All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age

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All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age

by Hubert L. Dreyfus, Sean Dorrance Kelly

3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 · rating details · 493 ratings · 126 reviews

In unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it's quite new. In medieval Europe, God's calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlet...more
In unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it's quite new. In medieval Europe, God's calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in “the zone,” you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a “wrong” choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal? All Things Shining says we can. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with and responsiveness to the world. Their journey takes us from the wonder and openness of Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert. Dreyfus, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, for forty years, is an original thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new relevance for people’s everyday lives. His lively, thought-provoking lectures have earned him a podcast audience that often reaches the iTunesU Top 40. Kelly, chair of the philosophy department at Harvard University, is an eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the culture— and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away—captures a generation adrift. Re-envisioning modern spiritual life through their examination of literature, philosophy, and religious testimony, Dreyfus and Kelly unearth ancient sources of meaning, and teach us how to rediscover the sacred, shining things that surround us every day. This book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves. It offers a new—and very old—way to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern world.(less)

ebook, 272 pages

Published January 4th 2011 by Free Press (first published December 22nd 2010)

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Aug 01, 2012 Cheryl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, philosophy

How do you find meaning and purpose for your life in the secular age? What is a meaningful pursuit when the choices in the contemporary age are prolific yet seemingly equal in value? How do you know your life has meaning without the clarity of religion's dictates? And what do the great books of former epochs teach us about how to find the sacred in contemporary culture?

These are the questions asked by the authors of ALL THINGS SHINING: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Ag...more How do you find meaning and purpose for your life in the secular age? What is a meaningful pursuit when the choices in the contemporary age are prolific yet seemingly equal in value? How do you know your life has meaning without the clarity of religion's dictates? And what do the great books of former epochs teach us about how to find the sacred in contemporary culture?

These are the questions asked by the authors of ALL THINGS SHINING: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. The authors emphasize that in the past there was clarity of the sacred. The sacred was whatever a culture would not allow you to laugh at. In contrast to the Middle Ages, for instance, there is almost nothing you are not allowed to laugh at in today's secular society.

With everything being seeminging equal in value, how are we to choose from the multiple stimuli and sensations in our culture to know what is meaningful or sacred?

Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly acknowledge the "sad condition" of nihilism as the fate of humans in the modern age, but are quick to point out that religious belief is not lost in our time, but it plays another role. The absence of certainty leaves open the question and challenge of how to live. Religious believers no longer perceive non-believers to be less than human but instead, while holding onto their convictions, believe there are admirable people who are outside the church.

This change in perception is both exciting and destabilizing because humans must find the sacred in everyday occurrences that were once marginalized by church dogma.

The spine of the book is the quest for wisdom from great books beginning with ancient Greek texts to the modern thoughts of David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert. And the aim is to make people today sensitive to what those of earlier epochs appreciated.

Intensity, meaning and insight can be found in what was marginalized in society in the age of religious rigidity. Bringing back the sacred in the great athletic events and the dinner parties of the Greeks, the polytheism of Melville's MOBY DICK and the truth of the complexity of human life will free us to find the sacred in everyday events and approach life with gratitude and surprise. Highly Recommended!
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Feb 28, 2011 Dave Maddock rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

Based on the subtitle, I was expecting the book to be about replacing religious practice with humanistic ones. That is, when one becomes secularized and religions' dictates can no longer provide meaning for your life, here is how one can turn to the Western Classics for fulfillment. Instead, it was a whirlwind survey of cherry-picked works from the Western Canon, how each addresses the problem of nihilism, and a plea to revive a polytheistic approach to assigning meaning to life.

Unfortunately, t...more

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Dave Maddock I've intrigued you with my keen insight and can only disappoint from here! I'll try to keep the magic going anyway... ;-)

I'm trying to draw a distinct...more
Jul 04, 2011 03:17am

Julie Just ran across this again - pretty sure I read it before, although Goodreads apparently forgot about that. Wait, no - just looked at the dates. I pro...more
Oct 23, 2011 11:23am

Mar 14, 2011 Caren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-nonfiction

I very much enjoyed the literary criticism parts of this book, but was less enchanted with the final "self-help" chapters. (But then, I wasn't looking for a self-help sort of book...) The authors are philosophy professors and the book is at its best when they relate ideas of philosophers to their chosen literary texts. The western classics explored at length are Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey", works of Aeschylus, Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Melville's "Moby Dick". I only read Homer fairly recentl...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Edward rated it 4 of 5 stars

The highest praise that I can give this book is that it makes me want to reread the classics, particularly Homer's ILIAD and ODYSSEY and MOBY DICK, the latter of which the authors regard as crucial in understanding what 21st century western humanity believes in, or doesn't. As well, it makes me want to read, for the first time, the contemporary writings of David Foster Wallace which are at the heart of our existential questioning.

