Though surely controversial and certainly just the tip of the iceberg, this accessible book provides interesting food for...
The mysteries and the esoterica of Islamic history and culture.
Knight (Why I Am a Salafi, 2015, etc.) begins with a scholarly explanation of why “magic” cannot be fully defined outside the confines of a European past; he concludes that, at best, it is a construct of any given culture and time and thus a fluid concept by nature. “Having performed the necessary deconstruction of categories and displayed critical self-awareness, now I’m going to do whatever I want,” he writes at the end of the introduction. “Maybe this book should just be called Weird Shit in Islam.” Despite that moment of levity, Knight presents an erudite and wide-ranging exploration of what might be popularly called “magic” in Islam. His subject matter spreads across centuries and continents. Knight begins, however, with the text of the Quran, in which he locates and discusses the Arabic term for sorcery. The term takes on a variety of meanings, ranging from satanic implications to mere superstitions. The Quran, as a book steeped in the power of the supernatural, has often been seen to have powers and properties that might be viewed as magical—e.g., the power to heal. Understanding Islam as a religion that cannot be studied apart from the cultures with which it has been in contact, Knight moves on to discuss astrology in Islam, a facet that often stemmed from contact with other religions. Similarly, the Quran mentions a figure named Idris, whom many trace back to the Hebrew Enoch and even to the Greek god Hermes. The author rounds out his book with a discussion of prophecy as projected through dreams and a look at Islamic power motifs in more modern black culture. Knight delivers a thought-provoking introduction to a little-examined subject, albeit a hard one to define.
Though surely controversial and certainly just the tip of the iceberg, this accessible book provides interesting food for thought.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17670-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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