No comments about Wartime Diary (Beauvoir Series).

No comments about John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait.

2 comments about Diogenes of Sinope: The Man in the Tub (Contributions in Philosophy).

1. This book is fabulous! Navia chronicles the life of Diogenes in an academic and professional manner, and effectively disputes many claims made by other philosopher historians, such as F. Sayre. If you are a fan of Diogenes the man and what he stood for, then you will definitely find this book edifying, but if you are not, then it is still an excellent learning experience.



2. I thoroughly recommend Diogenes of Sinope as essential reading for both Classical Greek scholars and those who simply wish to learn out more about the Cynics, their philosophy, and their way of life. Indeed, anyone who has overlooked this important philosophy. Scholarly in its approach, this book is yet compulsively readable. I was easily carried through the text which is generously peppered with fascinating anecdotes from the primary sources as well as Navia's own compelling interpretations. What better place to start an understanding of Cynicism than through its hero Diogenes.

   In Chapter 4, Hegel's view that Cynicism contains little philosophy and no `system' is demolished. Navia presents the reader with a very comprehensive and systematised account of what Cynicism's philosophy is, and yet achieves this without undermining Cynicism's integrity, for instance by not leaving a trail of `truths' for some unscrupulous management theorist to claim as the latest quick fix for a failing company. At the end of this chapter, Cynicism emerges with its anti-scientific credentials intact, but also with much greater clarity about what Diogenes' brand of Cynicism stands FOR as well as what it opposes. I deliberately choose the present tense here, because what Navia demonstrates in these pages, is that (unlike the ideas of say Freud or Marx, who as one writer put it `were weighed down by the cultural baggage of their time'), Diogenes' view of the world is as fresh and relevant today as it was 2,300 years ago. The reader should be left in no doubt that Cynicism represents a very powerful philosophy, even if he or she is not inclined to share it.

   Throughout the book I was impressed by passages that sent me off contemplating contemporary issues and debates, but I also appreciated the detail and minutia that conjured up vivid portraits of life at the time ~ Diogenes life in particular. The appendix of Diogenes Laertius' (not to be confused with Navia's own hero) original writings about Diogenes the Cynic is very helpful in supporting Navia's own text. What Navia has achieved cleverly in this book, is to strike a balance between producing an authoritative text which reinforces the `facts' available, while at the same time, acknowledging the myth-making that is essential for a real understanding of the Diogenes phenomenon.

   Can we have a paperback edition please!

No comments about Two Roads to Ignorance: A Quasi Biography.

1 comments about St. Martin: The French Mystic.

1. Waite traces the lineage of St. Martin from his youth to his traditional religious life and conversion to mysticism and how his order was started and influenced Rosicrucians in America. Martinism is now growing very fast and with the Internet many new orders have started worldwide. This biography lends substance and structure to understanding its popularity today!

No comments about Voltaire: The Universal Man.

2 comments about Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (Stages).

1. I am aware of many authors who died voluntarily. The hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Nietzsche's birth on October 15, 1994, will have special significance for me as being the date of Sarah Kofman's death. Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, an autobiographical account of her childhood, was written shortly before Sarah Kofman was sixty years old. It is easy for me to be impressed by Sarah Kofman because she was a woman who seemed to be interested in the same kind of gag reflex humor that appeals to me.
   
   Certain social situations demand silence about certain things. When the Republicans were coming to Saint Paul (an attempt to put lipstick on a pig's eye) for their convention, I realized that the police in Saint Paul would not want them to hear me shouting my opinions about tax cuts, war, and a ten trillion dollar national debt which is rolling in money in the wrong direction. I split, left town, and tried to crack myself up from a distance. Now that I'm back, and Sarah Palin has become the ideal joke vehicle for the things that Republicans enjoy mocking (like WHY IS THIS MAN LAUGHING? Nixon running for Vice President with Ike in 1952), it is easier for me to be open about Sarah Kofman being the hot white chick philosophy expert in Freud and Nietzsche for France during my lifetime, because she had the kind of familiarity with ultimate issues that World War II made an impression on Jews in Europe that will never quit.
   
