The book is a welcome addition to the field of Moral philosophy. It presents a good comparison between Eastern and Western description of morals, clearly siding with the Eastern approach which I think is wrong. Western 'individualistic' approach may seem off-hand and shallow but I find it very difficult to reject the Western achievements in freedom and liberty just based on a few months of research in India I am afraid. India is no comparison with the author's home country USA which the author has clearly being influenced with.
Nevertheless the author does a great job of explaining with a number of stories and analogies the difference between reason and impulsiveness, with impulsiveness and emotions clearly leading and reason coming in after with elaborate justifications. Again I tend to agree with this analysis of the emotions dominating our lives, but I was a bit surprised why the author missed a trick with not drawing more from the rich research available from the various religions of the world. Again the whole scientific term claimed by the author as a very new area of study is nothing different from hundreds of years of very rich studies already available on the religious shelves in countless libraries across the world. Religion is an old player in this domain and the author should have fully utilized the rich resource at hand.
There is one reference to the Quranic approach to apostasy which according to the author is clearly prescribed as death which is an untrue claim as given on the following link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
The book does a tremendous job of explaining the blind nature of following political ideologies by drawing upon examples for the Democrates and the Republicans in American political domain. It also explains the genesis of morals quoting from Darwin and the latest in evolutionary sciences. I think the author does a tremendous job presenting morals as necessary but not in the real living breathing world.
Nevertheless the author does a great job of explaining with a number of stories and analogies the difference between reason and impulsiveness, with impulsiveness and emotions clearly leading and reason coming in after with elaborate justifications. Again I tend to agree with this analysis of the emotions dominating our lives, but I was a bit surprised why the author missed a trick with not drawing more from the rich research available from the various religions of the world. Again the whole scientific term claimed by the author as a very new area of study is nothing different from hundreds of years of very rich studies already available on the religious shelves in countless libraries across the world. Religion is an old player in this domain and the author should have fully utilized the rich resource at hand.
There is one reference to the Quranic approach to apostasy which according to the author is clearly prescribed as death which is an untrue claim as given on the following link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
The book does a tremendous job of explaining the blind nature of following political ideologies by drawing upon examples for the Democrates and the Republicans in American political domain. It also explains the genesis of morals quoting from Darwin and the latest in evolutionary sciences. I think the author does a tremendous job presenting morals as necessary but not in the real living breathing world.
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