by Reinhold Niebuhr ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 1958
No one sees the American (and world) scene so steadily and whole as Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr. His Christian critique of modern man and his world must be reckoned with by any serious student of human affairs. This is his latest contribution to a large volume of incisive writing which holds a clear and unflattering mirror up before the face of Americans who do not always like what they see. The book's title is taken from the first of a collection of essays in which Dr. Niebuhr analyzes the phenomenon that America seems to be growing more religious and more secular at the same time. His keen mind next explores such related subjects as, "Frustration in Mid-century", "Higher Education in America", "Russia and America", "Liberty and Equality", "Justice to the American Negro from State, Community and Church", "The Relations of Christians and Jews in Western Civilization", "The Impulse for Perfection and the Impulse for Community", and "Mystery and Meaning". Dr. Niebuhr has never written so that he who runs may read, and often his theological writing can reward only the most careful and patient student. Nor has he now written in a popular style. Nevertheless, the careful reader of these essays will not have to subject himself to a determined re-reading to learn their meaning. Instead he will be tempted to rejoice that here is a man who can reflect and express the reader's innermost thoughts, disturbed though they are, and bring them all together on a hopeful note of potential triumph. In Christ, Dr. Niebuhr affirms repeatedly, is to be found that assurance of final forgiveness for the ineradicable evil in the human heart that can lift the self from despair to newness of life. This is the final answer to the mystery of human existence.
Pub Date: March 28, 1958
ISBN: 1579107400
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1958
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by Reinhold Niebuhr & edited by Ronald H. Stone
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
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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