Dialogues (European Perspectives) Review

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Dialogues (European Perspectives) ReviewHere, Deleuze and Parnet give very illuminating and interesting form to many of the ideas that will later be expressed w/Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. Excellently translated and insightful-- as though one were listening to Deleuze with an acquaintance speaking of the direction of his theory in the 80's. Highly recommended.Dialogues (European Perspectives) OverviewIn the most accessible and personal of his works, Deleuze examines -through a series of discussions with Claire Parnet -such revealing topics as his own philosophical background and development, the central themes of his work, and some of his relationships, in particular his long association with the philosopher Félix Guattari.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Review

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Tacit and Explicit Knowledge ReviewAn interesting book that attempts to explain the differences between explicit and tacit knowledge in formal philosophical terms. The author is a social scientist and he draws on his studies of science so I suspect the text is not quite as formal as a philosopher might require. As a researcher interested in technical occupations I found it more interesting than I expected and well worth the modest price.
His basic notion is that explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be represented as a string and passed through an intermediary (such as the Internet) without any loss of information. A string is a general term to represent characters, numbers, computer codes etc. The book is a fascinating exploration of the differences between human and artificial intelligence and links together many of the interesting experiments (both thought and actual) that have been published in the last 50 years.
He introduces some very interesting ideas. For example, the degree to which tacit knowledge is required to understand strings, even compose them in the first place.
He revisits Michael Polanyi's discussion on riding bicycles with the notion of somatic tacit knowledge, knowledge that becomes part of our body for the performance of mechanical tasks. He argues that this can be reduced to mechanical instructions, even though these instructions could not reasonably be performed by human in the required timescale. What attracted my attention was a footnote in which he dismisses actor network theory as "the so-called actor network theory has succeeded brilliantly in the academic market place by cleverly failing to acknowledge this obvious asymmetry and claiming that its absence from the theory represents a philosophical insight." I have not yet finished reading Latour's book so I will keep a lookout for this issue.
The asymmetry to which he refers is the notion that a blind man's stick becomes part of a blind man: the man uses the stick as an extension of his own self. However, we cannot say that the blind man has become part of the stick. (Page 114).
In the final chapter he talks about collective tacit knowledge and social Cartesianism, the notion that there is a distinct difference between humans and animals because, he argues, that humans are capable of reorganising their tacit knowledge to fit in with the social patterns of different social setting. Dogs, cats and other animals, he argues, cannot socialise at all. I think that this is the least impressive chapter in the book, in my opinion, because it seems out of touch with recent research, even common sense, that if humans cannot socialise effectively with animals since we cannot speak their language, it says nothing that animals cannot socialise effectively with humans. For example, there is plenty of evidence that whales have a complex social life and language. While I disagree with the detail of the chapter I'm happy with the conclusions that, for example, direct face-to-face human interaction is essential in order to acquire collective tacit knowledge. Where I differ is in his conclusion that teleconferencing will never be a substitute for air travel. Just as human beings are remarkably adaptable, teleconferencing has an enormous potential for improvement with genuine broadband transmission, and while it will never be quite the same as being there in person, has a long way to go in terms of development. I think eventually that he will be proved wrong in this conclusion.
Tacit and Explicit Knowledge OverviewMuch of what humans know we cannot say. And much of what we do we cannot describe. For example, how do we know how to ride a bike when we can't explain how we do it? Abilities like this were called "tacit knowledge" by physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, but here Harry Collins analyzes the term, and the behavior, in much greater detail, often departing from Polanyi's treatment. In Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, Collins develops a common conceptual language to bridge the concept's disparate domains by explaining explicit knowledge and classifying tacit knowledge. Collins then teases apart the three very different meanings, which, until now, all fell under the umbrella of Polanyi's term: relational tacit knowledge (things we could describe in principle if someone put effort into describing them), somatic tacit knowledge (things our bodies can do but we cannot describe how, like balancing on a bike), and collective tacit knowledge (knowledge we draw that is the property of society, such as the rules for language). Thus, bicycle riding consists of some somatic tacit knowledge and some collective tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge that allows us to navigate in traffic. The intermixing of the three kinds of tacit knowledge has led to confusion in the past; Collins's book will at last unravel the complexities of the idea. Tacit knowledge drives everything from language, science, education, and management to sport, bicycle riding, art, and our interaction with technology. In Collins's able hands, it also functions at last as a framework for understanding human behavior in a range of disciplines.

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Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite (Crises in World Politics) Review

