Engaging, accessible, and informative.
A lively collective portrait of daring intellectuals.
In this second volume of a planned trilogy on the history of philosophy, former Economist executive editor Gottlieb (The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, 2001, etc.) examines influential thinkers from the 1630s to the late 18th century, including Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and two “unlikely bedfellows” buried opposite one another in the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris: Voltaire and Rousseau. Surprisingly to some, writes Gottlieb, “all these men were amateurs” who questioned the implications of new scientific and religious ideas for self and society. The well-born Descartes was “fascinated by machines and all kinds of mechanical contraptions.” Hobbes, “the most vilified thinker in Britain,” was an irascible man whose writings included “tirades against Aristotle and scholasticism” and attacks on academics and theologians. “Above all,” writes Gottlieb, “it was probably Hobbes’s materialism…that made him an anathema.” Like Descartes, Hobbes regarded nature as a machine, but he took the idea further, maintaining “that absolutely everything is physical.” Gottlieb sees much of Hobbes in the works of Locke and Hume, as well. Spinoza, excommunicated from the synagogue, “treated the Bible as a collection of documents that reveal as much about their authors as about anything else,” best examined “with the tools of a literary critic and historian.” Locke, according to Gottlieb, laid down the precepts of British empiricism, whose later exemplars included John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, and A.J. Ayer. Pierre Bayle, a French philosophy professor, argued against religious superstitions such as the belief that comets were divine warnings, and his work focused on religious tolerance and “the so-called problem of evil.” Gottlieb reveals how his subjects were esteemed or derided by their contemporaries and also how their ideas filtered down to later generations. The Enlightenment, the author convincingly asserts, set the ground for toleration of religious dissent, scientific progress, and the dismantling of feudalism.
Engaging, accessible, and informative.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-87140-443-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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