Ozment (History/Harvard), a specialist in the Reformation (Three Behaim Boys, 1990, The Age of Reform, 1980), digs into the trenches with this popular history of Luther's revolution that doubles as neo-Protestant polemic. In Ozment's view, lay people and scholars alike have judged Protestantism to be ``the spiritual equivalent of a sobering cold bath'' and continue to prefer ``traditional Catholic piety and folk beliefs.'' While sympathetic to this choice, Ozment argues that Protestant virtues have been overlooked, in particular ``a heritage of spiritual freedom and equality.'' He makes his case in part through a fascinating examination of Reformation letters, diaries, and pamphlets (including some material written by teenage boys), indicating how, for many Germans, the Reformation meant nothing less than a new lease on life. More combatively, Ozment defends the much-maligned reputation of Martin Luther against modern claims of misogyny and hypocrisy, and places in historical context the Reformation's relentless war against monasticism and religious ritual. As the author admits, his spirited defense pits him against the scholarly consensus, which finds in the Reformation the seeds of Nazism. Ozment's defense of Protestantism now and then swells into fulsome praise, as when he asserts that ``Protestants are society's most spiritually defiant and venturesome citizens.'' A corrective to the intense anti-Reformationism of modern scholarship (``no other great event in Western history is more ignored by historians and the general public'') that shoots itself in the foot through excessive zeal—a charge, ironically, often hurled against the original Reformers. (Fifteen b&w illustrations- -not seen.)
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-42172-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
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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