Sartre, like Camus, has always been concerned with salvation. Both denied God and both were Catholic renegades. But Camus, seeking participation in life and reconciliation with nature, asserted man's right to happiness here and now. For Sartre, given the condition of the world, Camus' philosophy was merely sentimental or inspirational, an example of what he calls "bad faith." It is only by traveling in "the direction of History" that man's destiny can be realized. And for Sartre that meant the socialist future. Between Existentialism and Marxism, a collection of his most recent essays and interviews, emphasizes the dialectical turning point when existential or subjective awareness is heightened by neo-Marxian analysis, when the purely symbolic act enters the arena of real action, when universal values transcend individual consciousness. "How a man comes to politics, how he is caught by them, and how he is made other by them" — this defines Sartre's rocky journey. He tells us that "the Vietnamese are fighting for all men, and the Americans against all men," that "the machine cannot be repaired; the peoples of Eastern Europe must seize hold of it and destroy it," that the "duty of the Left" is to learn "to unite all the exploited to overthrow the old ossified structures" and thus attain the true revolution. In short, another version of the Absolute which Camus, of course, condemned, as tyranny, but which Sartre insists is the only path to freedom. Sartre's brilliance, however, is not to be seen in these cloudy ideological discussions, but rather in the three essays on Kierkegaard, Mallarme, and Tintoretto, striking and original pieces which inflame an otherwise ponderous book. Here he deals with the "quest for purification," the creative man's eternal task, makes concrete ideas which elsewhere are abstract, and in the celebration of Mallarme, in particular, writes with such power that he produces a sort of prose poem.
Pub Date: March 7, 1975
ISBN: 1844672077
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A poor contribution to a serious subject, this may indeed illustrate just how badly Catholic religious life misshapes one’s...
A short and rather smarmy reconsideration of the traditional Catholic doctrines regarding marriage and celibacy, written by ex-priest Kennedy (My Brother Joseph, 1997, etc.).
The universal overthrow of sexual taboos that took place during the latter half of the 20th century, anticipated by Freudian psychology and made possible by the development of chemical contraceptives and penicillin, came as a great surprise to just about everybody. Religious leaders, in particular, were caught with their pants down by this turn of events: Most of them (and especially the Catholics, who were predominantly celibate) had never bothered to devote a great deal of thought to sexuality from a specifically religious perspective—relying instead on appeals to natural law (among Catholics), tribal custom (for Muslims), or purification rites (within Judaism). The sexual revolution pulled the rug out from beneath all of these authorities, however, leaving many of the clergy with no idea where they were now to stand. Kennedy, who left the Catholic priesthood in the late 1960s, displays this disorientation (from which he has apparently never recovered) on every page of his study. Although he is quite specific in his condemnation of the traditional Catholic approach (to contraception, masturbation, divorce, etc.), his rage seems to be fueled by mists: He never bothers to articulate the grounds (either intellectual or religious) upon which his dissent is based, and he seems equally unable to put forward any “positive” approach to the subject—beyond vague talk of “unhealed wounds” and some silly, postmodern analogizing (e.g., Pope John Paul as the Fisher King) that sounds like a Leo Buscaglia script written by Joseph Campbell. “The priest is the wounded mythic figure, the wounded seeker of the Grail . . . whose infection and pain arise from that deep and unattended estrangement in the spiritual institution—the Church from this world, Spirit from Nature, the terrible price of a divided image of personality.”
A poor contribution to a serious subject, this may indeed illustrate just how badly Catholic religious life misshapes one’s understanding of sexual life—although probably not in the way the author intended.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26637-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Discussion of the role of religion in the formation of the Republic becomes a soapbox for right-wing reimagining of American history by the chairman of the National Journalism Center. In his introduction, Evans lists among the titles his friends suggested for the project ``Everything You Were Ever Taught Was Wrong''—a situation he sets out to remedy. The so-called liberal version of US history distorts the role of religion, in particular Christianity, in the founding of the nation, he asserts; America was, and is, a Christian nation. The founders of our liberty were in his view deeply religious men (yes, men!) who sought to embody their faith in the principles of the new country, believing that religious precept was essential to freedom. Among his other points: Liberals, who would deny this nexus between religious values and our political system, distort the Bill of Rights provision that forbids a state-established church into a rigid wall of separation between church and state that allows them to ban prayer in public schools and to deride those who would seek to inject faith into public discourse. Such a distortion of the historical record also permits government intervention in economic affairs despite the fact that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were firm supporters of private property and free enterprise. Far from being radicals, says Evans, those who engineered American independence were true conservatives, seeking to preserve the best elements of their Anglo-Saxon heritage while achieving political sovereignty. The great achievement of that heritage, to the author's mind, has been the imposition of limits on state power, a trend he claims modern liberals would reverse. This selective reading of history, complete with attacks on multiculturalism, will doubtless infuriate women, minorities, and those who consider themselves liberals. The religious right and true believers in Reaganomics, however, will cheer Evans on every step of the way.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-89526-497-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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