Influential Books

Photo of a bust of Socrates at the library at Trinity College Dublin

Recently on Bluesky, I did one of those things where people post about things (in this case, books) that have “influenced them or stayed with them.” I enjoyed doing it because it was also an occasion to think a little about my intellectual development. It occured to me that the list would have been quite different if I had compiled it as an undergraduate or graduate student. Likewise, should I live so long, my list in another decade or two might look quite different. This list speaks ultimately to my thinking and my library today.

Aside from selecting which books have influenced you, it’s challenging to consider what to leave out. There are many other books that didn’t make the list below but that also have been important to me. I arbitrarily excluded Biblical texts and novels. Some of these probably should be on the list, but you have to make judgment calls when a list is limited to 20 items, which is probably too long anyway for readers on social media!

For what it's worth, I don't interpret "influence" as suggesting that I take myself to understand the significance of these works (whatever that might mean) and that this is what I carry with me. Instead, what I mean is that I have read these books, and the books provoked me in some way that did not fade over time. In different ways, each of these books remains present to my thinking. 

Here's my list. (I'm leaving out publication information because with lots of these books, there are multiple editions and translations.)

1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

2. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations

3. Collingwood, R. G., The Principles of Art 

4. The Zhuangzi 

5. Gutiérrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation

6. Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius

7. Cavell, Stanley, The Claim of Reason

8. Diamond, Cora, The Realistic Spirit

9. Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

10. Horwich, Paul, Truth

11. Putnam, Hilary, Renewing Philosophy

12. Smart, Ninian, Dimensions of the Sacred

13. Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion

14. Sells, Michael, Mystical Languages of Unsaying

15. Masuzawa, Tomoko, The Invention of World Religions

16. Popkin, Richard, The History of Scepticism

17. The Analects

18. Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Cosmopolitanism

19. Yang, Fenggang, Religion in China

20. Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time

Not a big surprise that Wittgenstein looms large over my list, but I tried to contain it as much as possible. (So, other works of Wittgenstein's and Wittgenstein interpretation were left off the list.) Other books in the list reflect either Wittgenstein-adjacent philosophy, existential contemplation, theology, and/or historical and historiographical work in philosophy and religious studies.

Many books were left on the shelf, as it were. My extended list also included these books -- 

Alston, William, Perceiving God

Ames, Roger, Confucian Role Ethics

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Augustine, Confessions

Beauvoir, Simone de, The Second Sex

Clayton, John, Religions, Reasons, and Gods (left off the list because I played a role in preparing the posthumous manuscript for publication).

Davidson, Donald, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

Dennett, Daniel, Consciousness Explained

Goldman, Alvin, Epistemology and Cognition

Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Hume, David, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Johnson, Ian, The Souls of China

Montaigne, Michel de, Apology for Raymond Sebond

Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere

Neville, Robert, The Truth of Broken Symbols

Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals 

Phillips, D. Z., Wittgenstein and Religion

Plato, Republic

Putnam, Hilary, Realism with a Human Face

Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object

Sartre, Jean-Paul, No Exit

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism

Taylor, Charles, The Ethics of Authenticity

Tillich, Paul, The Courage to Be

Wiesel, Elie, Night

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty

The Xunzi

It also occurred to me when making the list that many of the works that had the most influence on me have been articles, and that this book-focused portrait of intellectual influence completely ignores that dimension. Maybe one day I will write up a sequel on 20 or so articles that have likewise influenced my thinking. 

November 5th and History

Photo of a quote by James Baldwin at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC

After the recent U.S. presidential election, many of us who are committed to the ideals of a pluralistic liberal democratic society are reeling, despairing of what is to come. The open embrace of racist tropes by the incoming president, the agenda of detaining and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, the threats to health care coverage for millions of citizens (as well as erosion of standards for health care), and the labeling of journalists and academics as enemies of the people are just a few of the reasons why many, including myself, are very worried about what will unfold over the next several years.

