Summary
Title: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God
Author: A. C. Grayling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195162528
Pro:
• Short but engaging essays on a variety of moral, social, and political issues
• Raises a great deal of interesting questions and ideas that deserve serious thought
Con:
• I wish it were longer
Description:
• Collection of essays, previously published elsewhere, on a variety of topics
• Offers a critical and philosophical examination of different social, moral, and political issues
• Provides an expression of how to live a good and moral life without God or religion
Full Review
There are a few philosophers who try to reach out beyond the class room, with one of the most fascinating being A. C. Grayling, a British literary journalist and university professor of philosophy who contributes the weekly column "The Last Word" to The Guardian. Grayling has written a great deal of material that attempts to bring philosophical questions and philosophical thinking to a wider audience, some of which has been collected in the recent book Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God.
The origins of the many short pieces that appear in this work are varied, but they were all chosen and arranged with a deliberate eye towards illuminating particular themes from different directions. General topics include morality, culture, war, sex, and nature. A more overarching theme can be noted, however, in the collection's subtitle: The Good Life Without God.
Grayling does not shy away from giving his opinions on things, writing for example that "there is no greater social evil" than religion and that religion is, in fact, the source of many of our social ills rather than a likely source of solutions. At the same time, it isn't exactly clear how he defines "religion." He certainly includes the traditional and even fundamentalist expressions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but he doesn't seem to have any complaints about Buddhism, Confucianism, or other religious systems. A slightly different perspective can be found in a later essay:
- "[T]he real reason for the bitterness and persistence of human conflicts has little to do with resources and everything to do with ideology, opinions, beliefs and traditions. ...It is only humans, with their congenital vice of inventing differences of politics and faith, who murder one another because they disagree. And what makes the tragedy more poignant is that the less secure their grounds for belief, the more anxious and violent their adherence to it - and the greater their readiness to kill and die in its defense."
Grayling's real enemy, it seems, is dogmatic and unyielding submission to an ideology while refusing to grant the possibility that others may have a point or justification for their own beliefs. There is no question that this occurs far too often in religion; in fact, it seems reasonable to conclude that religion's chief weakness may be its susceptibility to such pretensions. However, there is also no question but that it occurs readily outside of religion as well. While it may be a weakness of religion, it is more significantly a weakness of humanity to which we all are susceptible.
