A text that will appeal to philosophers and Kierkegaard-ians but will leave readers with more general interests...
Noted Kierkegaard scholar, translator and biographer Hannay (Emeritus, Philosophy/Univ. of Oslo; Kierkegaard: A Biography, 2001) offers a new translation of a little-known but significant work (1944) about the relationship between sin and anxiety.
Although Kierkegaard (1813–1855) claims in the preface that he plans to “write the book straight off as the bird sings its say,” many readers will find his words as similar to a bird’s song as a bird’s song is to a complex symphony. After some introductory remarks about thought, sin (which is not, he says, a sickness or an abnormality—far from it) and psychology, the philosopher begins with a disquisition on sin—specifically on original or “hereditary” sin. He notes that each individual’s first sin is analogous to Adam’s and declares, “Innocence is ignorance.” He then moves to anxiety, a feeling absent in Eden, he writes, until Adam faced something he couldn’t understand: the prohibition. Kierkegaard distinguishes between objective and subjective anxiety and notes the relationship to freedom: “Freedom’s possibility announces itself in anxiety.” He also makes a few clueless comments about the differences between men and women—comments that show that for all his erudition, he had a few things to learn. He describes each instant as “an atom of eternity,” then moves on to discussions of fate, guilt and evil, equating the demonic with “unfreedom.” He also explores the ways that we can lose freedom (a body’s betrayal, a spiritual loss) and ends with some pages about faith. The book has moments of clarity and flow but also sections of great density (one footnote is more than two pages long); the author cites the Bible extensively and often uses phrases from foreign languages, all of which the editor translates in brackets.
A text that will appeal to philosophers and Kierkegaard-ians but will leave readers with more general interests feeling…anxious.Pub Date: March 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-87140-719-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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
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
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