by John Gray ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2011
An occasionally dry but profound exploration into the unknown.
British political philosopher and critic Gray (European Thought/London School of Economics; Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, 2007, etc.) explores the great quest for eternal life.
The author’s noteworthy analysis plumbs the great enigma of death and the afterlife, pitting the ideas of rigid Victorian-era skeptics against more progressive-thinking individuals like 19th-century philosophers Henry Sidgwick and Frederic Myers. Both men eschewed the popularity of secular thinking and grew eager for proof of paranormal phenomena and philosophies delivered outside the realms of religious ideology or “scientific materialism.” Automatism, cross-correspondence (communications with the spiritual world), séances, mediums and subliminal though—all were vigorously investigated by Sidgwick, Myers and others, however stymied by the naturalistic theories of Charles Darwin, who asserted that a belief in human immortality only served to cushion the inevitable likelihood of universal extinction. Gray also examines Russian secular pseudo-religion dubbed the “God-builders,” who sought “deliverance from a chaotic world” and argued that science was capable of demonstrating death as a passage to another plane of consciousness. One such advocate was Russian diplomat Leonid Krasin, who attempted to freeze Lenin in the hopes of reviving him via “scientific resurrection.” But these beliefs can be challenged and overturned, Gray asserts, as in the history of author H.G. Wells, whose torrid love affair with a suspected Russian double-agent altered his lifelong belief in controlled evolution. Of course, more contemporary means of techno-immortalism, such as cryonics, calorie-restricted diets and nanotechnology, can be challenged, the author contends, by basic theism. Writing with stiff, academic solemnity, Gray evenhandedly weighs source material from books, poetry and quoted dialogue and rhetorically offers cautionary trepidation toward a subject that continues to bewilder: “What could be more deadly than being unable to die?”
An occasionally dry but profound exploration into the unknown.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-17506-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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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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