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Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite (Crises in World Politics) ReviewDiplomats shouldn't read Wittgenstein. Or Popper. The first will teach them that they deal in fictions, and that their language puts a distorting filter between themselves and reality. The second would have condemned the closed and undemocratic nature of the world's diplomatic arena.
Ludwig Wittgenstein once violently scolded a colleague who, commenting on a news that Britain had instigated an assassination attempt on Hitler, considered that such a covert act was the opposite of fair play and therefore incompatible with the British "national character". For the exacting philosopher, the notion of national character was more than an abstraction: it was an insult to intelligence. The concept of national interest, still the bread and butter of international relations theory and practice, would likewise have been dismissed as a childish fiction.
Karl Popper would certainly have counted the diplomats, with their culture of secrecy and unaccountability, among the enemies of the open society. Sustained by mechanisms of transparency, accountability, and fair elections, Popper's open society is another name for a healthy and striving democracy. It allows for the correction of mistakes when things go wrong, and reinforces positive trends in cases of success. Unfortunately, there is no feedback mechanism in the field of international policy. Simply put, "those affected in country A by the policies of country B have no means of informing the policymakers of country B what is going wrong."
After five years as First Secretary at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York, busily spent negotiating sanctions against Iraq at the UN Security Council, Carne Ross felt he needed to recover from exhaustion. He took a one-year sabbatical and enrolled in an international policy program at the New School University. There he complemented his general education with readings from Wittgenstein and Popper, and he saw the light. It occurred to him that he had stood on the wrong side of the fence, enforcing sanctions that did little but inflict misery on the Iraqi people. Worse, he participated in a cover-up operation for a preemptive war that had been decided long in advance. He had failed in his responsibility under the UN charter to maximize security and minimize suffering.
This was only the beginning. His awakening to Wittgenstein's philosophy of language and to Popper's advocacy of the open society led him to reconsider assumptions he had always considered as self-evident. This is how he recalls his conversion: "As I reflected on the process that allowed us as diplomats to say "Britain wants this" or "the US wants that", the more I realised that this was an arbitrary and manufactured process, with little grounding in reality, and certainly only very rarely discussed with those in whose name the whole discourse was being practised. In other words, something of a sham."
So Carne Ross resigned from the Foreign Office and created Independent Diplomat, a human rights advocacy outfit whose mission is to "provide diplomatic services for those who need it most". He collected his thoughts in a volume, and published them as "Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite". His recollection of the debates surrounding UN Security Council's resolutions on Iraq is particularly valuable, because it provides an insider's account of the negotiations' dynamics and of the mindsets of the experts who stood at the table.
Because he sat on the opposite side of the debate on Iraqi sanctions, Carne Ross had to fight blow by blow against the positions and negotiating tactics of his French counterparts. The level of animosity between the two camps, one led by the US and the UK, the other by France and Russia, had risen to a stage where hard feelings were involved. National differences had become personal feuds. As Ross recalls, "When the American delegate spoke, the French would stare at the ceiling and smirk. When the French had their turn, the Americans would shuffle their papers and whisper to one another."
But the animosity between French and British diplomats ran even deeper. Whereas Anglo-American negotiators stood ready to credit the Russian ambassador for acting in good faith and for defending his country's national interest, suspicions about cynicism and shady commercial interests always lurked behind the perceptions of French's stated goals. British officials took it as a personal goal to outsmart the French, to teach them a lesson in the art of diplomacy. The mistrust was probably reciprocal.
A few years ago, it is said, Britain's permanent EU representation invited diplomats to craft a mission statement for their work. One acclaimed (if unsuccessful) submission was: "Sticking it to the French, every day." Likewise, I know of a French senior official who always taught junior trainees the "golden rule of international negotiations": Never, never, never trust the British.
The opposition between "la perfide Albion" and "those treacherous French" has a long political history. This past hasn't passed out: not for nothing are the walls of British ambassadors' residences throughout the world lined with prints of Waterloo. Despite their supposed anti-Americanism, the French like to remind people of La Fayette's contribution to the War of Independence, and they revel in the celebration of "l'amitié franco-américaine". But "l'Entente cordiale" that was concluded in 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic has few contemporary supporters, and Joan of Arc, who stood against the Anglo invaders and kicked them out of France, is still a celebrated figure.
The reality, of course, is that diplomats and public officials from both countries should see through national stereotypes and beyond entrenched egotistic feuds. France and the United Kingdom have so much to share, and if they supplement each other, their diplomatic machines and talented negotiators are a tremendous force to count with. Carne Ross mentions in his book that he is sometimes invited to address gatherings of the diplomatic body in various countries to give them inspirational lectures. I wish he could lecture young French civil servants from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration and correct the mistrust, resentment and acrimony that are sometimes ingrained in them by prejudiced elders. He could also teach them a thing or two about Popper and Wittgenstein.Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite (Crises in World Politics) OverviewAlthough diplomats negotiate more and more aspects of world affairs--from trade and security issues to health, human rights, and the environment--we have little idea of, and even less control over, what they are doing in our name. In Independent Diplomat, Carne Ross provides a compelling account of what's wrong with contemporary diplomacy and offers a bold new vision of how it might be put right.For more than fifteen years, Ross was a British diplomat on the frontlines of numerous international crises, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Afghanistan, and the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, over which he eventually resigned from the British civil service. In 2005, he founded Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit advisory firm that offers diplomatic advice and assistance to poor, politically marginalized or inexperienced governments and political groups, including Kosovo, Somaliland, and the Polisario movement in the Western Sahara, as well as to NGOs and other international institutions.Drawing on vivid episodes from his career in Oslo, Bonn, Kabul, and at the UN Security Council, Ross reveals that many of the assumptions that laypersons and even government officials hold about the diplomatic corps are wrong. He argues passionately and persuasively that the institutions of contemporary diplomacy--foreign ministries, the UN, the EU, and the like--often exclude those they most affect. He exposes the very limited range of evidence upon which diplomats base their reports, and the profoundly closed and undemocratic nature of the world's diplomatic forums.As a diplomat, Ross was encouraged to see the world in a narrow way in which the power of states and interests overwhelmed or excluded more complex, sophisticated ways of understanding. As Ross demonstrates, however, the reality of diplomatic negotiations, whether at the UN or among the warlords of Afghanistan, shows different forces at play, factors ignored in reductionist descriptions and academic theories of "international relations." To cope with the complexities of today's world, diplomats must open their doors--and minds--to a far wider range of individuals and groups, concerns and ideas, than the current and increasingly dysfunctional system allows.

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Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness Review

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Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness ReviewThis book is a very enjoyable read, and far beyond what I expected from the editorial reviews. Micale gives a history of "hysteria" starting with the Greeks and ending with Freud. Micale sheds light on the issue of gender issues in psychology's history, and also looks at the interplay between objectivity and subjectivity in psychological science. I highly recommend this book.Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness Overview

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Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) Review

