Book Description
From Freud to Babbitt, from Animal Farm to Sartre to the Great Society, from the Theory of Relativity to counterculture to Kosovo, The Modern Mind is encyclopedic, covering the major writers, artists, scientists, and philosophers who produced the ideas by which we live. Peter Watson has produced a fluent and engaging narrative of the intellectual tradition of the twentieth century, and the men and women who created it.
Customer Reviews:
Pretty Much as Advertised.......2007-10-11
Dense, erudite and challenging, but never boring: An 800-page panoramic view of the intellectual history of the 20th Century. It follows both the paradigms and the paradigm shifts in the arts, humanities and most of all in the sciences -- paradigms and shifts that have taken place over the 20th Century mostly in the Western world.
All of the big ideas and the people that introduced them are present, accounted for, and are neatly and economically summarized, in context. The core elements of most of the key intellectual ideas and theories across a vast expanse of the intellectual landscape -- from Freud to Nietzsche, and Darwin to Einstein -- that have driven us from Modernism to Post-modernism are given with the historical connective tissue left in.
Importantly, the author makes a distinction between "cultural" and "intellectual" history and advances; between "big ideas" and "big people" and "big events" that normally drive history and uses these distinctions as a tool for ignoring the latter two; thus paring down his selections to a manageable size. As a result, the book has a unity that is simply uncanny in its utter coherence and precision.
What an exhilarating ride. Intellectual history doesn't get much better than this. Read and enjoy. Amen
Five Stars
The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century.......2007-08-23
This book is for those who think they are intellectauls, aspire to being intellectuals or have proof that they are intellectuals including being told so by one or more of their mentor/gurus. I made a present of a copy to a doctor of education and a University of Chicago graduate. I like it so much that I bought another book by author, Peter Watson called Ideas, etc. and it is also a winner.
Excellent though flawed intellectual history of the 20th century.......2006-11-22
Peter Watson, holding a number of research degrees, offers a comprehensive intellectual history of the 20th century in this book. Not being an easy read, it takes some time to get through.
The main strengths of this book are placing the intellectual development of the 20th century in its economic and social context. This is quite an achievement, considering the remarkable scientific and technological advances and the fragmentation of human knowledge into many small and specialised areas in very arcane topics.
Watson tends to cover science the best, and provides excellent accounts of the development and progress of 20th century science, including the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, scientific cosmology, evolutionary biology and the discovery of the gene. However, the book falls down in some parts where it covers philosophy. Watson dismisses Husserl's Phenomenology as 'abstract' and of little importance, when in fact Phenomenology was probably the most important philosophical school in the 20th century along with analytical philosophy, founded by Russell and Wittgeinstein, and attracted so many leading European minds to philosophy in a time when science was at its zenith of glory.
Overall though, Watson's work is a very important attempt to see where we are in what we know, and where we are going.
The Encyclopedia of Innovation.......2006-03-23
The Modern Mind is a genius encyclopedia. This half-a-million word monster catalogs every artistic, scientific, and social political innovation made in the last century. Peter Watson not only gibes insight as to what led to the breakthrough, but he also foreshadows what it led to. A different author could have made this project boring and laborious, but Watson writes the book like a collection of historical short stories. This allows the reader to treat each subject as a singular thing. A reader can work their way through the book in interesting baby steps. Otherwise and it would be hard to read. The book pays special attention to the surfacing of psychology as well as the growth of America's materialism. Despite the authors best efforts the book can still drag in some places. The book certainly isn't meant for those imaginative folk who don't like non-fiction.
Christian R. Cain
an introduction; only an introduction.......2006-02-04
The essential virtue of this book is that there is nothing else like it out there. So if you want to read a book like this, this is the best one available. Thus it gets 5 stars and I strongly recommend it.
In particular, there is strong coverage of science's progress (toward consilience), and its influence and intimidation of the humanities (although the Sokal hoax is unfortunately not mentioned). The influence and eventual failure of Freud, and its implication for his followers (not only the French left but a lot of self-conscious art and critical theory) is a major theme, along with the failure of socialism. But also, economic criticism of capitalism is well covered; as are questions about the meaning of life in capitalist societies. A related theme is the end of high art and the rise of pop. In the early part of the century the discovery of the non-Western mind in anthropology, archaeology and history is considered well; appropriately balanced by the emergence of non-Western intellectuals in various disciplines in the latter half of the century. But the failure to deal with racial inequality in the US (and now, Europe) is considered as well.
Those are the just major themes that I picked out; many more minor issues are dealt with as well. No other book that I know of covers this range of themes.
But I do have to criticize it a bit, hoping that something better does come out.
A minor criticism, which the author acknowledges and is perhaps somewhat inevitable, is that he relies heavily on a few other books, which maybe you should just as well read.
The essential criticism is that it is too brief. The list of omissions is huge: jazz, the Asian values debate, all of Japanese scholarship, math aftr Turing (such as solutions to the sphere-packing problem, Fermat's last theorem, and so on), liberation theology (other aspects of theology are pretty well covered), social and experimental psychology (Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo, etc), the idea of "kitsch" in art criticism, comparative religion. In contrast to the otherwise good coverage of science, he seems to have confused environmentalism with ecology (related indeed, but not the same), and didn't either one well.
