5 comments about Karl Jaspers: A Biography--Navigations in Truth.

1. I am not a real student of the work of Jaspers though I have read some of it especially his work on 'The Axial Age , that age in which Mankind in several different places seemed to simultaneously discover the higher moral life. Much of what I knew about Jaspers came from Hannah Arendt's chapter on him in her book 'Men in Dark Times'. There Arendt paints a picture of Jaspers as a person of highest integrity and fidelity to truth.She highly praises the humanity of her former teacher and thesis supervisor. They remained lifelong friends and were too connected by their respective relationships to Heidegger.
   Kirkbright tells the story of the frail sickly Heidegger and his lifelong search for truth. She tells of the specially good marriage he had, and how wife Gertrude ( nee Mayer) contributed to his thought. Jaspers and his wife survived the war and he afterwards became a kind of moral spokesman to German society. The book does not go deeply into Jaspers' thought, nor does it analyze in depth many of the incidents and events in Jaspers' life. I for instance would have liked to know more about what Gertrude Mayer's marriage meant for her father, who was an Orthodox Jew. Kirkbright tells of how Jaspers after years of struggle achieved a position and recognition as thinker.The book tells the basic story of his life in a convincing and highly readable way.
   And I am sure all those interested in Jaspers can learn much from it.



2. Already as a child, German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) suffered under bronchiktasis and an accompanying heart insufficiency, which was classified as incurable and life-shortening. the fear to die early pushed him to live concentrated and not to waste any time. Being exhausted very soon, throughout his life he was forced to work lying horizontal on a divan. His daily creative working periods (of reading and writing) had been very short, so he was obliged to budget his targets carefully. "A man will be, what he will be, via the things, he has chosen for his own affair..." was the way, he programmed himself. "The minimum of being self-determinate is associated with the joy to work. without that, everyone will get paralyzed. Therefore to save the joy of working is the main problem in the technical world. Assigned work mostly is a work, which separates being a human and being a worker. But the duties of a physician, teacher, minister etc. cannot not be technically rationalized, because they depend on vital existence ..." Jaspers noted in his tiny but important book "The Mental Situation Of Our Age". Beginning as psychiatrist (among other things with the fundamental work "PSYCHOLOGY of the WORLD VIEWS") he extended his horizon of views to a stable existence-philosophical theory, which at first united him with the academic colleague Martin Heidegger, then however, ethical standardizes taking seriously, had to lead him away from this Nazi-collaborator. Jaspers wrote after the end of WWII to the American Military Government in Germany: "Heidegger's kind of thinking appears to me unfreely, dictatorial, without any sense for communication. Nowadays it would (practiced at universities) have a fatal effect ...". Added to the lifelong illness of Jaspers was the threat by the Third Reich. Jaspers' woman was Jewess. The married couple during the Nazi-era always carried in their pockets cyanide-capsules, to be faster, if Gestapo would try to arrest them. "No longer able to continue the fight, suicide becomes more and more fascinating. It seems to be the last moral effort of autonomous humans. To end voluntary is like coming home to oneself... " Jaspers wrote in those dark days. "The rule of the apparatus favors humans, who live contemplativelessly without any leisure , bedeviled sleeplessly by their wishes of climbing up the social ladders. It is required to be skilful, slippery, oily. You have to become beloved, you must ingratiate on everyone with a clever fuss of persuading and captivating, you have to become zealous, indispensable, you have to be silent, insidious, you have to present a modest gesture, you have to work only to please your chief, you never are allowed to show any independence against a superior ...". Jaspers analyzed the Hitler-Germany and Martin Heidegger, the post war German society and "The Question of German Guilt" - but in the center he defined how to live with dignity - in any time...



