Friday, April 18, 2008

Book update



Like many of you out there, I enjoy the company of books. Last weekend Chad and I made a trip to Chicago hook up with the good folks at The Chapel. On the way there we stopped in Hyde Park to cruise a few of the used book stores. I acquired the following:



  • Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum (on the very strong recommendation of Samwise after having enjoyed The Name of the Rose.

  • Harry Prosch, Michael Polanyi: A Critical Exposition (because I'm interested in learning more about him as the second-hand things I've picked up about him resonate with my evolving thinking about epistemology).

  • Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character (I had decided to procure all of his books that I could find).

  • Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, The Truth about God (basically the same reason as above).

  • Robert Hellenga, Philosophy Made Simple (A novel that looks to be in the same vein as Sophie's World--all it needs is the accompanying board game for philosophy parties at my house!).

  • David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Wittgenstein's Poker (a reconstruction of an encounter between Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein (and a threatening poker) at a meeting of the Cambridge Moral Science club in 1946).

  • Niall Griffiths, Stump (I couldn't pass up a novel with my family moniker as the title; evidently it is about a guy with an amputated arm... it won the Welsh Book of the Year award in 2004... uses some variation of the F-word in almost every paragraph).

Not sure if I'll ever read them all, but I enjoy being in their company.

2 comments:

Joel Aric Schwartz said...

What have you read by Polanyi? I'm presently working on a paper discussing part of the effect of his epistemology on philosophy of science.

D said...

Have you read David Edmonds and John Eidinow's other work, Rousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment?

I think I might like this new "behind the philosophy" genre.