3 comments about His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy).

1. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 -1914) was an eccentric American genius and the founder of the philosophy generally known as pragmatism. A difficult, erratic, and sometimes violent man, he was denied in his attempts to secure an academic position and spent the last several years of his life in near isolation at his home, called Arisbe, near Milford, Pennsylvania. Peirce may be America's most significant philosopher. Yet he never produced a book. His reputation, insofar as it is based on his written work, is based on essays he wrote throughout his life and on large manuscripts which his admirers saw through to publication beginning shortly after his death.

   Professor Kenneth Ketner, the author of this "autobiography" of Peirce, is an acknoledged authority on Peirce's life and thought. He calls this book, "His Glassy Essence" an "autobiography" because it is based in large part upon a selection of Peirce's writings and letters arranged to tell the story of his life. As Professor Ketner states, however, the book is also in part fiction. It includes three fictitious characters, the narrator, Ike, a writer of mysteries, his wife Betsey, a nurse, and Roy, a Harvard PhD in philosophy who allegedly knew and studied with Peirce. The story line involves Ike taking an interest in Peirce based upon an old box of Peirce's papers that Betsey has inherited. Roy comes into the story to provide information about Peirce and, not accidentally, some excellent discussions on the nature of philosophy.

   The mechanism creaks at times. The story line is artificial although Roy has many insightful things to say in commenting on Peirce. It is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the account of Peirce because many of his letters and essays seem to be melded together from sources written at different times and places. Ketner's protestations notwithstanding, it is difficult to be convinced of the accuracy of the account presented here as scholarly biography. Finally, this book covers essentially only the first 28 years of Peirce's life (with forwards to his death and to some of his subsequent writings.) There are two promised sequels which are to continue the story through the remainder of Peirce's life.

   For all the difficulties, I came away from this book with a better understanding of Peirce and some inkling of the development of his thought. Peirce's own distinctive ideas beging to be developed only in the last third or so of this book. The earlier sections deal largely with Peirce's years in college when he was deeply under the influence of Kant.

   The book makes a good case that Peirce's work is narrowed unduly when he is viewed simply as one of the first American pragmatists. He was in fact a philosopher in the large manner concerned about science, about logic and categories in an expansive sense of these terms, and about God. He was an empiricist in the broadest sense that William James developed with his term "radical empiricism". I also see strong parallels in the account of Peirce given in this book to Husserl's phenomenology.

   Peirce tought the distinction between knowledge, or the accumulation of facts, and wisdom and meaning which cannot be learned from the books. He developed the philosophy of signs called semiotics and invented a personal and highly idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, including terms such as "Cenopythagoreanism" (see page 342) which stretch the casual reader' patience and may stretch the more serious reader's mind.

   This book gives an excellent picture of the philosophic mind, in the person of Charles Peirce, and of the serious and consuming nature of philosophic inquiry. It is not a book to read for a full account either of Peirce's life or his thought. It does capture something of the spirit of the man and the thinker.

   Readers who want a historically based account of Peirce and his times might enjoy "The Metaphysical Club" by Louis Menand. Ketner's book is cited in the references for Menand and it covers much of the same ground, Peirce's life, his relationship to his father, the mathematician Benjamin Peirce, the metaphysical club which met briefly at Harvard in the 1870s, the effect of the Civil War on American pragmatism, and much else. The distinctive value of Ketner's book, I think, is that for all its problems it will allow the reader to see Peirce from the inside out.




2. For me the book, "His Glassy Essence," has been invaluable. Ketner has pulled together information about Peirce's early life that I could not possibly have gotten to on my own. Since I am not attached to any institution, I do not have access to any unpublished documents. I am not sure I would have been able to find the information Ketner has laid out in this book even if I had such access. He has pulled together a great deal of information from diverse sources and put these scattered pieces together in chronological and contextual order.

   This book has been immensely helpful to me for coming to understand the provenance of Peirce's pragmatism. Now, it is obvious to me that there was no abrupt beginning to the development of Peirce's pragmatic theory. Now that I know of his early exposure to qualitative discernment and aesthetics, I can identify these as central to the evolution of his theory of abduction-something I have suspected all along, but had been unable to nail down because of the lack of a chronological and contextual framework for Peirce's early life.

   The author did a fine job of referencing information, providing page by page notes at the end of the book. These references were noted in such a way that they do not interfere with the reading of the text--which unfolds in a story-like way, enabling me to see how Peirce fit within his context. The biographical and temperamental information concerning Peirce's father, for example, fleshed out the cultural and familial milieu in which he was raised-seemingly as a crown prince of the intellectual world for which his father was a sort of king.

   Although there are minor discrepancies (such as a brother who seems to have been left out)and occasional confusions when following the story line, I think that this book is going to be very useful for anyone wanting to know about the early Peirce. I am finding "His Glassy Essence" especially useful as a reference tool. I suspect that other independent researchers, like myself, who are working with Peirce's ideas, but do not have access to unpublished materials by or about him will find this book useful as well.




3. As a Peircean supporter of personal inquiry I can't in good conscience write a traditional "review" like the Kirkus one which dominates this page. I write to encourage everybody to disregard the Kirkus comments and explore His Glassy Essence (and their own, in turn) for themselves.