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Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) ReviewHenry David Thoreau, born in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, was one of the co-founders and most influential representatives of the philosophical school known as "Transcendentalism." (Others include fellow Concord residents Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, reformist teacher and father of Louisa May Alcott.) Thoreau's life centered around his home town; yet, as his writings reflect, he was very familiar with all major philosophical schools of his time, not only those developing in America but also the writings of Kant, Goethe, Schiller and Hegel - indeed, the very term "transcendentalist" derives, as Emerson explained, from Kant, who had first recognized intuitive thought as a kind of thought in its own right, holding "that there was a very important class of ideas ... which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired ... [and which] were intuitions of the mind itself." These were the ideas which Kant had called "transcendental forms." (Or, as Thoreau himself once put it in his Journal: "I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations.")
To this day, transcendentalist philosophy, and Thoreau's work in particular, has proven enormously influential - on the program of the British Labour Party as much as on people as diverse as spiritual leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. on the one hand and rock star Don Henley on the other hand. Henley in the 1990s even went so far as to found the Walden Woods Project, teaming up with the Thoreau Society to preserve as much as possible of Walden Woods and the land around Concord, and foster education about Thoreau. Yet, during his life time only few of his many works, now considered so influential, were published, and even those did not find wide distribution. "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself," he commented on the poor sales of his "Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers."
This collection, one of two Library of America volumes dedicated to Thoreau's works and edited by renowned Thoreau scholar Elizabeth Hall Witherell, presents the majority of his essays and poems, from well-known works such as "Civil Disobedience," "Life Without Principle" and "Walking" to a large body of lesser known (but just as quotable!) writings and loving observations of nature ("Autumnal Tints," "Wild Apples," "Huckleberries"). A companion volume, edited by Robert F. Sayre, contains Thoreau's four longest publications ("A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," "The Maine Woods," "Cape Cod" and, of course, "Walden") - thus omitting from the Library of America series only his extensive journals and the posthumously published "Faith in a Seed," a collection of four manuscripts left partially unfinished at Thoreau's death in 1862 and published for the first time in the late 1990s, to much fanfare among Thoreauvians the world over.
Introspective to a fault, the man who once built a cabin on Walden Pond and for over two years lived the life of a hermit, was also a keen observer; of nature as much as of the world surrounding him. The shallowness and greed he saw in so-called "civil" society filled him with skepticism ("intellectual and moral suicide," he scoffed in "Life Without Principle") - and with the tireless need to encourage free thinking and personal independence. "I wish to speak a word for Nature," he thus opened his essay on "Walking," and explained that he sought to make a point in favor of "absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society." And he went on to mourn the fact that few people were truly able to walk and travel freely, to leave behind the social bounds that tied them down, and to open up to nature's beauty. This, of course, echoed his famous statements in "Walden" that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation;" that however, as he had learned by his "experiment" on Walden Pond, "if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." And this was the same spirit who, staunchly opposed to both slavery and to the Mexican War, would rather spend a night in jail than pay his taxes, and who summed up his posture in "Civil Disobedience" by saying that "I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right" - a statement echoed roughly a hundred years later when Mahatma Gandhi told an English court that he believed that "non-cooperation with evil is a duty and British rule of India is evil," and also resonating through the publications of many an American civil rights leader, first and foremost Martin Luther King Jr.
While I had read much of Thoreau's work already before I discovered the Library of America collections, I am extremely pleased to see the majority of his body of work reunited in two volumes in this dignified series. For one thing, while there are innumerable compilations containing "Walden" and some of his other better-known works, it is still difficult to get a hold of Thoreau's lesser known essays and poems. Moreover, though, and more importantly, reading his works in the context provided by this collection makes for much greater insight into the man's personality, and his philosophy as a whole. While a biography certainly adds perspective, nothing surpasses the experience of reading Thoreau's works in context - and in the context of the works of other Transcendentalists, first and foremost Emerson. This is a true literary treasure: to behold, cherish and read again and again.
Also recommended:
Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America)
Essays and Lectures: Nature: Addresses and Lectures / Essays: First and Second Series / Representative Men / English Traits / The Conduct of Life (Library of America)Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) OverviewAmerica's greatest nature writer and a political thinker of worldwide impact, Henry David Thoreau's remarkable essays reflect his speculative and probing cast of mind. In his poems, he gave voice to his private sentiments and spiritual aspirations in the plain style of New England speech. Now, The Library of America brings together these indispensable works in one authoritative volume.Spanning his entire career, the 27 essays gathered here vary in style from the ambling rhythm of "Natural History of Massachusetts" and "A Winter Walk"to the concentrated moral outrage of "Slavery in Massachusetts" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown." Included are "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau's great exploration of the conflict between individual conscience and state power that continues to influence political thinkers and activists; "Walking," a meditation on wildness and civilization; and "Life Without Principle,"a passionate critique of American materialism and conformity. Also here are literary essays, including pieces on Homer, Chaucer, and Carlyle; the travel essay "A Yankee in Canada"; the three speeches in defense of John Brown; and essays such as "Autumnal Tints," "Wild Fruits," and "Huckleberries" that explore natural phenomena around Concord.Seven poems are published here for the first time, and others are presented in new, previously unpublished versions based on Thoreau's manuscripts.

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Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History Review

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Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History ReviewThe catastrophic event that has come to be known simply as 9/11 was unique in American history. We had been brutally attacked. But by whom? Not by another country, as we soon discovered. Not by some vile dictator or head-of-state, as we later discovered. So who? Who was the enemy? Then, of course, came the question: Why were the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacked in the first place? Why would someone deliberately, maliciously murder thousands of ordinary, innocent people?

"Civilization and Its Enemies" is an attempt by Lee Harris to answer these and other questions. The work is a brilliant analysis of the current geopolitical situation and how it came to be what it is. More significantly, it provides an insight into the historical precipitates and intellectual foundations and foibles which may account for the 9/11 tragedy.

"The subject of this book," says Harris on the opening page, "is forgetfulness." Modern civilization has forgotten how it became civilized in the first place; it isn't knowledgeable of the long period of cultural evolution involved; and it doesn't remember the tremendous amount of labor, cultural and intellectual, that went into the development of civil society. Moreover, modern civilization has forgotten about a category called "the enemy." This concept of the enemy -- someone who is willing to die to kill another -- had been discarded from our moral and political discourse. And that fact, according to Harris, has left modern civilization vulnerable to attack by those who are the enemy of civilized society.

This is an interesting thesis and, at first glance, may appear to be an implausible explanation for the 9/11 tragedy which was, according to the author, an end in itself and not a means to some other political or social end. Many contemporary observers may find this latter statement problematic since we are so accustomed to thinking in terms of warfare as a means to an end. Harris suggests that our ordinary understanding about what wars are and why they are fought is not applicable to the current conflict with terrorism. The nature of the game, so to speak, has changed and so has the enemy, and 9/11 was a manifestation of that change.

So, who is this enemy and what is his intent? How did civilization get itself into this situation where it became so vulnerable to this enemy? What is the historical backdrop? What were the social and cultural influences? Who or what is really responsible? What can modern civilization do, if anything, to protect itself? Harris's discussion of these questions takes the reader on a tour through the development of civilization from antiquity to the present day, forming the framework with which he analyzes our current dilemma and providing a rationale for his conclusions.

One of the most interesting of his discussions has to do with what Harris calls "fantasy ideology" and the related "transformative belief." He also points out the difference between abstract reasoning and concrete reasoning and discusses the "fanaticism" of abstract thought, important elements in the presentation of his argument. His concept of fantasy ideology is familiar to me because, while I use a different term to describe the phenomenon, it appears to be a subcategory of what I have called "intellectual insanity" in my own writings. Modern intellectuals are particularly susceptible to this type of thinking, which eventually leads them into the irrational abyss of moral and cultural relativism, epistemological subjectivism, metaphysical idealism, politicism, and scientism.

Harris does more, of course, than just provide us with the historical background and intellectual underpinnings which have led to our present situation. He deals with the practical matter of our current conflict with "the enemy," giving us his prescriptions about how we should meet and confront the problem in the very real context within which we have to deal with it. Many intellectuals, especially those in the academic enterprise, will recoil at some of his suggestions.

But the problem we face today, the author says, is this: "The ideals that our intellectuals have been instilling in us are utopian ideals, designed for men and women who know no enemy and who do not need to take precautions against him." These utopian ideals are dangerous because they are out of touch with the situation as it really is. The new enemy of civilization does not play his "war" game according to the rules we are used to; indeed, as far as he is concerned there are no rules at all. Our intellectuals and those who influence our social and political policies must come to realize this. Our old categories of thought and analysis will no longer suffice. And this brings Harris to what may be his most controversial conclusion as far as the academic intellectuals are concerned.

Only the United States can play the sovereign in today's world. And if the use of force is necessary to defend civilization, then America will have to use it. At the same time Harris realizes the responsibilities involved in this type of action and points out the necessity, and dilemma, of being ruthless in the defense of civilization while not succumbing to ruthlessness itself. However, because it has produced, over a long period of time and through many sociopolitical conflicts, a practical design for solving and settling problems without resorting to massive ruthlessness, the United States is the only nation which can do the job required if civilization is to be defended and the enemy defeated.

