by Claire Fukouara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2015
A tremendously esoteric work of philosophical mysticism that may or may not yield fruit for its readers.
Fukouara (In Your Name, I Write, 2014) presents a new volume of mystic philosophy.
While the author’s previous book was a series of brief, koanlike passages on the subject of transmission and healing through words, this second offering, in her words, “appears as a barely open and abstract nebula that will require everyone to take the time to observe, to think and to re-read until they find the right path.” The volume is broken into three clearly demarcated essays, each pursuing its own thesis. “Suprematism In The Very Idea” deals peripherally with the eponymous Russian avant-garde visual-art movement (and is dedicated to the Suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich), but it focuses more on the difficulty of human perception. The author muses on the shifting, illuminating, and deceiving qualities of light, space, and color (“White is an unmixed and puritanical fragrance in all its written and uttered meanings”) as stand-ins for the entirety of perceived reality. “The Ultimate” is a meditation on an idealized, multifaceted state of interconnection and a call for “the benevolence of everyone, in their own intimate self.” “The Origin” discusses the limiting qualities of the notion of an origin, which she characterizes as “a firewall to the idea of creation.” As in her previous book, these essays are written in a highly abstract, semantically fluid style. Readers trying to pick out a coherent throughline will find it to be guesswork at best, but perhaps the author isn’t trying to provoke traditional reading strategies. The author praises Suprematism, for example, because its abstraction allows for “neutrality of thought.” In this idea lies a possible key to Fukouara’s own writing, as immersion in this book will clear one’s mind and make one a temporary hostage from the world. However, readers may not come away with anything to show for his or her time off.
A tremendously esoteric work of philosophical mysticism that may or may not yield fruit for its readers.Pub Date: March 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1508516248
Page Count: 84
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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 Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
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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