by Irving Singer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2000
Singer is a graceful writer, but one who seems most comfortable addressing an academic readership. Nonetheless, committed...
An ornately conceived, sometimes elliptical, but comprehensive and insightful examination of the work of philosopher George Santayana.
Singer (Meaning in Life, 1991, etc.) structures his book succinctly, to “unpack” the different layers of a philosopher whose life and work, closely intertwined, are less discussed today yet were hugely influential in their time: in his day, Santayana (1863–1952) was a prolific intellectual who made tremendous strides in merging philosophical and fictive writing. Singer defines his discussion by linking eight discrete long essays, each offering particular examinations, such as “Santayana as Literary Critic” (a fascinating entree to his then-radical attempts to glean clear philosophical stances and ethical qualities from the poetry and fiction of Dante, Shelley, and Dickens) or “Idealization: Santayana versus Freud” (an examination of these thinkers’ sharply divergent views on the human pursuit of unattainable objects). Singer also presents a well-executed analysis of Santayana’s “essayistic” novel The Last Puritan, a 1935 bestseller of broad scope that Santayana asserted was based upon philosophical notions developed over 45 years. Somewhat racier ground is covered in a surprising chapter on “Santayana’s Philosophy of Love,” where Singer maintains that, in “insisting upon the interrelation between ideals and natural processes” and contemplating the instinctual human drive towards “erotic bonding” for purposes of pleasure, Santayana implicitly laid directions toward the sexually explicit schools of thought that exploded a decade past his lifetime. Two concluding chapters approach Santayana’s ideas more actively, in relation to cultural stimulus: they address “Greatness in Art” in terms of the harmonic unity of form, material, and “significant world outlook” he required, and the relevant roles of aesthetic and moral criticism. Overall, one receives less of a sense of Santayana the man, and more of his immense interrelated body of ideas.
Singer is a graceful writer, but one who seems most comfortable addressing an academic readership. Nonetheless, committed lay readers will also find this to be a sound introduction to Santayana’s broad sphere of philosophic influence.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-300-08037-9
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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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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