At just over 200 pages this is a short book but packed with provo...more The highest praise that I can give this book is that it makes me want to reread the classics, particularly Homer's ILIAD and ODYSSEY and MOBY DICK, the latter of which the authors regard as crucial in understanding what 21st century western humanity believes in, or doesn't. As well, it makes me want to read, for the first time, the contemporary writings of David Foster Wallace which are at the heart of our existential questioning.

At just over 200 pages this is a short book but packed with provocative thoughts. The authors see 20th and 21st century culture as a series of responses to the "death of God", that is, a lack of a religious dimension which began with the enlightenment, especially Descartes, followed by Kant's elaborations on the idea of the "self" as the determiner of all meaning. David Foster Wallace's characters torture themselves trying to create meaning in an essentially meaningless universe.

In contrast to this grim self-direction are the Greeks whose gods (it's irrelevant how much the Greeks literally believed in their existence)reflect a "phenomena of gratitude and wonder." In contrast to the modern view that we are entirely responsible for our own behavior is the Homeric idea that we act best when we open ourselves to being drawn from without by this multitude of polytheistic gods, however arbitrary and capricious they might be.

With brief stops to discuss Christ, Augustine, and Dante in their contributions to the rise of monotheism, the bulk of the book is devoted to Melville's MOBY DICK, especially Ahab's obsessive urge to "strike through the mask". In his pursuit of the whale, he is trying to determine whether any montheistic and transcendent meaning of the universe exists. Ahab is a weird mixture of Kant's autonomy and Dante's vision of eternity, and of course, he fails to resolve much of anything. Interestingly, the author sees Pip, the black cabin boy who, while considered insane, as the figure who is able to hold multiple and conflicting view of reality at the same time - a reality which truly is "in-sane", or more accurately, "ex-sane." That's to say that his vision goes beyond what we consider rational thought processes.

The conclusions the authors reach are particularly interesting - we feel most alive when we are engaging in an activity which lifts us beyond ourselves. This often occurs in sports, with the sensation of what the authors call "whooshing." The dangers of modern technology are too often that they drive us inward and dull our sense of making distinctions. The "gods" (in modern or ancient terms) call us to "cultivate our sensitivity", the sense of wonder and surprise that is too often missing in our lives. (less)

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Jun 12, 2013 Jose rated it 2 of 5 stars

The best things about this book are the analyses of Infinite Jest and Moby Dick. (which are probably a rehash of earlier ones) The rest of it is a half baked idea that appealing to our classical polytheistic roots is the way to live a meaningful life in the modern world. Of course they don't literally mean the worship of gods, but more abstractly to follow our instincts and "give in" to our core being as personified by the likes of Aphrodite, Ares and Athena. Ok, this is ridiculous and the autho...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Literary Review The rated it 5 of 5 stars

By Charles Berret

For The Literary Review
Volume 54 "Emo, Meet Hole"

I first encountered Hubert Dreyfus, one of the authors of All Things Shining, as a
college student trying to figure out, in the words of David Foster Wallace, “what it
means to be a fucking human being.” Dreyfus has a reputation as the best living
interpreter of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, so I read Dreyfus while attempting to break through the fortified prose of Being and Time. Consequently, I found
Dreyfus’s new project, A...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

I rate this book a 3.5 out of 5, because I think it had a lot of good thoughts, but couldn't hold my attention very well at certain parts. It also would have been easier to read if I had been a literature major in college or enjoyed philosophy a bit more.

That said there are definite gems in this book. Homer/Athenian time-frame thinking are nice and totally took me off-guard. The medieval devotion to god and the way people drift based on autonomy was also really interesting. He had interesting cr...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Clare Cannon rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A full response to this book would require a doctoral thesis. Below are some brief thoughts about what I understood were the books claims and why I agreed or disagreed.

