“Philip Kitcher has composed the most formidable defense of the secular view of life since Dewey. Unlike almost all of contemporary atheism, Life After Faith is utterly devoid of cartoons and caricatures of religion. It is, instead, a sober and soulful book, an exemplary practice of philosophical reflection. Scrupulous in its argument, elegant in its style, humane in its spirit, it is animated by a stirring aspiration to wisdom. Even as I quarrel with it I admire it.” BookSpiritViewsPracticeAtheismStyleReflectionArgumentPhilosophicalDefenseContemporaryAdmireAspirationSecularSoberCartoonElegantQuarrelsHumaneAnimatedStirringFormidableCaricaturesPhilipSoulfulExemplary Author:Leon Wieseltier
“But even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight — matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in one’s own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows.” ShouldBookMatterBeautifulSpiritCoursesBitsRoomsEnvironmentWallDrawsWindowWeightPrisonBlockHallsHorizonAtoms Author:Leon Wieseltier
“Here is a humanist proposition for the age of Google: The processing of information is not the highest aim to which the human spirit can aspire, and neither is competitiveness in a global economy. The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers.” HumansCharacterAgeSpiritEconomyInformationHighestAimDeterminedOur SocietyHumanistEngineersGoogleAspirePropositionsHuman SpiritProcessingGlobal EconomyCompetitiveness Author:Leon Wieseltier
