Thomas V. Morris (1)Recensioni

12/13/21

12/2/21

2017: Having read this a second time, my opinion remains the same. It’s a great book that should be mandatory reading for any Christian interested in formulating their understanding of the Incarnation. Merry Christmas!

2016: This is a fantastic, thought provoking book that I will definitely read again. As promised in the synopsis, Morris does a great job parsing out the key metaphysical distinctions for retaining the coherency of the orthodox claim that God the Son is identical to Jesus of Nazareth. The key takeaways: (i) common properties are not necessarily essential properties and (ii) merely human and fully human are not the same thing.

For much of the book, I was skeptical of his proposed "two-minds" model. The terminology is terrible because it sounds exactly like he is promoting Nestorianism. Well, he isn't and while I'm a little hesitant to fully endorse it, it does seem like a coherent and plausible model. I was especially persuaded by his argument concerning the possibility of multiple incarnations.

It was difficult for me to get my head around some of the concepts because of my layman knowledge of metaphysics. Nevertheless, the salient points are well communicated and I definitely recommend this book if you are interested in sophisticated defenses of Chalcedonian Christology.

Rating: 4.6

Some of the articles were too intellectual, but, hey, these are philosophers. The majority of the articles were fascinating and I enjoyed reading them very much. I highly recommend this to any Christians with an interest in philosophy.½

Of the books I've read so far this year, this was the slowest going, not because it was the most dense, but because it was the driest. The fault may well be mine and not Morris's; I have always had a tendency to lose my place when reading most philosophy texts, perhaps because I accept their premises about as much as I accept the premises of religions (which is to say, not much).

Make no mistake, this is a management book only superficially. Yes, it uses examples from Harry Potter in ways I generally agree with, at least until a certain level of interpretation, and nominally associates them with business. Yes, it talks about management, but primarily in the sense that a discussion of morality and values is a discussion of management. Throughout, Harry and Dumbledore are held up as virtuous, and specific examples from corporate America are also held up as virtuous. The book would really benefit from a solid chapter on failures of virtue, including corporate examples. This option may be precluded by the business/management genre.

I was left with the sense of emptiness that I often have after reading books on management, industrial/organizational techniques for motivating workers, or discussions of institutional planning and infrastructure that rely overmuch on terms like "vision statement." Had the book been entitled The Philosophy of Harry Potter, and the relatively scant business comparisons dropped, I might have liked it more. However, there are already two books about Harry Potter and Philosophy: Harry Potter and Philosophy and The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What Our Favorite Hero Teaches Us about Moral Choices, which is really about Harry Potter as an exemplar of stoicism, and is reviewed below in mid-April-ish, q.v.

What I found most interesting was to read this now that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been published. It's entertaining to read the discussions of Dumbledore's decision-making in light of what we learn in that book.

An interesting perspective on the Harry Potter books. Lots of leadership insights.

The first half of the book is pretty good going. It's well structured and quite well written too. The many quotes and references to various thinkers contribute to make the text richer. But the author is not taking his role seriously as a guide into philosophy. He presents various points of view only to immediately give his own judgment of them and is leading the reader quite terribly at times instead of letting him draw his own conclusion. The fact that he writes "What do you think?" after half a page of argumentation for one side changes nothing, it's a meaningless gesture.

This malaise becomes very evident about halfway into the book, when the question of god is discussed, and by which time the author has already set the stage with his argumentation that a) dualism is far more plausible than materialism and b) he believes in life after death. Now comes a far more detailed examination of various arguments for and against the existence of god than any section before has received, and the author, so predictably at this point, draws the conclusion any reader can smell from 100 pages back. Worse still, he is using this as a basis from which to discuss other topics later on in the book, all the while considering his case to be a proven one, eg. "life has no meaning if not through god". He actually does a whole chapter on Pascal's wager, prefaced by a hagiography of Pascal to make his wager seem more authoriative.

Fitting perhaps it is that the chapters about the existence of god, which give the appearance of being a central part in the book, betray at times such a lacking intellectual capability that it makes you ask yourself how did I end up reading this book?