   Having read the correspondence between Ketner and Percy in Thief of Peirce, I know that Percy commissioned Ketner to write this volume. That said, I believe that Charles S Peirce, Walker Percy, and Kenneth L. Ketner are all speaking to any person whose interests run toward open-minded, evaluative, and exploratory inquiry into Life. What better way to discover your own Way than to see it in the life of another, namely Peirce.

   Personally, I have no doubt in my heart that Percy would be pleased with Ketner's first installment of the life of CS Peirce. But, by all means, don't take anyone's word for it --- be Percy's sovereign wayfarer, pick up a copy of HGE, and discover Peirce's transformative power for you own self!

1 comments about Adorno in America.

1. Written by David Jenemann (assistant professor of English, University of Vermont) Adorno in America is a biography of German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), who lived in exile in the United States from 1938 to 1953. Drawing upon Adorno's theories and archival materials ranging from Adorno's unpublished writings to FBI files, Jenemann reveals Adorno's experiences in New York and Los Angeles, and proffers not only the Adorno's story, but an evolving perspective on the rise of mass culture and consumerism. An exalting portrait of Adorno as a defender of intellectual democracy, as well as an intriguing portrait of mid-twentieth century cultural shifts, Adorno in America is highly recommended for philosophy and cultural criticism shelves as well as biography shelves.

1 comments about Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Bl¿cher, 1936-1968.

1. Hannah Arendt has had much of her correspondence published over the last decade or so. We have volumes of her correspodence with Karl Jaspers, Mary McCarthy, Kurt Blumenfeld, and Martin Heidegger, among others. But these letters between Arendt and husband Heinrich Blucher stand out as the finest volume yet published. Whereas in the other volumes we see Arendt as student, friend, confidant, teacher, philosopher, intellectual, in these letters with Blucher we see Arendt as intimate confidant, vulnerable lover, and supportive wife. Heinrich Blucher was the one person to whom she could reveal herself, with whom she dropped her guard. The confidence was mutual as well; in Blucher's letters to Hannah we see his hopes, frustrations, trepidations, and above all, his devoted attachment to her hopes, needs and ambitions. Two people for whom the other was much more than a spouse or lover: someone in whom to take refuge in dark times.

   The letters begin in 1936, shortly after Arendt and Blucher met in Paris, to which both escaped from Berlin in 1933: she after a short prison term for illegal Zionist activity, and he as a member of the German Communist Party, fleeing via Prague. At the time they met she was 29 and he 37. Both were married, but not to each other. They would not marry until 1940, shortly after their divorces became final.

   Their first letters set the tone. Interspersed with intellectual and political affairs are their feelings for each other and their doubts and a lasting commitment can be achieved. IT grows from there, in all aspects, intellectual and emotional. When Arendt reproaches Blucher for not sticking to their letter-writing schedule, she tells him that she cannot continue to careen like a car wheel that has come off, "without a single connection to home or anything I can rely on."

   They also discuss mutual friends such as Karl Jaspers, Mary McCarthy, Alfred Kazin, and Martin Heidegger (whose relationship over the years with Arendt can only be described as ambivilent), holding nothing back and giving the reader a rare glimpse into their intellectual and social world, a glimpse one can only imagine in a formal biography of the two. As no one writes letters anymore, this is a most valuable look into an intellectual time and world as distant from our cyber-present as last century's history.

   Worth your time and money? Yes - in every sense of the word.

No comments about Auguste Comte: His Philosophy, His Religion And His Sociology.

5 comments about Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography.

1. Subtitled "An Intimate Biography," NIETZSCHE IN TURIN by Lesley Chamberlain might be considered a new age treatment of a life dominated by the urge to write, as exhibited by someone torn by his appreciation of the power of music to make things clearer in a far more artistic fashion, driven by a personal rivalry with Wagner that assumed more importance than his personal relationships, and suffering from a disease which would deprive him of his ability to behave. Big philosophical issues are avoided as thoroughly as Nietzsche is pictured trying to avoid having contact with anyone who would want to discuss Hegel as he takes his daily walk in a city which "has a long reputation for magic and a disconcerting number of writers, from Tasso to Rousseau, J.M. Symonds to Primo Levi, have become depressed or gone mad there." (p. 211). The final chapter, "Collapse into the Beyond," is close to "The role syphilis played in heightening his pronouncements may be glimpsed through a comparison with his fellow sufferer, and ultimate madman, the French writer Guy de Maupassant." (p. 201).

   I frequently wished that the book had an index. There is some discussion of Nietzsche's appreciation of the artists of his time, but the names show up as substitutes for some picture, as when Nietzsche, in his autobiography, ECCE HOMO, mentioned the autumn of 1888 as like "a Claude Lorrain thought of into infinity, each day of equal, unbounded perfection." (p. 187). This is so similar to a comment in his letters of October, 1888, about "the leaves on the trees are a glowing yellow, sky and great river a delicate blue, the air of supreme purity - a Claude Lorrain in a way I had never dreamed of seeing him" (p. 167), with a note that only specifies "18.10.88, 19.10.88, 30.10.88" (p. 244), that I wonder if searching the web might give me more information about this artist, and more quickly than looking through the rest of this book.

