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
This academic analysis of Descartes's (15961650) mathematical and philosophical studies traces the development of his work more than the patterns of his life and times. With an emphasis on reason over passions and the body that Descartes would no doubt have approved, Gaukroger (president of the Australian Society for the History of Philosophy) approaches him through his childhood education by Jesuits and his early experiments as a mathematician and natural philosopher rather than as the Enlightenment's ``Father of Modern Philosophy.'' The expanding cultural context of 17th-century Europe and a classical education drew Descartes's analytic and inquiring mind into the new scientific possibilities that were being pioneered by Galileo and Francis Bacon, and Gaukroger shows how Descartes's first work in geometry informed his desire for ``clear and self-evident distinctions'' in his later philosophy, as well as how his experiments in hydrostatics, optics, and anatomy supplied him with his models for general physics and perceptive cognition. Although rigorous in reviewing Descartes's various treatises, particularly the Regulae and Le Monde, and studious in rescuing his reasoning from the Newtonian and Lockean hindsight of later commentators, Gaukroger skims over his life far less illuminatingly, whether his effective exile in the Netherlands and Sweden, his close if sometimes touchy friendships with other philosophers, or his repressed and reclusive personal life. Even crucial events receive summary treatment, such as his famous three dreams that inspired his career (Gaukroger hypothesizes these occurred during a nervous breakdown) and his reaction to the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo, which Gaukroger suggests turned him from his Copernican natural philosophy to a skeptically driven epistemological one that he could justify in relation to Church doctrinebut which would help to inspire the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Gaukroger's book lives up to its subtitle: It does valuable research in analyzing Descartes's work over his shifting career and in its proper context, but it wholly eclipses the biographic element. (67 figures, 4 halftones)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-823994-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
Extraordinary portraits of five dying people who contemplate ending their own lives, sensitively and movingly written by a physician who has thought long and hard about the issue of assisted suicide. Shavelson, who combines careers in medicine and journalism, encountered assisted suicide early: When he was 14, his mother, suffering from Crohn's disease and depression, made him promise to help her end her life should she so wish (she's still alive). Spurred by the response to Derek Humphry's Final Exit and the public debate over Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Shavelson contacted family support organizations and hospices for the dying to find his subjects. Each has a unique story. Renee Sahm, a resourceful woman with brain cancer, has two plans: (a) to fight for survival and (b) to kill herself. Shavelson anguishes at her bedside when she takes the fatal dose of liquid morphine and vodka. Pierre Nadeau, a proud and body-conscious young trapeze artist with AIDS, at first seems determined to commit suicide at a certain point of bodily deterioration. His story reveals not only how the dying continually redefine what they can live with but how the gay community handles assisted suicide. When Gene Robbins, a lonely widower who fears a third disabling stroke, contacts the Hemlock Society for information on how to kill himself, he gets not just brochures but some surprising personal assistance. This disturbing account of an overeager free-lance practitioner of euthanasia is the only one in which Shavelson uses pseudonymns. In recounting the poignant story of Kelly Niles, a 33-year-old quadraplegic who decides his life is no longer bearable and that starvation is his only way out, the author explores the rights of the disabled. In the final and perhaps most heart-rending story, a terminally ill woman chooses suicide but only after she and her family have their last farewells. A powerful argument in favor of legalizing assisted suicide, reinforced by haunting photographs taken by the author.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80100-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
