A focused history, neither simple nor simplistic, that—no surprise—shows the history of philosophy moving inexorably toward...
The award-winning French philosopher briefly summarizes the major philosophical ideas since Ancient Greece and explains why he has opted for contemporary humanism.
Ferry (Philosophy/The Sorbonne; Learning to Live: A User’s Manual, 2010, etc.) writes that some dinner guests recently challenged him to create a philosophy course for children and adults, something presumably accessible to both. If this book is the result, Hogwartians may be the only children capable of comprehension. But many college-educated Muggles will doubtless find it useful, too. The author begins with perhaps the most difficult question (What is philosophy?) and offers a three-dimensional answer: salvation (not in the religious sense), theory and morals and ethics (terms he uses interchangeably). The author then moves on to his historical tour of philosophical ideas, focusing on the first superstars—Plato, Aristotle et al. He examines how Christianity was able to supplant the Greeks (the religion’s vastly appealing notion of the afterlife) before moving on to humanism, a movement prompted by the discoveries and thought of Copernicus, Newton, Descartes and Galileo. Kant and Rousseau earn high marks here (though not the highest). Next comes Nietzsche. The author acknowledges, more than once, how that philosopher’s ideas, unfortunately, appealed to the Nazis, but Ferry mostly succeeds in separating the thoughts from the deeds. The author views Heidegger as the most important post-Nietzschean, focusing sharply on that philosopher’s views of technology and materialism and how they threaten the possibility of a more reflective, philosophical population. Ferry tries to lighten the tone of the narrative with literature (Poe makes an appearance, as does V.S. Naipaul) and popular culture (allusions to digital music). Ferry is an atheist and suggests throughout that religion is irrelevant.
A focused history, neither simple nor simplistic, that—no surprise—shows the history of philosophy moving inexorably toward the author’s current beliefs.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-207424-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fine thematic introduction to gnosticism, concentrating on the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi (Upper Egypt) in 1945. Pagels teaches the history of religion at Barnard, and she has spent practically all of her young academic life working with the Nag Hammadi manuscripts in one way or another. She brings her considerable competence to bear on the subject without overwhelming the reader with scholarly minutiae. Pagels sees in gnosticism a "powerful alternative to. . . orthodox Christian tradition," an alternative she clearly finds attractive. Gnostics treated Christ's resurrection as a symbolic rather than a corporeal event. They rejected the authoritarian, bishop-dominated structure of the orthodox church. They looked beyond the masculine imagery of the patriarchal God to various concepts of a feminine or bisexual divinity. They avoided the excesses of the martyrdom cult and its apotheosis of the suffering Jesus. In surprisingly modern fashion, they cultivated a religion that stressed personal enlightenment over corporate belonging, insisting that "the psyche bears within itself the potential for liberation or destruction." These and other gnostic tenets were repressed by mainstream Christianity because, Pagels claims, they constituted a political threat to the hierarchy. In the calmer, freer atmosphere of contemporary Christianity, they can better be appreciated for their intrinsic richness. Pagels' advocacy of gnosticism is restrained and responsible—she admits, for example, that its elitist, intellectualist qualities made it ill-suited as a faith for the masses—but this partisanship, plus the absence of solid explanation of the movement's historical roots, may create a misleading picture of it as a sort of heroic prototype of liberal Protestantism. Otherwise a clear, reliable, richly documented guide.
Pub Date: Nov. 26, 1979
ISBN: 0394502787
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.
An account of once-popular New York restaurants that had a rich social and cultural history.
“Since, by choice or historical necessity, exile and travel were defining aspects of Jewish life, somewhere a Jew was always eating out,” observes cartoonist and MacArthur fellow Katchor (Illustration/Parsons, the New School; Hand-Drying in America, 2013, etc.) in his exhaustively researched, entertaining, and profusely illustrated history of Jewish dining preferences and practices. The Garden of Eden, he notes wryly, was “the first private eating place open to the public,” serving as a model for all the restaurants that came after: cafes, cafeterias, buffets, milk halls, lunch counters, diners, delicatessens, and, especially, dairy restaurants, a favorite destination among New York Jews, which Katchor remembers from his wanderings around the city as a young adult. Dairy restaurants, because they served no meat, attracted diners who observed kosher laws; many boasted a long menu that included items such as mushroom cutlet, blintzes, broiled fish, vegetarian liver, and fried eggplant steak. Attracted by the homey appearance and “forlorn” atmosphere of these restaurants, Katchor set out to uncover their history, engaging in years of “aimless reading in the libraries of New York and on the pages of the internet,” where he found menus, memoirs, telephone directories, newspaper ads, fiction, and food histories that fill the pages of his book with colorful anecdotes, trivia, and food lore. Although dairy restaurants were popular with Jewish immigrants, their advent in the U.S. predated immigrants’ demand for Eastern European meatless dishes. The milk hall, often located in parks, resorts, or spas, gained popularity throughout 19th-century Europe. Franz Kafka, for example, treated himself to a glass of sour milk from a milk pavilion after a day in a Prague park. Jews were not alone in embracing vegetarianism. In Europe and America, shunning meat was inspired by several causes, including utopian socialism, which sought to distance itself from “the beef-eating aristocracy”; ethical preferences; and health concerns. A meatless diet relieved digestive problems, many sufferers found.
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4219-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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