Books That Would Have Been Useful
Posted by Matt Zeitlin on December 10, 2007
When I read Theory of Justice last December while on vacation, not only did I oftentimes have little idea what was going on in the book — having just about zero experience with Kant beyond What is Enlightenment? and and ill occasioned dive into Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals sure didn’t help — I was also on the beach, with waves literally lapping at my feet, so it was easy to get distracted. This is all just a long way of saying that Samuel Freeman’s book on Rawls looks really good, and probably could have helped out at the time. Even though carting two massive philosophy books to a Mexican beach probably would have been the nerdiest thing ever…
December 10, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Whoa, you read Rawls and Kant on the beach? That’s too cool. The nerdiest book I’ve read on a beach is Alex Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics, which is nowhere near as hardcore as Rawls.
December 17, 2007 at 10:56 pm
The only place I’d find Rawls worth reading is in the bathroom. The taradiddle in the book would be less elegant than the feces in the toilet.
I once read Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” on the beach. That book’s okay.