, he’s not content to make that obvious point without adding, “Anyone who protests ‘but of course the empirical world could go on existing without us in it’ has radically failed to understand what is being said. He is not about to agree with what is being said, but it represents a coherent and formidable view of such immense intellectual power that there cannot be any ‘of course.’” Why such strong language? Is he asserting the world of Forms?
This may not be where he’s going but, within the overall context of the book, it seems this could be what he’s really about. His discussion of art comes across as the province of the initiated. You can appreciate art’s truth only if you are properly prepared. Appreciation is distinctively intuitive. If, he writes, “someone responds to a work of art predominantly with his intellect, he has already misunderstood it.” If this is a plug for Gestalt-like non-thinking, I might agree, but here again, Magee seems like he’s after something more. Is it about Beauty? As to the possibility of another world, where he might exist after death, Magee is agnostic. But even if he’s doubtful, the fact that he even admits it as a possibility suggests he still has the world of Forms -- Permanence, Certainty and Truth – to grace his existence.*
Magee says that Socrates “did more than any other individual in the history of Western civilization to encourage radical self-questioning, which is the opposite of fanaticism….Being as he was, surpassingly rational, he seems to have seen ultimate moral sanctions as transcending both self and rationality.” That’s the world of Forms and being “rational” is to apprehend it. It’ the standard reading of Plato, but it’s also possible to see Socrates as pushing an agenda, via monologue masked as dialogue, and as being anything but “rational” the way most understand that word. Seen this way, Socrates is the guy in the room that no one wants to be around.
Magee is a Schopenhauer fan, which is a good sign in my book, but he characterizes Schopenhauer’s so-called “determinism and pessimism” as his “two greatest mistakes.” Schopenhauer saw the world, and ourselves, as being driven by the impersonal Will. At the end of his book, Magee says he loves life and doesn’t want it to leave him behind. He is being real. He nails down an existential truth. He loves life and wants to live, but knows that death determines his fate regardless of what he wants. That’s the impersonal reality of Schopenhauer’s Will at work. That kind of world means there is no Isle of the Blest. It means that our vaunted free choice is driven by underlying forces that deal with our survival and well-being. We are human in spite of ourselves. This is less than a rosy picture of reality so of course, Magee is going to see Schopenhauer as a determinist and pessimist. But, to go back to his opening chapter when he discusses the transitory nature of knowledge, Magee is after Knowledge when it’s only knowledge we get. For ourselves, Schopenhauer says that our Will-driven natures are anything but transitory phenomena. With a modicum of self-reflection, they reveal universal patterns, expressed daily, everywhere and throughout history. They are not out there, but inside. The “knowing thyself” mantra is about this world, not the world that Plato, through Socrates, tried so hard to get us to see.
*With the two quotes that follow, it could be that Magee is simply acknowledging that reality exists regardless of our powers to know. But this “of course” observation is not simply stated. It is a major theme throughout his book. In the first quote, Magee writes that “to conclude that nothing inconceivable can exist is an error. What can be conceived depends on our powers of conceiving, but what can exist does not depend on our powers of conceiving. The fact that we can apprehend only what the apparatus we have for apprehending can mediate is a fact about us and our powers of apprehension, not a fact about what exists independently of us. It means only that we can apprehend nothing else, not that nothing else can exist. Anything else may exist. But we have no means of contact with it.” In the second quote, Magee writes that “however difficult it may be for us to grasp, most of reality is unknowable by us, and – because beyond all possibility of apprehension – unconceptualizable.” Stated in these ways, is he positing the world of Forms?
