Tony Hardy's "Symbol Philosophy" is one of the most enjoyable books I ever read.

My previous encounter with the topic — phenomenology — was much more hapless: At university, I took a course on Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind, learning lots of terms and enduring a dozen seemingly endless, dry lectures, none of which payed off in the form of a deeper understanding of anything. I merely wasted my youth in a dull lecture hall, while the sun was shining outside.

Hardy's book was the exact opposite of that dreary university experience. For starters, I sat in the park, enjoying the view through sunglasses — those that make the colors pop —, surrounded by many living creatures of various degrees of consciousness, which provided me with ample examples to illustrate the text I was reading.

In his new book, Tony Hardy examines the advantages and drawbacks of Realism as a worldview, contrasting Realism with perceiving the world as a creative activity. This enterprise seems gigantic and difficult to grasp, but the book is surprisingly pleasant to read, very well outlined and structured, and written with the wisdom of old age and a classical education. There is no postmodernist nonsense, or critical theory attitude and jargon to deal with, just clear, systematic thinking. Any terms that Tony Hardy introduces, like "copying", "an sich", or "precept", I found to be actually useful in getting more order into my own thinking, and more suitable for structuring my thinking than the wrong oppositions created by dualistic terminology (for instance, "the world outside" vs "it's just in your head").

Everybody will get something else out of reading this book, and something different with each re-reading. I, right now, achieved a better understanding of people who consider themselves spiritually gifted, and feel cursed with talents like precognition by supernatural forces that they are powerless against. Next time I read this book, it will help me understand something else, and this promise makes it a valuable part of my library.