Modern Books - Page 3

In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (Harvest Book)

P. D. Ouspensky

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Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A new edition of the groundbreaking spiritual treasure, with a foreword by bestselling author Marianne Williamson .Since its original publication in 1949, In Search of the Miraculous has been hailed as the most valuable and reliable documentation of G. I. Gurdjieff's thoughts and universal view. This historic and influential work is considered by many to be a primer of mystical thought as expressed through the Work, a combination of Eastern philosophies that had for centuries been passed on orally from teacher to student. Gurdjieff's goal, to introduce the Work to the West, attracted many students, among them Ouspensky, an established mathematician, journalist, and, with the publication of In Search of the Miraculous, an eloquent and persuasive proselyte.Ouspensky describes Gurdjieff's teachings in fascinating and accessible detail, providing what has proven to be a stellar introduction to the universal view of both student and teacher. It goes without saying that In Search of the Miraculous has inspired great thinkers and writers of ensuing spiritual movements, including Marianne Williamson, the highly acclaimed author of A Return to Love and Illuminata. In a new and never-before-published foreword, Williamson shares the influence of Ouspensky's book and Gurdjieff's teachings on the New Thought movement and her own life, providing a contemporary look at an already timeless classic.

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

Michel Foucault

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Try the newest edition - April 2007 3 out of 5 stars.
13 of 18 people found this review helpful.

A new edition w footnotes, etc. is out.
Here is a review:
"Foucault the Historian [Mark Bauerlein]
A new translation of the book that launched Michel Foucault's international fame has just come out. The book is Madness and Civilization, and the first translation back in 1965 was a shortened version of the original French publication. When it appeared in English, it was a sensation, and its thesis against Enlightenment reason found fans throughout the social sciences and humanities. Missing in the English version were several chapters and more than a thousand footnotes, and what remained was a sweeping indictment of the human sciences, large claims about the nature of madness and normalcy, and the transition into modernity. People loved it, and to anybody passing through graduate school in the last 30 years Foucault was a Pantheonic figure. It is hard, indeed, to communicate to outsiders just how powerfully Foucault's work and thought gripped substantial and powerful cliques in the academy.

The current translation includes the material left out of the earlier translation, and it offers an entirely different picture of the book. In a word, it includes all the historiographical labor that grounds the grandiloquent theses--all the books Foucault read and cited, the original documents he gathered, his representations of concrete historical situations, the latest scholarship he consulted on the issues.

But there's a problem, and this new version lays it out in detail. The scholarship is a mess. Foucault attributes positions to documents that are not to be found there. He takes dubious 19th-century sources at face value. He gets basic facts wrong. He ignores recent scholarship. The most celebrated and revered historian of the last 50 years, a presiding deity of cultural studies, an icon of gender theory, interdisciplinarity, and poststructuralism, it turns out, committed one historiographical crime after another to push a counter-Enlightenment thesis."

Editorial Review:

Perhaps the French philosopher's masterpiece, which is concerned with an extraordinary question: What does it mean to be mad?

The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language

Michel Foucault

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Foucault on Facts 3 out of 5 stars.
10 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Viewed against the background of Foucault's other books, *The Archaeology of Knowledge* is a curious work. In it, Foucault not only explicates the results of his early books on madness, medicine, and the history of the human sciences: he also offers programmatic statements that link up his methods with the main stream of 20th-century French historical researches. The *episteme* linking seemingly disparate fields of inquiry is here explicitly presented against the background of Ferdinand Braudel's *duree*, and other famed devices for recontextualizing historical facts. For Foucault is intent on demonstrating his method without reference to (*against*) the philosophical luminaries that had until then monopolized such meta-theory.

The uninformed, and perhaps some of the informed, may be surprised to find Foucault actually considering the fact itself: hardly a promising beginning for showing how everything seemingly natural about social life hinges on systems of power. But it is precisely the historical fact that Foucault is concerned with, the dry, value-free content of the "archive": he is interested in the conditions of the possibility of grasping the events of the world in the manner of the historian, and proceeds to elaborate a system for comparing and construing such data without reference to processes of consciousness or any other valorizing quantity from outside history.

He proceeds to do this by elaborating a pragmatics of discourse quite unlike linguistics of the Saussurean (or Gricean) variety, studying how contexts of information combine to produce a happening intelligible as an event, not only as a linguistic counter or evidence of an intention. His analysis strongly resembles that of the celebrated Thomas Kuhn, who in truth aimed not to relativize science but to explain its true "background" in actual scientific practice. Drawing many examples from (and correcting naivete in) his books *History of Madness*, *Birth of the Clinic* and *The Order of Things*, Foucault attempts to show how an intellectual history can carefully collate and juxtapose historical information without imposing an idealizing "mentality" on the originators of a discourse.