July 1, 2021
کتاب جمع و جوری بود درباره نظرات شخصی نویسنده در مورد برخی از مسائل مهم فلسفی. تکه هایی از این کتاب:
* عقل میتواند در خطر انسداد، آلودگی، انحراف، یا حتی توقف قرار گیرد اگر که دخالتهای دین و مذهب را در آن بپذیریم*
* تنها یک قاشق از دین و مذهب در فلسفه همچون قاشقی شکر در فنجانی قهوه عمل میکند: قدرت و مزه ی آنرا میگیرد و به آرامی نوعی بی خاصیتی و بیمزگی به آن وارد میکند*
* آنچه بیش از هر چیز خود را مشتاق به اثبات آن می یابم این است که تنها راه صادقانه زندگی و تفکر، اذعان کردن به جهالت خودمان و پذیرش بی کم و کاست پیامدهای آن است، بدون گریختن از آن با تمسک به ایمان، خواه سلبی یا ایجابی، و بدون دیگر طفره رفتن ها یا ارضای نفس*
* عقل میتواند در خطر انسداد، آلودگی، انحراف، یا حتی توقف قرار گیرد اگر که دخالتهای دین و مذهب را در آن بپذیریم*
* تنها یک قاشق از دین و مذهب در فلسفه همچون قاشقی شکر در فنجانی قهوه عمل میکند: قدرت و مزه ی آنرا میگیرد و به آرامی نوعی بی خاصیتی و بیمزگی به آن وارد میکند*
* آنچه بیش از هر چیز خود را مشتاق به اثبات آن می یابم این است که تنها راه صادقانه زندگی و تفکر، اذعان کردن به جهالت خودمان و پذیرش بی کم و کاست پیامدهای آن است، بدون گریختن از آن با تمسک به ایمان، خواه سلبی یا ایجابی، و بدون دیگر طفره رفتن ها یا ارضای نفس*
December 14, 2020
Magee serves up a healthy dose of much-needed epistemic humility. He admits his own limitations, but at times he takes his skepticism too far, excluding entire arenas of life from our ability to know, forever. Overall its a mixed bag. Not sure it was worth the read except for some wonderful lapidary statements in the final chapter.
September 11, 2020
بیگمان پاسخ همهی پرسشها، نمیدانم است اما همین پرسشها و پاسخهای موجود، ما را به تفکر و اندیشه و پیشرفت در مسیر دانستن و زندگی آگاهانهتر رهنمون میکند.
November 17, 2024
This short, deceptively simple and unassuming philosophical work provides an incisive and deep inquiry into topics that make up the bread and butter of any curious/intellectual mind. Magee recognizes that one cannot find answers to the existential questions of human predicament. And yet, he urges us to plough on, even when we are fully aware that the holy grail of “truth” is not within reach, because only through our inquiry, can we revise our answers and inch closer to it. I think as cliché as it sounds, Magee implies that “it is not the destination that counts, but the journey.”
Perhaps the section of the book where Magee expands on his stance on religion as an obstacle or a serious distraction from the journey in seeking the truth is my personal favourite --see the excerpts below.
Much of the books’ focus is on analyzing the following concepts:
• time and space (the former examined as relative, while the latter considered as merely a “temporal arrangement”),
• experience (which Magee claims mostly corrupt because of our analytical powers, and considers our profound intuitions as the basis for our “unsullied understanding”),
• consciousness (interaction between an inaccessible ‘self’ and an inaccessible reality that exists independent of oneself), and
• existence.
Magee points out the limitations of our mind and senses that feed into us forming any type of apprehension and the subjectivity of the experience we build, and how our understanding thus formed from within (through us) can never fathom the world from within (in itself). I suspect this is akin to the Das Sein concept of Heidegger but I may be wrong…
Though Magee defines himself as an “agnostic” I found his thinking to be closer to existentialism, with a heavy dose of influence by Hume’s empiricism.
Some excerpts that I liked:
“The only honest way to live and think is in the fullest possible acknowledgement of our ignorance and its consequences, without ducking out into a faith, whether positive or negative, and without any other evasions or self-indulgences.”
“I leave undisturbed anyone who does not want to think about these things, and I do not get into arguments about anyone’s religious beliefs. But I do regard such people as no longer committed to the pursuit of truth… let them not expect others to feel obliged to give attention to whatever views they adopt.”
“There is temporal order… but there is no privileged moment which is ‘now.’ The flow of time is a characteristic of experience.”
“People who believe such things (‘religion’) do so, I suspect, because they have a powerful desire to. The wanting seduces them into the deed.”
“The resistance we feel against allowing the full extent of the unknown into our view of reality gives us a powerful drive to piece together a complete picture out of what we do now, or can know.”
“Ignorance is a compelling reason for not believing, not for believing.”
“Anyone who sets off in honest and serious pursuit of truth needs to know that in doing that he is leaving religion behind Unless he is prepared to do that… he will not even have set out on the journey – nor can he, because the position he is in is not an honest and genuine starting point.. because from the moment it is introduced an assumption of its legitimacy has been made, and something about possible outcomes has been either preselected or precluded, and the balance of possibilities rigged.”
“Although conclusive justification is not possible, worthwhile criticism is, and often helps to bring about an improvement in understanding. We are seeking not proof, but progress.”
“I keep religion out of the discussion because they use the very fact of our ignorance as the basis for their claim to be in possession of the truth. From facts such as life and consciousness are incomprehensible… it does not follow that I and my readers have immortal souls, or that there is a God who created the world.”
