Customer Reviews

Socratic Logic 3e: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles

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I purchased and read this Book with the intention of passing it to my thirteen year old Son. I chose this book because I know the author and agree with the points he made in the preface.

"Once upon a time in Middle earth, two things were different(1) most students learned "old Logic" and (2) they could think, read, write, organize, and argue better than they can today."

The author is Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor, writer and renowned apologist whose smooth, experienced, writing style flows over the pages punctuated only by his sense of humor. In the introduction, Kreeft explains his intended goals and why this book is different, and he delivers on his promises. For example his chapter on material fallacies is indeed comprehensive and suffers from no "oversimplification".

The book is organized with versatility in mind and can be used by a teacher, a self-learner and a budding philosophy student. The chapters, and the material within them, are well organized with adequate repetition of important concepts. The author's clear and methodical approach is representative of his mastery of the subject and his clean thought processes.

There are simple exercises in the book with thirty pages of even-numbered answers. The point of studying Aristotelian Logic is to apply the concepts to everyday life. Life is where you find the exercises of Aristotelian Logic and the reason to study it. There's no better teacher than the one found here. If I were to complain about any aspect of the book, it would be the near non-existent index.

Lastly, my thirteen year old son has started the book and is enjoying the content and the humor. He admittedly needs assistance with the philosophical (P) sections, but hey, He's thirteen.

So, Who's the target audience of this book? Anyone who wishes to think, speak and write in a coherent, comprehensive manner.

Decades may pass before this book is recognized for what it is: the most straightforward, honest, and philosophically illuminating logic text in print. It is hard to fathom how rare and useful it is for a man as well-read as Kreeft, and as orthodox, to sift through most historical and modern logic texts for us, and to present all the classic features of logic, and the salient departures from the classic approach to logic. Moreover he does this in one highly accessible, lively, readable volume. This book is even clear (and fun) enough to avoid intimidating an interested middle or high school student. It takes a uniquely dedicated and selfless teacher to 'condescend' as charitably as Kreeft does here- this book is bursting with palpable, intellectual energy on even simple topics, and overflowing with helpful examples on more difficult ones.

This book ought to be also a standard, near-required text for Catholic and Christian colleges. It may be some time before that happens, but it will happen, because it needs to.

This book is a great alternative to modern logic texts, if you're looking for a text that treats logic as more than mere symbolic manipulation then this is the book for you!

My parents got me a copy of this book (in its first edition) a little over five years ago, just as I was heading off to college. It's probably the most influential book in my intellectual life to date, since it served as my first introduction to philosophy as well as logic. It took me a year and a half to read every page and complete every exercise -- with extended gaps where I left it aside, of course -- and I found my reasoning abilities considerably improved. I lost track of how many times I experienced, after completing some exercise or debating a point, a sensation like setting a bone in my brain I never knew was dislocated. There's nothing quite like knowing how to judge when a thing is proved and when it is not.

Although I've moved on to study many other philosophies, and have come to disagree with professor Kreeft on some points, Socratic Logic still has a special place in my heart. Having bought the third edition, I look forward to renewing my relationship with this spectacular textbook and rebuilding my ratiocination skills in light of five years' accumulated knowledge.

I was going to end this review with something like "highly recommended for any aspiring philosopher or logician"; but the fact is that I was not an aspiring philosopher or logician when I first picked up the book. It was because of the book that I became one. So pick up a copy and start reading!

This book continually amazes me. Page after page you not only get the benefit of Dr. Kreeft's scholarly devotion to Aristotelian Logic and the Socratic Method but you get wonderful nuggets of wisdom and truth. These "nuggets" that he graciously shares as his examples are the reflections of a lifetime's devotion to academic study and Christian faith par excellence.

If you want to think clearer, read better, write distinctively, and become "larger on the inside" then please, please read this book. It is fabulous!

Peter Kreeft is a great speaker, writer, philosopher, apologist, and I'm sure he's probably a great surfer as well. As a Seminary student, this is the text that I'd recommend to anyone wanting to learn logic. There is no verbosity and the terms are clear and unambiguous, just like a good syllogism. Kreeft carries his readers along gently and guides them through the process while supplying numerous exercises that help the reader see how logic applies to everyday life.

While Kreeft is a Catholic Christian, he is fair to all viewpoints in that he gives a weak argument against Catholicism and one against Protestantism. Kreeft is one who wants students to learn how to think from all sides of an issue and not just the one he holds. (Of course, I still think he's a dangerous opponent for non-Christian viewpoints.)

If you want to learn the good basics of logic in a clear manner, I recommend Kreeft's work.

Peter Kreeft, author of over 40 books, writes: "We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well." And in "Socratic Logic" the good professor discusses the different applications of modern symbolic logic (Kreeft names as "mathematical logic") in relation to "Old Logic." Kreeft tackles some difficult notions yet writes in a very accessible manner.

