METAPHYSICS OF DAVID BIRNBAUM
PHILOSOPHY OF DAVID BIRNBAUM
Many readers of the Summa much prefer Book #1 over Book #2.
Presumably, it is clearer, and its style is more in a classic expository presentation/form. Plus Book #1 actually uses real, normal sentence structures.
Furthermore, Book #1 is almost a stand-alone, fairly comprehensible original and hi-energy, complete Metaphysics.
But only ‘almost.’
Whereas Book #1 conceptualized and framed-out the existence of Quest for Potential (enroute to dealing with theodicy, and before I brought Extraordinariation into the equation), Book #2 attempts to get its arms around the entire Q4P.
However, the mission of Book #2 is not so simple.
How does one use regular language to describe an infinitely expanding (as we speak) Infinitude?
I thought about Book #2 for fourteen years before commencing 5-6 years of writing. And I only even conceived of a line of approach 12 years into the fourteen years of mulling-over this little task. So, either I’m slow or the task is challenging, or some combination thereof.
As noted in the introductory section to God and Good, Book #2 is heavily intuitive as the major motif, and heavily intellectual as the minor motif, whereas Book #1 was the mirror-image in these regards.
To achieve my (ambitious?) goals for Book #2, I needed to not only push my own psyche to its limits, which was frankly painful, but I needed to push your psyches to their respective limits, which I presume may have been somewhat grating, aggravating, frustrating or some combination thereof.
I saw no other route.
And time marches on.
Remember that Book #1 initially encountered very significant resistance when it was published in 1988. No one criticized it; it just wasn’t “grasped.” Then, about 2-5 years after publication, it achieved ‘traction,’ for whatever combination of reasons. Note that Book #2 plays at a totally different level (higher) than Book #1, which itself was not shy in its goals.
— Birnbaum