   NIETZSCHE IN TURIN ends with a Bibliography, pp. 253-256, which provides the sources for much of the information in the book and its notes. An American professor has written a biography called YOUNG NIETZSCHE, but NIETZSCHE IN TURIN cites a book from 1912, THE YOUNG NIETZSCHE by Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, which must have at least 330 pages, as the more recent book does not. Page 330 recorded that "Fritz knew only too well how characteristic it was of all three of us in the first flush of our indignation to say and write sharp and unpleasant things which a day or two later we scarcely remembered having thought or written." (p. 239, Chapter 8, note 18). THE SCIENCE OF JOY is also used as the title of a book by Nietzsche known by other translations into English, and THE SCIENCE OF JOY makes so much sense in a new wave understanding of the world that it might lead readers to the conclusion that all of Nietzsche could be understood best in that way.

   Nietzsche originally moved to Turin in April, 1888, but this book provides a comparative chronology for philosophical breakthroughs from 1819 to 1930, when Sigmund Freud wrote CIVILISATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS. A far better translation of Freud's title is given somewhere in the text, but not in the Bibliography, and Freud appears offhandedly in the notes often enough that even an index might not clarify how much this book depends on how Freud is affecting new wave thinking recently. Names of people that Nietzsche wrote to in 1888 often appear without any explanation of who they were, and events in 1882 involving Lou frequently appear as explanations for the major forces driving Nietzsche's thoughts as he attempted to turn himself into the culmination of all history, drama, and the ultimate music critic. Even closer to perfection, Nietzsche is described as "delighted in 1888 when Carl Fuchs, well placed in Danzig to know Polish, told him that the name Nietzsche could mean `man of nothing.' " (p. 123). Trying to be Polish, in the April '88 outline of his life that he sent to Brandes, who had begun to lecture on Nietzsche's work, "gave him strength against the world which rejected him." (p. 123).

   NIETZSCHE IN TURIN is so sympathetic that it is no surprise to find, "Here is the moral underside of life, in which the good are destroyed by their own goodness: an excess of sympathy." (p. 105). Self-reflection predominates so much that the author pictures herself writing in Turin in the autumn of 1994, hardly modernized by the 106 years which had passed since Nietzsche was putting himself into an autobiography with unusual glee. The world could hardly appear more sane to Nietzsche now, though I think he could have found much better examples of music now, if he was willing to look beyond operas, musical comedy, and what anyone considers classical music. Chamberlain seems more concerned about how "Psychotherapy has become incorporated into the Welfare State. How Nietzsche, with his sensitivity to language, would have baulked even at that name, which might be translated back into German as *der Mitleidsstaat,* and given a Nietzschean reading as the state that killed God." (pp. 105-106).

   I read this book looking for things that could remind me of "Harold and Maude," a movie about age and youth in which the young man had an uncanny ability to fake death. What was not even suggested by the plot in that movie was a comic ability to fake the death of God, an accomplishment that Nietzsche might be given credit for, if anyone could figure out precisely how that could be done. This book did not apply itself to that problem, and most readers might not be surprised that such an attempt is missing, but something might still seem to be lacking.




2. Nietzsche's writings have been interpreted, misinterpreted, translated, mistranslated and mutated to serve many individual interests - from the evils of the Third Reich to the man's only sister, 'editing' his work to suit her personal, social and political gains. Like Freud, Nietzsche has been used and abused as a platform in the creation of 'new' philosophies, some citing his work as inspiration, while others, in a fit of intellectual dishonesty, claim his ideas as their own. It has been said many times that he is the most misunderstood philosopher of the modern age. From my readings and experience, this claim is not far from the truth. This brilliant book, however, in a single brush of elegance and heart, re-examines Fredric Nietzsche and his work in a gentle, unpretentious though concise way, and attempts to introduce or re-introduce readers to this intriguing, inspiring and highly complex mind.

   Chamberlain writes with passion and intuitive insight about the last sane year of Nietzsche's life while he lived and worked in the beautiful city of Turin. This was more than any other a happy and productive time in the professor's life. This is much more than a biographical narrative, but a brave exploration by Chamberlain into the sights, sounds, thoughts and relationships of this fragile though contradictory philosopher. This book is not so much a cerebral approach to the man and his thought, but an emotional, visceral appraisal of a unique thinker striving to understand the human condition.

   Of the many biographical narratives about Nietzsche's descent into madness, Chamberlain is the most sensitive without the sentimentalism or coldness similar to the many other descriptions I've encountered. It strikes at the heart with precision and leaves a lasting impression.

   If you are a philosopher or merely interested in a unique approach to telling the story of a thinker who has shaped modern philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first century, read this text. It will be well worth the time, money and effort.




3. I have to begin this review by saying that after sporadically reading Nietzsche over the last fifteen years, I still consider myself an amateur philosopher. Like most that appreciate his work, I have recognized the impact that his pen has had in my life. Still with that said, I lack the experience or ability to compare and contrast him with other philosophers, ideologies or viewpoints. I do believe that Nietzsche left the world a very human energy, a connection if you will that flows through his many words right into the hearts of those who feel they understand him the most.

   This is the first biography of Nietzsche that I've read that seemed to capture the essence of a very human man. Chamberlain's account is warm, sensitive and wonderfully written. To me, it depicted a brilliant man whose philosophies were all encompassing, not limited to classical thought and who battled disappointment, brilliance and physical handicaps.

   As a layman, who has admired Nietzsche for many years, I recommend this book to those who are interested in learning more about a wonderful and often misunderstood philospher.