This is a complex discussion of some philosophical problems of our age, which considers aspects of philosophies discovered in the cultural or religious traditions of Western history. Many of the philosophical concerns are valid, as are many of the historical philosophies they look to for insight, but the authors formulate the cont...more

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May 05, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-about-books, nonfiction

Every now and then I read a book which makes me wish I were a lot smarter and well-read than I really am. Now, as a librarian, you would probably expect me to have read quite a bit, and I have, but books like this one make me realize how much more there is (even though I already have forty-nine books checked out of my current library). In this work, two philosophers come together to examine what they deem “western classics” and examine their connection with the way our world is today. For those...more Every now and then I read a book which makes me wish I were a lot smarter and well-read than I really am. Now, as a librarian, you would probably expect me to have read quite a bit, and I have, but books like this one make me realize how much more there is (even though I already have forty-nine books checked out of my current library). In this work, two philosophers come together to examine what they deem “western classics” and examine their connection with the way our world is today. For those who lean towards the melancholic, “who wants to lure back the shining things, to uncover the wonder we were once capable of experiencing and to reveal a world that sometimes calls forth such a mood; anyone who is done with indecision and waiting, with expressionlessness and lostness and sadness and angst, and who is ready for whatever it is that comes next; anyone with hope instead of despair, or anyone with despair that they would like to leave behind, can find something worthwhile in the pages ahead” (xi). And although this is a bold and ambitious claim, I would argue that they succeed.

The first chapters address “contemporary nihilism” in a very unique manner, comparing and contrasting David Foster Wallace and his work “Infinite Jest” with Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat Pray Love.” The authors contend that both authors are addressing the “tension between commitment and choice” (27) and that “although each is motivated by a deep sense of confusion and lostness, a sense that the darkness of being adrift is a central feature of the age, nevertheless each feels strongly that the writer’s responsibility is to show the way forward, to offer a vision of the hopeful possibilities available in the modern world” (28). The following chapters jump backwards in history to Homer and other Greek literature, then to Augustine, Dante, Kant, and so on. In each chapter, the authors look at the society and culture which surrounds each writer or work, including the religious and philosophical assumptions that the general population lived with, and how that should affect the modern reading.

This is probably one of the better books I have read recently, even with a quick skimming through. Although the idea of using classic literature to explore philosophy has been done before, this one is particularly poignant as it considers the secular nature of our contemporary society, and makes readers consider what may be lost in a culture that is so disconnected from the sacred. (less)

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Feb 19, 2012 Rachael rated it 3 of 5 stars

All Things Shining is an exploration of existential philosophy applied to a criticism of wallace, Nietzsche, Homer and Moby Dick, among other things. The goal of the book is essentially something like a re-enchantment in the wake of modernity brought about by Descartes and Kant in their emphasis on individual autonomy. All that autonomy landed us with Nietzsche and later wallace, both nihilists insisting that we must make our own meanings. The authors see an alternative in the writings of Melvil...more All Things Shining is an exploration of existential philosophy applied to a criticism of wallace, Nietzsche, Homer and Moby Dick, among other things. The goal of the book is essentially something like a re-enchantment in the wake of modernity brought about by Descartes and Kant in their emphasis on individual autonomy. All that autonomy landed us with Nietzsche and later wallace, both nihilists insisting that we must make our own meanings. The authors see an alternative in the writings of Melville, particularly his Moby Dick. Ahab, and later Pip, driven mad, represents the modern, single-mindedly seeking an ultimate unifying reason for everything, and the quest has driven him insane. The alternative is represented by the pagan Queequeg and Ishmael, the latter able to inhabit the Christian and pagan worlds. The upshot is an ability to find meaning in a multifaceted fashion, not seeking a unified center but rather fully embracing each possibility, is the way to remain sane. The authors final recommendation then, is to seek moments of crowd induced euphoria, that they call physis and link to Greek paganism, and poiesis, finally tuned skill. Neither of these is going to impart any overarching principle or formula, but is supposed to enrich life in what they describe as a pagan manner, decentered, even chaotic, and only partially in our control.