3. Already as a child, German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) suffered under bronchiktasis and an accompanying heart insufficiency, which was classified as incurable and life-shortening. the fear to die early pushed him to live concentrated and not to waste any time. Being exhausted very soon, throughout his life he was forced to work lying horizontal on a divan. His daily creative working periods (of reading and writing) had been very short, so he was obliged to budget his targets carefully. "A man will be, what he will be, via the things, he has chosen for his own affair..." was the way, he programmed himself. "The minimum of being self-determinate is associated with the joy to work. without that, everyone will get paralyzed. Therefore to save the joy of working is the main problem in the technical world. Assigned work mostly is a work, which separates being a human and being a worker. But the duties of a physician, teacher, minister etc. cannot not be technically rationalized, because they depend on vital existence ..." Jaspers noted in his tiny but important book "The Mental Situation Of Our Age". Beginning as psychiatrist (among other things with the fundamental work "Psychology of the World Views") he extended his horizon of views to a stable existence-philosophical theory, which at first united him with the academic colleague Martin Heidegger, then however, ethical standardizes taking seriously, had to lead him away from this Nazi-collaborator. Jaspers wrote after the end of WWII to the American Military Government in Germany: "Heidegger's kind of thinking appears to me unfreely, dictatorial, without any sense for communication. Nowadays it would (practiced at universities) have a fatal effect ...". Added to the lifelong illness of Jaspers was the threat by the Third Reich. Jaspers' woman was Jewess. The married couple during the Nazi-era always carried in their pockets cyanide-capsules, to be faster, if Gestapo would try to arrest them. "No longer able to continue the fight, suicide becomes more and more fascinating. It seems to be the last moral effort of autonomous humans. To end voluntary is like coming home to oneself... " Jaspers wrote in those dark days. "The rule of the apparatus favors humans, who live contemplativelessly without any leisure , bedeviled sleeplessly by their wishes of climbing up the social ladders. It is required to be skilful, slippery, oily. You have to become beloved, you must ingratiate on everyone with a clever fuss of persuading and captivating, you have to become zealous, indispensable, you have to be silent, insidious, you have to present a modest gesture, you have to work only to please your chief, you never are allowed to show any independence against a superior ...". Jaspers analyzed the Hitler-Germany and Martin Heidegger, the post war German society and "The Question of German Guilt" - but in the center he defined how to live with dignity - in any time...



4. I have read every work of the late Karl Jaspers. I believe Ms. Kirkbright summarizes her approach in her introduction. She chooses a difficult path to explore. She must write about Jasper's life without focusing on his specific philosophy. She explains in the introduction that she will write about Jaspers seeking truth without going into detail about his idea of truth. Personally I can not put the book down, but I keep reading and reading. Too many academic snobs keep trying to kill the spirit of philosophy. Why is it wrong to look at Karl Jaspers through the lens of his family correspondence? I recommend this book to anyone who is interesting in learning about the man who wrote so much philosophy and began the long tradition known as existentialism. I do not recommend this book to anyone who is too pretentious to actually read a book!



5. In general, I do not like to post negative reviews to the Amazon Web site. For Suzanne Kirkbright's work, I am making an exception. This is a very poorly written and narrated biography. Very briefly, I would like to itemize its most obvious flaws,
   
   1. Writing. Ms Kirkbright writes in an English that is all but incomprehensible. The book reads like an inept translation. Here are the first two sentences of the book:
   
   "In Oldenburg, where Karl Jaspers was born on 23 February 1883, the changing attitudes that shape the fabric of civilized society were all but sheltered from view. (footnote 1) During these years of Bismark's Germany, political life was in flux, for modernizing the regions in a federal, secular and unified nation appeared to exacerbate disagreement among political parties which--apart from the higher authority of Emperor Willhelm I--could have been scrutinizing Bismarck's policies of social and cultural integration. (footnote 2)"
   
   Throughtout her book, Ms Kirkbright has trouble with standard English idioms and the use of prepositions. One has to wonder how this prose slipped passed the editorial staff at YUP.
   
   2. Historical. Ms Kirkbright's rendering of the historical and cultural background of Jasper's place and time is substandard.
   
   3. Narrative. This biography achieves no smooth narrative but skips around and does not build any kind of systematic portrait of anything--not the family, not Karl, not the political events.
   
   4. Ideas. Mr Kirkbright seems to have little understanding of the ideas that circulate in Jaspers work. She seems to be culling them from secondary sources rather than from her own reading and understanding.
   
   5. Research. Ms Kirkbright is working on a fascinating subject with many primary sources. However, she uses these sources in a very unskilled way. She has the tendency to footnote sentence after sentence, often with no serious goal.
   
