Things That Bother Me

Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc

Paperback, 240 pages

English language

Published Jan. 19, 2018

ISBN:
978-1-68137-220-4
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OCLC Number:
1019841467

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3 stars (1 review)

An original collection of lauded philosopher Galen Strawson's writings on the self and consciousness, naturalism and pan-psychism.

Galen Strawson might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly--in other words, he is a true essayist. Strawson also shares with Montaigne a particular fascination with the elastic and elusive nature of the self and of consciousness. Of the essays collected here, "A Fallacy of Our Age" (an inspiration for Vendela Vida's novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name) takes issue with the commencement-address cliche that life is a story. Strawson questions whether it is desirable or even meaningful to think about life that way. "The Sense of Self" offers an alternative account, in part personal, of how a distinct sense of self is not at all incompatible with a sense of the self …

1 edition

Charming cantankerous philosopher

3 stars

Arguing for a wider range of human differences in the experience of consciousness beyond the universalizing view of continuous, narrative, story-self-authored-as-meaning. And counter-positions on what a materialist view that doesn't try to explain away or deny conscious experience implies for morality, fate, death, etc. Enjoyable for clear thought and how often he deftly turns to literature's depictions of author or character's inner states as evidence.

Subjects

  • British Philosophy