Everything that is actually covered is covered too briefly, which is probably necessary from a marketing standpoint at least; but unfortunate for a student. For instance, minor theories and incredibly influential ones are considered shoulder to shoulder; based on the coverage here, a naive reader would conclude that David Riesmann is more influential than Gadamer.
The book should be 4 times as long, and it would still only be introductory.
I emphasize that these are minor criticisms because no other book like this exists currently: if you are a student or desire to fill-out your knowledge of the intellectual world, this is unsurpassed and despite my nit-picking I strongly recommend it.
In contrast to several other reviewers, however, I do not recommend using it as a "reference," as it compares poorly with several resources available on the internet.
I mentioned the author's reliance on a few key books; you might want to check some of them out. Among them are Wilson's "Consilience," Weatherall's "In Search of a Cure," Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," Johnston's "The Austrian Mind," Everdell's "The First Moderns," and Hughes' "The Shock of the New."
Besides them, Pinker's "The Blank Slate" is a book that I'd recommend because it has many similar themes to this one, but more focused and argumentative.
Average customer rating:
- Everyone is right
- Devoid of content
- Not the best of Ken Wilber's books.....
- Clear, Centered, Solid
- Suprised "A Theory of Everything" was a quick read
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A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality
Ken Wilber
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ASIN: 157062724X
Release Date: 2000-08-29 |
Amazon.com
The spiritual intellectual Ken Wilber takes on the hottest theory in modern physics, known as the "M Theory," or the "The Theory of Everything." As Wilber explains, it is "a model that would unite all the known laws of the universe into one all-embracing theory that would literally explain everything in existence." Of course this new "M Theory" opens up a can of wormy, slippery questions, which Wilber addresses: "What does 'everything' actually mean? Would this new theory in physics explain, say, the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development?"
Being Ken Wilber, he couldn't resist answering these questions by folding the "Theory of Everything" into some of his own personal visions and theories. This overlay is presented in his signature straightforward, clearly written style. The upshot is that common readers can easily follow Wilber on a quantum journey and wind up with a lasting souvenir--a scientific and spiritual understanding of how the mind, body, soul, and universe all work together like a never-ending symphony. And that's just in the first four chapters. From there he shows readers the practical applications of this vision--explaining how it could lead to more integrative styles of business, education, medicine, ecology, and even how we address world conflicts. Wilber admits that this "holistic quest is an ever-receding dream, a horizon that constantly retreats as we approach it." Nonetheless, he can still take readers on an incredible journey--one that's well worth the price of the ticket. --Gail Hudson
Book Description
Wilber's most timely, accessible, and practical work to date. Here is a concise, comprehensive overview of Wilber's revolutionary thought and its application in today's world. Wilber has long been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of our time, but—until now—his work has seemed inaccessible to the general reader who lacks a background in consciousness studies or evolutionary theory. Integral Vision will allow a general audience to fully understand what all the excitement has been about. In clear, non-technical language, Wilber presents complex, cutting-edge theories and models that integrate the realms of body, mind, soul, and spirit. He then demonstrates how these theories and models can be applied to real world problems. Finally, Wilber discusses daily practices that readers take up in order to apply this integrative vision to their own, everyday lives. Wilber begins by presenting a leading model of human evolution, a model called "spiral dynamics." He then goes on to summarize his ground-breaking "all-level, all-quadrant" model for integrating the seemingly contradictory realms of science and religion—the "all-level, all-quadrant" model has already been adopted by leading thinkers in a variety of fields. In a chapter entitle "The Real World," Wilber shows how these rather abstract theories and models are being applied to real-world issues such as politics, medicine, business, education, and the environment. Wilber goes on to present a collection of maps of the Kosmos. These are broader models that can integrate the various worldviews that have been developed around the world throughout the ages. The final chapter of the book, "One Taste," proposes that readers take up an "integral transformative practice" such as meditation to help them to apply and develop this integral vision in their personal, everyday lives.
Customer Reviews:
Everyone is right.......2007-10-10
The thesis of this book is that we need an "integral" approach to everything. What is an integral approach? Well, it takes into account all levels and all quadrants. So there.
Here's what you do. Create a sort of Dewey Decimal System for reality. Slice it into chunks, cram the chunks into categories, nest concepts inside other concepts, then create lots of lists, levels, charts, graphs, diagrams, spirals, and hierarchies. Adopt a progressive color scheme to describe the levels of human progress, from beast to buddha. Make a four-quadrant diagram. Find a place for everything in one of the quadrants. In fact, make a bunch of four-quadrant diagrams to demonstrate that, with a little ingenuity, you can make everything fit.
Once you have performed this microscopic analysis, declare that the proper course for humanity in all things is to consider all the stuff in all the quadrants. There, now, isn't that helpful? As the author says, "In the Theory of Everything, I have one major rule: EVERYBODY is right. More specifically, everybody--including me--has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace, a genuine T.O.E." (Emphasis in original.)
