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ON AGING

REVOLT AND RESIGNATION

Searing, albeit depressing, reflections on the process of aging. Born in Vienna in 1911, AmÇry fled Austria at the time of the Anschluss, joined the Belgian Resistance, and was eventually captured by the Germans and shipped to Auschwitz. Making his home in Belgium after the war, he produced At the Mind's Limits, a collection of essays on the meaning of the concentration camp experience. On Aging was his second book, written when he was 55. Originally a series of radio lectures, it consists of five pieces on the depredations age brings to the human body, mind, and spirit. Fiercely determined not to grow old, the author assumes an attitude that, as the subtitle suggests, is one of both resistance and resignation to the inevitable. Literature forms the springboard for many of his ruminations. Taking its cue from Proust, the first essay, ``Existence and the Passage of Time,'' discusses how the aged come to see time as the essence of their existence. Following de Beauvoir, the second article, ``Stranger to Oneself,'' details the infirmities of body brought on by growing old. The third piece, ``The Look of Others,'' draws heavily upon Sartre, considering the death of dreams: The old realize that they no longer will abe able to make it to the top of the hill and are forced to sit down and make do with the view from where they are. The fourth, ``Not to Understand the World Anymore,'' looks at the increasing inability of the old to grasp and accept new developments and ideas. The final essay, ``To Live with Dying,'' considers the approach of death itself as the culmination of the aging process. Shortly after this book's original publication in Europe, AmÇry wrote a companion volume, By One's Own Hand—A Discourse on Voluntary Death. Two years later, at age 65, apparently unable to accept growing old, he took his own life. On Aging is a record of a brilliant and tormented soul.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-253-30675-2

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Indiana Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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