   6. Bibliographical. Her reference section is not up to contemporary scholarly standards. One rather humorous example is her reference to "The Complete Works of Plato"...in the Jowett translation. Hmmm...?
   
   In conclusion, because of its awkwardness this book is hard to follow for a someone who simply wants to know a bit about Jaspers; for the scholar, it's probably worth a quick glance because of the value of Suzanne Kirkbright's source material.
   
   All in all, this is a poor book that needs revision
   
   rs

1 comments about Owl of Minerva.

1. I believe that when the philosophical dust from the 20th century finally settles, Mary Midgley will be regarded as among the more important philosophical writers (not just professors of philosophy) of the latter portion of the century. She wrote polemically but perspicaciously about animal rights, as in her work BEAST AND MAN, on many scientific questions (as in her work THE MYTHS WE LIVE BY), and on numerous other subjects.
   
   Her autobiography contains fascinating portraits of her family, such as her husband, Geoffrey, who was an inspiring teacher, and her famous friends, such as Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Anscombe, but many readers will perhaps find most interesting her comments on the philosophical luminaries she encountered, such as Wittgeinstein, whose inimitable philosophical manner she describes thus:
   
   **
   The extraordinary thing about Wittgenstein is that he succeeded in making crucial things clear in philosophy in spite of his fearful communication difficulties. These difficulties seem to have been more or less of the kind that is now discussed under the heading of Aspberger's Syndrome, and though such classifications can be slick and misleading, I think the central point does seem right. There was surely a kind of emotional remoteness that shut him off in many ways from those around him. But perhaps it was the terror induced by that very sense of remoteness that made him able to stress our social nature so powerfully. Having been very close to real solipsism he rebounded from it with tremendous violence. Thus he was able to break away from the conviction of individual isolation produced by [Descartes's] _Cogito_ and to replant us in our proper soil as social beings.
   **
   
   She also emphasizes that Wittgenstein's ideas about the world-beyond-language have eluded many of his interpreters:
   
   **
   . . . far from believing that everything outside science is nonsense, Wittgenstein himself thought (even then) that what could not be said was far more importannt than the relatively trifling things that were sayable. What lay beyond speech was, he said, the _mystical_, by which he did _not_ mean nonsense but the profound, the true stuff of our lives. . . of course the TRACTATUS is so obscurely written that there was nothing very surprising in its being misinterpreted. In fact, Wittgenstein might be said to have proved his own depressing proposition. The TRACTATUS, after all, was only words, and words alone, not fully back up by explanation in a suitable form of life, do indeed often prove inadequate for human communication.
   **
   
   Her descriptions of her philosophical life at the University of Reading make us consider the virtues of an earlier age, in which British philosophical discussion was not only the province of specialists in the Oxbridge constellation:
   
   **
   What did strike me was that it was possible to talk freely. Dons openly admitted that they were interested in subjects other than their own, and were willing to talk about them without looking round to see if the expert was going to confute them. If someone said, `That's really a biological question,' this did not lead to an anguish-ridden silence, but to finding a biologist at once and asking him about it. Nobody seemed frightened of having their reputation destroyed; nobody considered that a chance question over a coffee cup demanded an _ex cathedra_ pronouncement. The state of being unable to say or write anything for fear that one might get it slightly wrong was not common, and where it existed it was not held in honour. I cannot express how much I liked this. When I had anything to write, I began to be able to write it, and so to work my way past mistakes. For Oxford, though it has never managed to stop my mouth, had come very near to freezing up my pen.
   **
   
   In her book, Midgley details the puffed pretensions of some British philosophy dons, even as she relies on the idea of philosophical fear, which was first expressed by Iris Murdoch, to explain the character of some philosophers: "What is this philosopher afraid of?" Murdoch asked as she examined the works of 20th century philosophers. As Midgley writes:
   
   **
   It is indeed important to ask what any particular philosopher is afraid of. . . . what really frightened analytic philosophers was the danger of being though _weak_ -- vague, credulous, sentimental, superstitious or simply too wide in their sympathies. Unlike their forebears in William James's time, they were much more afraid of looking weak than they were of missing something unexpected and important. They were not at all afraid (on the other hand) of being thought too narrow. So they were happy to exclude all topics that could expose them to that central danger.
   **
   