This is an important book that every American citizen should read. It should be required reading for our college and university students who are so desperately in need of intellectual guidance through the realities of the current geopolitical conflict which puts civilization itself in jeopardy. My only criticism of the book is that Harris needs to recognize there are some intellectuals around who don't subscribe to utopian fantasies and the fanaticism of abstract thought. I like to think I'm one of them.Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History Overview

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Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics) Review

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Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics) ReviewJose Casanova, Georgetown University: "This is a pathbreaking book that shifts the attention from contentious debates over secularism as a norm and over the model of the secular state to the more fruitful task of comparing varieties of secularism and understanding the complex struggles that led to the historical formation of each particular type of secular state. It provides that secularism is not just a doctrine of separation of church and state but is most importantly a mode of state regulation in society. Kuru has opened up a field of study that should include many other varieties of secularism: Indian, Chinese, Russian, Mexican, Indonesian, and so forth."
Joel Fetzer, Pepperdine University: "Secularism and State Policies toward Religion should be a cautionary tale for opportunistic religious leaders tempted to give their public blessing to whichever authoritarian government happens to be in power at the moment. At the same time, Professor Kuru demonstrates that true democracy does not require the state to be hostile to religious expression. This book deserves to be read and debated by citizens of predominantly Christian and majority-Muslim nations alike."
Alfred Stepan, Columbia University: "One of the most important and difficult tasks for a major book in comparative politics is to document distinctive, politically significant patterns among states, and then to demonstrate the causes and consequences of these distinctive patterns. Kuru brilliantly pulls off this triple feat in his analysis of the `separatist secularisms' of Turkey, France, and the United States."
Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics) OverviewWhy do secular states pursue different policies toward religion? This book provides a generalizable argument about the impact of ideological struggles on the public policy making process, as well as a state-religion regimes index of 197 countries. More specifically, it analyzes why American state policies are largely tolerant of religion, whereas French and Turkish policies generally prohibit its public visibility, as seen in their bans on Muslim headscarves. In the United States, the dominant ideology is "passive secularism," which requires the state to play a passive role, by allowing public visibility of religion.Dominant ideology in France and Turkey is "assertive secularism," which demands that the state play an assertive role in excluding religion from the public sphere. Passive and assertive secularism became dominant in these cases through certain historical processes, particularly the presence or absence of an ancien régime based on the marriage between monarchy and hegemonic religion during state-building periods.

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The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy Review

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The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy ReviewDerrida deconstructs the simultaneous, yet not so simultaneous, process of logic and empirical sense. The point here is that of the birth of absolute knowledge, and Derrida shows that logic is a constitution of knowledge just as empirical sense. One can not begin without the other, so both supplement each other. Derrida shows that by reducing one, the other cannot proceed being without the other (i.e., genesis of knowledge, language, or consciousness). The contradiction that Husserl makes is that he keeps revolving back to an intention or intuition that prevents the subject (i.e., the human) from being seen as the object. Without objectivity, the philosophical horizon cannot be seen for what it really is, and if the subject is able to make any intention then obviously we haven't reached the genesis.
Even though Derrida hadn't coined a lot of his terms here, his thinking behind Deconstruction is there for the reader. This is a really good book to begin in order to understand what is in his later writings. I recommend Derrida's Origin of Geometry, Grammatology, and Speech and Phenomena after reading The Problem of Genesis.
I think a reader who has read much of his more modern works will see that Derrida's thinking is consistent up until his last works after reading this.The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy OverviewDerrida's first book-length work, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, was originally written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'études supérieures in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of genesis, and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead Derrida to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction.For Derrida, the problem of genesis in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology.Ten years later, Derrida moved away from phenomenology entirely, arguing in his introduction to Husserl's posthumously published Origin of Geometry and his own Speech and Phenomena that the phenomenological project has neither resolved this tension nor expressly worked with it. The Problem of Genesis complements these other works, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology."A dissertation is not merely a prerequisite for an academic job. It may set the stage for a scholar's life project. So, the doctoral dissertations of Max Weber and Jacques Derrida, never before available in English, may be of more than passing interest. In June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Mr. Derrida's dissertation, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, which the French philosopher wrote in 1953-54 as a doctoral student, and which did not appear in French until 1990. From the start, Mr Derrida displayed his inventive linguistic style and flouting of convention."—Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education

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Margaret Fuller, Critic: Writings from the New York Tribune 1844-1846 Review

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Margaret Fuller, Critic: Writings from the New York Tribune 1844-1846 ReviewThe editors have done anyone interested in the history of feminism, of cultural criticism, of Transcendentalism, of antebellum American culture a huge favor. The volume contains some of Fuller's most interesting and exciting writings, such as her review of Frederick Douglass's Narrative and her theory of literature as a "means of mutual conversation." Fuller talks about a range of issues, though, across the arts and politics; she demonstrates that she deserves a place in intellectual history alongside figures like Heine and even Walter Benjamin. She's been considered Emerson's shadow figure for too long. The volume is pricy, but the inclusion of the CD-Rom is a marvelous feature.Margaret Fuller, Critic: Writings from the New York Tribune 1844-1846 OverviewArdent feminist, leader of the transcendentalist movement, participant in the European revolutions of 1848-49, and an inspiration for Zenobia in Hawthorne'sBlithedale Romance and the caricature Miranda in James Russell Lowell'sFable for Critics, Margaret Fuller was one of the most influential personalities of her day. Though a plethora of critical writings, biographies, and bibliographies on Fuller have been available -- as well as her three published books, European dispatches, and editions of her letters and journals -- until now there has been no complete, reliable edition of her writings from theNew-York Tribune, where she was the first literary editor. Fuller wrote 250 articles for theTribune, only 38 of which have been reprinted in modern editions; this book makes this significant portion of her writings available to the public for the first time. Judith Mattson Bean and Joel Myerson have assembled a selection of Fuller's essays and reviews on American and British literature, music, culture and politics, and art. The accompanying fully annotated, searchable CD-ROM contains all of Fuller'sNew-York Tribune writings.

