One feature of the book that was enjoyable was the way he discussed contemporary events--such as the election of Donald Trump or the policies of Xi Jinping--through the lens of their culture's philosophical traditions.

How The World Thinks – Julian Baggini How The World Thinks – Julian Baggini

Reading this book aloud in the car, discovering gems together over Kopi and Roti Prata, letting a stranger skim through it just before the start of a lecture, discussing it with my boss after a workshop, trying to explain its gist to a curious 7-year-old. These were my favourite memories of reading this one. How he prioritises bodies of thought which are written down and more rigorously debated and argued (hence Asia being prioritised over Africa and Oceania). It may seem so normal to an Irish person to put crisps in bread, but it is one of those things Irish people do that the world thinks are weird. Maybe they need to try it! 8. Sayings that make no sense – I will, yeah Credit: Pixabay / NDE In your 20s, you spend a lot of time being self-conscious about what other people think of you. Then you hit your mid-30s and start to realize they weren’t really thinking about you that much.” Conversely, Western countries are not as secular as they claim to be. Western missionaries still invade other cultures seeking to buy converts under the guise of altruism and the only public holidays are those dedicated to Christian festivals.

Julian Baggini

The assumption that autonomous reason will inevitably lead to progress also fosters a dangerous complacency among academics, who often baulk if asked to say how their work benefits wider society. The logic of secular reason would answer that if learning has no practical effect, it doesn’t matter because inquiry is good for its own sake. If it does have an effect, it is bound to be good because learning leads to progress. But it surely makes sense to question whether the right people are studying the right things in the right way, and we cannot answer this unless we have some idea of what “right” is. Is it right, for example, if an academic community breeds a kind of consensus that stifles dissenting voices? Excessive belief in the autonomy of secular reason stops us asking these questions, raising the spectre of academic ‘censorship’. And the oddest coincidence is that philosophical structures and attitudes evolved worldwide, as far as we know, in China, India and Greece, at almost the same time. Indeed the Chinese philosopher Mencius is cited here more than Plato. Baggini tells us that philosophy was born, in practical terms, everywhere, between the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE, defined by Karl Jaspers as the “Axial Age”; this narrative, describing as many philosophical approaches as possible, aims to take the reader up to the Information Age. Germany’s Der Spiegel recalled the prime minister’s climate speech in September to the UN general assembly when – bizarrely – he referenced Kermit the frog. “When it comes to using zany metaphors to underline his message, Johnson has form,” Spiegel said. The saying above was very similar to the statement published in 1934, and QI believes Will Rogers was responsible for both. The line from the script may have leaked before the film was completed and exhibited. How The World Thinks by Julian Baggini is subtitled “A global history of philosophy”. I was expecting a cross-cultural, militias-faith tour of the topic, rather like Bertrand Russell‘s History of Western Philosophy without the direction. What Julian Baggini has assembled here, however, is something that initially surprised, but later rather disappointed as a result of a necessity to revisit similar concepts repeatedly.

How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy - Goodreads

There are some moments of insight such as the quote that philosophers live in two times and two places. But they are lost in a morass of unstructured arguments peppered with many irritatingly predictably generalisations and stereotypes. So rather than structuring the book around distinct bodies of ideas - e.g. Islam, Buddhism, western philosophy, etc. - and going through everything that body of thought think about how we know, who we are, etc., Baggini flips things around, only touching on philosophies he thinks relate to the topic of the chapter. E.g. In the chapter on No self, he talks about Buddhism, in the chapter on harmony he talks about Taoism, in the chapter on naturalism he talks about Shintoism, etc. with multiple philosophies considered within each chapter. True to form Baggini refers to the poverty of the part of India he visits. Equally true to form is the failure to discuss if he and others like him would be willing to pay fair prices for the goods and services extracted from India, Africa etc. One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the same time. These early philosophies have had a profound impact on the development of distinctive cultures in different parts of the world. What we call ‘philosophy’ in the West is not even half the story. Offering deep insights into how different regions operate, and their commonalities as well as their differences, Baggini shows that gaining greater knowledge of how others think is the first step to a better understanding of ourselves"When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place. So while this is undoubtedly a book about the biggest questions, there is no attempt on the part of the author to answer them – rather, simply to describe attitudes that in some instances are almost impossible to define. Can Westerners understand the Japanese fascination with emptiness, the spaces in between? Can Asians understand how literal parts of the European traditions are? Is there any agreement, for example, about time? Many philosophies see it as cyclic, while Australian aboriginals see past, present and future all as one. Can countries which believe in the philosophical determination behind thinking that society as a whole should provide for all its members understand the passion of can-do Americans to exalt the power of the individual and individual autonomy?

How the World Thinks: A Global History of [PDF] [EPUB] How the World Thinks: A Global History of

One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the same time. These early philosophies have had a profound impact on the development of distinctive cultures in different parts of the world. What we call 'philosophy' in the West is not even half the story. Julian Baggini sets out to expand our horizons in How the World Thinks, exploring the philosophies of Japan, India, China and the Muslim world, as well as the lesser-known oral traditions of Africa and Australia's first peoples. Interviewing thinkers from around the globe, Baggini asks questions such as: why is the West is more individualistic than the East? What makes secularism a less powerful force in the Islamic world than in Europe? And how has China resisted pressures for greater political freedom? Offering deep insights into how different regions operate, and paying as much attention to commonalities as to differences, Baggini shows that by gaining greater knowledge of how others think we take the first step to a greater understanding of ourselves. Libération saw “chaotic organisation” on show at the summit; Le Monde “apparent nonchalance” from the British side. “He seems a lot more interested in re-litigating Brexit with Brussels than with convincing global leaders to raise their CO 2 reduction targets,” the paper wrote.

Preferences

Personally, I have a problem with the interface between religion and philosophy. For me there always seems to be a leap of faith - rather obvious isn’t it? - that precludes serious critical analysis. “We don’t all die” were the words of a broadcast bishop recently in the United Kingdom, implying that those of a good life (equals conforms to his interpreted prescriptions] will be saved for all eternity. This is not bad for a faith that promises to respect and deal equally with all humanity. Of course, there is individual behavior to be accounted for, but the implication of the bishop’s words are that anyone who is perfectly faithful but not a Christian will be excluded from eternal life (an ambition which, it has to be said, has not one iota of evidence to suggest it might exist…)