Though not for those seeking a light read, this is a seminal work on the subject, to be studied, reread, and referenced.
Whitmarsh (Greek Culture/Univ. of Cambridge; Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism, 2013, etc.) explores the evolution of atheism from Homer to the Roman Empire.
With a nonprofessorial, relaxed style, he first explains that ancient Greece had no real religion. They had no centralized political or religious hub and no sacred texts. Their mythical, polytheistic gods were regionalized to suit geographic needs, and the myths were an expression of community through shared sacrifice and feasting. They revealed values and explained why things were as they were. The gods were not omnipotent, and the myths illustrated theomachy, wherein man confronts and tries to usurp the gods—e.g., the tale of Prometheus. The pre-Socratic philosophers pondered the nature of the world through philosophy rather than religion. Whitmarsh delves deeply into the many philosophers who felt gods were invented by humans or saw laws, in addition to religion, as merely imposition of order. The author’s erudition is impressive as he thoroughly explains the works of Plato, Diagoras, Anaxagoras, Theodorus, and Xenophon; however, less-informed readers may be overwhelmed. Whitmarsh examines the works of the dramatists, including Sophocles and Euripides, of the Hellenistic world, who introduced the idea of a king as god. The work of the Sophists, Stoics, Epicureans, and Lucian all contributed to what was still an evolving thought process. While the narrative can be exhausting, it is never dull, and the author clearly explains the idea that atheism wasn’t truly a concept until the arrival of established religion. To disbelieve in a god, you must disprove him. However, as the author writes, “this is a work of history, not of proselytism. It is not my aim to prove the truth (or indeed falsehood) of atheism as a philosophical position.”
Though not for those seeking a light read, this is a seminal work on the subject, to be studied, reread, and referenced.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-95832-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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