As an exploration of applied existential philosophy I found this interesting and easy to read, given the constraints that the continental tradition isn't my thing. It also undeniably enriched my understanding of Moby Dick. Ultimately, as an Ahab-like modern, I was unmoved by their advice to abandon my quest for unifying principles. while I certainly think there is something to appreciating things on the mundane level, cultivating 'skill' in things as ultimately meaningless as coffee drinking, I don't think that is any reason not to be moved by our ability to actually make greater sense out of our world through investigation. Further, I don't find the pursuit as cold or maddening as the authors seem to think it must be, it's exciting, even exhilarating. I'd even go so far as to suggest that the universe has turned out to be a much more deeply moving place than the Greeks of Homer could have imagined.(less)

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Jan 09, 2012 Susan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Grabbed this on a whim at a cozy independent bookstore in DC over the break. Started reading it over a pint of porter.

The in-depth discussion of David Foster Wallace's suicidal nihilism was pretty interesting, as were some of the bits about Homer. The chapter on Melville was oustanding. Otherwise, it was a mish-mash of woo-infected academic BS trying to pass itself off as "secular." Now I just want to read Moby Dick again.

To grapple with some serious, secular, useful ideas about human life and m...more

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Dec 07, 2011 Lorinda rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I agree with many of the comments of previous reviewers. The book builds up to the final chapter: Lives Worth Living in a Secular Age but then it falls short. Although I agree with the premise that it is not necessary to follow a monotheistic religion or develop a set of prescriptions about how to act, I think that the authors never really explain what it would mean to be more receptive in today's world.

For them, it has been all downhill since approximately 700 B.C when Homer wrote the Odyssey a...more

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Oct 23, 2011 Terence Blake rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

ALL THINGS SHINING is an ambitious book, it aims at helping us to find meaning in our lives by way of a philosophically informed reading of some of the great classics of the Western Canon. It seeks to address a popular audience rather than a professional one: it has its roots in Heideggerian philosophy but the style is not that of academic prose and it uses examples taken from news items, the practice of sport, and readily available literary classics such as THE ODYSSEY, THE DIVINE COMEDY, and M...more ALL THINGS SHINING is an ambitious book, it aims at helping us to find meaning in our lives by way of a philosophically informed reading of some of the great classics of the Western Canon. It seeks to address a popular audience rather than a professional one: it has its roots in Heideggerian philosophy but the style is not that of academic prose and it uses examples taken from news items, the practice of sport, and readily available literary classics such as THE ODYSSEY, THE DIVINE COMEDY, and MOBY DICK. It can be read without any major difficulty and with a great deal of pleasure, but it has the ambition of addressing the grand question of the search for meaning and for a life worth living in our contemporary world. This is a world that the authors, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly, describe as "postmodern", "technological", and "nihlist": a world where the "shining things" have been lost, where we are subject to a crushing burden of choice without the guidance of an unquestioned framework of meaning, such as served as a foundation for life and its meaning in previous epochs.

According to these authors the world was formerly a world full of intensity and meaning, "a world of sacred, shining things" (cf the preamble ), which elicited moods of wonder and reverence and gratitude and openness. This is the explanation of the book's title. However the shining things are now long gone, and life has become permeated with moods of sadness and lostness, a purely personal affair to be managed by the plans and choices of the closed-off "autonomous" ego. The solution proposed is a reappropriation of Homer's polytheism, now understood to be a polytheism of moods, such as we can see the outlines of in MOBY DICK. An important part of this response is the necessity to cultivate a specific skill that can help us discern when we can or should let ourself be taken up in the moods we encounter (example: a nonviolent freedom march) and when we should resist and walk away (example : a Nazi rally): this skill they call "meta-poiesis".

There is something very attractive about the ideas in this book: the pluralism of understandings of being, the polytheism of moods , meta-poiesis, a subjectivity of openness to the world and wonder at its shining things. But there are ambiguities that make one wonder (in the other sense of wonder) whether the book avoids the trap of romantic nostalgia. Its vocabulary is often nostalgic: "lure back" the gods, "uncover" the wonder, "reveal" the world. Also there is the danger of proposing merely a new postmodern theology, however philosophically distilled and sublimated. Here we can cite the suggestive slippage from "the shining things", index of a world charged with intensity and meaning, to the more theological sounding "sacred things", as if that were the same thing. But surely a life based on intensities, on moods and on meaning without any reference to the sacred is worth living. A last worry is that with their constant evocation of moods that attune a subject and reveal a world the authors seem to be stuck in what Quentin Meillassoux calls the "correlationist circle", unable to talk about the world outside its correlation with subjectivity.