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The 33 Strategies of War Review

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The 33 Strategies of War ReviewRobert Greene is a prolific research and thinker who has made a habit out of writing masterpieces that explore all nuances of human behavior. In his latest tome he follows the same approach as in his previous bestsellers by leading off each chapter with a quick and easy to read summary that gives you the essence of the strategy and the stories that follow. Then he leads you on one fascinating historical excursion after another that brings each strategy to life through the exploits of some of histories most famous and notorious characters.
The beauty of his approach is that there is something for everyone in this book. You may read about a tactic that is highly amusing, but that you say to yourself, "I could never do that." Then in the next chapter you may say, "That's fits in with my personality. I can do that." That's how I felt about his strategies for laying back and appearing to not care, and about his strategy for taking an unassailable position.
A brief story in chapter 4 on developing a sense of extreme urgency was well worth the cost of the book to me. It talks about Fyodor Dostoevsky and how a change in his perspective on the value of life lead to a greater appreciation for every moment, and to an era of rampant productivity that continued until his death. Because I'm an author I spend a good part of every day writing and thinking about my work. After reading about Dostoevsky I immediately felt an even higher sense of purpose and motivation.
You really can't go wrong with this book. It is very entertaining and educational. Beyond that, you could pick up some sage, time-tested advice for improving both your business and your life. Bravo!
Phil CapelleThe 33 Strategies of War Overview

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Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Religion and Postmodernism Series) Review

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Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Religion and Postmodernism Series) ReviewArchive Fever - A Freudian Impression is the text of a lecture given by Jacques Derrida at the Freud Museum in London during an international colloquium entitled "Memory: The Question of Archives" organized by the Société Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychanalyse. The location, the theme of the conference, the title of the lecture, the list of persons present and absent: all matters enormously for the understanding of this text, which highlights a decisive aspect of Derrida's thought.
Freud's last house after he flew to London in 1938 became a museum after his daughter Anna passed away in 1982. It shelters part of Freud's personal archives, his library, his daughter's papers, and a research center on the history of psychoanalysis.
To paraphrase Derrida, Freud's house is used as a scene of domiciliation: it gives shelter, it assigns to residence, and it consigns, as it gathers together signs. As a place for archives [the word comes from the Greek arkheion, the residence of the superior magistrate], it is at once institutive and conservative. "It has the force of law, of a law which is the law of the house," writes Derrida. The archivization produces as much as it records the event. It opens "the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow". In the case of psychoanalysis, the conservation of archives raises specific questions: "What is this new science of which the institutional and theoretical archive ought by rights to comprise the most private documents, sometimes secret?" asks Derrida.
But the House of Freud is also the place of a lineage: that of the father of psychoanalysis, whom all analysts claim as ancestor, and also the lineage of an individual who was taken in his own web of kinship relationships, in particular with his father Jakob and with his daughter Anna. The private library contains a Philippsohn Bible that Sigmund Freud had studied in his youth and that his father, having rebound the volume in "a new skin", gave him back on his thirty-fifth birthday, inscribed with a personal dedication in Hebrew.
It may be possible to read into the text of the dedication an allusion to Freud's circumcision, although the point is a matter of debate. But the gift of the father refers unambiguously to Freud's Jewish heritage: as a child Sigmund Freud had been "deeply engrossed" in the reading of the Bible, and as an adult he was still able to decipher his father's handwritten inscription in Hebrew, which renewed the covenant passed when the Book was first given.
This question of deferred obedience to the father, and of allegiance to the Law, was also taken up by Freud's daughter Anna. In 1977, she was invited by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to inaugurate an endowed chair carrying the name of her long dead father. Unable to go, she sent a written statement which acknowledges, among other things, that the accusation according to which psychoanalysis is a "Jewish science", "under present circumstances, can serve as a title of honour."
This is the main point Derrida wants to get at. It has now become difficult to discuss Freud and psychoanalysis without any reference to Judaism. Freud, of course, vehemently denied the notion of a Jewish science, and he emphasized the universal (non-Jewish) essence of psychoanalysis, although he sometimes hinted--in the private archives unearthed by historians--the influence of his Judaism or Jewishness over the elaboration of the new science.
This debate was forcefully addressed by the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in his Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable. Yerushalmi, who "discovered" the Hebrew dedication in Freud's Bible, is the absentee to which Derrida's lecture is addressed. Indeed, the whole text could have been condensed in the two words of a dedication, a "To Yerushalmi" that would also have echoed the greetings that Jews exchange at the Passover Seder and at Yom Kippur.
As Yerushalmi himself notes, the notion of a Jewish science will very much depend on how the very terms Jewish and science are to be defined. Derrida remarks that "only the future of science, in particular that of psychoanalysis, will say whether this science is Jewish, because it will tell us what science is and what Jewishness is." Following Yerushalmi, Derrida posits that if Judaism is terminable, Jewishness is interminable: it is "precisely the waiting of the future, the opening of a relation to the future, the experience of the future" as an event radically to come. In other words, it is "the affirmation of affirmation, the yes to the originary yes" that deconstructionist theologians like John Caputo sum up as a double "oui-oui".
But to Derrida the question of Freud's relation to Judaism also covers a more personal aspect. He refers in a parenthesis to himself as "I who have not only a father named Hayim, but also, as if by chance, a grandfather named Moses. And another, Abraham." He mentions several times the issue of circumcision, "that singular and immemorial archive called circumcision", adding that "this is not just any example for me". And he confesses that in addressing a colleague on the issue of Freud and Judaism, "I am speaking of myself."
There are other themes addressed in the text: the issue of ghosts, addressed at length in Specters of Marx but that Derrida revisits by noting that Freud also "had his ghosts"; the link between history and psychoanalysis, or between psychoanalysis and any discipline, as no discipline can escape, deny or repress the "Freudian impression". We even learn in passing that Derrida was the proud owner of a portable Macintosh computer. And of course, there is the style, the inimitable verb of Derrida, which is beautifully rendered by the translator. This short volume is a worthwhile addition to the Derridean corpus.Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Religion and Postmodernism Series) OverviewIn Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology—fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling."Judaic mythos, Freudian psychoanalysis, and e-mail all get fused into another staggeringly dense, brilliant slab of scholarship and suggestion."—The Guardian"[Derrida] convincingly argues that, although the archive is a public entity, it nevertheless is the repository of the private and personal, including even intimate details."—Choice"Beautifully written and clear."—Jeremy Barris, Philosophy in Review"Translator Prenowitz has managed valiantly to bring into English a difficult but inspiring text that relies on Greek, German, and their translations into French."—Library Journal

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Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity Review

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Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity ReviewThis book provides an excellent look at how the Enlightenment in France was seen by its enemies. McMahon discusses in detail the arguments made by religious and political thinkers who dissented from the liberalizing currents that swept Europe in the Eighteenth Century. His discussion of the use of invective and paranoid rhetoric by the Right is a worthy companion to Robert Darnton's studies of the same tactics employed by liberal enemies of the Ancien Regieme.
Rick Perlstein theorizes in his recent book "Before the Storm" that the Sixties were as much about the rise of the American Right as they were about the New Left. McMahon makes the same point about the liberalism of the Revolutionary era. The conservative movement defined both itself and the left in reaction to the influx of new ideas. This book is an excellent study of this phenomenon.Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity Overview

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Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre Review

