Dewey calls this sequence "Metaphysics." It includes some of the big words: beauty, time, evil, truth, and the ever-popular "Why?" In my local library, I found two items that looked like they might be interesting, as well as a surprising amount of, I don't know, dianetics and what-not. I picked up On Evil by Terry Eagleton, a Marxist literary analyst/ historian/ apologist for Liberation Theology. The book postulates that evil really exists. It criticizes the "product of circumstances" defence, the "expression of pure free will" argument, and the "born evil" accusation, which he calls just another form of determinism that would release the perpetrator from blame. It looks interesting enough and has the great virtue, after The Story of Philosophy, of being short. As insurance, I also brought home Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown: Time and Space, which has lots of pretty pictures and seems to be mainly about time travel, which is always good, and other speculative ideas. Then I went to the big library and ran into more short books with one-word titles like Truth and Beauty, but I think the winner is Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt, who writes for the New Yorker.
It's billed as "An Existential Detective Story" and seems to comprise an exploration of all the theories about not only the mechanics of creation but also the purpose, ranging from "there isn't one" to "God." I do feel the author made a strategic error in his introduction by blithely announcing that if you can accept a preexisting Creator you don't care about this issue. He thus disqualified a great many people, including me, from reading his book! But I don't think he's right. I think that even though I can accept a preexisting, purposeful Creator, it is interesting to consider both HOW and WHY He created. Furthermore, this book really is written in a highly readable narrative style that is a real blessing after The Story of Philosophy. But if the author is right and this book is not actually of interest to me, I can always learn about theories of time travel or the humanist perspective on evil.
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