With Trump’s electoral victory, reactionary rightwing movements, including Christian nationalism and (for lack of a better expression) tech authoritarianism, are enthusiastically preparing to take the reins of the federal government. In many parts of the country they are already culturally and politically ascendant. For years, Christian nationalists have been occupying positions in government. With Trump and Vance’s election, they will reach further and further into the administrative systems of government. On a federal level, I anticipate the leveraging governmental resources—from money to the military—to advance their ends even through states that might otherwise attempt to resist their policies. 

It is hard to know what will happen and thus how people of conscience should act. The first thing is to preserve truth, to tell the stories of what happens so as to counter the seemingly ever-present lies. The second thing (or maybe what should be first) is to care for vulnerable people in one’s midst who will be targeted by those in power and their allies. If it is possible, a third thing would be to develop or strengthen communities of trust and care; such communities would enable psychological and ethical, and perhaps spiritual, survival in the short term and ethical and political organizing in the long term.

The other night, I watched the documentary “King in the Wilderness” (2018), which covers the last year or so of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life. The more I’ve learned about King’s prophetic vision, from his critique of racism to the related critiques of militarism and poverty, the more I have come to see just how deep his wrestling with the moral issues in this country went. The multifaceted critique stays with me, but what about King’s faith in God and in America?

MLK Memorial in Washington, DC

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968

MLK’s social and spiritual activism continues to speak to the real possibility of seeing other people in their full dignity and humanity and to the transformative potential of this vision for our communities, society, and world. Seeing what I have in my life, however, I don’t know that I could believe in any sort of teleology within history. And it’s not clear to me that the United States will ever overcome its essential contradiction of commitment to constitutional equality of individuals and the legacy (frequently shut away from reflection) of enslavement of Africans and white domination Native Americans and of people of color.

The inevitability of brutal state power over possible sources of dissent is a characteristic of authoritarian societies. One sees the co-opting of potential sources of organizing against state power, from laborers, to educational systems, to religious organizations. The fragility of minority rights within societies wavering in their democratic commitments shows the importance not just of laws but of cultures of inclusion. 

While I do not believe in any sort of teleology in human history, at the same time, I cannot do without a sort of conviction that in the end, our societies can become more just, more humane. I don’t say this naively or flippantly. I don’t believe it will happen. I hold soberly to that uncertainty. At the same time, I cannot remain in that hopeless place. 

To that end, I have begun reading Eddie Glaude Jr.’s We are the Leaders We’ve Been Looking For (2024). The original lectures on which the book was based were given in 2011 at Harvard (the W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures) and can be found on Youtube. Here’s a link to the first lecture in the series:

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In February of 2008, I attended a campaign rally that Barack Obama held in Boston, at the Seaport World Trade Center. I got there early, waited in line for a long time and thus when we were let inside, I was standing near one of the barriers just before the stage, close enough to snap some blurry but recognizable photos of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Deval Patrick, and Obama himself. After the rally, Obama went down the line, shaking hands. As I shook his, I said to him, “Go get ‘em!” I hadn’t really thought through what I really wanted to say; this is what came to mind and I blurted it out. He seemed to process this for a moment and then said in his characteristic way, “Thank you!” 

Photo of Barack Obama greeting the crowd at a campaign rally at Boston's Seaport World Trade Center, February 4, 2008

Since then, I’ve wondered from time to time if I should have said something different. After all, his 2008 campaign had been, in part, about overcoming traditional divides in politics (no red states or blue states). Was my wish too partisan? But mustn’t one be partisan in contending for a genuinely culturally and racially diverse democratic society?

The America that is currently on the precipice has in truth barely been a democracy—just since the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and it is deeply uneven in how it has delivered on that promise. I would have preferred for the challenge to have been one of reforming the current political structure than contending with empowered Christian nationalists, tech world authoritarians, and the narcissist that is Trump. It is perhaps to be expected to feel profound fear and even despair at times, when so many have fought so hard for the realization of a universal liberty seemingly promised in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. 