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Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre Review"Like Abelard and Heloise, they are buried in a joint grave, their names linked for eternity. They're one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other." So begins Hazel Rowley's Tete-a-Tete, of which the author says, "This is not a biography of Sartre and Beauvoir. This is the story of a relationship."
And what a relationship it was! Although never married, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) lived together as "man and wife" for 51 years, dating from their meeting in 1929. Both were "free spirits" who contracted an "open marriage" in which other "contingent" sexual partners were welcomed, even encouraged. The only ground rule of their relationship was that they be honest with each other, and tell each other everything.
No other word describes Jean-Paul Sartre as well as the word "ugly." A short man (five-foot one), his atrocious eating habits soon led to a pot belly. When he was two years old, he went almost blind in his right eye, leaving him "wall-eyed." His face and neck were pock-marked and covered with blackheads. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, consumed vast quantities of alcohol, and gobbled amphetamines and barbiturates, especially corydrane, like candy. And yet, this guru of the existentialist movement attracted beautiful young women like honey attracts flies. Go figure!
"The story of a relationship" is actually the story of many relationships--of numerous sexual encounters and romantic attachments. Indeed, there are so many tempestuous liaisons and promiscuous affairs related in this book that one soon loses count of Sartre and Beauvoir's erotic adventures. The list of their amours is a long one: Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz, Bianca Bienenfeld, Nathalie Sorokine, Jacques-Laurent Bost; Delores Vanetti, Nelson Algren, Sally Swing, Michelle Vian, Claude Lanzmann, Evelyne Lanzmann (stage name, Evelyne Rey), Arlette Elkaim, Lena Zonina, Tomiko Asabuki, Sylvie Le Bon, Helene Lassithiotakis, and also various and sundry one-night stands.
As far as I can tell, Sartre was strictly heterosexual, a notorious womanizer whose real pleasure (so he claimed) was not in the sexual act itself, but in the thrill of the chase, in which he employed all the seductive stratagems of his intellectual arsenal. Beauvoir, on the other hand, was bisexual, and had affairs with many male and female lovers, the most famous of whom was the American novelist Nelson Algren, the "great passion" of her life.
Reading of Sartre's obsessive need to be loved by women, the image of a juggler comes readily to mind: How did he keep so many "ninepins" whirling through the air without a disastrous collision. When asked by an interviewer how he juggled so many women successfully, Sartre replied, "I lied to them all." "Even to the Beaver [Beauvoir]"? asked the interviewer. "Yes, I lied to the Beaver too," said Sartre.
The interminable series of Sartre and Beauvoir's sexual affairs strikes me as a tragicomic soap opera, and suggests the words spoken by Shakespeare's Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act III, sc. ii, line 115), "Lord, what fools these mortals be."
Hazel Rowley, who divides her time between New York and Paris, wrote her doctoral thesis on existentialism, and has closely studied the correspondence between Sartre and Beauvoir. Her academic career and intense research has qualified her to write authoritatively on her subjects. Although Tete-a-Tete doesn't go deeply into existential philosophy, it does contain enlightening pages that describe the kernel of this world view.
One is astonished that Sartre, an existentialist intellectual who gloried in the liberty and freedom of the individual, could have become a "fellow traveler" of communism. One can only surmise that, in his abhorrence of Western colonialism and imperialism, he allowed the pendulum of his thinking to swing so far toward the left. With the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, however, the scales finally fell from his blinded eyes.
Rowley also discusses the major works by Sartre--Nausea, Roads to Freedom (a trilogy), Being and Nothingness, Words (for which he won a Nobel Prize), Search for a Method, Critique of Dialectical Reason, and his plays (including "The Flies," "No Exit," "The Respectful Prostitute," "Dirty Hands," "The Devil and the Good Lord," and "The Condemned of Altona"--and by Beauvoir (The Second Sex, The Mandarins, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, A Very Easy Death, All Said and Done, The Coming of Age, The Woman Destroyed, and Force of Circumstance).
If you think this book is not for you, think again. Hazel Rowley has written an intriguing book about philosophy and literature, sexual politics, the clash of world powers, the angst of the human condition, and, above all, the unconventional love story of a man and a woman. Beneath their "unfaithfulness" to each other, there was a bedrock of "faithfulness" between Beauvoir and Sartre that lasted half a century. Rowley has told their story well.
Hazel Rowely's previous books include Christina Stead: A Biography and Richard Wright: The Life and Times. She has been a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow and a Bunting Institute Fellow at Radcliffe College, and has taught at the University of Iowa and at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.
Roy E. Perry of Nolensville, Tennessee, is an advertising copywriter at a Nashville publishing house. [...]

Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre Overview

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Recent Reference Books in Religion: A Guide for Students, Scholars, Researchers, Buyers, & Readers Review

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Recent Reference Books in Religion: A Guide for Students, Scholars, Researchers, Buyers, & Readers Review`Recent Reference Books in Religion' by University of Massachusetts Professor of History, William M. Johnston is that rare kind of book which you always wish you could find, but which seems to elude the best searches, and you end up stumbling over it by accident. This is a valuable book for those who use these resources, especially for small public and private libraries, which are not attached to colleges or universities where there are people who would know about such books.
The book gets high marks for the accuracy of its title and subtitle, and the reader is admonished to take the title quite literally. What I mean is that this book is NOT limited to citations of Christian references. It is also, thankfully, not limited to works in English, although it does stay very close to the primary languages of scholarship of Western Europe, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish, in roughly that order. This selection offers a wonderful example of how most of the very best encyclopedic and handbook style references are written by the Germans and the French, especially on religious subjects. Since Martin Luther, Bible scholarship has been a major academic industry in Germany. The subtitle also importantly indicates that this book will be valuable to anyone interested in studying religion, even if you do not intend to purchase many of these books. The reason for that is in the superb comparative evaluations of many of the reference works which have the same or overlapping subjects. A fine example of this is in the comparisons of the Harper Bible Dictionary, the Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, and the Anchor Bible Dictionary. The first two are single volume references and the last is a six-volume work, where each of the volumes is as large as the Harper and the Eerdmans. But Johnston successfully shows that this does not automatically mean the Anchor is the best. The author points out that the Anchor editors concentrate on `just the facts', so theological discussions are weak at best. The Eerdmans, on the other hand, offers the reader the Protestant theological interpretation in many entries, reflecting the fact that it is a translation of a Dutch work. The `non-denominational' material is so good that a Catholic, for example, can easily overlook this fact, since the Protestant material is always presented in a special section at the end of articles. Johnston points out that Eerdmans is not without some weaknesses, but if you want a Bible dictionary you can carry around with you, this may be your best bet.
These three works point up the fact that Johnston's book is obviously dated. It was copywrited in 1996, which is, I believe, the same year the Harper Bible Dictionary became the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, with important revisions; although I see that the criticisms of the older edition may still be relevant to the current edition.
This being out of date appears in other, more significant places. The aging `Encyclopedia of Philosophy' which first came out in 1967, had eight volumes and was edited by Paul Edwards, is criticized for out of date bibliographies. But my local library has a new edition with a new editor, running to twelve volumes, and with updated bibliographies. This is important, since this is the first and still the best general reference on Philosophy in English.
My most important complaint about this book is that it does not cover two very important genres of reference book. The first is the dictionary of New Testament theology, of which there are at least two very large samples. The first is the twelve volume `Theological Dictionary of the new Testament' originally published in German and translated into English, also available in a one-volume abridged edition edited by Geoffrey Bromley. The second is the four volume `New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology', edited by Colin Brown. This work was also translated from a German edition. I use both, and find this genre has things which all the other types of Biblical reference simply do not have. The second missing genre is the Biblical concordance, typified by many editions under the title of `Strong's' concordance, with different editions for the major different English translations of the Bible. It is possible this borders on the type of book an individual is likely to own if they are dedicated to reading the Bible. But the same can be said of the two one-volume dictionaries mentioned above.
In spite of these observations, the book has great value, especially in offering titles for works which are outside one's normal scholarly neighborhood. For example, I am well-versed in ancient mythology, but I am unfamiliar with many of the handbooks and encyclopedias cited here.
Especially useful in this book are its several indexes and appendices, helping one find particular works, most especially those which one may find valuable to own, if you happen to read, write, or study one or more of the world's religions. Although I will warn you that they may not be perfect, as I used them to try to locate the review of Edwards' Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and could not find it through the several indices.
One may be disappointed that things such as interlinear translations or commentaries on particular books in the Bible are not here, but I am sure these works simply do not appear in Reference sections of libraries.
Recent Reference Books in Religion: A Guide for Students, Scholars, Researchers, Buyers, & Readers OverviewRecent Reference Books in Religion provides incisive summaries and evaluations of more than 350 contemporary reference works on religious traditions ancient and modern that have been published in English, French, and German. For maximum usefulness to readers, Professor Johnston has broadly defined religion to include not just the world religions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism but also such alternative approaches as mythology, folklore, and the philosophy of ethics. Each entry, analyzing a particular work, includes full bibliographic details as well as commentary: outstanding articles and contributors are highlighted, strengths and weaknesses are carefully noted and weighed. Readers are directed to volumes whose strengths complement the weaknesses of others. An indispensable guide in any religious studies collection, Recent Reference Books in Religion: 2nd edition includes works published through the end of 1997. It also includes a Glossary that describes types and functions of reference books, and five indexes: Titles, Authors, Topics, Persons, and Places.