Suppose you're willing accept that dubious but egalitarian sentiment. How do you distinguish the "important pieces of truth" from the nonsense. Now THAT would be helpful. Wilber can't be bothered with such messy business. He's already handled the hard part. He told you to be integral. Does he have to explain everything?
The book is filled with quirky words to describe trite concepts. Consider the "holon." His definition: "A holon is a whole that is part of other wholes. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule; a whole molecule is part of a whole cell; a whole cell is part of a whole organism." What is the real analytical value of a word that describes everything in the universe? (Maybe Wilber's answer is that reality is holon's "all the way up and all the way down," as he says in the Notes. Cute, but of what use?) The concept of the "meme," when introduced by Richard Dawkins, was new and useful (even if it is stretched out of shape by Wilber). Not so with holons. Although by definition, a meme must be a holon, since everything else is.
Wilber has other distracting habits. As others have observed, he spends much of his time promoting his other books and dropping names. It all leads me to wonder why his writings and his ideas are so rarely cited, other than by himself. Some of his remarks, such as on evolution, would be shared with a fringe group, at best. It is apparent that he spends a great deal of time reading and pondering, but not enough time testing his ideas against those who would challenge him. He comes off as a wannabe guru.
I remember late nights in college during the 1970's, sitting around with friends, absorbed in deeply meaningful discussions that produced flashes of sudden insight, revelations so profound they simply must be preserved. I'd rush to my journal to record the epic moment for future generations. The next day I'd jump out of be and open my journal, eager to read what I knew had to be irrefutable proof of enlightened thought. Then I'd read it.
Reading A Theory of Everything reminded me of that.
Devoid of content.......2007-04-21
Nothing but an incoherent collection of allusions to other works, filled with trendy pop-philosophy terminology like "meme" and "holon". Over 23% of the book is simply the word "integral". There are no visions in this book, only "integral" visions; a hierarchy is not good enough, it must be an "integral" hierarchy. Avoid.
Not the best of Ken Wilber's books............2007-01-01
In this book Ken Wilber presents a concise overview of his basic ideas and how they can be applied to various areas such as medicine, education and business. This isn't a bad place to start reading Ken Wilber, but you would most likely be better served by reading A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING. This latter book goes more in-depth, rambles less and is presented in an interview format. It goes much more deeply, is more interesting, persuasive and easy to follow.
What Ken is attempting to do in this book and others is to take the best ideas and common threads from many different areas including psychology, philosophy and the world's wisdom traditions and consolidate them into a coherent worldview that considers multiple ways of knowing and respects all domains of experience such as the interior (subjective) and exterior (objective) of both individuals and collectives e.g. various cultures.
Mr. Wilber argues that reality consists of holons which are wholes that are also parts of other more complex wholes. An example of this would be subatomic particles make up atoms, atoms make up molecules, etc. Each whole has four irreducible dimensions as described above and there is an increase in complexity as one moves upward toward more complexity.
Ken also brings up the point that each domain or quadrant has different criteria for validity claims. For example, their may be one set of criteria for studying molecules, but a quite different set for studying the interiors of individuals e.g. mystical experience, the personal experience of emotion, etc.
Another important point that Ken makes is that at each successive level of complexity, new properties emerge that can not be fully accounted for on the basis of the whole being the sum of the parts. One such emergent is consciousness.
It is difficult to capture the spirit and key concepts of this author in a small space, but I think his synthesis has considerable validity and value. He assumes no one can be completely wrong and his attempted synthesis across many worldviews is very appealing.
If you were only going to buy one book on Ken Wilber, this would not be my top choice. However, if you are looking for a simple fast read that introduces his ideas, this volume might be for you.
Clear, Centered, Solid.......2006-12-16
The author takes you where he has been and points you onward to where he is going with the reminder that we are all on this journey together and that there is no separation.
Suprised "A Theory of Everything" was a quick read.......2006-12-11
First off I have to state that I absolutely loved this book! Wilber's writing style caught my eye instantly. He intertwines thought-provoking theories which can be applied toward every aspects of ones life with the use of non-technical language. This allowed me as a reader to understand the book without having a large background in such ideas as shown in The Theory of Everything (TOE).
TOE is expressed throughout the book to simply be the understanding everything is intertwined with everything else. To me, while reading this book I began to think that the world could be viewed as a giant spider-web; everything and everyone is interlaced and integrated in all action all actions of their lives and that in and of itself is an amazing idea.
I appreciated the detail-oriented, complex graphs shown throughout the book and even though I got lost more then a few times looking them over, I felt it wasn't necessary to fully comprehend Wilber's theory.
I especially liked that Wilber addressed many problems within society; however, at the end of the book (p.138) he addresses how one would began to achieve the status of "all-level, all-quadrant" by beginning with the waves of existence within ones self and that initiating a transformation isn't as difficult as one would think.