Thus, it is important to be reminded in the coming days and years that struggling for freedom is also part of American history. It also is an American inheritance. This is a history that it will be good to reexamine, to reach down into again and again, in order to restore and to find ways to put into practice that faith in a future that recognizes our human diversities.

The Philosophical Investigations in Philosophy of Religion

Book image from Wikipedia

With last year being the 70th anniversary of the publication of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, the Journal of Mind, Language, and the Arts (JoLMA) has been putting together a thematic issue on the legacy of this core work of Wittgenstein’s. I've got an article forthcoming in the issue. I'm looking forward to reading the other pieces when the issue comes out.

My article concerns the way the text has been read in philosophy of religion (to date) and considers some possible new ways in which the text might be explored in the field.

Rereading the book again in working on my article, I was reminded that this is one of those philosophy texts that has been with me most of the way through my philosophical education and development. I first read the work closely in a Wittgenstein seminar taught by Saul Traiger during my final year at Occidental College. I’m not sure exactly what I gleaned from the text at the time, but I sensed in Wittgenstein’s writing a certain depth and impatience with nonsense that was very appealing if also slightly frightening as well.

In that course, I attempted to write a final paper on ethics and the PI. I say “attempted to write” because I am certain the paper must have failed to grasp what “the ethical” might mean in connection with that book. Yet, this was a question present in my mind and one that has stayed with me over the decades. Even as I was then seeking to see the relevance of Wittgenstein to mainstream topics in analytic philosophy—such as meaning and reference, truth, the possibility of private language—I also was then beginning to think about and am now very interested in considering the bearing of this work on questions in theory of value, philosophy of religion, and comparative/cross-cultural philosophy.

It was to my great surprise then that I discovered more or less by accident that there were figures who had considered how ideas in the PI might be relevant to philosophy of religion. While not exactly encouraged at either Occidental or San Francisco State, I began to become interested in analytic philosophy of religion. I first read Alvin Plantinga and William Alston during the years of my Masters program at SFSU and while I found them refreshing for seriously engaging with philosophical questions concerning Christianity, I also found them to be more theologically conservative than my own philosophical and perhaps even “spiritual” sensibilities about religiosity. I think it was in a piece by one of these two that I came across a critical remark about a certain D. Z. Phillips and his “Wittgensteinian fideism.” That stuck with me. It seemed like an inadvertent recommendation.

(Incidentally, during these years I had the chance to meet Plantinga, Alston, and Phillips, who were each very generous with their time and patient with my questions. That really meant a lot to me at the time, and still does.)

During my time at Boston University, I came to have my own views on “Wittgensteinian fideism,” and the overall inadequacy of the expression in academic discourse. Nevertheless, it is not for nothing that there has been confusion about how Wittgenstein's philosophy bears on problems in philosophy of religion. Since Wittgenstein did not develop a philosophy of religion per se, the work falls to students, later interpreters, and critics to piece together what a philosophy of religion after Wittgenstein might look like. That is where my article picks up. Since the PI was the first work of Wittgenstein’s mature thought to see publication, it has had a very significant influence on how Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion developed and came to be perceived. My contribution to the JoLMA issue aspires to offer a portrait of how some philosophers of religion interacted with the PI and the ideas contained within it.

I was reminded a few years ago, when watching the presentations from a conference on the Swansea “school” of Wittgenstein interpretation, that in addition to what is published is what is written but left unpublished, and in addition to that is what is discussed in seminars and informal settings and never put down in writing. This too is part of the history of philosophy although it shadows the better known byways. Within history, there are always many more voices who could and should figure into the stories later generations tell about earlier times. I know there is much that is not included my portrait; it is a gesture towards that larger history of reception of Wittgenstein’s ideas and arguments among philosophers interested in religions. And, of course, this reception is still ongoing.

*Update 10/29/2024 -- The article is now available here.