The arguments are often engaging, but the narrative could have used more editing for an American audience—will appeal mostly...
A dialogue between two acclaimed French writers, originally published in France.
Liberal activist and philosopher Lévy (Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, 2009, etc.) and libertarian social satirist Houellebecq (The Possibility of an Island, 2006, etc.) collaborated for six months in 2008 to produce this book, written as an exchange of letters. Despite their eminence in the French intellectual scene, both have been attacked by the French press (and have attacked each other)—Lévy for hypocritical egotism and Houellebecq for racism. As the correspondence unfolds, the reader comes to see them in a different light—as social critics who are trying to grapple with the important issues of the day in different ways. Unfortunately, many of the topical illusions and literary and philosophical references in the book will be missed by readers unfamiliar with the specifics of French culture. While both Lévy and Houellebecq support Israeli policy toward Palestine, their stance is quite different. Houellebecq, a self-proclaimed nonbeliever, sees no value in ethnic identity; Lévy describes himself as a happy Jew, writing that “[t]here are Jews who suffer; I’m a Jew who fights.” He accuses Houellebecq of not caring enough about the destiny of the human race: “Africa’s forgotten wars, the massacres in Sarajevo, the Pakistani madrassas where jihad is taught, Algeria in the grip of mass terrorism.” How is it, he asks reflectively, that “one of us [Houellebecq] could act as if nothing was more important than to on listening to ‘Ticket to Ride’ in the company of gorgeous blondes, while the other gets up on his high horse.” Houellebecq counters by explaining why he puts personal freedom ahead of civic duty: “I believe that people who want to get too mixed up in the lives of their fellow men, to redesign or regenerate humanity excessively, are either dangerous lunatics or crooks, or both.”
The arguments are often engaging, but the narrative could have used more editing for an American audience—will appeal mostly to academics and dedicated readers of philosophy.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8078-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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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