by Adin Steinsaltz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999
Rabbi Steinsaltz, the impetus behind the monumental Steinsaltz Talmud (a translation of that work into English) and author of Biblical Images (1984) and many other works, offers meditations on the “simple words and notions . . . we use [that] contain very complex ideas”: nature, friends, family, God, etc. The essays are a mixed bag, some stale, some spiked with indisputable insight. In “Sex,” Steinsaltz forcefully argues that to imbue lovemaking with questions of ownership is a distortion; leave ownership for food and money, says Steinsaltz, but focus on giving when you’re in bed with your lover. And yet Steinsaltz’s reflections on love are particularly unsatisfying. He defines love as a feeling, “the emotion of attraction toward an object—the beloved,” rather than a choice, a commitment, a mode of living toward one’s beloved. The reader is left wondering what Steinsaltz would suggest for those moments when the feeling has evaporated, replaced only by annoyance that our beloved bought the wrong brand of o.j. It is tempting to describe Simple Words as a Jewish version of Kathleen Norris’s Amazing Grace, but there is little in these pages that is explicitly Jewish. Parsed another way: unlike Steinsaltz’s earlier forays into Jewish mysticism or the Talmud, Simple Words should enjoy a wide, diverse readership. Nonetheless, it is food for thought that one of Israel’s most revered rabbis has written a collection of essays in many ways indistinguishable from the musings of a Benedictine oblate. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-84642-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
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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