Customer Reviews

The Illusion of Technique

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

 

 

This is a wonderful introduction to many of the central philosophical questions of the twentieth century. The author focuses on Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and William James as a means to highlight the problems of elevating technique over substance. The book does not assume any familiarity with any of these philosophers, and so provides an entry into their thought. By focusing on Wittgenstein instead of the later logical positivists and Heidegger rather than Sartre or another existentialist, the author can bring out the true greatness of Wittgenstein and Heidegger compared to later philosophers. I recommende this book to anyone interested in critical thinking.

Here is a sample of Barrett's prose.

"One of the disservices of positivism (for which the early Wittgenstein bears some responsibility) was to erect into dogma the slogan 'Mathematics tells us nothing about the real world.' The dogma should have been suspect from the start. It is entirely unlikely that we should have been able to build airplanes or launch rockets without the aid of mathematics."

Here we see Barrett moving bravely through some areas of modern philosophy that are usually clogged with jargon and overly technical treatment, we see him dispensing with crutches, using plain language -- and he takes us with him.

I find William Barrett's books on modern philosophy accessible for all readers. I have read all his books, some of them several times, and each time find new insights into the persistent philophical questions of our modern age.

What I particularly like about this book is that he gets somewhat autobiographcial at the end, demonstrating his philophical belief in God.

The Illusion of Technique is at the same level of excellance as Irrational Man,his most famous book, which is quite an achievement.

William Barrett must have had a flimsy grip on happiness. In "The Illusion of Technique" he describes human life as a "pilgrimage" from "darkness to darkness," with nihilism and loss of meaning ever-nipping at our heels. He thought we need a faith to fend off despair -- or just to get out of bed in the morning! Unfortunately, the theistic God of yore is incomprehensible and remote, and faith in Him is no longer an option. In its place, Barrett would have us cultivate a new faith in Being -- the mystery of existence -- by making connections to non-human nature. As he writes at one point in the book: "The bond that attaches us to the life outside ourselves is the same bond that holds us to our own life." Or as he writes later: "We have only to open ourselves to the world for it to pour its riches are our feet." The argument is embroidered with ideas and themes from Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and William James.

I first read "The Illusion of Technique" years ago in my 30s. I loved it. I just re-read it at 53, and I still love it. Admittedly, the book isn't perfect. It meanders, and takes up in jumbled order huge topics like Logic, Technology, Freedom, Phenomenology, Being, Nihilism, Faith, etc. And for a book written by a university philosophy professor, it is astonishingly underargued, with its many gaps in logic disguised by lovely, if fuzzy, writing. But that said, the book has a sensibility that is elegaic and intoxicating, there are arresting insights and great one-liners, and Barrett had an incredible ability to sum up complex intellectual history in only a few paragraphs or pages. I wouldn't say the book has converted me to pantheism, but it has inspired me to read more William James. (Maybe Husserl, too.)

I took off one star because of the occasional anachronism (who now cares about B. F. Skinner or the Soviet approach to social engineering?) and because the discussion of Wittgenstein and mathematical logic is both hard to follow and not clearly relevant to the book's core thesis.