The reader will discover how to:

- use old logic to rightly think, argue, and write
- utilize the classical Aristotelian logic
- recognize the right benefit of modern logic
- apply logic in apologetic encounters.

Kreeft states: "An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer's tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic - probably more. The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: "What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say."
This volume is straightforward and not too difficult. It makes a fine basic volume for beginners because it is practical and thought-provoking. It will help the reader construct logical and philosophically powerful arguments to advance the truth using the Socratic approach in an assortment of situations.
The author adds: "Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them."

The Dr. Kreeft offers a high-quality analysis and application of old logic for today's use. If you are an educator or a student of logic, or aspire to study how to think critically, then you will receive much for this book.
Kreeft adds: "One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth."

For a fresh book that contends for Christian theism uses logic see:
Truth, Knowledge and the Reason for God: The Defense of the Rational Assurance of Christianity

I am unable to add more than what the other reviewers have written. This is an excellent primer on minor logic. But it might have been so much better if Professor Kreeft and his publisher had added a general index and a glossary to the work.

I bought this book for a basic logic class I am taking. My professor says this is the "best" traditional logic book out there. He says most books deal with symbolic logic, which is very popular right now, but not practical for logic's sake.

The author is very good at describing and detailing every part of the subject. His main downfall is that he can be very wordy and over explain a concept. I found his examples good, but he would go on and on to the point where he confused me when I thought I had the concept. His example exercises tend to be quirky as well.

I would have liked several simple examples, on the first page of the introduction, of the misapplication of symbolic logic, just so I could be clearer what commonsensical logic is. Just today on NPR's Science Friday radio program, I listened to a man discuss the human perception of musical notes and decibels. This man mentioned the fact that when multiple instruments each output, say, ten decibels, there is no additive effect to the human ear. If this fact were to be converted into a very simple general symbolic logic, it would be expressed as 10b+10b=10b, which makes utterly no sense in pure math! LOL :)

The problem I have with this book is further complicated when, on page 26 (which is still the Introduction), Kreeft states:

'All the terms' of an argument 'must be clear and unambiguous. If a term is ambiguous, it should be defined, to make it clear. Otherwise, the two parties to the argument may think they are talking about the same thing when they are not.'

I object somewhat to that statement (though not necessarily to Kreeft's meaning, since I've not yet read every page of the book to be sure he didn't even qualify it).

Firstly, natural language is inherently ambiguous, since most, if not all, human percepts are subject to refinement, and, thus, to sub-distinctation. For example, the taste experience of liquified soup, without ever having first tasted any of its constituents individually, results in the 'intuition' that that taste is unambiguously a single indivisible taste; and, then, when one constituent is tasted separately from the soup, this results in the 'intuition' (erroneously) that there are only two elements of the soup.

Secondly, the act of defining a term to ensure both parties use that term for the same thing is an act which is, at once, a further abstraction and an ideational refinement.

Symbolic, or mathematical, logic is merely an ultra-refined linguistic device for avoiding ambiguities in the first place by eliminating all extraneous content from the 'mechanics' of reasoning (it was only later found suitable for programming programmable computers). It's like a military person complying with the orders of a Commanding Officer, the former retaining only enough sense for the job so as to carry out the orders as intended by the CO.

So, the relationship between mathematical logic and conversational (Socratic) logic is a paraconsistency, meaning that neither logic is the true owner of either bivalent (Socratic) or paraconsistent logic. In 'A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition' the entry on Paraconsistency states that 'we need not assume that the inconsistencies in' important theories 'are aberrations that must be removed before' these theories 'can be properly studied.'

All of which means that attaining unambiguity (clarity of terms) is a continual, if lurching, process of negotiation between differing reasoning agents (or between differing modes of reasoning in one agent), regardless of their intelligence (see the Preface, the tenth sentence). As certain helicopter pilots say, 'The key to unpredictability is predictability', which is exactly how natural language goes: it's like a 'predictable helicopter pilot'.

So, for someone like me, I would have preferred this book begin like a suspense novel: one that grabs you from the first---and narrative---sentence, and hangs onto you until you absolutely must look for a place to land. After all, a key problem of modern times, and which this book makes a major topic, is that too many people learn too much symbolic logic for the amount of real-world experience (including conversational logic) they have (as properly autonomous persons). Even terms like 'inference' and 'deduction' are too symbolic when you lose sight of the ideational ground---like when you're forced to rely on a refined dynamic understanding of the onboard instruments, or, short even of that, on luck, God, or 'subconscious knowledge' (compare "Chapter 15, Section 5. How to read a book Socratically", with a certain congruent other key problem of modern times: autism spectrum (dis)orders).