“If one presses religious people for real explanations that really do explain, they retreat into protestations of how mysterious everything is, how far beyond human understanding.” (As per Wittgenstein, who wrote something like ‘if the existence of the world we know is so miraculous that we feel a need to posit the existence of God to explain it, then the existence of God is even more miraculous, and how do we explain that?’)
“The merest spoonful of religion in philosophy acts like a spoonful of sugar in coffee: it takes away the edge and insinuates blandness into the whole.” (!!)
“From the fact that a sufficient explanation of everything is not to be found within the world of our experience it does not follow that one must be found outside it. There may be no such explanation. And it was for this, seen as the ultimate reality, that humanist existentialists employed the term ‘absurd’.”
“All religion is an evasion, or partial evasion, of the mystery we confront.” (!!)
Perhaps the section of the book where Magee expands on his stance on religion as an obstacle or a serious distraction from the journey in seeking the truth is my personal favourite --see the excerpts below.
Much of the books’ focus is on analyzing the following concepts:
• time and space (the former examined as relative, while the latter considered as merely a “temporal arrangement”),
• experience (which Magee claims mostly corrupt because of our analytical powers, and considers our profound intuitions as the basis for our “unsullied understanding”),
• consciousness (interaction between an inaccessible ‘self’ and an inaccessible reality that exists independent of oneself), and
• existence.
Magee points out the limitations of our mind and senses that feed into us forming any type of apprehension and the subjectivity of the experience we build, and how our understanding thus formed from within (through us) can never fathom the world from within (in itself). I suspect this is akin to the Das Sein concept of Heidegger but I may be wrong…
Though Magee defines himself as an “agnostic” I found his thinking to be closer to existentialism, with a heavy dose of influence by Hume’s empiricism.
Some excerpts that I liked:
“The only honest way to live and think is in the fullest possible acknowledgement of our ignorance and its consequences, without ducking out into a faith, whether positive or negative, and without any other evasions or self-indulgences.”
“I leave undisturbed anyone who does not want to think about these things, and I do not get into arguments about anyone’s religious beliefs. But I do regard such people as no longer committed to the pursuit of truth… let them not expect others to feel obliged to give attention to whatever views they adopt.”
“There is temporal order… but there is no privileged moment which is ‘now.’ The flow of time is a characteristic of experience.”
“People who believe such things (‘religion’) do so, I suspect, because they have a powerful desire to. The wanting seduces them into the deed.”
“The resistance we feel against allowing the full extent of the unknown into our view of reality gives us a powerful drive to piece together a complete picture out of what we do now, or can know.”
“Ignorance is a compelling reason for not believing, not for believing.”
“Anyone who sets off in honest and serious pursuit of truth needs to know that in doing that he is leaving religion behind Unless he is prepared to do that… he will not even have set out on the journey – nor can he, because the position he is in is not an honest and genuine starting point.. because from the moment it is introduced an assumption of its legitimacy has been made, and something about possible outcomes has been either preselected or precluded, and the balance of possibilities rigged.”
“Although conclusive justification is not possible, worthwhile criticism is, and often helps to bring about an improvement in understanding. We are seeking not proof, but progress.”
“I keep religion out of the discussion because they use the very fact of our ignorance as the basis for their claim to be in possession of the truth. From facts such as life and consciousness are incomprehensible… it does not follow that I and my readers have immortal souls, or that there is a God who created the world.”
“If one presses religious people for real explanations that really do explain, they retreat into protestations of how mysterious everything is, how far beyond human understanding.” (As per Wittgenstein, who wrote something like ‘if the existence of the world we know is so miraculous that we feel a need to posit the existence of God to explain it, then the existence of God is even more miraculous, and how do we explain that?’)
“The merest spoonful of religion in philosophy acts like a spoonful of sugar in coffee: it takes away the edge and insinuates blandness into the whole.” (!!)
“From the fact that a sufficient explanation of everything is not to be found within the world of our experience it does not follow that one must be found outside it. There may be no such explanation. And it was for this, seen as the ultimate reality, that humanist existentialists employed the term ‘absurd’.”
“All religion is an evasion, or partial evasion, of the mystery we confront.” (!!)