   Her general comments on the narrowness of academe seem particularly apt at present:
   
   **
   In fact, the whole habit of dividing academic study into fixed disciplines is much more a matter of adminstrative convenience than of intellectual necessity. The ways in which subjects are divided often change and original thinkers constantly move between them. The demand for strict monoculture does not come from scholars (though any set of academics who are told that they constitute a centre of excellence will probably not reject the idea). The real demand for segregation comes from the administrators and, above all, from the accountants.
   **
   
   She also questions whether we are justified in espousing techno-optimism about the future:
   
   **
   Fantasies about the future therefore grow like mushrooms in our imaginations. At present, for many people these tend to take two forms. There are hopes concerned with technical miracles such as articial intelligence, space travel and genetic engineering. There are also economic hopes based on a faith in market forces.
   
   Both these kinds of proposal deal in means, not ends. They make no suggestion about what we should be trying to do, only about how cleverly we are going to do it. They aim to increase our power, not to make us use it differently. However, destruction being easier than construction, an increase in power can always do more harm than good unless real efforts are made to prevent its doing so. . . . We need somehow to get it into our heads that most of our troubles do not come from lack of power but from our own abuse of it.
   **
   
   Her excellent autobiography reveals that a productive philosophical life need not be expressed only in the writing of books and articles, and in discussions with professors of philosophy: Mary Midgley speaks to the philosophical impulse in each of us, and we may all benefit from listening to her.

No comments about In Memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

5 comments about Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of Rene Descartes.

1. Scholarly in what it delivers, but delightful in how it delivers what it delivers, COGITO ERGO SUM is highly informative and fun to read. Touching on all the key places, players, and events in the philosopher's life,Watson tells us (at least) as much as we want to know about Descartes as he cuts through the myths that have been passed down to us about him. This meant dissociating his biography from the still-operative hagiographic traditions: the French Catholic apologetic tradition and the scientific apologetic tradition. The result is a skeptical biography, full of distrust toward tradition and authority, written very much in the spirit of methodical doubt practiced by its subject. At the same time, COGITO ERGO SUM is wonderfully readable, humane, engaged, and funny. By destroying the monument called Descartes, Watson has unveiled the man who, it might have been suspected, turns out to be a much more compelling, complex, human, and interesting Descartes than we have known in the past. COGITO ERGO SUM is for specialists, general readers, and just about anyone interested in biography and imaginative prose writing.



2. Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of Rene Descartes is an in-depth biography of the "Father of Modern Philosophy", mathematician and architect Rene Descartes (1596-1650). From his childhood and schooling, to his contributions to science such as the invention of analytic geometry and his methods for testing hypotheses that formed the foundation of experimental science, to his piety as a Christian and much more, Cogito, Ergo Sum closely follows Descartes' life. A biography first and foremost, written for lay readers and scholars alike, Cogito, Ergo Sum brings alive the history of a truly remarkable and forward-thinking man. Highly recommended for biography and library shelves.



3. Other reviewers have singled out comparatively minor mistakes in Watson's book, and some have complained about the way he injects himself into Descartes's story. But I like the way Watson makes it personal, recounting stories from his travels and laying out his own philosophical attitudes in some punchy prose. I suppose if someone wants a cold retelling of the facts of Descartes's life, another book would be better. But as a long personal essay that aims to explain why the author finds his subject so interesting, I think it's very well done, and a good read.



4. I have read Watson's book up till page 72, waiting for it to get better and more relevant. We hear a lot, for instance about the author's stay in a rented house in Franeker, about Dutch licorice and bread, about the family line of Descartes -his great-great uncles, and so on-, but nothing on Descartes' philosophy. That may come after page 72. I don't know. I stopped there, because Watson at that point argues that Descartes at La Flèche will have read "the Greek authors Ovid and Seneca the Tragic". That did it for me. I quitted.