Recapping as it does his work of the Sixties, fans of Foucault's analyses in *Discipline and Punish* and *The History of Sexuality* may expect this book represents only "transitional" views of Foucault's, later discarded in favor of a full-blooded Nietzschean pursuit of power relations. But "genealogical" theories are not ignored here, particularly in Foucault's inaugural address for the College de France, "The Order of Discourse", generously included at the end of this volume. It is true that Foucault's theory does not represent the program of a "history of truth" elaborated in "Truth and Juridical Forms", early lectures on the history of the penal system included in volume 3 of the New Press's *Essential Works*. But by the same token those interested in the French social theorists who preceded Foucault will find that Foucault's engagement with their problems, especially those of his teacher Althusser, is here much more explicit than elsewhere.

In conclusion, this book is unlikely to grab you unless you have already made a significant investment in Foucault, or "contemporary" history more generally. But for anyone who has indeed spent some time thinking about such things, this book is an anodyne statement of important and influential views about history and how it is done.

Editorial Review:

"Next to Sartre's Search for a Method and in direct opposition to it, Foucault's work is the most noteworthy effort at a theory of history in the last 50 years." -- Library Journal

Leviathan (Great Books in Philosophy)

Thomas Hobbes

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

England in the middle of the seventeenth century was a quagmire of political posturing from a variety of power centres. Royalists, anti-royalists, the clergy, and sundry other groups were jockeying for the most advantageous positions. With the outbreak of Civil War, England's social and political future looked anything but certain. Amid this turbulence, Thomas Hobbes was to compose one of the most powerful pieces of political philosophy ever penned - his now famous work titled "Leviathan".Here, he sought to unravel political complexities in order to provide clear and unequivocal answers to the confusion that engulfed England. He sets forth his view of the "passions" that grip human reason - passions that if left unchecked would spell the obliteration of humankind in a war of all against all. To prevent total destruction, reason must prevail, and those in the pre-political state of nature must collectively acknowledge the creation of a civil authority as the only solution if peace is to be achieved and self-preservation assured.

The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This should be required reading for first years. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I haven't read any of the other translations of this text, however, this one reads quite fluidly.

The scope of the book sets the tone for one's consideration of contemporary events and societal relations. As research for a project on collaboration amongst individuals, the book was helpful in demonstrating that many forces are at work and are behind everything that exists in the world. This relates to collaboration in that each of us in a collaboration brings different histories to the table. The book also helps to illuminate the notion of the impossibility of non-collaboration. Even if the individual is from birth completely independant of others (which of course is quite improbable) their very existance comes into being through the cooperation of at least two separate forces (eg. the parents).

Debord shows us that the (two or more) forces which have led us to this point in history have done so, whether willingly or otherwise, together.

Editorial Review:

Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth cenlury. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.

The Wisdom of Insecurity

Alan W. Watts

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Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Book Changed/Grew My Life Perception 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book was one of my "bibles" when I was 15 years old. I remember turning the pages in awe, wonder, inspiration and the joy of clarity found. It told me what I already knew but needed BADLY to be told and it told me things in ways I had never thought.

One of my most lingering and favorite images from the book is his talking about the pain you feel when you stub your toe. How the knee-jerk reaction is to grab the toe, hold it tight, squeeze it to ward off the pain. He pointed out that doing just the opposite would actually be the least painful -- to will the body, the foot and toe to RELAX into the moment, and allow the pain in and to flow through.

Like the title of the book, his writing takes you to a place to be able to see that grabbing for security is the least secure way to go about things. I love it. Five thumbs up.

the sagacity of sheepishness 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Worse "self-help" books exist. Problem is, this is just a primer for what you already know. Psychology East and West is Watt's most substantial book--head west young man.

Editorial Review:

An exploration of man's quest for psychological security and spiritual certainty in religion and philosophy.

I AND THOU (Scribner Classic)

Martin Buber

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Gem at the Navel of the Lotus 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Ich und Du (badly) translated as I And Thou, by Martin Buber, takes me beyond any book I've ever read before. I had to read it with another selection, because after a few pages, my soul became saturated, and I had to read something else.

I am at a loss for how to describe this book. The Third Testament hints at the idea.

We construct the world in one of two ways: either through a relationship, which engages our entire being in the encounter (an I-You relationship), or through experiencing objects as the means to an end, engaging only a part of ourselves in an I-It relationship.

