In this classic philosophy of language review Professor Blackburn shows his remarkable skills as both philosopher and pedagogue. His analysis of the theories in the field and his presentation of his own views are valid and just. As are his lethal attacks on some dinosaurs in the field like Chomsky's LAN and Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument. A 'must' for the serious student and a 'should' for the intelligent reader.

The book is accessible to the lay person and keeps the reader's attention. Perhaps the strongest element of the book is the sense one gets that Blackburn is wrestling with ethical matters in a direct way. That is, he doesn't let scholarship (though when necessary he does cite the relevant materials) get in the way of his analysis. He is at a point in his career where he no longer has to hide behind explication of other philosophers' views and he can simply speak in his own refreshing voice. I especially liked his critique of McDowell (pp. 92-104). His linking of the affective and the intellective is usually well done (throughout but esp. 129).

I would like to note a few minor misgivings followed by one major criticism:

1. With precious few exceptions when Blackburn has a point to make it is always in terms of a philosopher from Great Britain. His criticisms of McDowell, Korsgaard and Kant are the almost singular (because unavoidable?) exceptions. Surely his background isn't limited to Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Smith, Hutcheson, Butler, Mill, Hare, Bradley, Moore, Ramsey, Ryle, Wittgenstein, Rhees, Sidgwick, Mackie, Wiggins, Parfit, Dancy, McGinn, Singer, Williams and Rushdie. We frown on French navel gazing. Surely thinkers like Hegel or Nietzsche or Heidegger or Bergson or Sartre have weighed in on any number of topics Blackburn addresses.

2. If the second half of chapter 4 and all of chapter 5 were excised the book would form a tighter argument (or just skip these or read them separately).

3. Blackburn's criticism of Rorty is weak (much like his TNR review of Brandom's book on Rorty). Philosophically, Rorty and Blackburn have far more in common than Blackburn is willing to let on. They are both anti-realists. Where they part company is in their differing assessments of the wisdom of what I call the antirealist's appropriation of the real. Basically, what this project amounts to is an attempt to defang realist critics by saying whatever we arrive at by (at least what used to be called) antirealist means is as "real" as it gets (cf. Arthur Fine). In ethics this reclamation of the real (now "quasi-real") manifests itself in Blackburn's willingness to speak of "truth." But note how deflationary his account of truth gets (p. 318). "Applied to ethics, this means that I can deem us to know, for example, that kicking babies for fun is wrong, because I rule out the chance of any improvement reversing that view" (p. 319). "I believe that the primary function of talking of 'knowledge' is to indicate that a judgement is beyond revision" (p. 318). So Rorty is a "weightless aesthete" because he isn't willing to be as belligerent as Blackburn (though Rorty's endorsement of what he perhaps more accurately calls "frank ethnocentrism" and his endorsement of the cautionary uses for truth undercut even this putative difference). One suspects Blackburn is merely bent out of shape over Rorty's flouting of Oxbridge gentility and is letting his passions rule.

My main difficulty with the book is already there in the title. How can passions rule? Hume who (along with Smith and Gibbard) for most of the book is Blackburn's hero had a different take on the passions. Briefly, Hume in his metaphysical and epistemological writings was (like his pre-Kantian predecessors) wedded to a vocabulary of mental contents. Hume's epistemological and metaphysical project on his own admission fell apart when he recognized he had to account for mental ACTIVITIES. A similar difficulty besets Hume's account of sentiments (Blackburn acknowledges this in a footnote but then in the narrative blithely ignores the footnote p. 259 n37). Unlike Hume, Blackburn has his passions ACT! For Blackburn the Neurathian ship of practical reason "is worked by a crew, each representing a passion or inclination or sentiment, and where the ship goes is determined by the resolution of conflicting pressures among the crew" p 245. The key issue is how to characterize such a resolution. In a backlash against a spectral Kantian/Korsgaardian Captain that rules the passions from some occult otherworldly perch, Blackburn wants to show how the passions rule. Note Blackburn's use of verbs. His passions/concerns/perspectives/values "contend," "deploy," "correct," "evaluate" "take up" (240, 262, 263, 267, 304, 313). Traditionally, that which does the contending or deploying or taking up or correcting or evaluating or, well, thinking is the self or the "I" or practical reason. Blackburn's reiteration of the argument against an ethereal Kantian 'Ich' doesn't by itself legitimate his distinctive understanding of the passions as active.

