Worldview: The History of a Concept

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book on Different Worldviews
Review: Having read this book for Dr. Naugle's Philosophy class, I got this book first hand. It was one of our textbooks for his class, and it was a hard read. It was his dissertation, and the language in it can tend to be obscure. He sets out to analyze various worldviews from various perspectives. Being distinctly Christian, Dr. Naugle has three chapters on various Christian worldviews (Chapters 1,2,9). But, his philosophical insights into it at just short of amazing. This is a tremendous book from a tremendous man (And when you get through with it you will definitely know what 'Weltanschauung' means!)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book on Different Worldviews
Review: Having read this book for Dr. Naugle's Philosophy class, I got this book first hand. It was one of our textbooks for his class, and it was a hard read. It was his dissertation, and the language in it can tend to be obscure. He sets out to analyze various worldviews from various perspectives. Being distinctly Christian, Dr. Naugle has three chapters on various Christian worldviews (Chapters 1,2,9). But, his philosophical insights into it at just short of amazing. This is a tremendous book from a tremendous man (And when you get through with it you will definitely know what 'Weltanschauung' means!)

Rating:
Summary: dissertation on intellectual history, followed by passion
Review: I bought the book several months back, started the first few chapters, and moved on to more pressing material. I finished the book as part of my expanded reading for an adult education class at our church on the topic of Christian worldviews. We know from the introduction that the book began as his PhD dissertation, i would suspect that this is the contents of chapters 1-8, which are just a little dry, factual presentation dominated by philosophers and their writings. Probably the best available introduction to the concepts revolving around 'world and life view', certainly well done and informative.

But it is chapters 9 and 10 that really interest me. 9 is "Theological Reflections of 'Worldview' " and 10 is "Philosophical Reflections on 'Worldview'". These two chapters are worth the time to read the whole book and well worth an occasional reread in the future to keep the ideas fresh, warm and on the top of my thinking. So if you have just a few minutes to analyze if you want to buy and read this book; start with chapter 9, especially for a Christian, or chapter 10, for the more secular, and see if the book is of interest to you. If you are interested in how he presents ideas i would turn to pg 46, a section entitled "Sacramental Worldview" which is a section on the Eastern Orthodoxy worldview, especially from the pen of Alexander Schmemann, and is probably the best 9 pages in the first 8 chapters, i ordered his book immediately on reading this part.

The book is not an easy read, a certain tolerance for names and intellectual history is needed, perhaps not a common quality in today's reading public. But there is nothing that a motivated person with access to the net for more background information can't cure in a few clicks and some supplementary reading. But i am afraid most people would follow a similar trajectory as i did, a few chapters then a slow creep to the bottom of the to-be-read pile, and this is unfortunate, if it happens to you, skip to 9 and 10 and read them, then get back to the harder, less uplifting work of the details rather than the big picture. The author would be well advised to release these 2 chapters onto the (wild)net, for they are standalone, and worthy of greater broadcast then they will get following his dissertation(as packaged in the book), for they would be of great value in discussions like my class at church.

Rating:
Summary: Iffy...
Review: I find some of Naugle's uses of "worldview" are questionable, to say the least. Philosophers explain that because a culture has a certain WORD - like "worldview" - it does not follow that it has the corresponding CONCEPT. Intellectual history is good but one must use caution when doing these types of philological (and don't be fooled - this is more philology than philosophy), studies.

Also, on an apologetic note - Calvinistic fideism is the rule in this book and it finally collapses into subjectivism (he tries to avoid it in a footnote in chapter one, unsuccessfully). If you have any evidentialist tendendcies, you won't find anything here. When all is said and done all he can say (and does say) is that theists and, say, 'non-theists,' just have different beliefes (shrug shoulders and walk away scratching head); that is what it amounts to.

Two stars because it is interesting in some ways, just take with a large degree of healthy skepticism if you are an objectivist.