New Books in Philosophy

The future is a constant focus of anxiety, and we are all familiar with the pressures that come distinctively from automation – the transformation by which tasks formerly assigned to humans come to be performed by machines. These days, the stakes seem to be higher, as technology now seems poised to render nearly all human labor obsolete. What lies in store for us, and for the flourishing and meaning of our lives, once technology has relieved humans of the need to work?

In Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work (Harvard University Press, 2019), John Danaher explores the issues facing us as we confront our own obsolescence. He defends the idea that a workless future is not only possible, but possibly utopian.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Aristotle on the Matter of Form: A Feminist Metaphysics of Generation (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), Adriel M. Trott argues for understanding the relationship of matter and form in Aristotle’s work on the model of a Möbius strip. With the figure of the Möbius strip, we can identify two planes at any particular point, but, taking in the figure as a whole, we see that those two sides are produced by a torsion of a continuous strip. Through this figure, Trott allows us to think anew with Aristotle, not just about form and matter, but also body and soul, male and female, and much else. Informed by and responding to feminist engagements with these issues, Trott challenges binary models of these couplets, often attributed to Aristotle, to show us innovative possibilities for thinking how we come to be and what we might become.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It is no easy task to survey and present a comprehensive history of philosophy of an entire intellectual tradition to a broad public audience without compromising on the scholarly rigor demanded by that history’s nuances. In an ambitious endeavor to do precisely that with the Islamic tradition, Peter Adamson masterfully shows how it can be done. His work, Philosophy in the Islamic World: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps (Oxford University Press, 2018) forms the third volume of a larger series of books comprising Adamson’s oeuvre on the history of philosophy and serves as an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the subject.

By covering a geographical territory spanning from Spain to South Asia; a temporal chronology running from the formations of philosophy in the Islamic world up to the modern period; and an intellectual arena incorporating Christian and Jewish thinkers; Adamson takes readers on a vivid – and accessible – journey through the intricate landscape of the philosophical world of Islam. In the process, he discusses crucial historical questions around translation movements, decline narratives, and the broader intellectual frameworks that have shaped the contours of how philosophy in the Islamic world has been viewed. From Avicenna to Ibn ‘Arabi, Maimonides to Saadia Gaon, Al-Ghazali to Mulla Sadra, Fatema Mernissi to Muhammad Iqbal, there is never a dull moment as Adamson shows us how these and other thinkers drew from and diverged from one another.

Divided chronologically into three parts – “The Formative Period,” “Andalusia,” and “Later Traditions – and split into 62 brief chapters, with a generous list of further readings at the end, Adamson’s work will prove to be a useful resource both for the non-specialist seeking to expand their horizons and for the specialist seeking to write and teach on the subject.

Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A basic question in mind and metaphysics is the relation between the nature of mental content (or meaning) and the nature of the domains of entities and relations to which those contents refer or which they are about. Does an explanation of this relation require us to give meaning priority, or instead is the metaphysics of the domain always involved in explaining the content? In his new book, The Primacy of Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2019), Christopher Peacocke argues for the idea that the metaphysics of the domain must always be involved – that one must always draw on facts about metaphysics to explain meaning but not vice versa. Peacocke, who is Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, applies his general thesis to various specific domains, such as temporal phenomena and the self, and considers how it bears on such further issues as the integration of metaphysics and epistemology and the limits of intelligibility.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When asked what democracy is, many of us instantly think of elections, and thus voting. Although we tend to see voting as central to democracy, we also think that voting is optional – a commendable activity that a citizen might choose to do, but one that can be omitted blamelessly. What’s more, political theorists and philosophers tend to regard voting as irrational, reckless, or worse. Some have even suggested that low voter turnout is a signal of the health of a society.

In The Duty to Vote (Oxford University Press, 2019), Julia Maskivker argues that voting is an obligation rooted in a Samaritan duty.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short, good charts make us smarter―if we know how to read them.

However, they can also lead us astray. Charts lie in a variety of ways―displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty―or are frequently misunderstood, such as the confusing cone of uncertainty maps shown on TV every hurricane season. To make matters worse, many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate them to promote their own agendas.

In How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information (W. W. Norton, 2019), data visualization expert Alberto Cairo teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones to understand complex stories. Public conversations are increasingly propelled by numbers, and to make sense of them we must be able to decode and use visual information. By examining contemporary examples ranging from election-result infographics to global GDP maps and box-office record charts, How Charts Lie demystifies an essential new literacy, one that will make us better equipped to navigate our data-driven world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the United States in particular, there is almost no social space today, whether that’s Thanksgiving dinner or going shopping, that has not become saturated with political meaning. In Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in Its Place (Oxford University Press, 2019), Robert Talisse argues that contrary to what many democratic theorists have argued, democracy is something we can do too much of – and that it is in fact being overdone. Talisse, who is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, notes that features of everyday life are overwhelmingly transformed into expressions of political identity, and argues that this transformation undermines democracy itself, since it undermines our capacity for civic friendship, or the capacity to see our political rivals as our equals. His book is a provocative contribution to discussion among political theorists about the problems facing contemporary democracy; from a practical standpoint, he also suggests that a way to counter this situation is to consciously seek out social interactions where politics is off the table.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it.

How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in.

Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected].

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

According to an intuitive view, lives are meaningful when they manifest a directedness or instantiate a project such that the disparate events and endeavors “add up to” a life.  John Stuart Mill’s life certainly was devoted to a project in that sense.  Yet Mill’s life was in many respects unsatisfying – riven with anxiety and trauma.  What does Mill’s life teach us about meaningful lives?

In John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press 2019), Elijah Millgram weaves intellectual biography together with philosophical analysis in the service of a distinctive style of moral philosophizing.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all.

Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.