This book has some good points, but other of its statements are plainly incorrect. I cite examples (among others) below. The referenced page numbers aThis book has some good points, but other of its statements are plainly incorrect. I cite examples (among others) below. The referenced page numbers are to the Kindle edition.
First, the book fails to apply critical thinking to the doctrine of postmodernism. It is impressed with the postmodern view that “there is no objective truth” (95). “Keep the postmodernist view in mind: perhaps we can never know the truth, and perhaps meaning is completely relative. If that is the case, many things are possible” (99). My response: As postmodern ideology has manifested itself in the early twenty-first century, one of its principal teachings is that reason and evidence are inventions of the Western, White, straight, male patriarchy and, as such, are to be rejected or minimized. (See the discussion at Alan E. Johnson, Reason and Human Ethics [Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia, 2022], 121–23, Kindle.) If this postmodern principle is correct, then critical thinking itself must be rejected or minimized as the invention of the Western, White, straight, male patriarchy, and this subject book on critical thinking must therefore be rejected or minimized as being the invention of the Western, White, straight, male patriarchy. More generally, if relativism is true and there is no objective truth, then this book should be rejected on the ground that critical thinking—including this book on critical thinking—is merely the author’s subjective, personal opinion. The premise of relativism—and its application to this book on critical thinking—is self-contradictory (Johnson, Reason and Human Ethics, 1–5).
Second, this book starts a sentence on page 108 as follows: “In 1782, during the US Civil War, Benjamin Franklin . . . .” (emphasis added). The U.S. Civil war occurred from 1861 to 1865—many decades after Benjamin Franklin’s death in 1790.
Third, on page 187, the book states that the following deductive syllogism is valid.
All fruits have seeds inside them. Cucumber has the seeds inside. Therefore, cucumber is a fruit.
This is obviously not a valid syllogism. The premise “all fruits have seeds inside of them” does not logically exclude the possibility that there may be living things other than fruits that also have seeds inside them. If the premise had been “only fruits have seeds inside them,” the syllogism would have been valid from a logical point of view. But that’s not the way the book framed the syllogism.
At this point in the book (page 187 of 436 Kindle pages), I gave up and marked the book as “partially read.”...more
The above title (which I cannot currently change) says the edition is "Leather Bound." That is not accurate. I am reading a PDF of the original EnglisThe above title (which I cannot currently change) says the edition is "Leather Bound." That is not accurate. I am reading a PDF of the original English translation (1768) available on Internet Archive (PDFs of the original English translation are also available at Google Books and Hathi Trust). The English translator was Michael Tatischeff, described on the title page as a "Russian gentleman."
Catherine the Great was very well read in philosophy, especially political philosophy. This work reflects her decades of reading and reflection on political philosophy. She wrote it while she was Empress of Russia. She saw herself as a philosopher-sovereign, as did her correspondents Voltaire, Diderot, and D'Alembert. She may have been one of the few political leaders in world history who had some approximation to Plato's concept of a philosopher-king, though she deviated from Plato's version in many particulars....more
![The grand instructions to the commissioners appointed to frame a new code of laws for the Russian Empire, composed by Her Imperial Majesty Catherine II, Empress of all the Russias; to [Leather Bound]](https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png)
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