Guide for the Perplexed

Rating:
Summary: A Classic, invigorating, clear and sharp
Review: A guide for the perplexed is a "philosophical guidemap" by the author of "Small is Beautiful". He develops some beautiful and perceptive ideas in the book, which is worth reading just for the quotes alone.

The basic thrust of the book is that throughout the history of humanity, there were considered to be "different levels of being", with increasing levels of awareness and consciousness, and that only relatively recently has the progress of science been so successful that consideration of our "inner" nature and being has been displaced.

Schumachers book is highly pertinent and relevant and every bit as useful and brilliant as his "Small is Beautiful". It is however a book about man, his purpose and meaning in life, and the role (if any) of spirit. At various times Schumacher was a Buddhist and a Christian and his quotations cover a wide spectrum of sources and views from both eastern and western philosophies.

Rating:
Summary: We all need to create our own map for living
Review: Do you wonder whether humanity has the correct view of itself? Do you think that we need a radically different worldview? Do you think we need to awaken from our spiritual sloth? Are you interested to read the last words from a brilliant mind and unorthodox thinker to a muddled world - a world perplexed by the problems of its own making? This book by the author of "Small is Beautiful" received good reviews, such as "The most exciting philosophical book for ages" and in fact the author starts off with philosophical maps. At school he had been given a map of life and knowledge - how to get into the job market and make money basically - but without any of the markings which he considered to be of the utmost importance for the conduct of his life; he was perplexed until he realized that his perceptions were probably sound and it was the map that was not only incomplete but also basically unsound. He felt like he had been given a map of New York and told to find his way in Chicago. In due course, he came to the conclusion that the traditional map makers - those in authority, our teachers, our leaders - know nothing about what really matters in life and that they were quite unqualified for the task. From that moment he started to think for himself and piece together his own map of what is important that he should know and of how he should live his life. He found that with the ever more rigorous application of the scientific method the last remnants of ancient wisdom had been discarded in the name of objectivity. He decided to construct his own map based on four universal truths - the world; man and his equipment to meet the world; man's way of learning about the world; and what it means to live in the world.

Schumacher found that traditional wisdom handed down to us through the centuries distinguished between "higher" and "lower" things and levels of being but that this had been rejected because they were not subject to quantitative measurement. Thus the traditional map did not address the question "What am I to do with my life?" Without the qualitative concepts of higher and lower it was impossible to even think of guidelines for living that lead beyond individual or collective utilitarianism and selfishness. Without these qualitative concepts it is not possible to find out where everything has its proper legitimate place because nothing can be understood unless its level of being is fully taken into account. Many things are true at a low level of being but become absurd at a higher level and vice versa.

The author then moved on to reflect on levels of being and that his task was to look at the world and see it whole - what our ancestors referred to the great "Chain of Being", beginning with the Divine. The great majority of mankind, throughout its known history, until very recently, has been convinced that the Chain of Being extends upwards beyond man. What is more, they considered this belief to be the most profound of all truths. A person fixed in the philosophy of materialistic scientism, denying the reality of the "invisibles" and confining his attention solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed lives in a very poor world - so poor in fact that he will experience it as a meaningless wasteland unfit for human habitation. It is self-awareness, constituting the difference between animal and man, that is a power of unlimited potential, a power that not only makes man human but gives him the possibility, even the need, to become superhuman. To be properly human you must go beyond the merely human. It is as though a book of great wisdom is given to a dog and to different people. To the dog, the book is nothing more than a colored object. To an illiterate it may be no more than pretty pictures; to a young and undeveloped mind it may be no more than words and sentences; to the superficial reader the book may be just a good story; but to the wise the book may unlock the secrets of the universe. This is what Schumacher meant by self-awareness, of higher and lower. Man is capable of bringing the whole of the universe into his experience but what he will actually grasp depends on each persons Level of Being. The "higher" the person, the greater and richer is his or her world. Life is a magnificent symphony that only the higher can appreciate.

The author goes on to imagine a perfect being who is always and invariably exercising his power of self-awareness - his power of freedom - to the fullest degree, unmoved by any necessity. This would be a Divine Being, an almighty sovereign power, a perfect unity, where "higher" also means and implies "more inner", "more interior", "deeper", "more intimate" and where "lower" means and implies "more outer", "more external", "shallower", "less intimate".

If you have concluded that the philosophical map given to you when young did not equip you well for living in this world; if you have a gut feeling that moving beyond the "lower" and seeking the "higher" is what we are here in this world to do; if you feel that you have been concerned only with the measurable and have been missing out on the invisibles; if you feel that you have settled for an impoverished view of reality; if you have been struggling to make your own philosophical map because you were given a map that was inadequate or misleading; then this book by one of the wise men of the last century is a very good place to start.