December 17, 2021
Very interesting book. I loved Magee's TV show Men of Ideas. There are places in this book where the author sounds a bit condescending towards reader "this is a very difficult concept even Oxford undergrads, the very brilliant minds, dont get it" (paraphrasing). But few examples are very thought provoking: our entire civilization is probably 60 human lifetime long (each generation has someone living 100 years, we need to go 2/3 individual to get someone who knew Napoleon). Another one was , If there are multiple aliens looking at our world , some might see WW1, others WW`2, some Norman conquest, drives the point about space-time interconnectedness. Finally his key thesis is essentially, given our material being we comprehend the world in a contingent, human specific way and there are elements which will always be incomprehensible to us (unknown-unknown), like it is for a blind person when it comes to color/face etc. It's not a language issue but simply that they are beyond us. Totality of the world does not overlap with totality of experience. His final chapter suggest that justification for certain transcendental truth is not necessary, we should look for progress (local optima) rather than seeking for elusive global optima, which may not exist. This is interesting but not entirely convincing. His argument against religion was very thoughtful and erudite
February 27, 2022
Last year when I read Noam Chomsky's What Kind of Creatures Are We?, I was most intrigued by his take on "mysterianism" – what we don't know about what we don't know. Bryan Magee has written another spirited meditation by a man in his late 80s approaching the same conundrum.
For Magee this is not skepticism; it's something closer to obvious fact. "In itself, reality's mode of existence must be unintelligible to us. This is so with regard even to our own existence." There are deliberate echoes of Kant, Schopenhauer, and especially Wittgenstein, whose dictum Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent may mean only that (in Magee's words) "everything that matters most cannot be talked about." But what matters most can be, and is, experienced. The profound experience of music (for those who so experience it) is one example. The larger example is being and consciousness itself. "Logically, it is possible to know that the self exists without knowing the self; and this is our situation."
At the end of his book Magee writes that he would like to be remembered as the agnostic. For him, religious belief explains nothing: God is an explanation that requires another explanation. He understands believers who need to believe and has no argument with them. "But I do regard such people as no longer committed to the pursuit of truth." Spoken like a true philosopher.
I'll wedge one final quote into this review, one that captures for me the spirit of this short book: "We may not know where we are, but there is a world of difference between being lost in daylight and being lost in the dark." This is a dark book bright with intelligence.
We need to understand that what can be the case can go beyond the limits of the conceivable in an indeterminately large number of ways, each of which would constitute a realm to which even the inventions of our imagination could never reach. This makes demands of ultimate difficulty on our minds. Perhaps I should say, rather, that it makes demands of ultimate difficulty upon our powers of intellectual imagination; for I have found that some people of the highest intelligence cannot meet these demands…
For Magee this is not skepticism; it's something closer to obvious fact. "In itself, reality's mode of existence must be unintelligible to us. This is so with regard even to our own existence." There are deliberate echoes of Kant, Schopenhauer, and especially Wittgenstein, whose dictum Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent may mean only that (in Magee's words) "everything that matters most cannot be talked about." But what matters most can be, and is, experienced. The profound experience of music (for those who so experience it) is one example. The larger example is being and consciousness itself. "Logically, it is possible to know that the self exists without knowing the self; and this is our situation."
At the end of his book Magee writes that he would like to be remembered as the agnostic. For him, religious belief explains nothing: God is an explanation that requires another explanation. He understands believers who need to believe and has no argument with them. "But I do regard such people as no longer committed to the pursuit of truth." Spoken like a true philosopher.
I'll wedge one final quote into this review, one that captures for me the spirit of this short book: "We may not know where we are, but there is a world of difference between being lost in daylight and being lost in the dark." This is a dark book bright with intelligence.
February 2, 2018
I am surprised by how this book hit me as such a satisfying philosophical read, when all it does is to avoid giving any definite solutions or answers. And funny enough I bought this book in search for one. More questions in my head now than before I read it, yes, but not in a bad way. If anything, I feel relieved. In fact I think that’s what the author intended to achieve.
I actually love the writing in this book a lot because unlike most other philosophical books this one doesn’t try to be annoyingly “clever”. One of those good ones that I didn’t consider tearing or burning. But don’t get me wrong what this book tries to convey is powerful, clear and encouraging. Interesting topics, well contemplated points with a concise structure. Five stars.
I actually love the writing in this book a lot because unlike most other philosophical books this one doesn’t try to be annoyingly “clever”. One of those good ones that I didn’t consider tearing or burning. But don’t get me wrong what this book tries to convey is powerful, clear and encouraging. Interesting topics, well contemplated points with a concise structure. Five stars.