Finally, for a book whose message is pluralist its bibliography is surprisingly monist. There is no mention of such pluralist philosophers as Paul Feyerabend, Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze, William Connolly, or Alain Badiou.(less)

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Sep 28, 2011 Fraser Kinnear rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: culture, history, philosophy

Despite the authors' pedigrees, I was hesitant to pick this up because the "Finding Meaning in a Secular Age" subtitle suggested some sort of self-help book. Then I found it for $4 at one of the Borders Bookstores that was liquidating and snatched it up!

Thankfully, All Things Shining has a historical/lit-crit focus, and turned out to be a fascinating course on how Western culture has changed their value of meaning [meaning of value? :-P ] over time, as seen through some important works of liter...more

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Sep 05, 2011 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: ethics, biography, history

THE GUIDING THEME of the book can be stated in a series of questions.

First, what understanding of being human has shaped the various epochs in the history of the West?
Second, how did these accounts of human being, and of the sacred, keep the problem of nihilism at bay?
Third is there anything in these self-understandings from our history that we can use to combat the nihilism of our secular age?

I don't think the authors really drew any real conclusions in this book that made much sense to me. The...more

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Aug 13, 2011 Chris Holliman rated it 3 of 5 stars

It was the title that attracted me: All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. I felt that the authors were making two assumptions outright: 1) that we dwell in a fallen age devoid of the intensely passionate lives that our ancestors enjoyed and 2) that great books can cure this.

Sure enough, the authors suppose that the overarching zeigeist of our time is nihilism, marked by a loneliness and alienation familiar to us all. They also take for granted that t...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Jason Yang rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of the first philosophy books I've read in a long time. The authors try to communicate this idea that an element of the spiritual and mystical nature of life has been lost within the secular climate of our modern world. They draw upon the ancient and classic literature (primarily Greek legends and Melville's Moby Dick) to illustrate different aspects of modern society and the progression away from a polytheistic past. Their claim is that part of the dynamic range of human experience...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Skrot rated it 2 of 5 stars

About halfway through you start to suspect that these guys have no idea what conclusion they are building toward. There is some fairly incisive literary criticism - the chapter on Moby Dick, in particular, was eye-opening. The whole premise fails, though, when the seemingly mind-blowing advice on how to live a meaningful life in a post-God world that they've been hinting at all along turns out to be nothing more than a few snippets of Greek myth, a dollop of unacknowledged lifts from Canetti's t...more

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Jun 17, 2011 Ellen added it

Shelves: 2011

I'm over a week overdue on this book already, and YET, and YET I have to finish it despite its density.

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Jan 03, 2013 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interesting Book. Dreyfus and Kelly take on a huge burden by attempting to explain the collapse of the Western Paradigm in 226 pages. They describe the gradual encroachment of Nihlism upon Western intellectual life and propose a tenative solution. The authors discuss a variety of authors, philosophers and theologians, including: David Foster Wallace, Homer, Aeschylus, Dante, Luther, Kant, and ultimately Melville. As a civilization, many of us seem to have racionated God out of our lives and ente...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Bryan Neuschwander rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dreyfus and Kelly offer a brilliant couple of opening chapters, and fascinating treatments of Dante and Melville. The discussion of Homer's sacral world as a framework for meaning in our time, however, fails to inspire. In the middle of the book, the treatment of Jesus is seriously flawed. It is ironic that the authors use the Gospel of John to suggest that Jesus was merely one of the "shining things" that helps see how we can find moments of meaning in our existential morass. More incomprehensi...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Philip Scriber rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think I need to read this again, alongside Charles Taylor's A Secular Age and Michael Gillespie's Theological Origins of Modernity. A proper review will come in time, but for now I'm basking in a certain amount of mindblow. Right now, though, this is a book I would call more "useful" than properly informative about the pursuit of meaning in the modern world.

The claim for the last chapter seemed to stress that the tools for meaning must be historically based in order to be comprehensible, that...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'll give it three stars, but I'm not sure I "liked" it.

This is a very odd book. Written by high-level academic philosophers, it is written as a popular book and embraces a form of polytheistic values to address our current nihilism. I read the book because it received so much coverage, especially in the NYTimes, when it came out.

