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| How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 47 reviews)
Sales Rank: 19206
Category: Book
Author: Francis A. Schaeffer
Publisher: Crossway Books
Studio: Crossway Books
Manufacturer: Crossway Books
Label: Crossway Books
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 50 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1581345364
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.09821
EAN: 9781581345360
ASIN: 1581345364
Publication Date: March 3, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In How Should We Then Live? Francis Schaeffer analyzed the reasons for modern society's state of affairs and presented the only viable alternative: living by the Christian ethic, acceptance of God's revelation, and total affirmation of the Bible's truth, morals, values and meaning. This edition commemorates the 50th anniversary of L'Abri Fellowship and includes a new foreword.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 I was literally shaking when I finished this book December 30, 2008
I give this book five stars not because it is page turner, but because it was able to put in perspective why everything is so weird today. What this book does is go from Rome to the 1970s and lays out how popular philosophy influences art (and vise versa) then influences politics, and how each philosophy crashes on its face only to get up to try again.
Incredible Book! December 14, 2008
This book stands out as my single favorite when it comes to Worldview and cultural analysis. It is very well researched, insightful, thought provoking, and enlightening. Dr. Schaeffer did a masterful job.
Thoughtful review of worldviews June 28, 2008
This is a very thoughtful and penetrating book about different worldviews, especially modernism or post-modernism and Christianity. Helpful for helping those influenced by current Western culture.
A question we all have to ask ourselves April 26, 2008
A question we all have to ask ourselves, when we analyze our philosophical presuppositions about truth and morality, IS, "How Should We Then Live?" Whether we care to think about and admit it, we are all active moral agents in the world around us. Francis Schaeffer was a man consumed by this responsibility, and also a man passionate about his Christian faith. I chalk up a lot of the one star reviews to the latter fact about his life.
The book's first few sentences are indicative of the book's path and purpose: "There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind- what they are in their thought world determines how they act." Schaeffer then gives a brief summary of Western culture and thought. He shows how the changing philosophies and the "pop culture" play off of one another.
Meanwhile, in an evaluation of the book we must also heed Schaeffer's disclaimer: "In no way does this book make a pretense of being a complete chronological history of Western culture. It is questionable if such a book could even be written." (15, Author's note)
I think that Schaeffer's most apt observation is Hegel's influence on philosophy and epistemology, and the resulting smorgasbord of "truths" that result. If ideas are no longer "true" and "false" but somehow combinable, one cannot emphasize enough how much this has relativized the entire Western way of thinking. Once truth is relativized, the ability to claim one idea as "right" and another as "wrong" vanishes; people begin to make decisions in terms of convenience and expediency rather than definite moral principles. One could argue that this moral attitude has always existed; however Hegelian epistemology could be said to have institutionalized relativism. Schaeffer argues this (162-163,215-220).
In a Western world where the only absolute is skepticism; any meaningful basis for society, any truth around which a country or group could define themselves, is instinctively undermined. Here Schaeffer was once again prophetic; predicting the growing skepticism of the West a good fifteen to twenty years before the phrase "hermeneutic of suspicion" became the predominant, if not exclusive, academic ideology of most universities. Consider his words on page 202: "If people begin only from themselves and really live in a universe in which there is no personal God to speak, they have no final way to be sure of the difference between reality and fantasy or illusion." This is the philosophical child, you might say, of Descartes and existentialists.
Of course there is much more Schaeffer could have said. There is, just in this one review, much more I'd like to say. However, I've blabbered on far enough already; let me say that I recommend this book to all Christians and to any thoughtful, open-minded person who is interested in the philosophical and historical progression of the West as seen through the eyes of a Christian thinker.
 Wow, what an amazingly bad book March 14, 2008
5 out of 16 found this review helpful
Schaeffer writes "I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist."
If you can follow this poorly written book (very obtuse and difficult to read) and find yourself agreeing with Schaeffer then obviously you are used to reading poorly written obtuse books. I'll let you guess which book I'm referring to.
Schaeffer goes through history and finds a way to denigrate everything that he believes is 'from below' and exalts everything that is 'from above' by deciding if it agrees with his basic assumption "The only way to live is to follow the Bible and it's teachings." If he thinks that it agrees with that premise then it is rewarded and if it doesn't fit his model of behavior then it is labeled a failure of 'humanistic thought'.
This book is filled with silly and ludicrous comments like my first quote. Schaeffer decides that Leonardo Da Vinci was depressed in his old age because "As man thinketh so is he--and humanism had already begun to show that pessimism was its natural conclusion." In Schaeffer's heavily religious mind anyone who doesn't see the world the same way he does is insane, depressed, or suicidal.
If Schaeffer doesn't like a piece of art, it becomes a failure of the humanistic mindset. If Schaeffer does like a piece of art then it becomes an indication that only through a Christian world view can an artist really see the truth of the world.
If you are a heavily religious person yourself, this book will help you feel better about your beliefs, by reinforcing them using 'historical facts'.
If you are a reasonable and educated person with a curiosity about history and how it relates to religion, I'd recommend reading anything else. Anything.
I wish I could give this book zero stars, but Amazon doesn't allow that.
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