A charismatic and thoughtful look at the value of Pyrrhonism in the 21st century.
A case for the contemporary relevance of an ancient philosophy.
In his nonfiction debut, Bates offers readers an elaborate, in-depth introduction to Pyrrhonism—an ancient Greek philosophy that he describes as essentially “a health maintenance program for the mind.” Founded in the fourth century B.C.E. by the philosopher Pyrrho, it draws heavily on Westernized versions of concepts from ancient Buddhism, such as the search for enlightenment and the concept of nirvana. However, Pyrrho omitted the Eastern emphasis on meditation; he also sought to characterize Pyrrhonism as an “anti-philosophy philosophy.” Bates’ book is a careful and comprehensive historical overview of the birth of the philosophy, its reception, and its spread through the centuries. It concentrates, in part, on the Pyrrhonist idea of eudaimonia; it’s essentially the Buddhist concept of harmonious, effective living—but, as Bates stresses, it’s shorn of its spiritual or meditative aspects to make it more compatible with the pragmatic practices of Western philosophy. “Instead of using meditation to launch the mind beyond the sphere of the mundane,” Bates writes, “Pyrrhonism pours rationality onto the ground we think we’re standing upon, dissolving it until the ground beneath us disappears.” As Bates brings the story of Pyrrhonism forward in time, he effectively details its conflicts with Stoic dogma, such as “The only good is moral good, and the only evil is moral evil” and “Pleasure is not a good and pain is not an evil.” As a counterbalance, Bates seeks to present Pyrrhonism as ideally suited for embracing modern times—a philosophy whose main goal is to banish illusions and see the world as it is. In this, he’s successful; “Pyrrhonism changes your mind,” he states simply, and his book’s combination of exhaustive scholarship, powerful prose, and heartfelt advocacy may indeed have some readers thinking twice about their basic beliefs.
A charismatic and thoughtful look at the value of Pyrrhonism in the 21st century.Pub Date: June 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-896559-56-8
Page Count: 321
Publisher: The Sumeru Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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