5. Richard Watson certainly seems like an amiable man, a great asset for your vernissage, your cocktail party, or any other function that merits a lively imagination above actual knowledge. I won't bore you stiff by addressing every blatant error in this book: it will suffice to say that our Prof. Disney has, single-handedly, come up with an entirely new successor to Prince Frederick-Henry of Orange (1584 - 1647): a certain Henry III. All it takes is a monkey (Descartes would have loved that) with a computer, to google himself to enlightenment: that the good prince Frederick Henry was in fact succeeded by his son William II, who was succeeded by his son, William III, Prince of Orange and King of England, Schotland and Ireland. 'Elementary, my dear Watson'. (And no, Richard: Descartes didn't meet Huygens in 1630, they first met in 1635, and no, no, Richard: 'Stadhouder' is not quite the same as 'Commander-in-Chief', and no, no, no, Richard: Constantijn Huygens served two, not three Stadhouders as first secretary, etc. etc.). All this nonsense in one page (160).

2 comments about Encounters with Destiny: Autobiographical Reflections.

1. One of the few books I've read where the translation adds to the book. The style is fabulously readable and interesting - English spiced with the idiom of the subcontinent. Dr Iqbal comes across as, not just talented and purposeful, but a tremendously nice guy and it's great to see that a nice guy can succeed in so many areas by being a decent human being in the face of so much self-promoting corruption. He seems to embody the idea of the open hand, open heart, open mind. We need more statesmen of such caliber.
   
   This book was so interesting I couldn't put it down. It describes a life fully lived, fun, engaged and delighting in people, creating and joining in culture, promoting understanding and harmony.



2. The writer Javid Iqbal is the son of Allama Iqbal, the great poet/Philosophy of the Indian Subcontinent.
   Justice Javid Iqbal has chronicled an insightful biography wich is divided into 6 major themes.
   
   1. Childhood
   2. His Education (Doctoral Degree in Philosophy at Cambridge and Bar at Law)
   3. Life as a Lawyer/Diplomat
   4. Political Career in 1971.
   5. Judicial Career as Justice spanning from 1971-1989.
   
   Justice Javid born in 1924 is older than the state of Pakistan. While recounting his years, he has brilliantly managed to synthesize why the Pakistan nation has failed to understand the true ideals of Jinnah and Iqbal.
   
   This autobiography also contains lessons for the Pakistani nation to understand the shortcoming of our political & Judicial system and to rectify these deficiences and hypocrisy of the Pakistani leaders (Bhutto and Zia) to project islam as means to consolidate their reigns.

1 comments about The Point of View : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 22.

1. The greatest challenge for any newcomer to Kierkegaard is finding the best place to gain an overview. In my opinion, this is the finest place to start. In the main work in this collection, THE POINT OF VIEW (the book also contains some smaller pieces on his Authorship), Kierkegaard sets out to explain his purposes and strategy in writing the books constituting what he calls his Authorship. Students of Kierkegaard generally refer to these books as his Pseudonymous Authorship, because in all of these he writes none of them under his own name, but employs a variety of fictionalized authors, who represent a particular point of view that is not that of Kierkegaard himself. The Pseudonymous works are contrasted with what has become to be known as Kierkegaard's Second Literature (a descriptions attributed to Kierkegaard scholar Robert L. Perkins), which comprises his edifying works and his later religious works, most of which were published under Kierkegaard's own name, though with a couple of his greatest later works published under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus.

   Some of these works, such as EITHER/OR I, contain writings on a variety of aesthetic topics. Many of the books deal with either ethical or religious topics, though the latter never from within a religious perspective. Kierkegaard's main argument in the POINT OF VIEW is that from first to last he was, even when writing on aesthetic topics, a religious author. The Pseudonymous works all presuppose a theory of stages, which Kierkegaard describes as moving from the aesthetic to the ethical and into the religious (the precise prepositions, according to SK, being of the utmost importance).

   It is not clear that Kierkegaard had a precise understanding of all this at the moment he was writing the first of his Pseudonymous works, but it is unquestionable that he moved to this point of view fairly early on. This little volume is, therefore, a wonderful introduction to Kierkegaard's most famous works, and remains one of the most fascinating reflections by a great writer on the nature of his own work ever written.

No comments about Correspondence of Spinoza.

3 comments about Lady of the Lotus-Born.