July 14, 2023
کتاب کتاب خوبه. سوالهای اساسیای رو پهن میکنه. البته اندیشه نویی نیست. تقریری از فلسفههای تا به اینجاس. به قول خودش نقل و قول نمیکنه از بزرگان اما متاثر بودنش از بزرگان فلسفه مشهوده، میدونه فلسفه چی میگه و چی نمیتونه بگه هنوز. این کتاب آخرش هم هست، منظور آخرهای عمرشه، و میدونه که نمیدونه. اصلا آخر کتاب میگه همونجور که جان لاک رو به تجربهگرایی، هیوم رو به شکاکیت، شوپنهاور رو به بدبینی میشناسن دوست دارم منو به لاادریگری بشناسن. و کتاب خیلی سعی میکنه روی مرزها راه بره و هی حواسش هست مثلا این نمیدونمش مارو توی بغل باورهای دینی نندازه. یه نکته که در مورد برایان مگی هست روونی نثر و مدل فکر کردنشه. همونجور که تونست اون گفتوگوهای فلسفی رو بیاره توی بیبیسی و از فلسفه برای مردم حرف بزنه بیکه خیلی بیاردش توی سطح.
January 29, 2018
It's if Descartes read Kant.
I used to be like him, highly observant and highly objective, I even during last year and the year before, wrote and discussed many ideas that he mentioned (blind person comparison; us and flow of time; being an active being in a materialistic world; and so on). I changed through last year 2017 (I'm 26 now). Life is too short not to be insane. To be too rational (to the point of being agnostic, and not either believer or atheist, of not having a go) is too weak of a soul. I believe that Nietzsche is gonna burn this book if he read it. At least Descartes (very observant and objective) was highly sharp in his conclusions: God exists, because he ought to be!
I used to be like him, highly observant and highly objective, I even during last year and the year before, wrote and discussed many ideas that he mentioned (blind person comparison; us and flow of time; being an active being in a materialistic world; and so on). I changed through last year 2017 (I'm 26 now). Life is too short not to be insane. To be too rational (to the point of being agnostic, and not either believer or atheist, of not having a go) is too weak of a soul. I believe that Nietzsche is gonna burn this book if he read it. At least Descartes (very observant and objective) was highly sharp in his conclusions: God exists, because he ought to be!
June 22, 2016
The first portion of the book left me a little cold at first, and when I reached the chapter titled "Personal Reflections" I moaned out loud. But actually this made the book more compelling.
I think reading this as a personal reflection rather than a book of philosophy made me more responsive to his thoughts - and indeed he asks the ultimate questions: meaning of life stuff.
I think reading this as a personal reflection rather than a book of philosophy made me more responsive to his thoughts - and indeed he asks the ultimate questions: meaning of life stuff.
September 18, 2022
I read this book on the recommendation of Jules Goddard, one of my favorite guests from the Soul of Enterprise, and a great management/strategic thinker. The book begins:
WHAT WE CALL CIVILISATION HAS EXISTED FOR SOMEthing like six thousand years. …There are always some human beings who live to be a hundred. go further and further back, putting the lives of nameable human beings together, end to end, without any gaps in between. It comes as a shock to realise that the whole of civilisation has occurred within the successive lifetimes of sixty people.
We know our past, but not our future. Hayek said the mind cannot see its own advance. People from the 19th century couldn’t imagine what the 21st century would be like, except perhaps in the realm of human behavior. I loved this thought experiment Magee posits:
"If, on the star I was talking of, there is a sentient being looking at our earth through a telescope, he sees our earth as it was nearly a hundred years ago enables him to observe human movements, he could be sitting there in my “now” watching World War I being fought. He is watching not a record of the events, or some sort of re-run of them, as in a film, or anything of that sort: he is watching them.
"We are familiar with the idea of God as a being who sees the whole of history simultaneously, but a group of human beings could do it if they were able to set up appropriate observation equipment in the right places. There would be no time-travel involved in any of it…"
Why isn’t NASA working on this? He also states how it is common for us to make legitimate and meaningful statements about things we don’t understand. Ed and I always discuss the limitations of our vocabulary in explaining new things, yet it’s not an absolute limitation. Magee uses the example of a congenitally blind person not being able to comprehend certain things. What does it mean to say that Mozart is a great composer, and a greater one than Schumann. What does “depth” here mean? Or truth? If we say we are unable to assert these things—or whether torturing children is wrong—we are denying the truth. Magee is an agnostic and writes, “In any honest intellectual enquiry there is no place for religion,” and that “ignorance is a compelling reason for not believing, not for believing.” Among philosophers, he explains Locke was the empiricist, Hume the skeptic, and Schopenhauer the pessimist—he’s the agnostic. But he’s no materialist, understanding that not all knowledge that’s available is available through science.
Overall, it’s an evocative book, and if you like philosophy, along with abstract, yet grounded, thinking, you will probably enjoy it as much as I did.