4. The book does not claim to be an introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy. It is important to remember that Nietzsche said there "are no philosophies, only philosophers." Chamberlain does an excellent job of describing the last year of Nietzsche's life, from the cheerful moments to the most painful. It helps all those studying Nietzsche to know more about the life of the great man.



5. I found Lesley Chamberlain's book to be a thoughtful, sensitive, and insightful exploration of Nietzsche's often heart-wrenching life. Many times it touched chords which resonated what so deeply moves me both about Nietzsche's philosophy and his struggles to master himself in life. With this book Lesley Chamberlain breaths new life into this misused and ill abused philosopher. I recommend it to anyone with an open heart and interest in the relationship between Nietzsche the man and his philosphy.

4 comments about Socrates: A Life Examined.

1. This new book on Socrates is unique in many respects. It addresses in a clear and convincing way practically all the major issues related to Socrates' life and philosophy. It is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to learn from the example and ideas of the great Greek philosopher.



2. Navia is sophisticated enough as a philosopher to make a walk with Socrates sound like reading Kant without sitting down. I was impressed that the last two chapters dealt with religion in a wilt two power way that blended quite well with my reading of The Accursed Share by Georges Bataille, in which the feudal values of aristocrats are most famous for squadering whatever opportunities anyone else ever had in life.
   
   The chapter on comedy is like a roast of Hugh Hefner on "The Aristocrats" DVD. Religion in pre-industrial society was much more like witchcraft than the religions which are currently practiced. People know different jokes, and yearly comedy contests featured the current round of comments about whoever was getting a wide stance reputation. The taste of hemlock was just the finishing touches on the way freedom empire's gulag deal with those who have an evil eye for prying into things that most people cover over lightly with euphemisms.
   
   It was truly great for Socrates to cash in some religious chips at the end by remembering which god he was supposed to sacrifice a rooster to for whatever the hemlock cured Socrates of wishing for. I think 2008 should be a great year for people to read this book because it might inspire them to see leaders that are shuffling off into the sunset as going to join a long line of other devils who thought we never had it so good as when everybody was willing to lend us money.



3. Philosopher Luis E. Navia provides a fine biography of Socrates and reviews his philosophy in a title perfect for either advanced high school grades entering into basic philosophy studies, or college-level collections. It provides a critical, documented study of the major ancient sources about Socrates, blends in new research and critical analysis of his ideas and concepts, and considers Socrates in light of his times, history and culture. The result is a wider-ranging study than most, combining the best elements of biography with philosophical analysis and review.



4. In this remarkable and welcomed book on Socrates, Luis E. Navia gives us what is very likely his final assessment of the historical nature of the character and, more importantly, the real philosophical thinking of this most significant but enigmatic of ancient thinkers. The result of decades of research and reflection, this book become and will remain, I think, one of the standard and necessary works on the subject, not only for the philosophy of Socrates, but for the very powerful relevance that his presence has exerted on the modern world. It is this presence, this legacy, which is of real importance. In a world that values material things more than spiritual ones, that highly prizes the ordinary and glorifies the second-rate, Navia understands clearly that it is ultimately the search for the soul, as Socrates understood it, that matters most of all. It is this search, and the possible discoveries along the way, that is the substance of this work. Highly recommended it for everybody!

5 comments about Lives in the Shadow: with J. Krishnamurti.

1. It's hard to say and understand....because when I read about Krishna's life story...not Krishnamulti; but the real one. He also had a spritual lover, Redha (??) and later on he married to a beautiful princess and had four children. I guess in India or Hindu you do allow to get married even you're a God reborn or holy man. In fact the existance of this affair asnswered the question why Krishnamult didn't attend their wedding. He probably already attracted to her when they were together. He seemed easily attracted to young caucasian women in his early years. He did say he was longing to be a monk (sansyi ??) and be alone, away from the human beings during those years. To my humble opinion, if your mind is so full of God and love Him so much then you can not love another physical human being...a woman or a man and have a physical sex relationship with this person. I believe in his teaching or his words...the path is formless and pathless. He did awakening the Kudalini engery and made his way to see the masters, Beloved ones....but nothing can last forever, that's life. Life is a strange thing and no one can predict the outcome. Should the result be different if he married R.R and ended the affair? Maybe not...cause maybe they would end up to have a divroce. We are all human and we made a mistake one way or the other. We can see K. as a teacher and maybe teacher also allow to make mistake. Maybe we can accept it if we don't see him as God. He is not God, never was and never will be.
   
   K. is just a messager. He sent out the messages from the other dimension for those who tries to make a break through to see it. That's what he decided for himself the purpose of life. We all need to have a pruspose to live on. We should see it as a tragic he has made such a mistake and dimming the light and feel sympathy for his loss to the power of woman....temptation. The scandal itself and it's consequence is the biggest punishment he has asked for and deserved. Be compassionate.



2. Despite Krishnamurti's repeated misgivings about hero worshiping of Gurus, we're back to square one. What personal difference does it make to an individual whether Krishnamurti was a philanderer or a monk? Why should one be bothered with his presumed shortcomings, when he always carefully distanced 'the speaker' from the message? Did he ever ask for the reader's, or the listener's approval of his personality? Did he ever say 'follow me'?
   
