Reviews for Citizens, parties and the state

The average rating for Citizens, parties and the state based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-11 00:00:00 Erin Jackson Stroud’s book takes up skepticism not in the sense of ontological doubt, but in the sense of asking how we can ever actually come to know reality. I wasn’t sure that I liked it at first, but it turns out to be an excellent critique that has the unusual quality of getting appreciably better as it goes along. The author starts with the example from the First Meditation in which Descartes asks how we can know we’re not dreaming. He sticks with this example as a reference point throughout the book because it poses the problem of skepticism in its entirety, and this simplicity makes it easy to follow the subsequent discussion. Thinkers since Descartes and Hume have proposed ways by which to ground what we think we know in an objective reality. Stroud critiques these thinkers one by one, taking up Moore, Kant, Carnap and Quine. The value this critique brings to philosophy isn’t really the flaws the author discovers in the reasoning of these gentlemen, but the light he sheds on their philosophies aside from skepticism. Stroud's arguments are good no matter where the reader locates himself in the debate over skepticism. As a realist myself I began to see what the missing ingredient might be in each attempt to ground knowledge in reality, so the steady, in-depth critique the author provides helped me refine or revise my own thinking on the matter. If a philosophy book can do that then its author has connected with his readership. That makes this one of the better philosophy books I’ve read, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic. Stroud drags out the starting discussion of Descartes too long and works the example too finely in later chapters after having already established it. But for that, I would have given this study five stars, which I rarely do for a philosophy book. The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism turns out to be surprisingly good and it's accessible to general readers of philosophy as well as specialists. Stroud’s critiques are very well done; I’m glad I read this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-03 00:00:00 Marybeth Mallios A useful introductory text to Philosophical Scepticism. I'm torn between 4.5 and 5 stars, because I wanted more discussion of the influences responsible for 20th Century cultural divergences in methodology. This book is written for a wide audience, which is not always easy to do while keeping the work appealing to a professional philosopher. This book succeeds.