This is not "Philosophy for dummies", this is "You're ignorant about philosophy and I'm going to convince you of everything I believe while pretending to be neutral". I feel for this guy's students.

Morris attempts to bridge an interesting divide. While the recent events in major companies across the country highlight more than ever the need for a renewed interest in the study of ethical behavior, the bridge presented here, while unique, accomplishes the goal in a convincing fashion.

The wisdom of the ancients (and some not so ancients) applied to modern business problems is a novel approach. Business, and just about any other form of modern management, typically has a myopic focus. The only focus is earning a profit. When financial security is the primary focus, every moral and ethical obligation soon becomes flawed to achieve that end.

To circumvent this attraction to flawed logic, another focus must be determined. If an entity, be it an individual or a transnational corporation, shifts its focus from earning a profit, to reaching for the ancient principles found in philosophy – truth, beauty, goodness, and unity – the actions preformed by that entity will still lead to a profit (at least in most cases) but will do so without violating moral obligations.

This book, in fact, illustrates the need for a liberal arts education. It is not enough for students to learn how to balance a ledger, or to create a marketing campaign. These students must be taught to approach each problem they encounter not through the myopic lens of simple profit and self-promotion, but through the multi-faceted, interdisciplinary lens of a liberal arts education. Looking at an issue from a collection of different angles will illuminate the one best course of action.

Quite an interesting book. Essentially, Thomas Morris tries to show that the ideas we hold about God are pretty consistent with logic and also, therefore, philosophy. I admit I was surprised by how much he relied upon Anselm and his idea of a Being, greater than which none can be imagined. I'd never read much about Anselm, but the times I'd seen him mentioned in passing he seemed to be regarded as having been superseded. All in all, quite a good book which provokes thought about the consistency of one's beliefs.½

Finally, I read Thomas Morris' Making Sense of It All after having it on my shelf for nearly a decade. It was an assigned book in my freshman philosophy class, but I don't think we ever got around to discussing it, spending most of our time on Socrates and Hume ("Has-Been Deities" would be a great name for a rock band). Anyway, I should have read it sooner. It's a short (under 200 pages) book, but very enlightening. It talks about Pascal's Pensées and why deep thought about the meaning of life is so important for everyone to do at some point in their life and why so few people actually do take such thought.

Actually very interesting, and more intelligently written than you'd think.

This is a cute sweet little book. While I think it veers off into the abstract more than is helpful- more concrete examples would have been better illuminating, still a worth a gander to make sure one is on the right track. The material strikes a nice balance between Eastern values and Western thinking.

The external world will never move us toward nirvana. It might, on the contrary, drive us crazy. And we can't live happily with our nerves all ajangle. We need some calm. We need inner peace. We need some measure of personal tranquility or we'll never be able to deal well with all that the future may throw at us.

Unappreciated people feel little or no sense of loyalty or camaraderie toward those who are ignoring them, and very little responsibility.

It's interesting but not as much of a "how-to" as I had hoped. Morris explores four elements in the context of good business as itemized by Aristotle and others: Intellectual (truth), aesthetic (beauty), moral (goodness), and spiritual (unity).

Describes some of the logical implications of Jesus being both human and divine. Great stuff, if you like that kind of thing.

This book is a sample of stoic philosophy explained by a philosophy professor who has become a motivational speaker in corporate America. The prose is therefore reminiscent of all the upbeat, motivational corporate seminars that I've attended over the years. It is direct, but free of nuance and poetry. The thinkers, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, are voices of the Roman republic and empire, and their thoughts are abstracted in this volume. The author is somewhat critical of Epictetus and his lack of feeling, or rather his lack of attention to the positive effects of feeling on motivation and satisfaction. I am very attracted, perforce, to stoicism, given all the minor disappointments I have each day. I wish that many of my patients would develop stoicism for their ailments. This book was not profound, and my experience of it was interrupted and I did not grasp a sustained argument.

Cse 1 shelf 1

1 110 MORR

Don't remember whether or not I read this. If I did, it didn't make much of an impression.