Notable
In life as we know it, time is the cruellest, the most lethal of all the forms of our limitation. well-known hymn:
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
In one of Dostoevsky’s novels a character says that if the prosperity and happiness of all future mankind could be secured by the torturing to death of a single child, and it were done, he would dissociate himself from humanity.
Socrates used to say that he had an inner voice which occasionally told him not to do things, but it never told him what to do.
Wittgenstein said, if the existence of the world we know is so miraculous that we feel a need to posit the existence of God to explain it, then the existence of God is even more miraculous, and how do we explain that? If one presses religious people for real explanations, explanations that really do explain, they retreat into protestations of how mysterious everything is, how far beyond human understanding. But we know that already.
From the fact that a sufficient explanation of everything is not to be found within the world of our experience it does not follow that one must be found outside it. Schopenhauer believed that. Such people could be wrong. But they could be right. And a religious approach precludes the possibility.
T.S. Eliot: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”
Locke: “Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns, or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men’s, opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.”
WHAT WE CALL CIVILISATION HAS EXISTED FOR SOMEthing like six thousand years. …There are always some human beings who live to be a hundred. go further and further back, putting the lives of nameable human beings together, end to end, without any gaps in between. It comes as a shock to realise that the whole of civilisation has occurred within the successive lifetimes of sixty people.
We know our past, but not our future. Hayek said the mind cannot see its own advance. People from the 19th century couldn’t imagine what the 21st century would be like, except perhaps in the realm of human behavior. I loved this thought experiment Magee posits:
"If, on the star I was talking of, there is a sentient being looking at our earth through a telescope, he sees our earth as it was nearly a hundred years ago enables him to observe human movements, he could be sitting there in my “now” watching World War I being fought. He is watching not a record of the events, or some sort of re-run of them, as in a film, or anything of that sort: he is watching them.
"We are familiar with the idea of God as a being who sees the whole of history simultaneously, but a group of human beings could do it if they were able to set up appropriate observation equipment in the right places. There would be no time-travel involved in any of it…"
Why isn’t NASA working on this? He also states how it is common for us to make legitimate and meaningful statements about things we don’t understand. Ed and I always discuss the limitations of our vocabulary in explaining new things, yet it’s not an absolute limitation. Magee uses the example of a congenitally blind person not being able to comprehend certain things. What does it mean to say that Mozart is a great composer, and a greater one than Schumann. What does “depth” here mean? Or truth? If we say we are unable to assert these things—or whether torturing children is wrong—we are denying the truth. Magee is an agnostic and writes, “In any honest intellectual enquiry there is no place for religion,” and that “ignorance is a compelling reason for not believing, not for believing.” Among philosophers, he explains Locke was the empiricist, Hume the skeptic, and Schopenhauer the pessimist—he’s the agnostic. But he’s no materialist, understanding that not all knowledge that’s available is available through science.
Overall, it’s an evocative book, and if you like philosophy, along with abstract, yet grounded, thinking, you will probably enjoy it as much as I did.
Notable
In life as we know it, time is the cruellest, the most lethal of all the forms of our limitation. well-known hymn:
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
In one of Dostoevsky’s novels a character says that if the prosperity and happiness of all future mankind could be secured by the torturing to death of a single child, and it were done, he would dissociate himself from humanity.
Socrates used to say that he had an inner voice which occasionally told him not to do things, but it never told him what to do.
Wittgenstein said, if the existence of the world we know is so miraculous that we feel a need to posit the existence of God to explain it, then the existence of God is even more miraculous, and how do we explain that? If one presses religious people for real explanations, explanations that really do explain, they retreat into protestations of how mysterious everything is, how far beyond human understanding. But we know that already.
From the fact that a sufficient explanation of everything is not to be found within the world of our experience it does not follow that one must be found outside it. Schopenhauer believed that. Such people could be wrong. But they could be right. And a religious approach precludes the possibility.
T.S. Eliot: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”
Locke: “Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns, or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men’s, opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.”
May 16, 2023
I paired this with Magee's The Story of Philosophy. If Philosophy functions as a textbook inviting us to consider philosophy as a means of common wonder rooted in reason, ultimate questions is a heart laid bare autobiography into why Magee values philosophy. One is personal the other is didactic. One is void of documentation and details, the other an in depth examination of the how philosophy came to be.
There are definite overlaps however. Such as the notion of Platos cave, which rests on the idea that we can only ever see and understand the world from our unique perspective, bound as we are to our bodies. Or the relevance of language as the container through which we can express what we know. Language is the thing that limits our ability to know. It's also what allows us to know.