   If someone begins to idolize him after reading his work, and is later shattered to read criticism ( that might be true ) of his person- then the whole point of Krishnamurti's writings is lost on the reader. If one cannot differentiate between the message and its bearer, (s)he does not yet possess an unperturbed mind to dispassionately contemplate.
   
   Let's face it- the greatest human beings are imperfect and fallible. Their greatness is not in the absence of, but despite their failings. Even Ram(a), considered to be an ideal man, the greatest spiritual figure in Indian lore, made questionable decisions. Those great men after whom the major religions are based, also will find critics.
   
   People have asked of Krishnamurti- 'If he cannot live it, who can?'
   And if they cannot separate the man from the message, have they asked of themselves- 'If this were true, and if I could not forgive this man after all he has done, who could I forgive?'



3. Radha Sloss wrote this book primarily to expose Krishnamurti's affair with her Mother, Rosalind Rajagopal, therefore if someone is looking to learn more about K's life, this book will not provide him/her with much insight. It is obvious that Radha is basically a spokesperson for her Mother and her attitude towards Krishnamurti, though he was like a Father to her, turns into contempt and resentment as the affair begins to fall apart. Rosalind's letter exchange with K. is not available for legal reasons and though it seems conceivable that they did have an intimate and affectionate relationship that lasted for many years, it also becomes quite obvious that Rosalind was extremely jealous, possessive and obsessed with K. and this book served her as a way to vindicate her pain after the affair ended. It's sad that such private matters had to be exposed, especially for K., who was already dead when the book was published and could not respond to any of the allegations. Krishnamurti himself never claimed he was chaste; he just claimed his private life wasn't important. His intimate relationship with Rosalind based on mutual love and friendship shows no contradiction or hypocrisy in his teachings. It is important to understand that it wasn't really an affair, since Rosalind and Raja never had a true marriage (right after Rosalind gets pregnant Raja in fact announces to her that there is no need to live as man and wife anymore, and many passages refer to Raja's tacit consent to this romantic relationship between his wife and K.). Raja's and Rosalind's marriage seemed more of an arrangement based on a profound bond of friendship, friendship that had indeed existed between all three of them (K., Raja and Rosalind) for many years before any romantic bonds were established.
   I read the book in hopes of learning more about who K. was, but felt a bit disgusted with the petty details of personal conflicts which Radha was trying to settle in the public eye.



4. I just finished this book in July 2007.I had read most of K's books by the early 1980's and had developed a certian affinity with his way of looking at life in its complexity and complete nakedness.I think K expressed alot of insights into the human condition in ways that knowone else quite has.
   He really knew how to take the paint down to the metal as it where and get you to look at things objectively through the process of elimination and sincerity.
   That said I also think any idea that humanity could come to live in the mental and spiritual framework he portrayed was completely naive on his part.Paradoxically I believe in turn that made him feel somewhat superior to others when they challenged him or couldn't grasp his words.
   I think this book portrays all of that very well and the fact that not only could humanity not live this out but ultimately neither could K.
   Much like the greek philosophers I believe he contradicted himself in his own idealism and really didn't understand the true nature of human selfishness including some of his own.
   I don't believe Radha was being vindictive by writing this book and I think she really loved K dearly and struggled with these contradictions in K's life herself for many years.
   There is no doubt that she takes a few little diggs at K throughout the book but she also portrays the beauty and complexity of the life her family had with him and the overall picture she paints I believe is is quite honest,heart felt,true and clear.
   The book also gives some very clear detailed insights about K's up bringing from childhood on that are quite fascinating psychologically.
   "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" which please believe me I am not trying to do here but as much as I appreciate K in certian ways I still feel he was a bit of a prima donna and lived a very cush,pampered and spoiled life.The funny thing to me is that I had always intuitively sensed this since long ago and this book very much confirms these thoughts.
   As insightful and perceptive as K was I think in the end he was as human, frail and fractured in his own way as all the rest of us and so may God Bless Krishnamurti and rest his soul.And as K always use to ask what is love? and as the good book says.
   
   4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love seeketh not itself, is not puffed up,
   
   5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;
   
   6 rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth;
   
   7 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.



5. The first book of K's I ever read was in the Sixties, when I was still a teenager; the last was in my late 40s, as I prepared to enter a doctoral program in philosophy. I read the Sloss book at about the time I was in contact with the Krishnamurti Center in Ojai, which I was planning to visit. I was struck by how various people who had known K aped his manner of writing and speaking; it was both pathetic and humorous at the same time. This was one indication to me that not all was as advertised in the realm of the Enlightened.
   
   So, what did I think of this book? It did indeed come as a revelation, because as some other reviewers have noted, K at various times in his talks and dialogues made passing reference to himself as knowing nothing about sexual feelings, etc. Was he a hypocrite--just another of the procession of "horny gurus" that we have seen pursuing starlets in the West? Was K, as one author suggested, a man who had somehow compartmentalized his own mind, so that the left hand did not know what the right had done?
   
   It doesn't "wash" to say that the teachings and the man are separable, because as Kierkegaard noted, an assertion of fact by a liar is not the same thing when asserted by someone who intends to be truthful. Intention matters, and certainly no less in spiritual matters (!) than in the other, more "mundane" aspects of existence.
   
   Forget Krishnamurti, but not this book: it is a useful, cautionary tale to all who undertake spiritual learning at the feet of any person.