What I did like, in particular, were the sections on Homer, Aeschylus, and Melville. The authors interpret Moby Dick as having a singular place in Western history: "th...more I'll give it three stars, but I'm not sure I "liked" it.

This is a very odd book. Written by high-level academic philosophers, it is written as a popular book and embraces a form of polytheistic values to address our current nihilism. I read the book because it received so much coverage, especially in the NYTimes, when it came out.

What I did like, in particular, were the sections on Homer, Aeschylus, and Melville. The authors interpret Moby Dick as having a singular place in Western history: "the sinking of Ahab's ship might stand for the sinking of the entire history of the West" (Christianity included).

I am fascinated by interpretations of Moby Dick, having previously been influenced by John Updike's, which I included in a sermon once. But I've never read one that placed the novel in such a prominent intellectual role. They read the novel as a critique of the Western tradition, as addressing the same nihilism they are, and also offering a solution -- some polytheistic value-system.

In discussing Homer, their main point is that the excellent person for Homer is not someone who always makes right choices or takes right actions, but is someone who opens him/herself to the power of the gods. Thus, Helen is great because she allowed herself to be overcome by Aphrodite, Achilles because he was overcome by Ares, etc. They propose that our insistence on individual responsibility, decision-making, and action (which they blame upon monotheism) has led inexorably to nihilism.

This is an interesting thesis, but the parts I found odd or bad are as follows. I don't think nihilism is the only available option, despite their reading of David Foster Wallace. I've never been drawn to Wallace myself. This gets at some of the criticism I've read that they misunderstand the role of religion in people's lives.

Their summarized intellectual history of the West is vapic. I often found myself disagreeing with their intrepretation of someone's views (particularly Jesus) or thinking that there was much greater nuance. Plus, I don't think Augustine invented inner thoughts as a concept; I'm pretty sure that despite all the bad he did and influence he had, even upon the development of subjectivity, he didn't invent it.

I found part of the final chapter to be really encouraging and helpful even. There are interesting ideas here about pluralism and how to structure our lives. In fact, I thought that they needed to discuss Oprah, because their conclusions were much like her closing sermon -- live with gratitude, find your calling.

But, then, the very close of the book was completely strange. The Epilogue made no sense whatsoever and seemed to undermine what one just read. And I couldnt' figure out how to take the closing paragraph of the acknowledgements (the last text in the book). Should one take this seriously or metaphorically?

"And thanks, finally, to the gods, who show themselves little by little or sometimes all at once and for whom we hope this book provides an appropriate landing place to welcome you back home."(less)

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Aug 05, 2011 Ron rated it 5 of 5 stars

This fascinating book traces Western civilization's journey from a world that was open to the experience of the sacred and meaningful to a world where meaning has come to be something entirely up to the individual to create. It begins with the Homeric Greeks, and takes us to David Foster Wallace (my favorite) as the best contemporary example of the dilemma this position (most clearly described first by Friedrich Nietzsche) creates for us. On the journey between this beginning and end, they take...more This fascinating book traces Western civilization's journey from a world that was open to the experience of the sacred and meaningful to a world where meaning has come to be something entirely up to the individual to create. It begins with the Homeric Greeks, and takes us to David Foster Wallace (my favorite) as the best contemporary example of the dilemma this position (most clearly described first by Friedrich Nietzsche) creates for us. On the journey between this beginning and end, they take the reader through the impact of Christianity on Western thought, from Jesus' mood of agape love to Augustine (Christianity interpreted through the Greek concepts expounded by Plato), then to Aquinas (Christianity interpreted through the Greek concepts expounded by Aristotle) and Dante, and to Luther's pre-Enlightenment turn away from these Greek concepts but to yet another form of individualism. The authors then run through the Enlightenment really quickly. And I mean really quickly. Focusing only on Descartes and Kant, they show the total turn to autonomy that completes the trip away from the ancient view of meaning that was shared and from without and beyond our control to the modern view of meaning that is individual and from within and totally our responsibility. Yet despite the brevity, they cover the philosophical tradition of the West in a way relevant to any contemporary reader.

