Not a volume to be picked up lightly, unless you enjoy tussling with sentences heavily laden with philosophical jargon and...
Intellectual all-star Kristeva (Possessions, 1998) offers this study of Arendt as the first installment of her new trilogy on female genius (the next two will deal with Melanie Klein and Colette).
Kristeva begins provocatively, questioning the very existence of the female genius and purposefully leaving the question unanswered. Her stance is doubly provocative in relation to Arendt, who would seem to qualify as a genius by anyone’s standards. Born in Linden, Germany, in 1906, Arendt was an intellectual prodigy who quarreled with her schoolteachers so relentlessly that she was eventually expelled for insubordination. This bad start notwithstanding, she went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg and became the protégé (and lover) of the influential philosopher Martin Heidegger. She first emerged as a major figure in philosophy and intellectual life with the 1951 publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, a monumental work that argued against humanity’s own absurdity (in response to the cultural degradation of fascism, communism, and WWII) and offered a critique of the prevailing school of existentialism. But this is not a biography; Kristeva’s portrait takes the form of an intellectual dialogue between Arendt and herself. She integrates a full range of Arendt’s philosophical work into her study, and includes many texts that illuminate aspects of Arendt’s private life (including her correspondence with Heidegger and husband Herman Clucher, and extracts from the diary of Arendt’s mother). The portrait that emerges is quirky, intentionally subjective, and finely detailed.
Not a volume to be picked up lightly, unless you enjoy tussling with sentences heavily laden with philosophical jargon and esoterica—but Kristeva fans are a diehard and hardy bunch, and they’ll find plenty to be excited about here.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-231-12102-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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