2 comments about Zizek: A Critical Introduction (Key Contemporary Thinkers).

1. If you've never read Lacan, and you're reading Zizek for the first time, this introduction is for you.
   
   Kay's text is a great foray into Lacanian aspects of Zizek's thought, and, in fact, makes a decent introduction to Lacan himself (although it purports not to be such). Compared to Ian Parker's introduction, I prefer how Kay begins: with the problems of conceptualizing the Lacanian real. This forms her first two chapters, and the subsequent ones make individual
   passes at the real from the angles of sexual difference, ethics, and (finally) politics. Kay writes with progressively broader strokes and only concludes with the Lacan, Hegel, Marx triad. This progression is the easiest and best way to get a foothold on Zizek's thought (rather than begin with Marx, as Zizek himself frequently does in his writings).
   
   Highly recommended as a first introduction (though why not read Zizek himself?--The Sublime Object of Ideology and, especially, Looking Awry are good places to start).



2. The buzz of Slavoj Zizek is eminently important, fascinating and politcally useful within today's cultural force fields at work. Zizek has found a combustible energy between philosophy and the omnipresence(largely Hegel) and psychoanalysis(Jacques Lacan forever)."We love you Jacques. . . " So whether he speaks/writes about "The Matrix"(Loaded or Not-Loaded), or Kieslowski's "Decalogue",Hitchcock, Lenin, Christianity, cyberspace, junkspace or other competitors,(quite recently) as the late Deleuze of currently Alain Badiou, Zizek locates his triggering points in how objects are pitted against the real and can delude us and seem important, like a prostitute's gaze/or flick of the eye toward her prospective john. So fantasy becomes one place for focus and popular culture abounds in the fetish of the Cult,what is marketable(another pathway into Marx),and one of Zizek's most fertile breeding grounds where his work has spawned and is chocked filled with objects to discuss as they are hardened against the death-drive, the end of time as we know it, the Buzz turned Off. So we,(our culture,our objects) become in a state of "acceleration" as Virilio(within another context) has referred to as the "dromos",the "running or race".

   The Real, The Imaginary, and the Symbolic are three cyclical/ellipitical Lacanian icons of discourse that forever revolves within Zizek's thought,be it politics of culture,or cyberspace and consequently ours. For the Real, is Real(real) wherever it may interface with the human object.

   This is an utterly useful book, a virtuosity of intellectual thought/,creating a capsule like profile of such a formidible thinker, explaining his vast philosophic Helegelian energies expanding over 20 years of Zizek's work. Kay knows how to break apart/and impeccibly analyze Zizek's vast edifice.She touches on all his primary texts,most of which are far from breeze-easy reading.In that there is always a synthesis, a coagulative process at work finding Hegel in cyberspace or Lacan in Hitchcock, or truth in Lenin. But she defends this endeavor as well worth a flatter, the exepnditure of time. Zizek is a livily impassioned speaker,often throwing wonderful jokes, quips,shibboleths, incidentals, and dirty humour into the texture of his thought written or spoken.Kay's remarkable job here is locating points of developmental alchemy and longevity within Zizek.

   Zizek having experienced first-hand the break-up of the Soviet empire/ satellites, Zizek has been an important instigator/speaker toward committment into the ethics and the political, Desiring(as I understand here) a Marxism without Marx, and a Lenin without anyone. Lenin? Ethics? Now, What For? The fascination here is magnetized toward points of hardened committment,vision,cohesion,agenda something quite rare within After-postmodernity hopscoth ontology. In that we(our cognitive faculties,our cultural products)seem to move/mulitply/accrete (and die) at such great speeds. Lenin(in Zizek's eyes) had vision for success, The Revolution. This is given meaning further with his recent fascination with Paulist Christianity,Belief and the work of Alain Badiou, a philosopher who has been reconstructing the philosophic edifice,perceptive pieces from the French deconstructive,(In that Derrida can only summon the complaisance of Marxian "ghosts" as explaining reality Now)and virtuosic post- structuralists(Baudrillard,Lyotard)both representing a kind of escapism of the past three decades.Badiou has been useful for Zizek in the search for the truth "event", that truth never finds itself impacted within a system, but truth always is determined by its past, a point Zizek finds worth developing.

   Kay quite clearly brings a forward looking narrative to this in Zizek's forever search at expansion from the kernel of Hegel/Lacan/Marx.There is also a useful Glossary of terms.

5 comments about Meditation.

1. This is a great item for someone practicing in Christianity to see the ties the Bible has to meditation - 12 step as well....



2. because I feel safer going into a meditation knowing God is my protector and nothing can harm me. Even if it sounds annoying to some who are not very religious (there is nothing wrong with that, whatever floats your boat), but it doesn't hurt to say a short prayer. The only thing I don't like about his tape is that the mediation is kind of short. Maybe because it's geared to beginners. But I definately would recommend this tape to anyone. I would also recommend, "Guided Meditations For Calmness, Awareness and love" by Bodhipaksa.



3. After going through this material in more detail I gained a greater appreciation of it. Not sure why I was so turned off at first by New Testament imagery since it is not that heavily used (probably says more about my background than the material itself :-) The discussion on chakra energy centers is truly excellent - one of the best I've heard/read. Unfortunately I still gag on the music which is a barrage of easy-listening drivel. Overall I recommend it to other beginning meditators although I think the material is better suited to text rather than audio format.