What makes All Things Shining not just really interesting but an actually great book is that it is as strong on prescription as it is on diagnosis, an extreme rarity to say the least. The remarkable thing is that they cover this through the same method, through the reading of classic literature to find the answer we desperately need today. To find this answer, they spend a chapter on Moby Dick, one of my all-time favorite novels. And their exposition of Melville was absolutely brilliant. Without going into detail, I can say that they find the answer in Melville's rejection of any kind of monotheism, the demand even to know whether reality has an answer or not, and the embrace of a form a polytheism, a polytheism of meaning and moods and truth.

This book is worth reading, even by those who are not regular readers of philosophy. The reason is because what this book addresses is the dilemma faced by the genius David Foster Wallace, a dilemma that he was unable to solve. This book takes a stab at it, and comes up with some answers worth serious pondering and consideration. At the very least, this book is one of those shining things.(less)

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Jun 21, 2011 Marks54 rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was interesting, although I was not sure I liked it until I got all the way through it. It came to my attention in a joint review with "Examined Lives" about books that look at ethics and morality through the point of view of the classics. The intended punch line seemed to be a reaffirmation of the liberal arts perspective and the generalist approach to dealing with the big questions of life. There was an early chapter on David Foster Wallace that really whetted my appetite. But then i...more This book was interesting, although I was not sure I liked it until I got all the way through it. It came to my attention in a joint review with "Examined Lives" about books that look at ethics and morality through the point of view of the classics. The intended punch line seemed to be a reaffirmation of the liberal arts perspective and the generalist approach to dealing with the big questions of life. There was an early chapter on David Foster Wallace that really whetted my appetite. But then it turned more into a general overlook of the western intellectual tradition from Homeric Greeks through the classical Greeks through the Hebrews and Christianity and into the moderns, including Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, and Melville. Get the idea?? A broad survey!

But there was a point and the authors kept at it. The idea is that our meaning in life comes from sources outside of us that we respect and follow - that our value comes from how we fit into a broader set of values, rules, and relationships - provided in different ways by different cultures throughout history. Modernity, in this view, involves the destruction of these outside sources of meaning such that we are left on our own and have no way of achieving the meaning that we need as part of our makeup. Our extreme and subjective independence is touted as a positive development but in this view it is the end of the road in which values and meaning have been taken away and we have nothing with which to replace them. So far, so good. . . . and the book is interesting for clarifying how Homeric Greek, Classical Greek (Plato), Christianity, and modern philosophy fit together (or not as the case may be). The book outlines the same bankruptcy of modern man that was chronicled by others and it is done so clearly. You may or may not buy the argument, but it is an accessible argument. Compare this to the later work of Philip Rieff, who outlined the modern death of the sacred (God is dead and all that) but is very hard to work through.

The point is what to do about it. The authors make a good try and note a variety of situations that permit the possibility of encountering "sacred" experiences and meaning. While they spend too much time on sports metaphors, the authors clear note the downside of losing oneself in the crowd. Much more interesting to me was the chapter on craft as a mode of interacting with and experiencing sacred value in the world. It reminded me of Richard Sennett's work on craftsmanship. Ultimately, however, the authors have written one chapter too many and end up dodging the issue of sacred value. Why its all around us and all we need to do is notice it! That is a cop out! Even worse, the perspective is "phenomenological" meaning it focuses on our experience of the sacred. What that sacred order is and where it comes from is not addressed (how could it be?). The problem is that if the moderns have done their work and killed God and morality, then what is to be put in its place. The authors suggest nothing - it is already there of course and we just need to notice it. This strikes me as a too facile answer that dodges more questions than it addresses.

Then again, it they acknowledged that they don't have a solution, the next question is why they should be paid attention to, since they are not adding anything new. And it they had a real solution to this modern human condition, then wouldn't that be special? Overall, the book was sufficiently thought provoking but in the end comes across as what you would expect from two liberal arts professors.

Still, on the whole a fine and useful book that is well worth the day or two it takes to read it.(less)

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May 27, 2011 Charles rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, nonfiction

Read my review at Eureka Springs BookShoppe. A quick preview of the link:

In their book, All Things Shining (ATS), by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, the authors portray the post modern era as a period where metaphysics engenders an existential nihilism. The book (ATS) is their effort to provide a window or a small crack through which we might escape the nihilistic metaphysics that dominates our age. For literature of this post modern phenomena they use David Foster Wallace's, Infinite Je...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Mary Fisher is currently reading it

Just beginning this book...find the persons who wrote the inside blurb an interesting mix. But as I read I cannot help but wonder if it is going to be a reflection of idealism or will there be a metaphysic to give some substance...or as a friend once stated to me on the banks of the Thames outside Colin Gunton's office..." do you think the ontic just collapses into the noetic?????