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The Dictionary of Bullshit Review

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The Dictionary of Bullshit ReviewIf you find human interaction increasingly irritating, it may be because your internal b.s. detector is working overtime. Nick Webb's little book will enlighten you and give you much-needed consolation and amusement.The Dictionary of Bullshit OverviewBull shit (n.; adj,; adv.; etc.)1: deceitful language; lies 2: jargon or cliches intended to place a positive spin on something plainly negative 3: anything said by a politician, CEO or PR flak 4: new age, modern, postmodern, cutting edge, meta or Xtreme 5: pretty much everything you read or hear these days.A hilarious, irreverent and generally subversive compendium of what passes for discourse today, The Dictionary of Bullshit savages politics, self-help, marketing, the media, all things new age, statistics, science and business.From the political credibility gap (aka lying) to the oxymoronic instant classic, whether you're in a paperless office or have been out-sourced, The Dictionary of Bullshit is an all-out offensive against all that is phony, stupid and just plain meaningless.

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A Secular Age Review

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A Secular Age ReviewCharles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher who has written extensively on the interplay between the religious and secular attitudes towards life. His recent book, "A Secular Age" explores this relationship in great and thoughtful detail from both a historical and a deeply personal perspective. The book is based in part on the Gifford Lectures that Taylor delivered in Edinburgh in 1997. (William James, a philosopher Taylor admires, also delivered a set of Gifford Lectures which became "The Varieties of Religious Experience".) But the book was expanded greatly from Taylor's Gifford lectures, and he aptly advises the reader "not to think of it as a continuous story-and-argument, but rather as a series of interlocking essays, which shed light on each other,, and offer a context of relevance for each other." (Preface) Taylor's book received the 2007 Templeton Prize. The Templeton Prize is awarded "for progress toward research or discovery about spiritual realities." It carries with it the largest cash award of any major prize or honor.
A good deal of Taylor's book is devoted to understanding the nature of secularism and the different contexts in which the word "secularism" is used. For the larger part of the book, Taylor describes a "secular age" as an age in which unbelief in God or in Transcendent reality has become a live option to many people. He describes our age as such a "secular age" especially among academics and other intellectuals. He wants to give an account of how secularism developed, of its strengths and weaknesses, and of its current significance.
Taylor's book is written on a personal, historical, and contemporary level. Taylor is a believing contemporary Catholic, and much of his treatment of religious belief reflects his own Catholic/Christian commitments. At times, I thought that Taylor's description of the religious life (necessary to his consideration of secularism) was focused too much in the nature of specifically Christian beliefs, such as the Incarnation and the Atonement, which would be of little significance to non-Christian practitioners of religion, such as Jews, Buddhists, or Zoroastrians. Taylor is, in fact, fully aware of the diversity among religious traditions, but his discussion of the religious outlook still at times tilts greatly towards Christianity. The advantage of Taylor's approach (in emphasizing his own religious commitment)is that it gives the book a sense of immediacy and lived experience. The key difference between secularism and religion for Taylor is that the former tends to see human good and human flourishing as focused solely in this world, in, for example, a happy family, a rewarding career, and service to others, while the religious outlook insists that these goods, while precious are not enough. The religious outlook is Transcendent and sees the primary good in life as beyond all individualized, this-worldly human goods.
From a historical perspective, Taylor tries to reject what he calls the "subtraction story". This story sees secularism as resulting purely from the discoveries of science -- such as Darwin's evolution -- taking away assumptions basic to religion leaving a secular, nonreligious world view by default. He offers learned discussions of the medieval period, the reformation and the Enlightenment, of Romanticism and Victorianism as leading to the development of secularism but to new forms of religious awareness as well. The "subtraction story" for Taylor is a gross oversimplification. Secularism, and the religious responses to it, has a complex, convoluted history with many twists and turns. The impetus for both views, Taylor argues is predominantly ethical -- developing views on what is important for human life -- rather than merely epistemological.
Taylor's approach seems to me greatly influenced by Hegel. He offers a type of dialectic in which one type of religious belief leads to a resulting series of secularist or religious responses which in turn result in other further variants and responses. In spite of his own religious commitments, he acknoledges, and celebrates, the diversity of options people have today towards both secularism and religion. The book is also deeply influenced by Heidegger (and Wittgenstein) in its emphasis on the unstated and unexamined views towards being in the world that, Taylor finds, underlie both religion and secularism.
I found the best portions of the book were those that specifically adressed modern life, as Taylor asseses the importance of an "expressivist" culture, which emphasizes personal fulfillment especially as it involves sexuality, of gender issues and feminism, of this-worldy service to others, and of fanaticism and violence upon issues of secularism and religion. Taylor emphasizes that people today tend to be fluid in their beliefs and to move more frequently than did people in other times between religions, between alternative spiritualities, and, indeed between secularism and religion. He attributes this to the plethora of options in a fragmented age and to a search for meaning among many people that did not seem as pressing in earlier times. Peggy Lee's song "Is that all there is?" is a theme that runs through a great deal of Taylor's book.
Taylor has written a difficult, challenging work that is unlikely to change many people's opinions about their own secularism or religion but that may lead to an increased understanding of individuals for their own views and for those of others. This book is not for the casual reader. It will appeal to those who have wrestled for themeselves with questions of spirituality and secularism.
Robin Friedman
A Secular Age Overview