4. I was looking for a guided meditation tape/CD to help me fit some meditation and chakra tuning into my busy schedule. Bought the tape version of this CD because it was Edgar Cayce. On a positive note, it describes basic techniques, discusses the role of meditation in daily life and draws important distinctions between meditation and prayer. Also gives an interesting analysis of the Chakra system that's different from others I've heard. Unfortunately there is no guided meditation section anywhere in this tape. Other things I found distracting were the persistent use of Old Testament imagery and the incredibly lame musical score. I plan to transcribe the salient points into a notebook and go through the workbook excercises that come with the tape; however I don't plan to listen to to it in the future.

   I think my next purchase will be along the lines of a more traditional Eastern approach that's free of music or religious references since these can cause unexpected negative impressions.




5. This meditation tape really helps the beginner meditator. Not expecting one to have prior beliefs or religious convictions (though Cayce himself was a devout Christian and read the bible once for every year of his life), you can really benifit from this tape in amazing personal ways

5 comments about Hegel.

1. My favorite biography of my favorite philosopher. Previous favorite was the Walter Kaufmann. One can only wonder what intimate details might be uncovered by a Ray Monk treatment but I suspect we aren't likely to get one. Ever. It puzzles me why Peter Singer's little book might be thought of interest to any but those who don't want to read any Hegel.
   
   Two of my favorite Hegel comments are gone thanks to this book. The death bed quote and another item that I can't think of at the moment but I am sure will come to me the next time I go to use it. I suppose another issue is the whole way to approach the dialectic. As many times as the issue comes up it still seems in a short summary class there seems no better way to present it along with the comment that it is a misrepresentation of the process. Which last is always such a marvelously clear thing to point out to people! "Here, let me misrepresent something important for you...."
   
   Can you picture the lightning storm breaking up the birthday party in Tivoli? Ah yes! Just thought of the other thing I have been wrong about - death by stomach complaint and not by plague.
   
   Absolutely good ending.



2. I won't belabor the kudos here. This is an impressive work of scholarship and well worth the read.



3. This monumental work has 665 pages of text, followed by 115 pages of notes, sources, and index. Ten of its fifteen chapters deal primarily with Hegel's life and with the social, cultural and political climate within which he worked. These chapters are very accessible, though marred by a style which is sprinkled with colloquialisms and even slang - I have lost count of the number of times Pinkard uses the phrase "a bit", as in "a bit worried" or "a bit of scepticism". The editorial staff ought to have eliminated these; not only that, but the proof-reading of the book is quite the worst I have ever come across and is a disgrace to an academic publisher.
   
   The technical discussion of Hegel's philosophy is mercifully put into five separate chapters, which I have found almost impenetrable. A reader who would like the read an outline of Hegel's philosophy would do much better to read Peter Singer's little book in the Oxford University Press (1983). But Pinkard is scornful of much that has been written about the philosopher previously. In his Preface he leads the reader to expect a demolition of some of the ideas generally held about Hegel's teaching. The notion of thesis - antithesis - synthesis which was attributed to Hegel in a popular book (not listed in Pinkard's bibliography) by one Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus in the middle of the 19th century and was then perpetuated by Marx was never held by Hegel; and it is true that he used these terms only "seldom" (Coplestone. Pinkard says "never".) But even Pinkard shows how often Hegel explained the development of a new idea arising out of the clash between contradictions.
   
   Extraordinarily, Pinkard never mentions the notorious phrases which Hegel applied to the State: "The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth"; "we must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on Earth"; "the State exists for its own sake" etc. All these are quoted and sourced by Karl Popper in his famous attack on Hegel, The Open Society and its Enemies (Vol.II, pp. 31 and 305); but Popper does not figure in Pinkard's bibliography either. So these quotations are not confronted: instead Pinkard (p.494) simply uses a sentence from Hegel's Philosophy of World History to convey the opposite impression: "The universal spirit or world spirit is not the same thing as God".
   
   Pinkard does bring out the development of Hegel's thought: like every great philosopher, he changed some of his ideas in the course of his life. Moreover, he was capable of perplexing his contemporaries by what appeared to them to be contradictions in his behaviour. The strength of this biography is to show how Hegel could combine sympathy for the early phases of the French Revolution and then for Napoleon with acting, at the very end of his life, as a government commissar to supervise the University of Berlin and therefore responsible for seeing that the University did not fall foul of the repressive Carlsbad decrees to which the Prussian government subscribed. He approved of the dismissal of a colleague, de Wette, for radicalism, but then urged that he should continue to receive his salary and, when the university refused, contributed to a secret annual fund to support him. He had great sympathy for those of his students who got into trouble for liberalism, and was yet very hostile to liberalism himself. No wonder that even in his life-time, the Reformers, with whom Hegel identified himself in many respects, thought he had sold out to the conservatives. Pinkard generally defends him against this charge. As Hegel himself pointed out to Heine, his famous sentence that "the Real is the Rational and the Rational is the Real" consisted of two statements; and whilst the first of them has a conservative bend, the second has a radical one: if a situation is not or is no longer rational, it loses the claim to be real. After Hegel's death, the Young Hegelians (also called Left Hegelians) would use the second part of the sentence as their lodestar, and would restore to the Dialectic the dynamism which is built into it and with which conservatism was really very ill-matched.
   