Average customer rating:
- Kostler needs a better "Boswell"
- More than you may ever want to know about Arthur Koestler
- informative and tedious all at once
- Until more starts appearing on Koestler, the best for now
- The light that faded
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Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind
David Cesarani
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ASIN: 0684867206 |
Book Description
Arthur Koestler, best known for his world-famous novel Darkness at Noon, stands as a cultural beacon in the post-1945 world. Along with Sartre, Camus and Orwell, he helped to shape the ideas of today. This major reassessment, based on groundbreaking and comprehensive research, sets Koestler's life and thoughts against the tumultuous century he chronicled and explores fully for the first time the continuing drama of his private life as a lover, a husband and a Jew.
David Cesarani paints an explosive portrait of Koestler that bridges the gulf separating public and private life, contrasting the work of a genius against the backdrop of his tormented soul and brutal private life. In England, Cesarani's revelations led to the removal of Koestler's bust at the University of Edinburgh, so strong were the feelings roused by his dissection of Koestler as a thinker and as a man.
A central European Jew born in 1905, Koestler was molded by his times. Uprooted by war and revolution and hounded by prejudice, he struggled to make sense of a world on the edge of apocalypse. His search for meaning, identity and belonging swept him up in the raging ideological torrents of his times -- Zionism, Communism, anti-Communism and both hard scientific and esoteric mystical pursuits -- and culminated in an idiosyncratic and deeply personal ideological position that has confused and eluded critics and commentators.
Equally restless in his personal relationships, Koestler made and broke friendships and marriages. His violent affairs with women were legendary, but until now the shocking details of his private life were hidden from view by loyal friends and obscured by the Olympian prose of his autobiographical writing. Cesarani is the first to make unrestricted use of Koestler's private papers. He also draws on previously secret documents held by the KGB and the FBI, which expose the depth of Koestler's involvement in the Communist Party and, later, his relations with the CIA.
Once a Communist, Koestler eventually rejected Marxism and led the intellectual counterattack that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall. His speculations on human nature and the future of mankind in the atomic age were stamped upon a generation that lived in the shadow of the bomb. But alongside his brilliance and charm was a darker side, fully plumbed here for the first time, which led ultimately to the tragic dual suicide with his third wife, Cynthia, in 1983.
With Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind David Cesarani has ensured Koestler's place in the pantheon of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century as surely as his forceful, provocative and groundbreaking study is guaranteed to reignite the controversy that swirled around Koestler in his life and his death, in his work and his actions.
Customer Reviews:
Kostler needs a better "Boswell".......2007-09-23
Koestler was the one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, and one of its profoundest writers.
Unfortunately, Cesarani is neither great nor profound. He is a narrow-minded, wretched hack who does a politically correct hatchet job on Koestler, besmirching his reputation as the giant that he was. The biographer brings his notorious reputation as a character assassin to his greater subject. He is also a borish scribbler who dangerously considers freedom of speech to be "a relic of 18th-century liberalism".
Kostler needs a better "Boswell" than this petty mouse that would toss into the ashbin 300 years of hard won freedoms. Koestler writings were about those freedoms and the dangers stooges, such as Cesarani and other fellow travelers, muster against those freedoms.
More than you may ever want to know about Arthur Koestler .......2007-06-04
Arthur Koestler's intellectual road was a long one indeed. Cesarani traces in detail the many stations of Koestler's life. He does this with a certain sympathy but even more with a critical awareness of the personal failings. Koestler who is remembered today more for 'Darkness at Noon' and the revelation of the true nature of the Soviet regime and mind is an extremely complicated and difficult figure. What is I guess most surprising in this work is the revelation of just how nasty a character Koestler could be. He was a conqueror in his own mind and his relations with the women in his life of which there were many did not ordinarily make or leave them happy. Cesarani writes a lot about the Jewish side of Koestler and the transformations he went from being a pioneering Zionist to a mythmaking re- inventor of Jewish historical identity.
This book will tell its readers more than they may ever want to know about a human being whose life illustrates the truth that 'intelligence is not only everything it may not even be the most important thing'.
informative and tedious all at once.......2004-10-22
It's sad to have one of one's heroes shot down. Apparently Koestler's understanding of why old Bolsheviks caught in the Stalinist terror confessed to crimes they had not committed was based less on facts than on his own psychological dilemmas. It is also tiresome to have yet another biography of a central European Jew caught between assimilation and anti-semitism and between Communism and anti-Communism. As for K's alleged sexual proclivities, I could not care less. Another hero gone. They have taken George Orwell out by showing his nasty side, and now they have taken out Koestler.
Until more starts appearing on Koestler, the best for now.......2001-01-31
Koestler is the lost prophet of the 20th Century.In fact I only know much about him, thanks to my late father who was a fan (and curiously was born and died five years later than Koestler). He explored such areas as LSD, eastern religion, voluntary euthanasia and nuclear disarmament years before most people... He was caught up in many of the ideological causes of the age- Communism and later anti-Communism, Zionism, the movements against capital punishment and nuclear weaponry (although curiously he espoused abortion), as well as rubbing shoulders with a number of well-known people from different countries. No way do I agree with everything he said, but he has been written off because he alienated certain people. His writings about science for example, contain many controversies, but at the same time they contain many home truths.
