Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization, and science, by Borgmann (Philosophy/Univ. of Montana at Missoula). To recap: As if climbing out of the sea and becoming a land creature, man now climbs out of the once modern, now postmodern era into a being that finds him thinning out as he covers more space. The great thinkers and explorers (Bacon, Columbus) came, shattered, and remade the past and changed us all forever. Luther broke the bond to a central authority; Copernicus decentralized us from the sun; Descartes gave us rational method; Locke overthrew the rule of kings and headed us toward individualism and democracy. Then came the rise of industrialism, as the railroad and the corporation squeezed us into the modern era and we split up our spiritual center into work, family, and community, which are now fading before the flood of information technology, TV, and our privileged classes' lack of interest in the poor. And we have lost faith, too, while living in our ``sullen'' postmodern era, with its rampant individualism and meaningless institutions. The more we grasp, the more ghostly our lives: ``The hyperintelligent sensorium, just because it is so acute and wide-ranging, presents the entire world to our eyes and ears and renders the remainder of the human body immobile and irrelevant.'' Borgmann finds hope in once-dying, now reviving Missoula, Montana, where daily city life has real spaces, real people, real tasks, and favors a ``bodily vigorous, richly connected, and securely oriented life.'' It is a place of charms and traditions, festivals and ``the holy game of baseball.'' The author ends with a ringing of church bells in his ``heavenly city'' and calls for all churches to follow Manhattan's St. John the Divine with its commitment to social works. Not a light read—and never disingenuous.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-226-06626-6
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
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
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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