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The Character of Rain: A Novel Review

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The Character of Rain: A Novel Review"In the beginning was nothing, and this nothing had neither form not substance -it was nothing other than what it was." I read the opening sentence of Amélie Nothomb's, The Character of Rain (Métaphysique des Tubes), and was hooked. I was not disappointed. Using a Japanese belief that children are gods until age 3, at which time they fall and become human Nothomb constructs a brilliant study of infancy. Deeply autobiographical, like all her work, and deeply philosophical, like all her work, what amazed me most was how completely she captured or imagined the self-preoccupation that is early childhood. Any child will believe it is the center of the universe (and why not an infant must be watched and waited on), and yet the same child will experience "the fall," the recognition that he or she is not a god, is not the center of the universe. Nothomb's ability to recognize this essential problem of being a child and tease out of her own experience the joys and pains of existence in a way that is as imminently and entertainingly readable as it is philosophical is where her genius lies. I've never read anything like it.The Character of Rain: A Novel OverviewThe Japanese believe that until the age of three, children, whether Japanese or not, are gods, each one an okosama, or "lord child." On their third birthday they fall from grace and join the rest of the human race. In Amelie Nothomb's new novel, The Character of Rain, we learn that divinity is a difficult thing from which to recover, particularly if, like the child in this story, you have spent the first tow and a half years of life in a nearly vegetative state."I remember everything that happened to me after the age of two and one-half," the narrator tells us. She means this literally. Once jolted out of her plant-like , tube-like trance (to the ecstatic relief of her concerned parents), the child bursts into existence, absorbing everything that Japan, where her father works as a diplomat, has to offer. Life is an unfolding pageant of delight and danger, a ceaseless exploration of pleasure and the limits of power. Most wondrous of all is the discovery of water: oceans, seas, pools, puddles, streams, ponds, and, perhaps most of all, rain-one meaning of the Japanese character for her name. Hers is an amphibious life.The Character of Rain evokes the hilarity, terror, and sanctity of childhood. As she did in the award-winning, international bestesller Fear and Trembling, Nothomb grounds the novel in the outlines of her experiences in Japan, but the self-portrait that emerges from these pages is hauntingly universal. Amelie Nothomb's novels are unforgettable immersion experiences, leaving you both holding your breath with admiration, your lungs aching, and longing for more.

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Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers Review

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Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers ReviewAlan Schrift (Grinnell College) has written a book that is a gift to both scholars and students. Singular in both its conception and execution, the book has three main parts: an 80-page historical overview of 20th-century French philosophy; a nearly exhaustive 100-page compilation of brief biographies of both major and minor figures in French thought; and two appendices (which deserve bigger billing). The first appendix is an overview of academic culture in institutions in France (this alone is worth the price of admission) and the second is a comprehensive bibliography of French philosophy in English translation. In the first appendix on French culture (which should really be the introduction), Schrift provides a wonderful look into the halls of the Sorbonne and other key institutions in France, with a special emphasis on the levels of philosophical formation in France. This enables him, in the biographies, to trace the genealogy of French philosophy in an illuminating way. (A graphic presentation of this in a family-tree kind of diagram would be an excellent online supplement to the book.) This book should be a required textbook in every course in Continental philosophy.--CHOICETwentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers Overview

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History: The Definitive Visual Guide (From The Dawn of Civilization To The Present Day) Review

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History: The Definitive Visual Guide (From The Dawn of Civilization To The Present Day) ReviewI love this book. It starts with a chapter titled Our Remote Ancestors about how humans evolved and ends with a chapter titled Shrinking World about developments in communication and technology and how they have changed the world. The book is big. 12 x 10.5 x 1.75. It is full of pictures. This book reminds me of the wonderful travel guide books that DK publishes. History is a guidebook to the history of the human race. There are hundreds of wonderful pictures, maps, timelines and charts. This is a book that viscerally appeals to me. Since it arrived I have enjoyed opening it and browsing at every opportunity.
The other thing that I love about this book is that it allows me to find answers to the random historical questions that often come up when I am traveling, reading the newspaper or watching historical fiction on TV. I have three examples of this.
A recent visit to the ancient bristle cone pines made me want to understand more about ancient civilizations and human migrations. History: The Definitive Visual Guide allowed me to satisfy my curiosity.
History: The Definitive Visual Guide helps me to understand the historical backgrounds of the presidential biographies I have been reading.
A waitress recently told us she was from Moldova. I knew almost nothing about Moldova. One of the nice features of History: The Definitive Visual Guide is that it has a 110 page section that traces the individual histories of the world's 193 countries. When we got home I read up on the history of Moldova.
In my opinion History: The Definitive Visual Guide is a must have for anyone who is fascinated by history. I highly recommend this book. It would make a great Christmas present!History: The Definitive Visual Guide (From The Dawn of Civilization To The Present Day) OverviewThis is the definitive, 4.4 million year-old story of human history - from the origins of mankind to the 21st century, spanning the globe and based on the latest research, the complete story of the people, events, themes, ideas and forces that have shaped human existence. Find out about our history's turning points: eye witness accounts and biographies give a personal angle to major events. Explore humankind's legacy from architecture and artefacts to the big ideas that have changed our world. Examine the effect we've had on nature and vice versa. And discover how the past has been unlocked: from interpreting ancient documents to analysing ice cores. This book is a compelling look at human existence: perfect for the family bookshelf.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun Review

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Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun ReviewI adopted Madre for my "Language and Society in Latin America" course last semester and I plan to use the book again. I assign Madre to build on the student's readings of Octavio Paz, Matthew Gutmann, and Gloria Anzaldua. Understanding how the word "madre" is used in Mexican slang does shed light on gender and sexual identities in Latin America, especially Mexico. The book is popular with students and they especially like the way the author lists and explains a plethora of expressions, such as "me vale madre" and `que padre"; and why, for example, saying "madre" is considered vulgar but "mamá" is not. Additionally, Bakewell's research supports the concept of linguistic relativity, demonstrating how grammatical categories of a language influence native-speaker perception. Her compelling and well-written book also presents a teachable moment regarding feminist ethnography. The author, a "gringa" anthropologist, crosses multiple borders and boundaries in her fieldwork. I recommend the book for those who teach courses on gender and sexuality in Latin America, language and culture, and ethnographic methods and want to balance out the literature assigned on machismo by men with focus on machismo by feminists and other women writers/investigators.
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