From this simple seed, Buber grows three chapters and an afterward. Walter Kaufman, who translated the work, wrote a 50 page introduction, which is in itself a wonder to experience.

The experience of reading the book was amazing, although I'm not sure that I learned as much as I might have. What Buber did was to give me words to explain how I believe, what I experience, and what I long for. I must read it again. And again. And again.

Editorial Review:

Martin Buber's I and Thou has long been acclaimed as a classic. Many prominent writers have acknowledged its influence on their work; students of intellectual history consider it a landmark; and the generation born since World War II considers Buber as one of its prophets.

The need for a new English translation has been felt for many years. The old version was marred by many inaccuracies and misunderstandings, and its recurrent use of the archaic "thou" was seriously misleading. Now Professor Walter Kaufmann, a distinguished writer and philosopher in his own right who was close to Buber, has retranslated the work at the request of Buber's family. He has added a wealth of informative footnotes to clarify obscurities and bring the reader closer to the original, and he has written a long "Prologue" that opens up new perspectives on the book and on Buber's thought. This volume should provide a new basis for all future discussions of Buber.

The Portable Nietzsche (Viking Portable Library)

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Correction of False Vulgarization of Neitzsche 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

A recent interesing discussion encouraged this reviewer to comment on this book edited by the late Walter Kaufmann. This anthology undermines the false popularlization of Nietzsche, and serious readers get a better understanding of Nietzsche than is provided by critis many of whom have probably not read Nietzsche. One should avoid "slick manuals and canned opinions edited at the editor's table. Read Nietzsche for yourself.

To say Nietzsche was unconventional is an obvious understatement. Those who think he glorified war are badly mistaken and need a clear understanding. When Nietzsche talked about war, he was talking what might be called intellectual war or "a battle of wits." Nietzsche is clear in this collection that he opposed actual war, and his one quote,"How good bad music sounds when war is in the air." When writers who probably have not read Nietzsche talk about "The Blond Beast," they fail to realize that Nietzsche is using a poetic allegory and not physical violence. Nietzsche used aphorisms to explain his protest against what he saw as mass society and thoughtless conformity.

Those who have not read Nietzsche may be surprised that he was very well read in Ancient Greek poetry and drama which he cited to explain human dilemmas. Basically Nietzsche was trying to explain if a profound if possibly confusing way, was that the human condition was not rosy, and tragedy was certainly part of the human condition.

Sections of this anthology of Nietzsche's thinking undermine the notion that Nietzsche was somehow a bitter anti-Semite. The sections titled "Nietzsche vs Wagner" or "The Wagner Case" leave no misunderstanding of Nietzsche's views of Jewish people. For those who are not sure, they should read pages 88-89 of this anthology where Nietzsche gives unstinting praise of the Jews both from a historical and social point of view. Many readers will be surprised at this selection.

Some quotes and aphorisms of Nietzsche are worth noting and "food for thougt." The following examples were selected at random which are poignant and trenchent. They are as follows:

All truth is simple. Is that not doubly a lie.

The best way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to respect those who think alike rather than those who think differently.

...The errors of great men are more venerable than the truths of little men...

The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

And when they say, "I am just," it always sounds like, I am just-revenged."

Virtue is necessay, but at bottom they believe only that the police are necessary.

Nietzsche has obviously been critisized for attacks on religion. Yet, one must consider that Nietzsche was attacking organized religion for its demands of conformity, its hyopcracy, its intellectual dishonesty, etc. Nietzsche attacked organized religion for straying from its roots and original meaning.

Nietzsche was one of two men who commented on mass society. The other thinker was Karl Marx. Nietzsche was concerned about the thoughtlessness of mass men which could lead to intellectual stagnation. Marx saw the emergence of mass men as a tool for social and political revolution.

This reviewer thought Walter Kaufmann did a good job in editing and collecting the materials for this book. Other books that should interest readers are Kaufmann's NIETZSCHE: PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGIST, AND ANTICHRIST which the eminent British historian A.J.P. Taylor endorsed as follows: "This is the most sensible exposition of Nietzsche's philosophy ever made." Readers may futher consult BASIC WRITINGS OF NIETZSCHE also edited by Walter Kaufmann.

Being And Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre, Hazel E. Barnes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A bad edition of a great book 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Being and Nothingness is a difficult but great book. This edition is terrible. It omits some of the central passages of this classic. For instance, the beautiful section on the 'Patterns of Bad Faith' are deleted. If you carefully read the inside of the jacket, it does say it is an abridged edition. That would not be bad if they deleted unimportant sections. Instead the publisher deleted key sections which they reprinted in their edition of Essays in Existentialism. So you are forced to buy two of their books.
If you want a copy of Being and Nothingness, get the Washington Square Press edition or the Routledge edition.