I walked away thinking...where's a dictionary? But as I start reading this book his words came back...is this going t...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Webster Bull rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a former book publisher, I know the severe limits of book review space in major newspapers. So when the New York Times publishes an op-ed piece and two reviews about a new book within 24 days (December 30, January 3, and January 20), one is forced to stand up and take notice. And when that book is a work of pop philosophy, which by January 30 had reached only a lowly 25th on the NYT Nonfiction Bestseller List, one must extend one's hand and scratch one's head. One must also ask, Who's paying...more As a former book publisher, I know the severe limits of book review space in major newspapers. So when the New York Times publishes an op-ed piece and two reviews about a new book within 24 days (December 30, January 3, and January 20), one is forced to stand up and take notice. And when that book is a work of pop philosophy, which by January 30 had reached only a lowly 25th on the NYT Nonfiction Bestseller List, one must extend one's hand and scratch one's head. One must also ask, Who's paying off whom?

Pop psychology is a term all readers know. The authors of All Things Shining, however, are heavyweight academic philosophers from major universities, Hubert Dreyfus (Berkeley) and Sean Dorrance (Harvard); and their mission is to distill for the layman all of Western philosophy in under 300 pages, in order, according to the book's subtitle, "to find meaning in a secular age." Throw in detailed readings of Moby Dick and post-modern novelist David Foster Wallace and you have quite a stone soup of pop philosophy.

In fact, I was immediately disposed to like this book when I looked at the table of contents and found the second chapter dedicated to "The Nihilism of David Foster Wallace." Having read the book now, however, I am no longer "ready to make nice," in the immortal words of The Dixie Chicks. This book is insulting when it isn't stupid.

To save myself some heavy lifting, let me first offer the book's thesis statement from the Dreyfus-Dorrance web site.

"An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us nothing on the basis of which to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it’s quite new. In medieval Europe God’s calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in 'the zone,' you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a 'wrong' choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided the meanings they reveal? All Things Shining claims we can."

The alleged nothingness offered by our culture is laid out in the first two chapters, and here is where my favorite novelist, Wallace, comes in. Misreading Wallace—and the authors do—is sin enough, but misreading Christianity and its present role in our world is something greater. Dreyfus and Dorrance talk about religion like two men who never experienced it—like children analyzing the differences among vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and Cherry Garcia without ever having tasted ice cream. In their Cook's Tour of Western thought, they reduce the end result of Jesus Christ’s teaching and presence among us to a "mood of agape love" (in contrast with "Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude"). After showing over 200+ pages how Western thought has led us all on a short road to nihilism—Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Descartes, Kant, Melville, Nietzsche, Wallace—they end with the preposterous notion that all of us rational 21st century folks would do well to return to the polytheistic mindset of ancient Greece and let ourselves be "whooshed up" by events.

My head is too tired to explain all of the above, dear reader, and let’s give the devil his due: I’m guessing that the authors and their financially motivated publisher settled on the childish term whooshing up because it was new and cool and because they hoped it would enter common parlance the way Peter principle or tipping point has. Oh, and sell lots of books too. If so, they are out of luck.

All Things Shining is a facile trip through the thought and faith of the West, by two men who should and do know better. It is also a towering symbol of our current, sad cultural relativism, as well as the bankruptcy of American publishing.(less)

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Jun 13, 2012 Patrice rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It is written in a very engaging style. It analyzes great works of literature and compares them to the modern mind-set,even tying in popular culture which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed reading it. The authors raise interesting questions. However, I found too many of their conclusions to be just plain wrong to say this is a great book. They seem to start with a hypothesis and then fit the facts to prove them. They tweak the truth so that it fits their ana...more

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May 13, 2011 Charles Francis rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a thought provoking book. The theme seems to be there are other routes to spiritual satisfaction than traditional religion. In this there is nothing new. Literary criticism and anthropology have pointed this out as long as they have been around. One need but look to Wallace Stevens's "The Necessary Angel" or Wade Davis's "The Wayfarers" to find better examples than those cited by the authors. "All Things Shining" has "The Iliad" as an example of a western classic offering spiritual insig...more

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