Or the stark relationship between space and time, especially as it relates to past, present and future. Experience roots us in the present, but knowledge itself is not bound by such constraints. Within that we have the push and pull of philosophy in many different directions- towards the relativists, the humanists, the skeptics, the nihilists, the materialists, the romantics, the stoics, and on and on, shaping, movements throughout history from its common beginnings to its Greek expressions to its modern evolution. Magee is distinctly interested in its western progression, which shows itself most clearly in Ultimate Questions, although you can see his bias' sown into the fabric of his textbook material as well.
On a base level Magee hitches the story of his fascination with philosophy on a trajectory away from religion. He does so, however, under the guise of a wanted agnosticism. His ultimate goal in Ultimate is to demonstrate that knowledge is limited, it will always be limited, therfore we operate on the basis of not knowing which moves us forward in our questions towards a reconciling of our limited knowledge with the truth that knowledge itself stands apart from the confines of our experiences. This, he says, is a good thing, and I'm inclined to agree.
At the same time though, I think he betrays some of his own inconsistencies towards that end. He wants to distance himself from religion because he sees religion as anchored in claims of certainty. And yet the very reason he does this is based on certain claims he believes to be true about religion. Here he demonstrates a tendency to avoid the fact that he holds convictions, and those convictions drive how he sees the world and how he experiences reality. In truth, in naming knowledge as limited he refuses to apply those same constraints when it comes to his convictions. He can't quite figure out a way to avoid becoming what he desperately does not want to be; a person making certain claims about the world. Thus he uses religion as a scapegoat hoping that it will divert the attention away from him. Perhaps the most noted thing that Magee glosses over is that there are different ways of knowing, and that knowing doesn't mean the absence of mystery.
Now don't get me wrong. I actually really enjoyed reading through The Story of Philosphy. The facts can still stand even while acknowledging the interpretation exists alongside that. Something I think Magee could stand to learn. And there is much about his personal journey that I agree with and connected with, even if I interpret the same ideas towards different ends. I really appreciated how he highlights the importance of language. I think language lies at the heart of understanding the relationship between philosophy and religion and knowing God and ourselves. I like his appeal to mystery and a willingness to ask questions. I loved his reflections on space and time. I think he places western philosophy on way too high of a pedestal and misconstrues its strengths when it comes to dealing with life's biggest questions, but I do like the way he uses it to reason in concise and well constructed patterns of thought. The books might seem daunting, and demand rereading large sections in order to connect the flow of thought, but it's actually quite accessible. On the front I would definitely recommend.
There are definite overlaps however. Such as the notion of Platos cave, which rests on the idea that we can only ever see and understand the world from our unique perspective, bound as we are to our bodies. Or the relevance of language as the container through which we can express what we know. Language is the thing that limits our ability to know. It's also what allows us to know.
Or the stark relationship between space and time, especially as it relates to past, present and future. Experience roots us in the present, but knowledge itself is not bound by such constraints. Within that we have the push and pull of philosophy in many different directions- towards the relativists, the humanists, the skeptics, the nihilists, the materialists, the romantics, the stoics, and on and on, shaping, movements throughout history from its common beginnings to its Greek expressions to its modern evolution. Magee is distinctly interested in its western progression, which shows itself most clearly in Ultimate Questions, although you can see his bias' sown into the fabric of his textbook material as well.
On a base level Magee hitches the story of his fascination with philosophy on a trajectory away from religion. He does so, however, under the guise of a wanted agnosticism. His ultimate goal in Ultimate is to demonstrate that knowledge is limited, it will always be limited, therfore we operate on the basis of not knowing which moves us forward in our questions towards a reconciling of our limited knowledge with the truth that knowledge itself stands apart from the confines of our experiences. This, he says, is a good thing, and I'm inclined to agree.
At the same time though, I think he betrays some of his own inconsistencies towards that end. He wants to distance himself from religion because he sees religion as anchored in claims of certainty. And yet the very reason he does this is based on certain claims he believes to be true about religion. Here he demonstrates a tendency to avoid the fact that he holds convictions, and those convictions drive how he sees the world and how he experiences reality. In truth, in naming knowledge as limited he refuses to apply those same constraints when it comes to his convictions. He can't quite figure out a way to avoid becoming what he desperately does not want to be; a person making certain claims about the world. Thus he uses religion as a scapegoat hoping that it will divert the attention away from him. Perhaps the most noted thing that Magee glosses over is that there are different ways of knowing, and that knowing doesn't mean the absence of mystery.
