Customer Reviews

The Big Questions: How Philosophy Can Change Your Life

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Once in a great while in my reading, I come across a gem, and Chapter 2 of Lou Marinoff's new book is just one such! It is the best summarization of ethics for the layman, you might say, that I have come across. The distinction between ethical relativism and meta-ethical relativism was especially nicely done.

having only read half of this book i can still say that these reviews make no sense to me (being way too negative). This book is not just a guide to philisophy it is also a guide to how to live your life. In doing the latter it is a phenominal help to any rational and intelligent person. Half way through the book i have already taken some of marinoff's advise and, surprising to me, numerous people have already commented how much happier i seem. I guess the question should really be whether or not you are willing to face the bigger issues in your life. if you are, this book will help. if not, look at psychology and fixate on the micro-issues. What can i say, i really like the book?

I found this book to be interesting as well as thought-provoking. The author had each chapter listed as a question that he has found to be relevant to our lives at one point or another, such as "What is Love?", "Are You Offended, Or Are You Harmed?", "Must You Suffer?", and "How can You Handle Change?".

In each chapter, the author explains how using philosophy can help you to answer these questions and apply them to your life in order to make positive changes within. He gives readers a new way to look at certain situations, like just because you are offended by someone, does not mean that any harm has been caused to you. You have the power to accept the offense or let it go. The author also gives examples of real-life situations taken from clients of his philosophical counseling practice. He applies what he has taught in each chapter to an event that we can understand more fully and how the process of using philosophy really can change your life.

Lou Marinoff covers just about the whole range of potential areas where one might need practical philosophy for help. His message is that, barring a few exceptions, most disease, especially psychological disease, is not disease at all but what he terms dis-ease, or the mental malaise resulting from the way we perceive or respond to life's challenges. His prescription is application of philosophical teachings, from Socrates on down the line, and more or less cherry picking whichever philosophical style works. At the same time, Marinoff urges the reader to identify and define their own personal philosophy, so that this will be available as a resource ahead of time, before crisis strikes and catches one unprepared. As in a review I wrote of Marinoff's Plato, Not Prozac!: Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems, I see how the eclectic approach is the approach that most people use anyway, moving from stoicism to perhaps transcendentalism as the situation requires. This is not necessarily a bad thing, even for those who are of orthodox faiths - it's just the way you may operate anyway; at least acknowledge it and use it to the greatest advantage.

My quibble with Marinoff in this work is his lack of references. At times he makes claims and draws conclusions that require referencing whichever source he draws from, since he uses concepts and principles from other disciplines, like evolution and psychology. Is conditional fatherly love really the kind of love that a child needs (in addition to unconditional motherly love)? I have never heard of this position on parenting and would have liked to see references to the original sources.

I picked this book up never having read THE BIG QUESTION by Marinoff that is mentioned in other reviews. The ideas in this book are interesting and the writing style is thought provoking and funny. Its great!

This book is the paperback edition of "The Big Questions" by Marinoff. This MINOR DETAIL is not mentioned in the description. If you have the hardback of The Big Questions, DON'T ORDER THIS BOOK! The original is an interesting read, and deserves 3 stars. The big question really is: Why the title change?

This book came highly recommended. I was happy to learn that some educators are actually waging an effort to return philosophical dialogue to prominence in the educational matrix. I was looking for creative thinking, new challenges in philosophy, new paths to dialogue introduced, a wonderful case history.

What I received was hype! This book is emblematic of the tragedy of our educational system. Lou Marinoff somehow "achieved" a Ph.D., which should indicate exceptional research skills, and a profound knowledge of his chosen subject. This book has so many high school level compositional errors and worse, serious subject errors in one of the most well documented philosophies of human history, to demonstrate that it is more a rambling opinion by marijuana addict than anything authoritative or well thought out.

At very least, the book ends up slouching for a political manifesto of the plea to return philosophy to its rightful place in the educational system. Unfortunately, this book functions as yet another proof of the failure of American "higher" education.

From a weak start to a woeful middle, I could not bring myself to finish this book. The positions and "research" could be easily dismantled by a high school debate. This is not the kind of "support" philosophy deserves, let alone from a PhD.!

This book is a disaster. It's written apparently (or ghost-written, since someone else seems to have had to reorganize and make it intelligible) by someone with a PhD in philosophy, but it reads more like someone with a specialty in new age psychology or something like that, since there's little real philosophy to sink your mind into. If a book is an entity that has a beginning, middle, and end, then this doesn't qualify as a book, since it doesn't seem to have an ending, but instead just seems to come to a dead halt, I guess the author realizing that he had nothing to say. I sure hope people who read this don't come away thinking this is in any way what philosophy is all about, who that people who get PhDs in philosophy typically write such tripe.