Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century

by C. Grayling A and A.C. Grayling

Book Overview

Ideas can, and do, change the world. Just as Marxism, existentialism, and feminism shaped the last century, so are fundamentalism, globalization, and bioethics transforming our world now. In Ideas... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 046501934X
• ISBN13: 9780465019342
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
• Length: 436 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Succinct, sharp, intelligent and worldly wise

Grayling has made an effort here to distinguish between ideas that were once formative such as free will, determinism and perhaps angels dancing on a pin (which he has left out), and ideas that either are newly shaping the world, such as the Internet and artificial intelligence, or old ideas with new influences, such as democracy and history. The book consists of mini essays on 130 ideas from "absolutism" to Zeitgeist," covering subjects as diverse as string theory and romanticism. Grayling writes well and displays a sharp and considered intelligence that make this book a pleasure to read. He doesn't mealy mouth around what he sees as cant, error, willful ignorance or just rank stupidity. But he is eminently fair and not interested in inciting any riots. It is clear from reading the entries (I read most of them) that Grayling is a philosopher first and a historian and social critic second. He is the author a couple of dozen books, mostly on philosophic subjects such as reason, meaning, Bishop Berkeley, Wittgenstein, philosophic logic and so on. Some of the ideas on philosophic subjects presented here such as consequentialism, deontology, and verificationism were a bit beyond the reach of this reader, but then that would be my problem. On the subjects about which I have some knowledge I found his treatment interesting, enlightening and mostly agreeable. The closing paragraph on "communism"may serve as an example of the sort of deep understanding that Grayling brings to his diverse subject matter: "China is the only country to try the experiment of a capitalist economy with a communist-style unelected central party command government. Despite that party being called the Communist Party of China, it is in almost all functional respects a mere reprise of the authoritarian imperial government commonplace throughout China's history. In this it is paradigmatic of what communism has been wherever it has been put into effect in the modern world; most of the experiments in this regard have failed in what, in historical terms, is the blink of an eye." (p. 88) Or, consider this from the entry on "consumerism": "The joke phrase 'retail therapy' used to denote the restoration of good spirits that a shopping expedition induces--usually the forage among brand-name goods in a variety of shops, with a few triumphantly found bargains or exactly suitable items--is in fact an accurately descriptive phrase. More to the point, the word 'forage'...is also speakingly accurate: if anthropological models of hunter gatherer societies are correct, foraging among bushes and roots for edibles was an important task for women while their menfolk were away on (probably often unsuccessful) hunting expeditions." Grayling is particularly sharp on religions, believing that overall they do more harm than good. He has entires on Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, creationism, fundamentalism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, and religion in general. Typicall

A philosophical guide for the perplexed

"Ideas are the cogs that drive history onward, for good or for ill," writes renowned English philosopher A.C. Grayling in //Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century//. This philosophical dictionary, while an "opinionated guide," is a remarkably clear and erudite book of short essays on the power of ideas - from "Absolutism" to "Zeitgeist." Today, as science becomes even more complex, specialized, and incomprehensible to most of us, to make some sense of things, we must now understand ideas such as game theory, bioethics, globalization, wealth, privacy, and even xenophobia. Without jargon, condescension, and especially, coercion, Grayling helps the reader who seeks more cultural and scientific literacy and to better understand the tremendous gaps between the natural and social sciences, and the humanities, religious and literary culture, and how to bridge them. For better or worse (better for the reader, I think), the book is without references. Grayling writes that if readers are further interested in a topic, they should go to the library or the Internet to hunt for the sources, which he provides in a short bibliography at the end. "We allow ourselves to grow ignorant about ideas at our peril," Grayling says under the entry "Future, The." Reviewed by Phil Semler

Ideas that matter in a book that kind of doesn't

In a breezy 388 pages, this book will take you on a quick tour of the following topics: From politics and soceity: absolutism, activism, anarchism, aristocracy, black consciousness, Black Power, capitalism, class, communism, democracy, economics, equality, Fascism, feminism, freedom of speech, globalization, human rights, identity, justice, law, liberalism, liberty, Marxism, nationalism, neoconservatism, politics, privacy, punishment, socialism, totalitarianism, war, war crimes, Westernization; From Society and Social Questions: accomodation theory, activism, athropocentrism, anti-Semitism, civilization, cognitive theory, consumerism, economics, education, ethnocentrism, feminism, freedom of speech, the future, history, human rights, identity, Internet, liberty, love, multiculturalism, postmodernism, privacy, punishment, racism, relativism, religion, romanticism, science, slavery, sociobiology, technology, terrorism, tolerance, utopia, vegetarianism, war, war crimes, wealth, Westernization, xenophobia, Zeitgeist; From Philosophy: aesthetics, altruism, animal rights, anhropocentrism, autonomy, bioethics, business ethics, cloning, consequentialism, deontology, egoism, Enlightenment, epistemology, equality, ethics, history of ethics, euthanasia, existentialism, experimental philosophy, falsifiability, game theory, history, humanism, human rights, identity, Intuitionism (mathematical and logical), irrationalism, logic, falacies of informal logic, love, theory of meaning, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, positivism, postmodernism, psychology, realism, relativism, Romanticism, scepticism, scientific revolutions, sociobiology, truth, utopia, verificationism, virtue ethics; From Religion: afterlife, agnosticism, anti-Semitism, atheism, Catholicism, Christianity, creationism, Daoism, fundamentalism, Hinduism and brahmanism, Islam, Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism, religion, secularism; And from Science: anthropic principle, artificial intelligence, Big Bang cosmology, biodiversity, bioethics, biology, biopoieses, black holes, cloning, congitive science, evolution, the future, Internet, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, relativity, science, scientific revolutions, sociobiology, standard model, string theory, technology. As can be seen, it's quite a list. And even though the distinguished Dr. Grayling is a fellow of St. Anne's College at Oxford, you find yourself merely listening indulgently to his presentation as you would to a friend who insists that you attend his child's concert recital. Your impressed that he put in the effort while not necessarily being blown over by the results of that effort. For one thing, when I think of great future writing I think of books like The Singularity is near by Ray Kurzweil. While it may more than laughable by the time its predictions are due, it still has the courage to actually make predictions and not merely assert that ideas current today will in one way or another remain current down the