Book Review: Beyond Reason

Finding political truth

Medium contributor Jakub Ferencik caught my attention a couple of years ago. He seems to be on a path of being a political influencer. So I bought his book “Beyond Reason.” Here is my review.

My first observation is Jakub’s many citations from famous and not-so-famous philosophers, plus academics in other fields. Not only has Jakub read a lot, he seems to remember where he got all his thoughts from. I too used to read a lot when I was younger. But I couldn’t tell you, in a specific way, where I got many of my insights about an alternative democracy.

Jakub occasionally gets a little too deep in philosopher talk for this reader. While I was reading through these parts, I put my deep-thinking cap away, not really trying to understand much. “Not much sense in burning mental energy for this,” I thought. So I just waited until the intensity to lower, then I got back into a reading and thinking mode. Fortunately, the harder sections were fairly short.

Early in his book, Jakub addresses his purpose:

The point of this book is to fundamentally question our objectivity. So, assuming that these things do not apply for us misses the general thesis for which I will argue for.

I’ll just say that he sticks to this topic very well.

Jakub bandies around how we create our sense of right and wrong. Some of us rely on seasoned reasoning to find “the truth.” But this can fail us. So we then rely…