I would recommend Cesarani's biography, for the simple reason there is so little on Koestler now, and his books are mostly out of print. It is heavy going at times, and there is a slight self-righteous tone going through the book. Koestler did do and say some objectionable things (wife beating for example and bullying), but then again so have many "great people". Winston Churchill for example said and did far worse things. Cesarani is right to point out Koestler's tendency to neglect his Jewish roots, but he overplays this theme since he repeats it through the book (partially because Cesarani is a Jewish historian). Most interesting in this book is Koestler's life which touched on many important events, many places and ideologies and which is an incredible life by any standards.
We need to re-examine Koestler, I think for many of the reasons above. Here are some books I recommend by him.
Darkness at Noon (novel)- about Soviet show trials. A classic of its time.
The Case of the Midwife Toad (out of print)- about the virtual character assassination of the scientist Kammerer and his startling experiments about evolution.
The Ghost in the Machine - Like Synchronicity, this gave its name to an album by The Police, and talks about the uncomfortable idea that the human brain may have dangerous self-destructive flaws in it, and that modern psychology (of that time of course) may have to reassess itself.
I would also recommend his essays such as Drinkers of Infinity, and The Heel of Achilles.
The light that faded.......2000-07-10
Just 40 years ago, he was considered one of Europe's great literary minds, and one of Zionism's most prominent intellectual stewards. Yet today, his reputation lies in such tatters that we need a new biography just to remind us that he wrote five novels aside from Darkness at Noon, as well as countless influential pieces of non-fiction.
What makes Arthur Koestler's fall into obscurity doubly surprising is that his intellectual trajectory ran alongside that of George Orwell, an author who couldn't be farther from obscurity if he were alive and writing today.
The similarities are startling: Both writers were leftists who awakened to the evils of jackboot ideology in war-torn Spain; both returned from the fight against Franco to denounce the propagandism of Europe's Russophilic intelligentsia; and both are remembered best by signature dystopic masterpieces in which they laid bare the frightening psychological engine at the heart of totalitarianism.
And yet Orwell's reputation is still strong despite a career cut short by illness in 1950, while Koestler's star faded long before his death 33 years later. So, why? This is one of the many interesting questions that David Cesarani raises in his dry, but methodically rendered biography, Arthur Koestler, The Homeless Mind (Random House, $45).
The pink decade of the '30s ended less than 60 years ago, but by post-Soviet lights, it seems more like centuries. Still, it is worth revisiting, if only to enjoy the highly charged political writing of the period. While modern authors and literary critics fight their culture wars over such issues as multiculturalism and feminism, mid-century antecedents such as George Orwell, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler, and Andre Gide wrote their great works in the shadow of real wars. Millions of lives actually were up for grabs in their struggle to disabuse Europe's Communists and fellow travellers of totalitarian sympathies. Between the publication of Darkness at Noon in 1940, and his abandonment of political writing in 1955, no author did more to further this effort than Arthur Koestler.
But, as Cesarani illustrates in his rigidly chronological account of the writer's life, anti-communism was just one of the monomaniacal phases that filled Koestler's 78 years. As a young journalist, he moved from Zionism to Marxism to communism to anti-communism. He then picked up with anti-communism as a novelist, shifted into anti-revolutionism, and then adopted full-blown anti-rationalism. He flirted again with Zionism after the Second World War, then launched himself into chest-thumping Cold War jingoism, and finally retreated full time into his cranky obsession with science, psychology, and the mysticism that had suffused his life's work.
From a literary point of view, however, Koestler's only works of enduring value came between Darkness at Noon and The God That Failed in 1950. Before this period, his writing consisted largely of straightforward reportage and boilerplate left-wing propaganda. Afterward, when the battle for the West's most influential minds had already been largely won, his writing became sententious and sophomoric.
Unfortunately, Cesarani does not concentrate his efforts on that jewel of a decade sandwiched in between. Arthur Koestler's early meanderings through Palestine and Europe are all recounted with abundant, and often excessive, detail. At many points, whole pages are devoted to endless descriptions of marginal figures who flitted through Koestler's life. Yet where more interesting details are concerned -- Koestler's many fantastic domestic disputes and episodes of continental debauch, for instance -- Cesarani errs on the side of stinginess. How much better the book would have been if the author had trimmed some of the dry factual tinder to make room for full-bloomed treatment of Koestler's more intriguing adventures!
On the other hand, Cesarani does not flinch from describing Koestler's many faults -- especially the author's despicable attitude toward women. As episode after episode reveals, Koestler was a pathological adulterer, a misogynist, and, on several occasions, an unrepentant date-rapist. He was also a hopelessly self-destructive, vain, arrogant, and self-pitying man who marred each of his important relationships with disgraceful, drunken rows. In other words, he was in every way the psychological antipode to the ascetic, sober, humble "Burma Sergeant" who authored 1984 and Animal Farm.
Moreover, as with all egomaniacs, Koestler had the tendency to externalize his most obnoxious qualities. In his autobiographical works, Arrow in the Blue and The Invisible Writing, Koestler alternated between attributing his antisocial pathologies to dubious childhood traumas, and explaining them away by casting himself as the protagonist and victim of some redemptive cosmic journey.