This tension is present when Blackburn says "The self is no more passive when our concerns are contending for a controlling say in our direction, than a parliament is passive when it debates a law." The question arises, what in this example is the relationship between "the self" and "our concerns"? Blackburn's point against Kant is that such a self can't be totally divorced from its concerns. Again and again he says THE mistake is to objectify the passions and thereby make them passive. Instead of treating the passions as passive objects Blackburn claims they act, they RULE. What role remains for the self? Does the unitary self devolve into a "parliament" and when civility breaks down into a Hobbesian/Nietzschean war of erupting drives? This issue keeps popping up as you read Blackburn. "I can take up a critical perspective on any of my own basic desires and concerns, in the light of my other basic desires and concerns" (p. 267). Here again we have an "I" that performs a verb ("takes up a critical perspective on") on desires and concerns. Is this activity itself just one more passion? Does this "I" (or the earlier parliamentary "self") reduce without remainder to our inventory of concerns? I don't think it quite does. The "I" or "self" or practical reason seems to be the arena within which and by means of which the passions contend. Parliamentary debate is importantly different from rule by referenda, i.e., _Ruling Passions_.

First there was Plato, who argued that Reason must keep a check on all our unruly passions and emotions; then there were the Middle Eastern religions which said moral rules are given to us from on high - they are, for instance, inscribed on tablets of stone brought down from mountains, independent of human minds or involvement; somewhere along the line came Kant who said the application of reason and reason alone will provide us with clear rules for living.

Against these traditions of ethical values and moral rules as being somewhow objective, and deriving from reason or an independent authority is (to my taste, anyway) a more common sensical tradition that sees these rules and values as being inextricably human, as deriving from our human conerns, expressed through our emotions, and represented in our social life and practices. We are appalled by the pictures of towers falling, of humans jumping, and we feel great anger even as we feel pity, and we want to do something about it. We don't say to ourselves "how very unreasonable of them". Hume was the great expositor of the importance of the passions and sentiments in ethical thinking, and Blackburn is a worthy defender of our complete humanity.

This is an extraordinarily fine book - learned, witty, elegantly written and as thorough a demolition job on the opposition as one could imagine.

But it can't be said it is "an easy read". It is hard philosophy in the best post-analytic tradition and, by neccesity, takes on many able modern philsophers who have argued for different versions of the objectivity of moral value. Read it slowly and carefully, however and, perhaps like me, you will learn a great deal as well as equip yourself for an intelligent defense of the place of emotions in our ethical life.

I highly recommend this text, especially for those interested in moral psychology, action, and practical reason. The first three chapters especially are written in thoughtful and elegant prose. Superb examples. Blackburn is careful to establish just what the normative issues are in ethics.

The final chapters are most interesting in centering debate on relativism, subjectivism, and projectivism. Blackburn adopts a broadly Humean theory of moral motivation.

This is one of the most interesting, creatively written, and masterful texts written on this subject in years.

Professor Blackburn has written a concise, clear, and witty dictionary of philosophical and political terms covering a wide array of traditions, both Eastern and Western. And like all the best reference works, it carries the flavor of an individual author, displaying, here and there, touches of idiosyncratic wit and charm. Many of Blackburn's definitions are masterpieces of concision and fairness--see, for instance, his entry on Nietzsche, which squeezes a century's worth of scholarship into two-and-a-half lucid columns. This delightful book has earned a permanent place on my desktop.

Philosophy is, at best, a difficult business. Whether one is a professional philosopher (whatever that means), or a casual reader, any discussion of philosophy requires familiarity with a huge number of specialized terms. A philosophical dictionary allows the reader to quickly ground himself in the vocabulary without losing the train of thought.

The various encyclopedias of philosophy are more comprehensive, but they serve a completely different purpose. If you are looking for in depth analysis, turn to an encyclopedia, but for a quick definition, this volume is perfect. The entries contain just the perfect amount of information. You are quickly gotten up to speed, without bogging down in endless peripheral issues.

In short, a valuable supplement to philosophical studies, both for the novice and for the more experienced reader of philosophical texts.

The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy by Simon Blackburn is a handy guide when it comes to the realm of philosophy. The preface is written in a scholoraly tone without sounding prentious or being overly dry. The book itself lacks a good table of contents which is a must for a dictionary of any kind. There is also no index which is odd since this makes it hard to use and one finds topics more by chance then with skill. The only thing that Mr. Blackburn bothered to put in was an apendix that has nothing to do with the actual content of the book. The entries in themselves are well written and they are in aplhabetical order. I must admit that I was a bit baffled to see a dictionary without an index or a table of contents.

I was looking for a "primer" on philosophy...who said what, when and so on. Though this wasn't the book I was looking for, I found it engrossing and interesting.

After trying to wade through Durant's pompous prose in "A Story of Philosophy," Blackburn's straightforward style was very refreshing. Like a good novel, I couldn't put it down and sometimes jumped to the end of the end of a chapter just to peek at the author's conclusion. Blackburn never really gave definitive answers to life's great questions, but that made it even more satisfying.

For a novice, like myself, the terminology was a little confusing and I'm still not sure who was associated with what school of thought (I wish I had had his dictionary to read along with this), but it left me wanting to know and read more.

