Reference Books - Page 4

Poetics

Aristotle, N. G. L. Hammond

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In many fields of knowledge Aristotle was and is today an outstanding figure. He possessed the acutest powers of observation and analysis, and he applied the systematic method of definition and classification to the study of biology, physics, logic, ethics, metaphysics and literature. His writings, however, at least in the form in which they have come down to us, are far from systematic in arrangement and far from clear in exposition. The discrepancy between his scientific method and his literary manner is probably to be explained on the hypothesis that the notes, on which his lectures at the Academy were based, were published in the form in which they were found after his death. The Poetics is a case in point. The arrangement of the argument is often haphazard. For example, a technical term is frequently used in one chapter and defined in a subsequent chapter; literary forms, such as tragedy and epic, are distinguished from one another, but the treatment of them is intermingled; and the summary of contents does not correspond in order to the unfolding of the argument. In consequence, the treatise is often confusing to the scholar and to the layman. In this version the text has been so rearranged that it makes the argument clear. The style of Aristotle is direct, concise and close to the ordinary speech of his day. The style of the translation by professor Hammond is intended to be similar. Aristotle's method of exposition is marked in detail by some idioms of connection and arrangement which are alien to us. In the translation these idioms of exposition have been abandoned, and the normal practice of our day has been adopted.

Nietzsche And Philosophy (European Perspectives)

Gilles Deleuze

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Praised for its rare combination of scholarly rigor and imaginative interpretation, Nietzsche and Philosophy has long been recognized as one of the most important analyses of Nietzsche. It is also one of the best introductions to Deleuze's thought, establishing many of his central philosophical positions.

In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze identifies and explores three crucial concepts in Nietzschean thought-multiplicity, becoming, and affirmation-and clarifies Nietzsche's views regarding the will to power, eternal return, nihilism, and difference. For Deleuze, Nietzsche challenged conventional philosophical ideas and provided a means of escape from Hegel's dialectical thinking, which had come to dominate French philosophy. He also offered a path toward a politics of difference. In this new edition, Michael Hardt's foreword examines the profound influence of Deleuze's provocative interpretations on the study of Nietzsche, which opened a whole new avenue in postwar thought.

In the Dark Places of Wisdom

Peter Kingsley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

I really want to like this book 3 out of 5 stars.
16 of 22 people found this review helpful.

But i can't give it more than 3 stars. Why? first, as the reviewer below states, Peter Kingsley throws out an awful lot of assumptions without any backup. No guided footnotes, no back story, just a jumble at the back of the book for people to sift through. Combined with his sensationalist style a-la The Davinci Code (not sure which came first), it's awful and insulting. Perhaps because of this style, he ends up wasting our time as he thinks things through for himself in parts without just giving us the information to think through ourselves - as if we're incapable of doing so...i really wonder how he can be a university professor since he talks to us like we're in high school. He does this while also telling us how great it is that the ancient Greeks did no such thing - they wrote simply but with deep meaning, and let the reader figure it out (i guess he's not as clever as they were? or does he think we aren't?) Oh, right -- throughout the book he explains that scholars are stupid and only he and a few others really understand how to explain what's going on! Yes, that's why!

But even with all that, i was getting into this book in spite of myself, as he brought out a lot of interesting facts about the Phocaeans and Parmeneides. But when he literally pulled this one out of his a**--he said that some scholars actually believe the harmony of the spheres heard by Pythagoras was the sound of a snake hiss--i had to just laugh. Now, it's true that a large portion of people don't actually hear overtones, but there are many of us who do - and you don't mistake the sound for a hissing snake. Furthermore, to say such a thing totally dismisses all of Pythagoras's teachings about harmony and the overtone series, which wouldn't exist if all that were the case. But saying they sounded like "pipes" as Parmeneides and Pythagoras in fact did would be a better bet. I guess Peter likes to take what those dumb scholars said if they fit his own agenda. Indeed, Peter Kingsley apparently dismisses the actual word for pipes USED by the ancients, to bring hissing snakes into his theories. To twist something so simple around like that just made me lose respect for him. Sorry Peter. I wanted to like you because it's obvious you're a great student of this stuff, but you owe us a little more than that.

In the end, what we learn that is so important is actually nothing new - that the great philosophers, mathematicians, etc. in ancient Greece were mystics, and that Plato shut the door on that. Well, that has been an acknowleged fact for a long long time. The sad thing is, that this book has some interesting information about the mysticism practiced. But it's couched in paragraphs and paragraphs of an angry tone about how there's a conspiracy (yes he uses that word) to keep people from knowing it. Too bad - but i guess it's because, if you take all the unnecessary stuff out, it would've been a much thinner book.