What is odd in Cesarani's biography is that at the same time that he catalogues Koestler's many flaws, he seems anxious to claim him as one who "exemplified the Jewish experience in Europe during the twentieth century." In the book's early pages, especially, Cesarani eagerly traces each of Koestler's important life decisions to some profound but unspoken Judaic or Zionist impulse. The effort is hardly convincing, but even if it were, the reader is left wondering why anyone would want to claim this dissolute bully as one of their own.
But it was not just because Koestler was so disgusting in his personal life that his reputation has suffered. Unlike Orwell, who rejected doctrinaire communism in favour of democratic socialism, Koestler saw the socialist experiment as naive and anachronistic (and he said as much in the rather condescending obituary he wrote for Orwell). Although Koestler was quite positively against communism, he had no concrete vision of what should replace it. It was this intellectual failing that would ultimately nudge Koestler into useless teleological utopianism.
As with the life it describes, this biography fades into melancholy in its final chapter. Koestler died under bad circumstances -- a successful suicide attempt ending a nervous and itinerant life full of many attempts that were not. In a final Pharaonic gesture that cemented his reputation for cruel selfishness, he even convinced his perfectly healthy wife to accompany him into death. Sad to say, but it was an emblematic end to the life of the brilliant but despicable man who gave the world Darkness at Noon.
Customer Reviews:
A very disappointing effort.......2007-06-09
Commager is considered an eminent historian of America. This was the first full length book that I have ever read by him and I expected much more than I received. The subtitle suggests that it is Commager's view of the philosophy of the American people from 1880 until the time of its printing nearly 60 years ago. I was expecting to read profound and thought provoking ideas that would bend my own impressions about what we Americans are intellectually made up of.
Instead of that, Commager provided a very ivory tower view of our philosophy. His style was particularly annoying in that he dropped names of writers, jurists and artists routinely while comparing their products to an individual he is expounding on. Then he drops it. Should the reader be intimately knowledgeable of the hundreds of people he casually mentions the book may have been more valuable. As it is however, Commager simply mentions some sort of kinship between the thoughts of several individuals and fails to shore up any connection with an explanation. Often this would propel the reader to do some investigation of their own but it was far too numerous and simply not interesting enough to spend the time doing it.
Commager wrote this book prior to the common usage of the term Post Modernism. He certainly employed that style in writing this book. This included the use of terminology that required an explanation that was not given; a misuse of scientific principles (Newtonian political decisions for example) and attempts to make Darwinian evolution a philosophy. Commager also spent a chapter lauding Dadaists in his chapter on the "Cult of the Irrational".
Commager came highly recommended to me and I was looking forward to something far more useful than this near nonsense.
Our forgotten Progressive-era intellectuals.......2005-01-11
Commager's thesis here is pretty simple: The American character is animated by pragmatic concerns rather than by abstract thoughts. Commager reckons that the Civil War and the economic disasters of the 1890s provided the kindling for a blaze of intellectual, national self-examination in the following decades. Abstract theories were out. Pragmatic solutions were in. This thesis sound familiar? His style is "New History" all the way. Not so many dates and numbers and summaries of important events, but lots of narrative discussion of intellectuals, their ideas, and the inter-relation of those ideas. In that way, this book resembles Lovejoy's THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, in style if not in substance.
Though most of the characters Commager discusses here have generally been relegated to the academic dustbin--replaced by trendy postmodernism and deconstruction--they deserve our renewed attention for their contribution to American intellectual maturity. This is really the first generation of Americans, according to the author, which accepted the challenge to write an assessment of the American charater and condition from within, rather than simply relying on the interpretations of somewhat biased foreigners (i.e. Crevecouer, de Tocqueville and Bryce). Commager wants to capture the image of America through American eyes rather than through the filter of European culture cringe so apparent in the works of ante-bellum historians like Adams and Parkman.
Read it to know what Americans thought of themselves after the trauma of the Civil War and the economic crisis of 1893. And, by all means, read Menand's THE METAPHYSICAL CLUB as well.
Very exciting, if selective, read on who we are!.......2003-03-06
There are, in general, two types of American history that one can be fascinated by. The physical (wars, homesteading, etc,) and the intellectual (creation of law, American philosophy, etc.) The second type of history is decidedly the lesser studied of the two. There have been few good books on America's intellectual tradition(s). Commager's is one.
Commager's 'thesis' is that pragmatism or variants thereof (not always explicitly so) is our nations motto. DeTocqueville, shortly after the founding, commented on American emphasis on practicality over the more European abstractions. Commager elequently backs up his thesis and gives us 450 pages of reading pleasure in the process.
The book is selective in that it tends to focus on the scientific and poltical reactions to social darwinism (which caught on like wildfire in the states, second only to the backlash it inspired). If I had to guess the thinker Commager most admires in his book, it would be Lester Ward, who developed devestating arguments against social darwinism, heightening the importance of environment to evolutionary thought. Commager is even more selective when, while rightly championing these developments, he doesn't talk much about its more extreme and ridiculous incantation in todays cultural relativism. So many subjects, so few trees!
