Patience

I will say that the problem with philosophy books is that its very hard to keep reading them past their basic premises if you completely disagree with the basic premises. I see where they are going with the book and I know I can't accept the conclusion because I know the premises are just plain wrong or incomplete and missing what I believe are key points that should be addressed.

I did in fact stop reading a book halfway through it when I just couldn't get past the fact that the writier was just completely wrong. Of course it was a collection of dialogues of some ancient greek philosopher who was a student of or contemperaneous with Aristotle and of course his basic premises were based on science and observations that while excusab;e for the time were just plain wrong in my mind and I couldn't force myself to keep going after he set up his opponent for his "killing blow".

I have also read through books where I didn't think the author took his analysis far enough, but I think that's an easier fault to excuse. I'm thinking of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the author (I forget his name) talks about life being a series of mountains with peaks and valleys. I'm not going to discuss it now because I'd have to look up his thought to get it straight, but it was intersting in that I had a similar line of self-examination and as I was reading what he was saying it all sounded very familar to me and then he stopped where I had kept on going several steps further. It was a rude jolt for me and frustrated me because his follow up comments in my mind could have been resolves if he kept going along the lines I had considered. I read through the rest of the book anyway because by that point I was about 80% through it but I kept having this feeling that he would have been better served by taking his thoughts just those few more steps that may have helped settle his mind.

Anyway, the point is I'm not sure where McInerny is going with the book and whether or not it goes to places I won't follow. I do have a book of Aquinas' writings I was going to follow up with after this one so we'll see how it goes.