Now don't get me wrong. I actually really enjoyed reading through The Story of Philosphy. The facts can still stand even while acknowledging the interpretation exists alongside that. Something I think Magee could stand to learn. And there is much about his personal journey that I agree with and connected with, even if I interpret the same ideas towards different ends. I really appreciated how he highlights the importance of language. I think language lies at the heart of understanding the relationship between philosophy and religion and knowing God and ourselves. I like his appeal to mystery and a willingness to ask questions. I loved his reflections on space and time. I think he places western philosophy on way too high of a pedestal and misconstrues its strengths when it comes to dealing with life's biggest questions, but I do like the way he uses it to reason in concise and well constructed patterns of thought. The books might seem daunting, and demand rereading large sections in order to connect the flow of thought, but it's actually quite accessible. On the front I would definitely recommend.
October 15, 2025
Tempted to give it 4 stars, but it wasn´t as enjoyable or as insightful as other similar books. Starking surprise as Magee´s The Story of Philosophy is one of the books I´ve most enjoyed in years. This is still a good short book.
The most important insight can be summed up in something like this: we better get comfortable with our ignorance of ourselves and of the world. Embrace it fully, with all its consequences, without resorting to the alluring false certainty of religious or scientific dogma.
It seems to me that Magee was much greater as a philosophy populariser, rather than as a philosopher of his own. He seems to have understood exceedingly well other peoples´philosophies, rather than elaborating a comprehensive and profound philosophy himself. For that, I will always have the greatest respect for him.
The most important insight can be summed up in something like this: we better get comfortable with our ignorance of ourselves and of the world. Embrace it fully, with all its consequences, without resorting to the alluring false certainty of religious or scientific dogma.
It seems to me that Magee was much greater as a philosophy populariser, rather than as a philosopher of his own. He seems to have understood exceedingly well other peoples´philosophies, rather than elaborating a comprehensive and profound philosophy himself. For that, I will always have the greatest respect for him.
October 27, 2024
Overall A Solid One!
I picked this book up randomly at my local public library the other day in hopes of exploring philosophical topics regarding our existence. It was an interesting read, particularly for someone who hasn’t studied philosophy in an academic setting. In my eyes, it seemed like Byran Magee frequently restated how much we don’t know as humans (of course in a more intelligent, sophisticated, logical way) and how much religion doesn’t explain. I’ve had a lot of similar conversations with my friends after a bottle of wine, except in a more dumbed down way. It’s nice to find these are the exact thoughts of lots of philosophical thinkers. I did get confused sometimes in the writing, but overall it flowed well.
I picked this book up randomly at my local public library the other day in hopes of exploring philosophical topics regarding our existence. It was an interesting read, particularly for someone who hasn’t studied philosophy in an academic setting. In my eyes, it seemed like Byran Magee frequently restated how much we don’t know as humans (of course in a more intelligent, sophisticated, logical way) and how much religion doesn’t explain. I’ve had a lot of similar conversations with my friends after a bottle of wine, except in a more dumbed down way. It’s nice to find these are the exact thoughts of lots of philosophical thinkers. I did get confused sometimes in the writing, but overall it flowed well.
November 24, 2019
A wonderfully concise and piercing summary of the human condition. Magee takes the transcendental idealism of Kant and Schopenhauer and imbues it with an optimistic levity that nonetheless resists the tempting consolations of faith. He holds that the only honest intellectual position on ‘the ultimate questions’ is one of deep agnosticism. This for him, however, does not discount the power of further illumination of ‘existence’ through honest philosophical, artistic and scientific pursuit. “We may not know where we are, but there is a world of difference between being lost in daylight and being lost in the dark.”
August 21, 2025
کتابی است کوتاه، خوشخوان و مفید برای همه، بهخصوص کسانی که در خود باورهایی نادرست یا جزمی پروراندهاند و حاضر نیستند بهراحتی دست از آنها بکشند (اگر که بتوانند بر خشم و سرخوردگیشان غلبه کنند و بارقۀ نور را ببینند). برایان مگی در این کتاب در طول هفت فصل مهمترین مسائلی که انسان با آنها رویاروست را معرفی کرده و پس از بررسی مختصر رویکردهای فلسفی گوناگون به آنها، نگرش لاادری خود را بهعنوان بهترین و یگانه رویکرد متقن معرفی میکند. این برای منی که خود لاادری هستم بسیار خوشایند است، اما میتوانم خشم و سرخوردگی جزماندیشان از خواندن این کتاب را تصور کنم.
February 11, 2018
An extended meditation on the limits of our knowledge. Magee explains in clear language the types of things that as humans we cannot possibly know and what that means for the way we live our lives. Read twice in a row (it's short and engaging enough to do that) and will probably return to it for further reflection on the questions he raises. A sober treatment, and an incentive to the practice of humility.
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