   Certainly Hegel was constantly opposed by the reactionaries in the Prussian government and always felt in danger of being denounced as a "demagogue" (i.e. subversive) or an atheist, either of which would have been a cause for his dismissal. He survived because of the patronage of the Education Minister, von Altenstein.
   
   One of the most interesting themes of the book is the immense importance the reformers attached to the universities as the motor of enlightenment, reform and modernization; and within the universities, the principal task of promoting Bildung (culture based on independent thought) should fall upon the departments of philosophy. Hegel had his first academic appointment at Jena (1801 to 1808). His identification with the ideas of the reformers secured him appointments to professorships, first in Heidelberg (1816 to 1818) and then in Berlin (1818 to his death in 1831). Unfortunately, as Pinkard points out, whenever Hegel took up a university position, the cause for which he stood happened to be in retreat: at Jena the reforming philosophers were leaving just as he arrived and the university was subsequently devastated by the French bombardment during the Battle of Jena (1806); at Heidelberg the traditionalists (who there included most of the students) were fighting back; and at Berlin the Carslbad Decrees of 1819 also put the reformers on the defensive.
   
   Pinkard is also interesting on Hegel's personality. Extremely sociable and convivial in private life, he was dry, ponderous and nervous as a lecturer; and yet he gradually attracted very large and loyal student audiences, who took his pauses, hesitations and repetitions as signs that he was arguing with himself while speaking, appearing, as it were, to put the dialectic into operation even while he was thinking. The contradictions which infuse his theories are also present in his life.



4. While you are unlikely to approach Hegel aa a novice, all the same, if you were and did, this is a remarkably well written, clear presentation of Hegel's life and thinking, as well as a thoughtful setting of the philosophical questions of his time. It was a time when thinking still mattered to the spirit of a people. Pinkard has written a great account of a life of a man who sought his own voice after so many disappointments. His friendship with Holderlin, his relationship with his illegitamate son, his rancourous rapport with his nephew, the slights suffered working for philistines or in the shadows of lesser minds were the sand in his soul that ground a pearl. Pinkard details them all with a truly 21st Century American voice, and in so doing makes the drama of Hegel's life present to today.
   Pinkard is another great Georgetown Hegelian in the line of Wilfrid Desan, and in so doing weaves the dynamics of Hegel's life into the dialectics of his thinking. Pinkard presents a terrifically concise and to the point analysis of the immediate momentums initiated by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and others, casts them in as true a light as possible, and so opens an entire tradition, well regarded for its complexity for consideration by those trained in this tradition as well as by those wondering what all the fuss was about. Hegel was not an Ivory Tower elitist. His life formed the ground of his philosophy, and while he was also not an everyman, he is one in whom thinking took hold at any early age and kept calling him out into its light. Hegel meant that his writings have an impact. He was not interested in building flights of fancy that had no repercussions for culture, politics, spirituality. He distanced himself from traditions that would have ensnared him, compromised his boldness, and left him in a tradition, instead of clearing new ground.
   Pinkard clearly shows how and why you have to deal with Hegel in Western Philosophy, just as much as you have to confront Plato, Aristotle, Kant. Nothing was the same after Hegel. History, psychoanalysis, culture, politics were all forever changed. His was an original voice, and the call, once heard, altered everything.
   I keep returning to the point that this is a great read. And it is! So novice or enthusiast, you'll find this a book you'll return to often. This should be mandatory reading for anyone pursuing a higher education. The lessons of the life as well as the philosophy produced deserve thoughtful consideration.



5. It would be difficult to justify a biography of a philosophy as being essential: if you want to understand a philosopher you should read their works instead. But Pinkard manages to wage an astonishingly battle on two fronts: first, elaborating on his philosophical development with a view towards prominent influences and second, foisting off common misconceptions about Hegel.

   So, for part one. Hegel is difficult. It was, as I learned, his distinguishing mark in early years: "more obscure than Fichte!" was something like a slogan. Pinkard does a marvellous job of showing the diversity and complexity of Hegel's experience (the chapters on his university friendship with Schelling and Hoderlin are especially absorbing) and pulling out some of the more unexpected sources of his thought. (Adam Smith and Gibbon and the New Testament, for example.) Ever since Dilthey more attention has been payed to Hegel's early work and for good reason. Moving from this account Pinkard gives excellent insights into the genesis and exposition of Hegel's notoriously difficult "system." Having been absoloutely dumbfounded by Hegel in the past I think this book is the best possible introduction to what Hegel is up to in his Philosophical work. Pinkard in addition to being keen has some serious philosophical chops so he brings out some aspects of Hegel that get overlooked.

   As for the second front Pinkard does a great job of countering some of the more cartoonish and absurd pictures of Hegel: the pioneer of German nationalism, the doddering obscurantist, the proto-fascist conservative. Pinkard does a good job showing how the most common images of hegel are thorough characters whose longevity has more to do with the fact that few people actually read or know much about Hegel. I particularly liked the way Hegel's complex political commitments were mapped out and how the more intimate aspects of Hegel the person (his addiction to whist, his love of coffee) were brought out.

   I am given to understand that Hegel scholarship is experiencing something of a revival these days, and by my account Pinkard's biography should be at the forefront of any movement. He deserves a great deal of credit for producing a skillfull, well-written and insightful work on an extremely difficult thinker.