A focused history, neither simple nor simplistic, that—no surprise—shows the history of philosophy moving inexorably toward...
The award-winning French philosopher briefly summarizes the major philosophical ideas since Ancient Greece and explains why he has opted for contemporary humanism.
Ferry (Philosophy/The Sorbonne; Learning to Live: A User’s Manual, 2010, etc.) writes that some dinner guests recently challenged him to create a philosophy course for children and adults, something presumably accessible to both. If this book is the result, Hogwartians may be the only children capable of comprehension. But many college-educated Muggles will doubtless find it useful, too. The author begins with perhaps the most difficult question (What is philosophy?) and offers a three-dimensional answer: salvation (not in the religious sense), theory and morals and ethics (terms he uses interchangeably). The author then moves on to his historical tour of philosophical ideas, focusing on the first superstars—Plato, Aristotle et al. He examines how Christianity was able to supplant the Greeks (the religion’s vastly appealing notion of the afterlife) before moving on to humanism, a movement prompted by the discoveries and thought of Copernicus, Newton, Descartes and Galileo. Kant and Rousseau earn high marks here (though not the highest). Next comes Nietzsche. The author acknowledges, more than once, how that philosopher’s ideas, unfortunately, appealed to the Nazis, but Ferry mostly succeeds in separating the thoughts from the deeds. The author views Heidegger as the most important post-Nietzschean, focusing sharply on that philosopher’s views of technology and materialism and how they threaten the possibility of a more reflective, philosophical population. Ferry tries to lighten the tone of the narrative with literature (Poe makes an appearance, as does V.S. Naipaul) and popular culture (allusions to digital music). Ferry is an atheist and suggests throughout that religion is irrelevant.
A focused history, neither simple nor simplistic, that—no surprise—shows the history of philosophy moving inexorably toward the author’s current beliefs.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-207424-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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