Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson (Penn State Series in the History of the Book)

Rating:
Summary: Difficult, but enlightening, and well worth the effort
Review: While the verbose, academic style of this book makes it more difficult to read than it ought to be, it is still very much worth the effort. Brainard proposes a unique approach to the question of ultimate reality that has the potential to deepen our understanding of this elusive subject in a way I have not seen before. He may have in fact found a way to show how different views of ultimate reality might complement each other without whitewashing their differences.

Part of what makes Brainard's analysis difficult but also rewarding are his original definitions for "reality", "truth", and "awareness". One of the more intriguing concepts he introduces is that awareness creates reality and truth (like people create languages and cars), and yet realities and truths are not subjective. According to the author, these elements of reality are not products of individual minds (like mine and yours), but rather by the cooperative activity of more than one mind -- or, more exactly, by more than one moment of awareness (in the way an illusory car exists for just you, while a real car exists for all). This objective and external character of reality is based on Brinard's thesis that everything, from Quarks and atoms, to rocks, and plants have some level of awareness, with human awareness being just one flavor out of a great many. While the concept of multi-dimensional awareness is difficult to grasp at first, his discussion of material "awareness" is especially interesting and provides some good insights that makes the rest of his ideas go down more smoothly.

If this sounds like a bit like Whitehead or Kant or Hinduism or Buddhism (or de Chardin for that matter), you're right; it does recall many different philosophical approaches. In fact, Brainard argues that his approach does not intend to offer another philosophy to compete with others, but rather show the way in which we might discover how competing philosophies and religions might complement each other. Regardless of what he thinks, his approach is certainly a compelling way of doing philosophy, one that seems to offer a set of analytic tools that promise to enable thinkers to get past some of the roadblocks that limit current inquiry into the thorny questions of perception and reality.

I'm giving the book 5 stars for the concepts and ideas it expresses, even though it does lose some credit with me for being difficult to read by non-academic types such as myself. But for those that take the challenging journey into Brainard's world, they will be richly rewarded.