Rating:
Summary: A laudable attempt at a cheerful philosophy by a kind person
Review: however, bad logic is used from the very beginning to provide the foundation for a quasi religious system, starting with the proposed "Four Levels of Being": inanimate matter/live plants/animals/humans. The humans are supposed to be a combination of matter, life, consciousness, and self-awareness. The animals are this minus self-awareness, plants, this minus consciousness, and so on. The immediate question: how do we know animals have no self-awareness and plants no consciousness? Because plants don't wave hands, and we don't understand the sounds animals make? By the same logic, shall we then say the French have no self-awareness? (Judging from a book by Michel Foucault I've recently read, that wouldn't seem impossible... and I read an English translation!)

Anyway, as an initial axiom, all of these are rather unconvincing. We really don't know who's got what, the only thing we know is ourselves -- and even that without certainty. The author then adds that the above hierarchy may be somewhat blurred and that a lack of exact boundaries is no reason to discard the structure itself. Well, OK, if you say so.

The author is certainly a kindly and learned man: the book is suffused with a sense moral excellence and a goodness of the heart, but all the same -- philosophically it's weak, what it amounts to is a call to self-comforting delusion, vague religiosity.

To a rational individual it will do no harm. To an irrational individual it will provide authoritative-sounding excuses for irrationality. But for either reader, I doubt it will dispel metaphysical bewilderment or provide a satisfactory way of dealing with it; thus it will fail to reach its proclaimed goal.

To those contemplating the purchase I would say: life is short, time is at a premium, in one's reading one must ruthlessly discriminate in favor of the absolute best; this one doesn't make it, imo. And on a personal, and perhaps off-topic, note to the perplexed: there is no answer, I fear, we must live forever baffled; all, even the most admirable attempts by humans to shatter the mysterious spell of life are bound to fail; let's hope we're laying out groundwork for a smarter species.

PS. I've come back and revised this note, to recommend another book instead of this one, a book, which, although it doesn't have a catchy "guide to the perplexed" title, does actually have to offer a lot in that (but not only that) respect: "Confessions of a Philosopher", by Bryan Magee. A very personal account from a passionate and open-minded philosopher, totally devoid of metaphysical phantasms (but lacking in neither metaphysics nor imagination).

Rating:
Summary: A True Keeper
Review: I have moved a lot over the years, and there has always been a shelf in my personal library for books that were "to be kept at all cost." A Guide for the Perplexed, along with E.F. Schumacher's two other major works, Small is Beautiful and Good Work, have been on that shelf ever since I first read them some 20 years ago.

Fritz Schumacher was one of those rare individuals who could simultaneously see through the centuries of superstition and frankly silly tradition that bound so much of man's history, religious beliefs, etc. and still understand that there was much of genuine value in the ancient wisdom of mankind. Schumacher was no fundamentalist or religious zealot. He fully embraced and promoted modern ideas and advances, yet also eloquently warned the reader of the dangers of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." There are concepts and ideas in his book that I personally disagree with (is there ANY book on this topic that everyone entirely agrees on?) Yet,the first chapter of the book "On Philosophical Maps" and the Epilogue alone make this book more than worth the purchase price.

A Guide for the Perplexed is both a powerful personal testament, which lays out the philosophical, spiritual and moral underpinnings of Schumacher's life and work, and precisely what the title says it is - a guide, a well-written starting point for those who are willing to think, explore and learn for themselves.

Rating:
Summary: aka A Guide for People who Take Time to Think
Review: I picked this book up again recently and read it, and I found it thoughtful, compact, elegant--this is Fritz Schumacher's "spiritual" book (compared to the better known "Small is Beautiful", a book about economics and sustainable development). He completed it in January of 1977, the year he died.

When I travel to a foreign country, I like to buy a good guidebook to the country or region I'll be visiting. The best guidebooks provide pictures, text and graphics which serve as useful maps to newcomers and explorers. A Guide for the Perplexed aims to be a guidebook or a map of "the real world" for intellectual and spiritual pilgrims. Schumacher offers a look at how we know who we are and where we're headed; in his own words, the book is about how "Man lives in the world."

A map or guidebook does not solve problems and does not explain mysteries; it merely helps to identify them. (p. 8) This is a very practical handbook that I recommend to everyone who thinks.