Editorial Review:

A set of ancient inscriptions on marble found 40 years ago in southern Italy, recording details so bewildering that scholars have kept silent about them ... Sensational new information about a group of ancient philosophers who were so intensely practical that, two and a half thousand years ago, they shaped our existence and the world we live in ... These are just two ingredients of this extraordinary book, which uncovers an astonishing reality right at the origins of the Western world. Written by a highly-acclaimed contemporary historian and expert in the field, it provides dramatic new evidence about one of the most important of ancient philosophers, Parmenides-and revolutionizes our un-derstanding of the history of religion, of the origins of philosophy, and of Western culture as a whole.

The Philosophy of History (Great Books in Philosophy)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Hegel believes Hegel is the only one who got it right 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 41 people found this review helpful.

The presumption and arrogance of Hegel's philosophical enterprise is apparent. A powerful and profound thinker he believes that he understands all. It is thesis- antithesis - synthesis and that synthesis is new thesis - antithesis - synthesis. And this logic of mind is the logic of history. And it is all coming to climax in the nineteenth century Germany Hegel is living in.
The method of course leads to Marx. Two dialectic dummies.
The 'system' is of course opposed by Kierkegaard who wants real life in his philosophy and not ' system' and ' endless abstraction'.
The world actual history with all its surprising turns and new developments simply makes a joke of the Hegelian analysis. Technical reality gives far too much to our world to take someone like Hegel who could not possibly have understood it as its leader.
We still have the idea of development today. We still too need real and deep thinkers.
But Hegel is outmoded, gone without the tools to help us contend with what we are contending.

Editorial Review:

Within the body of his work, Hegel's philosophy of history stands as a fascinating example of this influential German thinker's efforts to capture the multidimensional character of a broad theoretical framework. Hegel describes history as the evolution of freedom--as societies and cultures grow in awareness of, and appreciation for, the interaction of individuals with the rational goals and purposes of the greater whole.

One World: The Ethics of Globalization, Second Edition (The Terry Lectures Series)

Peter Singer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Worth your time. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I've read the pro's and con's of other reviews and would like to have a brief word with those considering this book as a future purchase.

Looking at the good reviews, one I could easily give becuase I find them very agreeable, one finds the essence of the book, a global utilitarian ethical viewpoint. After browsing the negative reviews I find useful criticism gone too far. There is good substance to their points, but more often they seem to be thinking aloud rather than providing a useful review.

My suggestion: If you have heard about this book or stumbled here by accident, buy this book. While there are always points of contention in the 'nitty-gritty' the essence of his thoughts are worth more than one read, and more than simple consideration. The world is a rapidly changing place and the four chapters presented in his book offer four distinct ways to view the globalization of mankind from an utilitarian ethical perspective. I admit my idealists leanings nevertheless if one doesn't agree with Singer's arguements, then there is no better place to start making counter-arguements. The book is easy to read in common vernacular and Singer gives a good overview of the backround to each chapter focus. You will be a better citizen of whichever state after reading this one.

Editorial Review:

Known for his original and courageous thinking on matters ranging from the treatment of animals to genetic screening, Peter Singer now turns his attention to the ethical issues surrounding globalisation. In this provocative book, he challenges us to think beyond the boundaries of nation-states and consider what a global ethic could mean in today's world. Singer raises novel questions about such an ethic and, more important, he provides illuminating and practical answers. The book encompasses four main global issues: climate change, the role of the World Trade Organization, human rights and humanitarian intervention, and foreign aid. Singer addresses each vital issue from an ethical perspective and offers alternatives to the state-centric approach that characterises international theory and relations today.

The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol. 2

Rene Descartes, Elizabeth S. Haldine, G. R. T. Ross

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Editorial Review:

These two volumes provide a completely new translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English.

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-1940

Walter Benjamin

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Editorial Review:

"Every line we succeed in publishing today...is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness." So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not long afterward, he himself would fall prey to those powers, a victim of suicide following a failed attempt to flee the Nazis. However insistently the idea of catastrophe hangs over Benjamin's writings in the final years of his life, the "victories wrested" in this period nonetheless constitute some of the most remarkable twentieth-century analyses of the emergence of modern society. The essays on Charles Baudelaire are the distillation of a lifetime of thinking about the nature of modernity. They record the crisis of meaning experienced by a civilization sliding into the abyss, even as they testify to Benjamin's own faith in the written word.

