The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations by Robert Nozick (PDF)

Description

One of this century’s most original philosophical thinkers, Nozick brilliantly renews Socrates’s quest to uncover the life that is worth living. In brave and moving meditations on love, creativity, happiness, sexuality, parents and children, the Holocaust, religious faith, politics, and wisdom, The Examined Life brings philosophy back to its preeminent subject, the things that matter most. We join in Nozick’s reflections, weighing our experiences and judgments alongside those of past thinkers, to embark upon our own voyages of understanding and change.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly Everyday emotions and events including romance, sex, self-worth and creativity are not often the focus of formal philosophy, but are questioned and analyzed here by Harvard social thinker Nozick. PW found this “an accessible, novel discourse.” Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Robert Nozick (1938-2002) is the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which won a National Book Award in 1975, Philosophical Explanations, which received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa in 1982, and The Examined Life. He was the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Robert Nozick’s first book, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”, has been widely touted as the philosophical bible of libertarianism in America, the most rigorous case ever argued against redistributive justice and the welfare state, the Summa of anarcho-capitalism. Here’s what Nozicks writes in chapter 25, near the end, of The Examined Life:”The libertarian position I once propounded now seems to me seriously inadequate, in part because it did not fully knit the humane considerations and joint cooperative activities it left roon for more closely into its fabric. It neglected the symbolic importance of an official political concern with issues or problems, as a way of marking their importance or urgency, and hence of expressing, channeling, intensifying, encouraging, and validating our private actions and concerns toward them…. There are some things we choose to do together through government in solemn marking of our human solidarity…” John Donne, of course, said something similar: No man is an island entire unto himself.The Examined Life is a book of homilies – sermons – expressing the earned wisdom of a lifetime of philosophy. I’m not a devoted sermon reader, and I can’t profess to find this book fun to read, but it is full of simply-expressed clear thinking. Perhaps a chapter a week – there are twenty-six – on Sundays would be serviceable. Nozick’s goal, I think, is to sketch out a kind of secular morality or ethics, not based on religious myth but rather on shared humanity and empathy.Chapter 20, entitled The Holocaust, impresses me as the most fearsomely cogent declaration of the fallen state of human progress that I’ve ever read: “I believe the Holocaust is an event like the Fall in the way traditional Christianity conceived it, something that radically and drastically alters the situation and stautus of humanity.” Nozick declares taht he is not a Christian, and continues: “It now would not be a special tragedy if humankind ended… I do not mean that humanity deserves this to happen… but now that history and that species have become stained, its loss would now be no special loss above and beyond the losses to the individuals involved. Humnaity has lost its claim to continue.” In relation to Christian eschatology, Nozick declares that humanity has desanctified itself. “There still remain the ethical teachings and the example of the life of Jesus before his end, but there no longer operates the saving message of Christ. In this sense, the Christian era has closed.”A few pages later, Nozick offers this: “Perhaps it is only by suffering ourselves when any suffering is inflicted, or even when any is felt, that we can redeem the species. Before, perhaps, we could be more isolated; now that no longer suffices…. If the Christian era has ended, it has been replaced by one in which we each now have to take humaity’s suffering upon ourselves. What Jesus was supposed to have done for us, before the Holocaust, humanity must now do for itself.”It’s not so rare to find a philosopher repudiating his earlier opinions, and perhaps more than once. To find Robert Nozick, however, repudiating his Ayn Rand hyper-individualism, meretricious free-market economic dogma, and opposition to social justice through government, is unusually satisfying. Here’s a beaker of health to you, Professor Nozick! Live long and thrive!

⭐I actually read this book and it was very insightful. I still use some information till this day that helps me throughout every day life. I recommend it to everyone.

⭐Definitely not the usual self help book that proliferates on new age bookstores shelves, so if this is what you are looking for, one will be better served elsewhere. Professor Nozick helps setting up philosophical life questions in a tidy, professional manner in the vein of a XX century Socrates. May not always agree with his positions – and he is not trying to convert – but overall a very insightful book that makes one think. The first edition was published in 1989 but it reads like it could have been written last year – whished I read it a long time ago.

⭐He writes exceptionally well, but this book isn’t as philosophically rigorous as Philosophical Explanations (his best book) or Anarchy, State and Utopia. This book is his witty and wise reflections on his examined life, and those are the reflections of an extraordinarily intelligent person. They are well worth reading. John Searle’s recent book, Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World, is much more rigorous and, from that standpoint, much more philosophically interesting, but it isn’t as “personal”. But both should be read by thoughtful people.

⭐I bought this book, excited about the opportunity to read what purported to be a thoughtful man’s ruminations about the big questions in life. I’ve never found a book to be so disappointing and frustrating. Nozick seems to have an “instinct for the capillary.” It’s maddening how he’ll start out on a topic that offers some promise and then go off on a tangent about one or more trivial aspects related to that topic. To give one example: He has a chapter on parenting. Not being a parent myself, I was still interested in hearing about the process of bringing another person into the world, the sacrifices, the joys and disappointments, and how it does or does not give meaning to one’s life, etc. etc. Instead, I got a chapter devoted primarily to how inheritance laws should be fashioned. Exasperating is the best word for this book, I’m sorry to say. I read about four chapters and then could take no more.

⭐A worthwhile read but life does not need to be this complicated.It is a worthwhile read but digest it as if you are eating an elephant; a chapter at a time

⭐Still a great book – good read

⭐I received this book in new quality. It is exactly as they show it! Very good book for my college. Exactly as I needed it.

⭐Robert Nozick was a sharp thinker. Many of the philosophical meditations in the book are rewarding. I especially liked the ones on Dying and also on Reality. Oddly, the one on Love was less good. But on the whole almost all of Nozick’s writings are very good. He could write philosophy in an engaging way, a rare gift in the academic fraternity. Despite his being an analytic philosopher – they normally leave religion out – his references to Kabbalah ideas are both enjoyable and pertinent. I want to read more by him. PS I also appreciate how he discarded his previous libertarian views to embrace a more communitarian approach to political philosophy and ethics.

⭐I really haven’t a clue what I’m reading

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