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AGAINST THE CURRENT

ESSAYS IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Though some of Sir Isaiah's best-known essays were included in the previous two volumes of his collected essays (Russian Thinkers and Concepts and Categories), this third of four scheduled volumes contains the essence of Berlin's scholarly contribution because all his writing is deeply involved with the history of ideas. If he has a single guiding principle, it is that the search for a final truth is illusory and dangerous, and that human existence is culturally, historically, and therefore relatively constituted. Not surprisingly, then, his touchstone is Vico, the 18th-century Italian philosopher who rejected the notion that the methods of the natural sciences—particularly mathematics—could yield definitive results when applied to the realm of social life, where what is true for one culture and historical epoch is not necessarily true for another. Aside from two essays specifically on Vico, Berlin explores the same theme in pieces on Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and various lesser-known thinkers of the "counter-Enlightenment." In all of these, Berlin treads a narrow path bordered by various irrationalist currents, but his step is sure and he knows just where he is going in extolling the virtues of intellectual temperance and pluralism against the excesses of pseudo-scientific rigidity. Other essays deal with problems of Jewish identity, centering on the writings of Moses Hess, a 19th-century socialist and Zionist, and on a comparison of the existential similarities of Benjamin Disraeli and Karl Marx. The issue of cultural identity is also taken up in essays on Alexander Herzen and George Sorel, and in a final piece on nationalism as a force to be reckoned with. Throughout, Sir Isaiah is mapping our own cultural and historical relatedness and showing us the implicit "relevance" of the history of ideas to our time. The essays are elegantly written, one and all, by a master of the genre who is also one of the true intellectuals living today.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0691090262

Page Count: 419

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1979

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

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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