A comprehensive inquiry into the central tenets of Fackenheim’s philosophy.
A detailed study of German-born Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim’s thought.
Philosopher McRobert (Appearances: Genetic Mythology and Cosmic Instincts, 2011, etc.) presents a thorough chronological analysis of Fackenheim’s writings. Fackenheim (1916–2003) was a Holocaust survivor, philosopher and rabbi. His work developed from his preoccupation with medieval philosophy and the works of philosophers Friedrich Schelling, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig toward a search for existential foundations in the works of Georg Hegel and Søren Kierkegaard. Fackenheim’s study of Immanuel Kant’s works, McRobert writes, provided him with the means to pose theological issues philosophically. The author concludes that Fackenheim eventually went beyond philosophy and, in his major work, To Mend the World (1982), moved toward prophetic theology. She sets out to show how the philosopher’s early work prepared the way for this change by asserting that evil was an absolute and by providing “prophetic symbols” for his philosophy and theology. Fackenheim, McRobert explains, ended up seeing the Holocaust as an event of transcendent absolute evil that forever fragments meaning—one that must be kept alive in the witnesses’ minds in order not to give Hitler any posthumous victories. The philosopher also came to see Israel as a necessary “secular-religious truth” to resist evil. This book provides a serious examination of philosophical and theological issues and is meant for scholarly, not casual, readers; it’s best suited for graduate students in philosophy. Students of contemporary Jewish thought, particularly those interested in ethics and theology in the light of the Holocaust, will likely be drawn to this detailed study, and readers of Fackenheim’s work, in particular, may also find it a helpful guide.
A comprehensive inquiry into the central tenets of Fackenheim’s philosophy.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479110568
Page Count: 440
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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