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HISTORY OF PARADISE

THE GARDEN OF EDEN IN MYTH AND TRADITION

A vividly detailed account of how Western society interpreted and was influenced by the biblical story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, by a French cultural critic and historian (Sin and Fear, not reviewed). Early Christianity tended to see Paradise in largely allegorical terms and characterize it as a place of ``rest'' where the just awaited the final judgment and their entrance into Heaven itself. As this idea waned, the Garden of Eden became conflated with Greco-Roman descriptions of a past Golden Age or a mythical earthly paradise of perpetual bliss that many thought still existed in some inaccessible region. (Adam's sin was deemed especially heinous in comparison with the blessings with which he had been surrounded.) The dream of discovering this place of delights inspired such fantasies as Sir John Mandeville's Travels and the legends of Prester John, which in turn led to the explorations of Columbus in the New World and, in Europe, to a renewed interest in gardens and the study of botany. With the advent of the Age of Reason and the discovery of fossils proving that the earth was much older than bibilical history stated, the literal interpretation of the Paradise story gradually fell out of favor, and a more symbolic view of the Garden of Eden again became necessary. Delumeau's text is a work of enormous scholarship, richly illustrated with 25 medieval maps and many quotations from primary sources throughout the centuries, and it is published here in a fine English translation. The author concludes by suggesting that the only acceptable Christian theology of Paradise today is that of second- century writers, who do not assign ``an excessive guilt to the stammering human race that first came on the scene.'' Scholarship happily combines with intuition in this stimulating analysis of a powerful idea.

Pub Date: June 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-8264-0795-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Continuum

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

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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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