Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

Callard has written a deep and insightful book that is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand aspiration and self-transformation that has radical consequences for our understanding of ourselves and others. Highly recommend this book 10/10

A philosophical journey through self-transformation and why aspiration is rational. Wonderful.

As an executive and leadership coach with a background in philosophy I loved this book, as it speaks to the seemingly simple but actually incredibly complex process of personal and professional goal-setting, which often includes an aspirational element. I read it in a weekend, because I found it so exciting, although I wouldn't recommend it to the casual reader. It required all my powers of concentration to stay with the nuance of her arguments. She uses good examples, which helps, and situates her thought in relation to others working in the field of Transformation Studies (a field I had not heard of until I read this book).

This is certainly not an easy read, but for anyone interested in philosophical questions surrounding value-learning, it is certainly a worthwhile one. Professor Callard demonstrates not only a gift for distilling complex inquiries with lucidity, and even occasional humor, but also displays an extraordinary breath of cultural knowledge with references and allusions to everything from A Tale of Two Cities to popular gangster films. This is what philosophical writing should be.

Having read Jean Paul Sartre, Immanuel Kant, Simone de Beauvoir, Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, I can say, with some confidence, that Callard might be the least effective writer in the group (yes, even compared to Kant). Some sections of this book are borderline impenetrable.Lines like:"It is a form of response that comes under the aegis of the value only to the extent that we situate it in a developmental process: pinching in order to eventually attend without pinching. It is only insofar as we bring the aspirant’s response into relation with the response of the person she aspires to be that we see the former response as guided by the relevant value." Has me gasping for a mental breath of air. While her ideas are interesting, and I don't think there are any alternative sources for reading about them in great detail, I still feel that the book could have used some more editorial love in terms of clarity and succinctness.For now, if you are interested in the ideas of Aspiration, read the book, you don't really have a choice, but perhaps future editions, or other authors might get to the point more eloquently.

Kindle version doesn’t have real page numbers. That’s a little sad for a $50 book. Since anyone buying this book will likely be an academic who hopes to cite it in her work, the Kindle version should have proper page numbers. (I know, there are conventions for citing Kindle books, but I have yet to see a published philosophy paper that cites the Kindle version of a text.)