Anyhow, if you are interested in exploring pragmatism, the rise of evolutionary environmentalism or American radicalism in politics (which is deeply connected to the previous two) then this is a great book.
Fundamental.......2002-11-02
The most dificult challenge is to understand what's going on, while it's going on (is George W. really President?). This book is a piece of work and well worth the effort. Make sure you have a good encyclopedia handy, time enough to stop and lookup the references, and the energy to stick with it. If so you will gain a wonderful perspective on who we are, how we got here, and the fundamental aspect of change in America. Go for it!
Book Description
States of Mind presents a series of dialogues with twenty-two of the world's leading political, philosophical, and literary thinkers. Over the past decade, Richard Kearney has interviewed a range of notable figures, including Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, George Steiner, Charles Taylor, Herbert Marcuse, Seamus Heaney, Jorge Luis Borges, Noam Chomsky, Miroslav Holub, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Umberto Eco, Neal Ascherson, Emmanuel Levinas, Marina Warner, Paul Ricoeur, Edward Said, Stanilas Breton, Martha Nussbaum, and Vaclav Havel. Each of these critics has helped to shape the most pressing debates of the century in areas such as ethics, art, language, psychology national and international identity, and religion.
This searching and lively exchange of ideas, reflecting a multitude of provocative and exciting visions, acts as an introduction to the work of each thinker. The volume addresses issues on a global scale and makes some of the most pioneering and influential thinkers of our time available for the first time to a general readership.
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Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge
Maryanne Cline Horowitz
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ASIN: 0691044635 |
Book Description
In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking study, Maryanne Cline Horowitz explores the image and idea of the human mind as a garden: under the proper educational cultivation, the mind may nourish seeds of virtue and knowledge into the full flowering of human wisdom. This copiously illustrated investigation begins by examining the intellectual world of the Stoics, who originated the phrases "seeds of virtue" and "seeds of knowledge." Tracing the interrelated history of the Stoic cluster of epistemological images for natural law within humanity--reason, common notions, sparks, and seeds--Horowitz presents the distinctive versions within the competing movements of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, Augustinian and Thomist theologies, Christian mysticism and Kabbalah, and Erasmian Catholicism and the Lutheran Reformation. She demonstrates how the Ciceronian and Senecan analogies between horticulture and culture--basic to Italian Renaissance humanists, artists, and neo- Platonists--influence the emergence of emblems and essays among participants in the Northern Renaissance neo-Stoic movement.
The Stoic metaphor is still visible today in ecumenical movements that use vegetative language to encourage the growth of shared values and to promote civic virtues: organizations disseminate information on nipping bad habits in the bud and on turning a new leaf. The author's evidence of illustrated pages from medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment texts will stimulate contemporary readers to evaluate her discovery of "the premodern scientific paradigm that the mind develops like a plant."
Book Description
A richly textured work of history and a powerful contribution to contemporary cultural debate, Absent Minds provides the first full-length account of 'the question of intellectuals' in twentieth-century Britain - have such figures ever existed, have they always been more prominent or influential elsewhere, and are they on the point of becoming extinct today? Recovering neglected or misunderstood traditions of reflection and debate from the late nineteenth century through to the present, Stefan Collini challenges the familiar cliche that there are no 'real' intellectuals in Britain. The book offers a persuasive analysis of the concept of 'the intellectual' and an extensive comparative account of how this question has been seen in the USA, France, and elsewhere in Europe. There are detailed discussions of influential or revealing figures such as Julien Benda, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, and Edward Said, as well as trenchant critiques of current assumptions about the impact of specialization and celebrity. Throughout, attention is paid to the multiple senses of the term 'intellectuals' and to the great diversity of relevant genres and media through which they have communicated their ideas, from pamphlets and periodical essays to public lectures and radio talks. Elegantly written and rigorously argued, Absent Minds is a major, long-awaited work by a leading intellectual historian and cultural commentator, ranging across the conventional divides between academic disciplines and combining insightful portraits of individuals with sharp-edged cultural analysis.
Customer Reviews:
An intellectual's defense of intellectuals .......2006-09-11
Collini among other things sets out to prove that the British have been a bit modest about their own intellectuals, believing that they have not really had any. i.e. The British have thought of themselves as too narrow and practical, as opposed for example to their broad-minded, richly speculative cousins across the Channel. Collini says that this denial too relates to a sense that our world has lost its generalists, and that the ever- increasing specialization of the scientific and academic worlds on one side, and the glitz celebrity culture on the other side have simply left no place for the man of mind who can reach the broader public.
This thesis I must admit , or rather the idea that the British would think themselves without intellectuals surprises me. Even good old non- British me can give a very long list of people professionally qualified in some narrow specialalization who had and have the broader public ear. I think first of all of Sir Isiah Berlin trained as an analytic philosopher and one of the greatest figures in the area known as the 'history of ideas'. Sir Isiah certainly was in his BBC lectures a broad communicator across the academic- wider public divide. But there are others, some of whom such as Orwell and Bertrand Russell Collini gives chapters to in this work. And in fact one of the much discussed people in this work C.P. Snow even when lamenting about the gap between the two cultures, the scientific and the literary was somehow communicating across them both.
