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 fascinating memoir with an ending that will change many people's opinion about the Peck's bad boy of philosophy. Feyerabend (who died in 1994) was one of the gadflies of 20th- century philosophy of science. Viennese-born, he served during WW II in the German army and was wounded in the retreat from Poland- -wounds that left him crippled and impotent. Did that stop him from a life of romantic involvements and multiple marriages? No way. Nor did this essentially inquiring mind ever cease knocking authority and criticizing the foundations of Western culture. Yet the Nazi takeover of Vienna in 1938 washed over a schoolboy with no consciousness of anti-Semitism but many memories of family eccentricities, suicides, and encounters with ghostly relatives. In his postwar studies, Feyerabend (Science in a Free Society, 1978, etc.) quickly abandoned history in favor of science and philosophy: Soon he was imbibing and disgorging opinions about Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, Niels Bohr, and others; his brash, no- holds-barred critiques brooked no elitism and assumed no superiority of rationalism or the scientific method. His ``big mouth,'' wide reading, and immersion in other cultural pursuits (spurred by a gifted singing voice and a theatrical sensibility) made him attractive to universities here and abroad; he spent his last years teaching at Berkeley and in Zurich, with time set aside for Rome and the company of his adored wife, Grazia. This last great love transformed the exuberant iconoclast into a touching figure who demands our regard and sympathy. In the end he reiterates his lifelong argument that the West cannot continue to blindly exalt reason; there must be a recognition of other paths to knowledge. Not a basic primer so much as an emperor's-new-clothes account of academic philosophy by a man who found meaning in his own life through a commitment to one who shared his concern for all humanity.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-24531-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
A jaded, outdated manifesto of post-Zionism by an Israeli journalist. Evron made a splash with the Tel Aviv cafÇ set (rather than Israel's academic crowd) with the Hebrew publication of The Quality of Freedom and A National Reckoning, from which this book is drawn. Taking a cue from the pre-state school of ``Canaanites'' who wanted to blend secular Jews and Arabs into a nation of Levantine pagans, the author denies the existence of or need for a Jewish state. Displaying ignorance of normative Jewish thought, the author's thesis requires Judaism and nationalism to be incompatible. Overlooking the majority of religious Israelis, who are nationalists and ultrantionalists, Evron seems to only be aware of the Satmar hasidic approach, which posits that only the messiah can return the Jews to their homeland. Evron also touts Napoleon's Jews, ``Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion,'' in demonstrating that ``assumptions and ideologies about the nature of the Jewish people and the Jewish State...have largely been refuted by historical developments.'' He claims that Jewish culture and law only flourished ``under foreign rule.'' His post-Zionism resting on a post-post-Holocaust sensibility, Evron even denies the need for Israel as a Jewish national refuge. A lot of water has flowed down the Jordan since his 1988 publications. Just as the barrage of ethnic cleansing following the dissolution of the Soviet Union has sent large waves of Jewish refugees fleeing to Israel, so Muslim and Jewish extremism has forced Israel to seek internal peace through divorce rather than marriage with the area's non-Jews. But Evron still has some powerful points to score about the secularists he does know best. He writes that Israelis like himself ``lack a national consciousness, a religious backbone...and the non-Jews' opinions of them have a decisive influence in determining their opinions about themselves.'' A pseudo-intellectual drive-by with a misfiring Uzi.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-253-31963-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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