I liked being, I skipped nothingness. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is really a propaganda piece whose primary objective was to rouse French people to resist German occupiers. Published under enemy censorship, it reads between the lines as an appeal to French guilt about not facing up to their responsibilities. Sartre risked his life in the underground and hoped that his fellow countrymen would get the same message. It was written deliberately in a pseudo-Germanic, Heidegger-type complicated style to fool German censors into thinking that it was a work of philosophy. Philosophy really seeks knowledge. But being is not apprehended through knowledge and has nothing even to do with philosophy. The very word "ontology" is an oxymoronic joke. It means "knowledge of being," but being by definition cannot be known. As Sartre says, being does not exist, it simply is.

In one passage, Sartre uses as an example of free will a person who chooses not to associate with Jews. Sartre knew that this obvious burlesque of Nazism would have been taken seriously only by a censor brainwashed under the Hitler Youth movement. The book is a classic example of how to write in code and make it appear something else. It serves as an inspirational guide for authors and speakers living in controlled societies.

Here is an example of how such code words could be applied. It is almost impossible to be heard on a radio talk show, unless you agree with the host and heap praise on him or her. Suppose that the host favors intervention in Iraq and you oppose it. What can you do to get on air? The answer is to agree with the host but in an absurd way so as to expose subtly the illogicality of the policy. For example:

Host: Jane in Toledo, go ahead.
Caller: Love your show, Fred. I just wanted to say that it doesn't matter how many of us must die. The important thing is that finally we have peace in the Middle East.

Do you get the idea how to achieve being and avoid nothingness?

Editorial Review:

The often criticized philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre encompasses the dilemmas and aspirations of the individual in contemporary society. This work of power and epic scope provides a vivid analysis for all who would understand one of the most influential philosophic movements of this or any age. Reissue.

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (Penguin American Library)

William James

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Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Always providing further insight 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This 1902 publication still takes pride of place as a landmark study and remains one of the most influential books ever on psychology and spirituality. The style is accessible and engaging, consistently interesting with well-reasoned arguments. Religions are not compared; the study is restricted to the experiences of the individual.

James considers the feelings, actions and experiences of people insofar as they understand themselves to be in a relationship with whatever they consider the Divine. It has nothing to do with churches, doctrine or dogma, concerning itself only with the religious experiences of everyday life.

He emphasizes the passionate aspect of religion and its power of adding enchantment to life. Dealing objectively with a wide spectrum of observed and personally related religious experiences, James also quotes from the autobiographical writings of famous authors, theologians and mystics from many traditions including Whitman, Luther, Voltaire, Emerson, Tolstoy and many others.

The terrain of study is clearly identified and circumscribed. Chapter titles include Religion & Neurology, the Reality of the Unseen, the Religion of Healthy-Mindedness, the Sick Soul, the Divided Self & the Process of Unification, Conversion, Saintliness, Mysticism and Philosophy.

In his own words: "Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or thought. When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories which religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary. If you wish to grasp its essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements."

This book offers a treasure trove of insights, revelation, wisdom and points to ponder that contributes substantially to the reader's understanding of consciousness, psychological processes, mystic states, thought & emotion, and the relationship to the Eternal Divine.

Although it is not a difficult text to grasp, patience is called for since every sentence is loaded with so many layers of meaning that one often has to reread a previous paragraph in order to fully comprehend and properly process the insights and information. A mindful, meditative study of the text will richly reward the reader.

Other works on religion and/or spirituality that I have found illuminating, inspiring or thought-provoking are Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning & The Creative Process in the Individual by Thomas Troward, Religion in the Making by Alfred North Whitehead, The Hidden Power of the Bible by Ernest Holmes, Alter Your Life by Emmet Fox, Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover, The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Adin Steinsaltz and One Cosmos Under God by Robert Godwin.

Editorial Review:

Standing at the crossroads of psychology and religion, this catalyzing work applied the scientific method to a field abounding in abstract theory. William James believed that individual religious experiences, rather than the precepts of organized religions, were the backbone of the world's religious life. His discussions of conversion, repentance, mysticism and saintliness, and his observations on actual, personal religious experiences - all support this thesis. In his introduction, Martin E. Marty discusses how James' pluralistic view of religion led to his remarkable tolerance of extreme forms of religious behaviour, his challenging, highly original theories, and his welcome lack of pretension in all of his observations on the individual and the divine.