All this is not to deride Collini's painstaking research and innumerable insights, but rather to wonder when he has proven a thesis which needs no proof, or disproven one which needs no disproof.
In any case the talk about intellectuals, and about the meanings of being an intellectual are so considerable in this work than anyone who has interest in intellectuals, or aspires to be an intellectuals, or thinks of themselves as an intellectual, will have something to read and learn from here.
And this when I would add one perhaps irrelevant note. Collini does not like Julien Benda's classical 'The Treason of the Intellectuals' too much, nor accept the theory that Intellectuals promoted the between- the- wars totalitarian movements. But one thing Benda does certainly point to is that being an 'intellectual' a person of great specialized skill who can communicate to a wider audience on matters outside his own specialization, is no guarantee of virtue and goodness. The very highest achievements in work of the mind can go with the most abominable values and poorest human judgment.
So one real basic point for the broader public to hold in mind is the fact that someone is an 'intellectual' or 'an authority' does not mean that they are to be blindly followed, or unthinkingly listened to.
A healthy skepticism to even the 'most well- known intellectuals' is in order. This by the way is true today ( Consider Richard Dawkins sweeping negative pronouncements on religion, or the enthusiasm which Noam Chomsky pied- pipers for the most totalitarian regimes in the universe) as it has always been.
I do not know if this means that one should adopt William Buckley's famous recommendation of opening the Boston telephone and choosing the first names that come up, as preferable to relying on the staff of Harvard College, for electing public officials- but it does suggest that each and every layman should be a bit of a skeptic, perhaps a bit of an intellectual , in listening to the 'guidance and wisdom' of those who pronounce from on- high.
More Collini Insights.......2006-07-19
Stefan Collini is one of the leading intellectual historians currently at work, as is well evidenced by his prior books, particularly "English Pasts" and "Public Moralists--1850-1930" (both recently reissued by Oxford). This book is quite long (and even perhaps too long at over 500 pages), and Oxford has selected a compact typeface which can be tiring to read. The title is related to the author's desire to explore what he believes is a misconcenption that intellectuals never have played much of a role in British life. As is to be expected, one problem for an American reader (unless he be quite conversant with British intellectual history of the last several centuries) is lack of familiarity with many of the individuals discussed.
The author tackles this issue in a number of ways. He first studies the evoluton and use of the term "intellectual" in Britain; then compares it with French developments. He then goes back into British intellectual history to demonstrate that more "intellectual" activity was going on than is generally recognized. For example his chapter on two periodicals ("New Age" and "The Nation") during the 1907-22 period very well develops this argument. Along the way, a whole cast of characters appear: Priestley, the Woolfs, Huxley, F.R. Leavis, Laski, Trevelyan, Annan, Berlin and Shils to name just a few. Next, Collini discusses comparable development in several other countries, including Germany (quite a good analysis), France (too many French quotes even though translated tend to disrupt one's concentration), and the USA (where he demonstrates a severe distaste for Judge Posner's "Public Intellectuals").
One interesting section involves profiles of T.S. Eliot, R.G. Collingwood (very well done), Orwell, A.J.P. Taylor (a knockout discussion), and A.J. Ayer (very solid but too short). Collini finishes up with an interesting analysis of the impact of academic specialization and the role of celebrity in pop culture and how these factors have negatively impacted upon the current role of intellectuals in Britain.
A challenging volume, but reflecting the usual Collini traits of unsurpassed research, sparkling insights, and an infectious style.
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- Very, very thought provoking
- Useful insighrs.
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At Century's End: Great Minds Reflect on Our Times
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Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
ASIN: 1883051053 |
Book Description
39 great minds reflect where the world is headed into the new century.
Customer Reviews:
Very, very thought provoking.......1999-03-22
I felt the book was very well written. It opened my eyes to see what is happening in the world beyond my sheltered suburban highschool life. It also caused me to ask myself questions and think about the future, and it made me ponder the problems of the world which I will live in.
Useful insighrs........1997-09-23
Essays and interviews by thirty noted leaders and thinkers as varied as V.S. Naipaul
and Nelson Mandela examine the condition of the world at millenium's end and offer
a variety of cautions and prescriptions for the world to come.
Pierre Trudeau and Isaiah Berlin on nationalism, , Akbar H. Ahmedon on Islam and
the West, and Lee Kuan Yew on East Asia are among the distinguished contributors
to the New Perspectives Quarterly, from which this work is drawn.
Highly recommended as a valuable resource for perspectives on our troubled future, and
for tragic/comic relief there is Oliver (I-don't-have-to-tell-the-truth-I'm-an-artist) Stone,
decrying the public cynicism of which he ia a principal architect.
(The numerical rating above is an ineradicable default setting within the format.
This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.
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Ma Xiangbo and the Mind of Modern China 1840-1939 (East Gate Books)
Manufacturer: M.E. Sharpe
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Modern France, Mind, Politics, Society
Barnett Singer
Manufacturer: Univ of Washington Pr
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ASIN: 0295957913 |
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