Gertrude Stein observed of Ezra Pound that he was a village explainer, and very good to have around if one happened to be a village. Simon Blackburn merits the same level of praise. This book's stated intention is to give readers some sense of how philosophers approach the really big questions of knowledge, free will, God, reasoning, and so on. That's a tall order. Think is better appreciated as a chrestomathy of thought-provoking quotations and asides. The book's strongest points are its useful tips on formulating and analyzing arguments. Incidentally, the politically correct reader will be delighted at Blackburn's bows to gender-neutral language, his digs at the religious right and his sly elbow in the dead ribs of Edmund Burke. We [...] recommend this book for anyone interested in philosophy but short of time, or merely out to impress friends, colleagues and clients by dropping names of celebrity philosophers into conversations or sales pitches.

Neither a history of philosophy nor a dry, scholarly work, Simon Blackburn's book will appeal to those who have some knowledge of the subject and want an up-to-date primer on the big questions in philosophy. Using references to and quotations from the 'big names', Blackburn nevertheless ensures that the topics are always related to real life (including a hilarious reference to Microsoft when discussing the Problem of Evil), showing both the contemporary relevance of philosophy, and the current 'consensus' on the topics in question. A must read for non-philosophers interested in philosophy, or anyone interested in rejecting the 'unexamined life'.

Blackburn blows it with this one. How someone with his credentials can repeatedly refer to Epicurus as a Stoic is beyond me -- unless he's letting students do his work and not supervising production very carefully. I would have given the book at least three stars otherwise, but this lapse is really infuriating.

Blackburn's "short introduction to ethics" is an easy-to-absorb read for the novice, allowing one to learn about the field without venturing into long, heavily-written academic treatises. However, its contents seem misguided: the three sections focus on "threats to ethics", ethical issues, and the basis of ethics, and while the second section is appealing, the first and third seem misplaced.

Beginning an introduction to ethics by discussing its detractors, as Blackburn does in his opening "threats to ethics" section, seems out-of-order and defensive. Moreover, the subject matter exacerbates Blackburn's prose - wandering, disorganized, and vaguely preachy even when it lacks content.

The book's second section focuses on the issues that laypeople might associate with ethics: birth, death, the idea of happiness and what it constitutes. However, Blackburn's discussions are dominated by definition and exposition(i.e. "why is death important to people? why are we afraid of it? what have greek/roman/medieval philosophers said about its importance?") and ignore the modern field of ethics entirely. There is a chapter devoted to the major schools of modern ethics, but it doesn't tie into the rest of the book (so we don't learn whether, for example, Kant thought killing another person could ever be permissible). This incompleteness leaves the reader with no idea of what modern ethicists might say about humanity's most important concerns.

The book's third and final section discusses a number of attempts - both ancient and modern - to construct a universal, indisputable framework for ethics. This section is interesting but seems to miss the point: surely it would be more enjoyable and profitable to a reader who already know the basics of the field. Like the rest of "Being Good", it seems written not for the interested but uninformed audience it claims, but rather for the knowledgeable and skeptical reader who understands ethics and argues against its merit.

"Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics" is just that, a slim volume about the philosophy of ethics and how philosophers think about this subject. It is an introduction for people who are brave (or fooligh) enough to dare to ask "Why be good?". Far to few people it seems have bothered to ask this question or assumed there is a patent answer without ever taking that answer out into the daylight to examine it.
Thinking ethically isn't done in a vacuum, it is of a process. When faced with an ethical problem, how do you seek a solution? Do you try to maximize the good for the most people? Do you try to identify universal laws and then try to follow them? Do you seek the advice of authority figures or authoritative books?
The text is split into three distance parts, the first addresses what Mr. Blackburn refers to "threats to ethics." These threats include relativism, skepticism, nihilism, challenges to free will, and altruism. Threats are largely those things which suggest that there is no real reason to be good at all; it's just something we as a people do. With each topic, he explains why they do not make ethics "impossible" after all. Mr. Blackburn explains how religion's declining influence does not harm ethical thinking, in fact he views this in a positive light in that without religion frees us to make independent choices, rather than to simply be automatons. Relativism is a more serious challenge, but when taken to its logical conclusion relativism refutes itself and removes the arguer from the conversation altogether.

The second section discusses particular attitudes about ethical issues including birth, death, desire and the meaning of life, pleasure, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, freedom from the bad, freedom and paternalism, and rights and natural rights. This second section is the weakest and seems to be ill connected to the other two. This weakness is there despite the fact that the author is talking about such hot topics as abortion and euthanasia.

The third section looks at the larger question of whether the idea of ethics rests on anything at all. This I believe is the topic that unsettles most people. The thinking goes that without a basis there is no reason for ethics. Mr. Blackburn shows this to not be the case. Mr. Blackburn believes people should actively engage in ethical dialogue in an effort to arrive at a common point of view for making ethical decisions. This of course means that there is no guarantee that such conversation will be successful, but at least there is a chance, and without such a dialogue, there is no chance at all.

The book is demanding of its reader. It demands that one actually look at one's ethical system and see it for what it is.