   The gag reflex is the ultimate contrast to the kind of piffle that praise for an old goat with America first policies is standing for as the national debt jumps from ten trillion dollars to twelve trillion dollars in the immediate future. Sarah Kofman could be nasty by telling how Rabbi Bereck Kofman was beaten to death in Aushwitz because, instead of working, he wanted to spend the Sabboth praying for everyone on all sides. Religion is a hell of a context in that kind of world, and old goats don't make it much better.



2. This is a slim volume from a French philosopher writing of her childhood as a Jew in France during World War II. She writes from the perspective of an adult who clearly still is ill-at-ease with her history, specifically her choosing of a Christian woman who help hide her over her mother; her violation of Jewish law taught her by her rabbi father. This volume does not speak to common experience, not even French Jewish experience; rather it is the experience of Sarah Kofman as seen in retrospect. What is most evident is the lack of resolution regarding her past - the reader appreciates the difficulty with which she apparently tells her story.

No comments about There Is a River.

5 comments about Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century.

1. It was truly wonderful to read David's biographies of these great souls. There is quite a warts-and-all documentary style to this, but I really felt that I got into the lives of the people. For instance, I felt like I got a better picture of Billy Graham from the one chapter on him here than I did from the whole of Graham's autobiography.

   Full disclosure: I know David a little, we go to church together. But it's STILL a great book. I hope you can still find it around.




2. What a wonderful book! I have the privilege of knowing the author, and I can say that Dr. Aikman has not only unveiled six great souls for our benefit, but has exposed the greatness of his own.



3. I really want to thank Mr. Aikman for this book. It illustrates the way a pure soul can be used by God to accomplish things beyond anyone's expectations. The author masterfully weaves anecdotes, interviews and biographical information to connect us in a unique way to these great people. I came away inspired to try and carry away remnants of each of these wonderful people. Thank you for such a masterful work. It is profound in so many ways.



4. I really want to thank Mr. Aikman for this book. It illustrates the way a pure soul can be used by God to accomplish things beyond anyone's expectations. The author masterfully weaves anecdotes, interviews and biographical information to connect us in a unique way to these great people. I came away inspired to try and carry away remnants of each of these wonderful people. Thank you for such a masterful work. It is profound in so many ways.



5. Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century is undoubtedly one of the best collections of biographies I have read in years. In an era where celebrities are designated "heroes" and fifty or so men in New Orleans are called "Saints", it is refreshing - no it's inspiring - to read about five men and a woman whose attitudes and actions had a profound and positive effect on this century. David Aikman, a talented foreign correspondent for Time Magazine turned writer, has done a superb job capturing, in a few pages, the extraordinary lives and accomplishments of Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Pope John Paul II, Elie Wiesel and Nelson Mandela. If you are looking for perfect people, you won't find them in Aikman's book. What you will find, however, are six individuals who again and again, rose above their times and circumstances to change, if only for a brief time, the course of human events. Aikman's astute observations into the worldly and spiritual lives of these great souls hold important lessons for all of us today. Mother Teresa's inexhaustible compassion for the poorest of the poor, Nelson Mandela's amazing capacity to forgive, Billy Graham's urgent quest for salvation for the human soul, Solzhenitsyn's implacable pursuit of the truth, Pope John Paul's passion for human dignity and Eli Wiesel's constant reminders of the profound wickedness that lurks in the hearts of men, these are some of the lessons in store for those who read this enjoyable and inspirational book. Perhaps the best chapter is the last. Here Aikman uses Eli Wiesel's compelling and tragic story to inquire into the nature of evil. Was Adolph Hitler a charismatic but misguided despot or Satan incarnate? Was the Holocaust "a mutation on a cosmic scale" or "merely the natural shoots watered by Europe's longtime subterranean lake of anti-Semitism"? As we move from this millennium to the next, hopefully the brilliant lights of these great souls will illuminate the answers to these questions and be a lamp unto the uncertain path that lies before us.

   rlrodriguez@ucdavis.edu

No comments about On Gadamer (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).