Rating:
Summary: I helps you to recover your soul
Review: I recently read a book titled "How to Think about Weird Things" which basically states, that the mode of logic proposed by Descartes, is the supreme instrument to discover the nature of reality, and remains the best tool that any responsible person can use to guide its life. Indeed, the methodology adopted by its authors to present their arguments is superb, and their demise of meditation, exploration of feelings, emotions and intuition to discover the nature of reality is quite convincing. Nevertheless, it left me anguished, since from their conclusions, the reader could infer that man is just an evolutionary accident and as such he is just subjected to a series of mechanical laws, without any interest or regard for the world of ethics and values. Therefore, the meaning of life is something which can be dictated according to its rational needs. In other words that meaning does not respond to an "adaequatio" to a higher plane of reality. On the contrary, meaning is something artificially adopted by people and societies if it is convenient. Luckily, I found this book by Mr. Schumacher, who with even higher elegance and spotless reasoning explains why reason is not the only tool that could lead us in the right direction if we decide to find what is Truth. I certainly leave to the author to explain his point of view. However, I will allow myself to quote a small paragraph of his book which for me is a very good guide of what is it about.

"Experimentation is a valid and legitimate method of study only when it dos not destroy the object under investigation. Inanimate matter cannot be destroyed, it can only be transformed. Life, consciousness, and self awareness, on the other hand, are damaged very easily and almost invariably destroyed when the element of freedom inherent in this three powers is assumed to be non-existent. It is not simply the complexity at the higher Levels of Being which invalidates the use of the experimental method, but much more important, the fact that causality which rules supreme at the level of inanimate matter, is at the higher levels places, in a subservient position; it ceases to rule and is, instead, employed by the higher powers for purposes unknown at the levels of physics and chemistry".

Rating:
Summary: A Book for the Ages
Review: O! for a muse of fire... Way back in the 70's I remember being introduced to the writings of E.F. Schumacher through The Mother Earth News... I was intrigued by Small is Beautiful, but I was completely and absolutely blown away with A Guide for the Perplexed. For me, this book was a life-altering experience. Who am I? Where am I from? What does it all mean? Like other human beings, I had questions; "and I was left in a state of total perplexity". Schumacher provided the answer. Not to everything, of course, he was "a finger pointing at the moon"; but you can be assured that the finger is pointing in the right direction. Since that time I have persued a liberal education, and my tastes run to Shakespeare, Dante and Marcus Aurelius,but the Guide remains a touchstone, as it were, to the bare bones of what liberal education is about. The Great Truths that Schumacher expounds are just that, and speak universally to all men. While the attack on Science appears dated now, the overall structure is sound. If you, yourself, have achieved some measure of liberal education, by all means give this book to your less well off friends. Few books of the 20th century can match it.

Rating:
Summary: Not the person to tell us what science is...
Review: The author makes the case that human beings are more than a chance accumulation of molecules. While science has its definite merits it cannot solve the fundamental question of purpose. Science can and does provide answers to "how?" but cannot be used for "why!" By the very nature of the scientifc method the questions have to be reduced to numbers and thereby measurement but this is not applicable for the human spirit. Only when science and "religion," in its widest sense rather than sectarian, co-operate in a given human being is personal growth likely to be achieved.
Although one may quibble about certain aspects of this little book it is a useful and appropriate counterpoint to our materialistic society which seems to be bent on self-destruction. It may be especially helpful for college students who have been reared exclusively on Darwin and Freud so that they examine themselves and their purpose in this fragile world of ours.

Rating:
Summary: top class
Review: This book is a superb exposition of the deep flaws in the scientific method which has influenced everyone's lives and the scoiety we live in so profoundly. The logic of Decartes in particular is shown to be seriously fragmented, and moreover at odds with science's latest efforts to understand whole systems, like ecology, or the weather, or even economics. As a matter of fact, man is a whole system so in Schumacher's view Cartesian logic is also flawed in it's approach to life, conciousness and self-awareness, the very properties that bring great breakthroughs in science.

The reason why this book is so revolutionary in my opinion is because, along with the author's previous book, Small is Beautiful, it states the case for drastically reworking the whole of human society.

The modern-day confusion of life, which seems to state that the only reason for existence is to be a consumer within a global capitalist state, raises many problems of self-importance, what is the individual's worth or role in such an scenario? Of course God can't exist in such a scheme because Science can't reduce religion to analysable parts. Human evolution must be an accident because Science can't derive the formula to create life artificially....

This not to say that Schumacher is claiming that the Christian God did all this and he can prove it, he merely suggests that science in itself cannot decide the truth of these things, certainly not if it is based only on objective logic.

Schumacher does address these questions in a quasi-religous sense, but also makes the important point that logic or reasoning without intuition or self-knowledge is worthless, because your reason will declare your own self worthless, or some sort of random accident.
What seems like an attempt to trash science is in fact more like a caution to be careful, and the introduction of Levels of Existence or Being are in fact an attempt to classify scientifically those phenomena that are so often ignored by traditional science.
What Schumacher takes on is a mighty task, essentially a blueprint for a new approach to science, and within that framework new paradigms for economics and religion. Despite a few flaws, he still succeeds in creating a visionary foundation.