This volume ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. At their core is the question of how art can survive and thrive in a tumultuous time. Here we see Benjamin laying out an ethic for the critic and artist--a subdued but resilient heroism. At the same time, he was setting forth a sociohistorical account of how art adapts in an age of violence and repression.

Working at the height of his powers to the very end, Benjamin refined his theory of the mass media that culminated in the final version of his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." Also included in this volume is his influential piece "On the Concept of History," completed just before his death. The book is remarkable for its inquiry into the nature of "the modern" (especially as revealed in Baudelaire), for its ideas about the transmogrification of art and the radical discontinuities of history, and for its examples of humane life and thought in the midst of barbarism. The entire collection is eloquent testimony to the indomitable spirit of humanity under siege.

El Arte De La Guerra (Arca de Sabiduria)

Sun-tzu, Thomas Cleary

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Para los que viven en guerra 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

a pesar de que este libro tenga milemios de antiguedad su palabra es aun vigente, y valida para aquellas personas que viven una guerra constante, asi sea en sus trabajos o en sus vidas y estan tan acostumbrada a ellas que no las pueden dejar. Las palabras del libro son sabias para aquellas personas que no les gusta perder y siempre tienen una meta fija.

Para ganar una guerra hay que conocer a tu enemigo y conocer sus defectos. Y como dice Sun Tzu "la mejor guerra es la que se gana sin pelar"

Lecciones vitales 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

El texto contiene la versión original de las reglas que el general Sun-Tzu escribió hace mas de dos mil años.

Contiene una versión comentada de todas las reglas que facilita su lectura, lo cual facilita mucho su lectura y comprensión al explicar el contexto en el que fueron escritas

El reducido tamaño de bolsillo lo hace ideal para una lectura rápida

Sin embargo, quizás es demasiado generalista; se echa de menos un análisis mas profundo que permita sacas mas conclusiones al lector

Editorial Review:

La versión de Thomas Cleary, de El Arte de la Guerra, libro de ds mil años de antiguedad, saca a la luz uno de los mas importantes textos clásicos chinos. En el que, a pesar del tiempo transcurrido, ninguna de sus máximas ha quedado anticuada.

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Routledge Classics)

Frances A Yates

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Revolutionary Rosicrucians 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

This book began a revolution in encouraging scholars and laypersons to take the role of Esoteric movements as a legitimate element in the study of Western history. Though there have been recent disputes with some conclusions drawn by Dame Yates in this work, it still remains a pioneering document of historical research. The recent collection of essays by Christopher Bamford, "The Roscicrucian Enlightment Revisited" goes toward validation of much of this work. A seminal book in esoteric studies, highly recommended.

The best,, so far 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I found this book to be invaluable in clearing the factual fog around the original Rosicrucians. The author was a scrupulous and brilliant historian who has not, as far as I can find, been seriously challenged on her major conclusions by another scholar of similar standing and specialty. The reviewers of this book who claim Dames Yates made "HUGE assumptions" and "misinterpretations" do not cite sources for these claims. Not to do so is, at best, a disservice and at worst, indicative that the sources are not of the same caliber as Dame Yates.

Editorial Review:

"No one has done more than she to recreate, from unexpected material, the intellectual life of past ages. It is DrYates's great achievement to identify the ideas and, by delicate scholarship and profound study of symbolism, to provide them with a pedigree and a home. A brilliant and exciting book." -- Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Sunday Times

The Birth of Tragedy (Oxford World's Classics)

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Op. 1 of Frederic Niezsche ! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The first essay of this giant philosopher is deeply influenced for the echoes of Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner and pretends expose a new conception of the world : the tragic thought, , the intuition of the unity of the things , the converse affirmation of the life and death , the timeless return , the innocence of becoming .
Fundamental text if you want to get ready for the Apollonian and Dionisus duel!

Editorial Review:

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche expounds on the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. He declares it to be the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos and suffering which underlies all existence and the discipline and clarity of rational Apollonian form. In order to promote a return to these values, Nietzsche critiques complacent rationalism of late nineteenth-century German culture and makes an impassioned plea for the regenerative potential of the music of Wagner. A wide ranging discussion of the nature of art, science, and religion, The Birth of Tragedy's argument raises important questions about the problematic nature of cultural origins which are still valid today.