Wager

How do humans explore beauty, virtue, love, justice, and goodness? This book argues that philosophical attention to our lives, shaped in part by our choices, is our instrument for investigating these parts of reality. Constructing a life is a philosophical act. Philosophical acts that are shaped by a life, and that shape a life, constitute philosophical style. Everyone has a philosophical style, which is fundamentally about the way we live in the world through our bodies, our reason, our imagination, and our virtue. It is about what we love and how we are loved. Beauty, suffering, and being in the world are placeholders for everything that makes up our lived experience. As we live our lives between beauty and suffering, we learn most about being in the world. The argument of the book moves from a discussion of philosophical style, through the three placeholders for human experience as they are affected by philosophy (beauty, suffering, and being in the world), arriving at a reworking of Pascal's wager about living in relationship to the presence or absence of God as a way of understanding the commitments that are our only way into the truth of our life. ""You do not have to read this book, but I wager if you do, you will discover you are very glad you did. It is a book of wisdom written by a person who refuses to let how they think we should think and live be determined by disciplinary boundaries. I have a sense this book may become a classic."" --Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, Duke University ""Here you will find everything we have come to expect from this extraordinary philosopher, physician, musician, and teacher. Subtle arguments, philosophical erudition, and probing questions are all clothed in a warm and accessible style. We are made to think as perhaps never before about that ultimate risk, the 'wager' on God, and the questions that we all send heavenward at some time or another: 'Are you there?' and 'What if you are there?'"" --Jeremy Begbie, Duke University and the University of Cambridge ""Raymond Barfield has written a beautiful, compelling, and absorbing book. What makes it so special is that it is written with intellectual sophistication and yet carries the smooth, satisfying prose of a novelist; that it is fun and engaging and yet addresses the greatest subject of all; that it is inspired by a great apologist from four hundred years ago but is as contemporary as could be. This is a marvelous writer wrestling with the reader, with himself, and ultimately with God: and giving each a profound blessing."" --Sam Wells, Vicar, St. Martin-in-the-Fields Raymond Barfield is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Christian Philosophy at Duke University. He is the author of The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy (2011), Life in the Blind Spot (2012), and a novel called The Book of Colors (2015).