1. Once again the Padmakara Translation Group does an exemplary job of translating this fascinating life story of Tibet's most famous and influential master (yes, she was a female from Tibet born over 1200 years ago, who was renowned as the great Indian yogi Padmasambhava's main Tibetan disciple/consort, and responsible for spreading his teachings through the planting of termas or "hidden treasures").
   
   This tale is a traditional "namthar" or spiritual biography which is meant to teach on many levels. Sometimes these kinds of stories are a bit too fantastic for the modern (literal-minded) reader, but this translation does a good job of presenting Yeshe Tsogyal as both humane (intimate and familiar) and fantastic (divine consort of Padmasambhva and mother of Buddhism in Tibet). It is a fun, lively story (full of joys and sorrows, intrigue, struggle and liberation), and not a dry retelling of an old tale.
   
   As good as the story is, my favorite part is the introductory chapter where the translators put the Lady's life and tradition into perspective. They give one of the clearest explainations of how our Buddha Nature (ever present and unchanging in all beings) is obscured by ignorance and revealed through the accumulation of merit and pointing out instructions of a genuine master (Padmasambhava and then Yeshe Tsogyal in this case).
   
   This is a remarkably complete and complex story of personal liberation, Tibetan history, direct and symbolic spiritual instructions and some might say, an early feminist statement, but I tend to disregard her gender, and even her nationality-cultural identity. What matters is how she served her master, and what she accomplished and disseminated... a practice legacy we are still directly benefiting from today.



2. Yeshe Tsogyal, or White Tara, was a rare example of a female buddha. She has walked the earth many times but her 200+ years here with Padmasambhava left a legacy for all mankind that we are still learning from. She left behind many treasures and teachings for us to use as we grow. Some treasures are still to be found.

   To understand Yeshe Tsogyal is to understand the true meaning of compassion and detached giving. These are lessons for all time.




3. it seems the tradition of retelling life-stories in tibet was largely for teaching purposes. this book does that part well. a valuable support for the depressed yogini.

No comments about A Philosopher's Story.

1 comments about On Eco (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

1. A slim but informative introduction to Umberto Eco's work in philology and semiotics, Gary Radford's "On Eco" belongs to the Wadsworth Philosopher Series. Prefaced by Eco's somewhat ironic quote "I myself like easy books that put me to sleep immediately," the work gets underway with a cheerful introduction of itself as a self-aware text, suggesting to its reader that any notions of authorship or Gary Radford be tossed out the window. All you have in front of you is, well, a text; and one that will hopefully assist in the creation of its own Model Reader.

   "On Eco" proceeds in this playful spirit, introducing Eco's work in semiotics, outlining his theories of interpretation, and finally relating these ideas to his first two novels. Intended for the general reader, the book is written in a refreshingly immediate style, virtually twinkling with wry humor and peppered with charmingly eclectic examples. Radford takes an obvious delight in selecting offbeat illustrations for Eco's theories, and his erudition ranges from Monty Python and Elvis Costello to Borges and Schopenhauer. Not above tweaking the nose of his subject, Umberto Eco quickly becomes the primary target of his own theories and obsessions - after finding his name emptied of content and cast as an "expression unit," the Professor is, among other things, deconstructed out of existence, semiotically "blown up," and placed in a hypothetical mystery novel as the killer's next victim.

   Happily, amidst the humor and playfulness, Radford stays focused on his topic with admirable dexterity, covering the major elements of Eco's semiotics: expression units and content units, Model Authors and Model Readers, textual topics and inferential walks, closed and open texts, and theories of sign production. Radford is very careful to keep pace with his Model Reader, developing each topic from the previous one, backing theory with concrete examples, and patiently cross-connecting his points from chapter to chapter. While at times one desires more depth, the text provides many original quotes from Eco's works, an implicit invitation to further study the topic at its source.

   The penultimate chapter, "Watching the Detectives," touches upon the semiotic nature of detective stories. Focusing on "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum," Radford discusses the way each novel examines the quest for meaning, the former using semiotics to posit a potentially useful truth, the latter revealing what happens when meaning is consistently deferred and all truths are held equal.

   "On Eco" ends as it began, with a brief discussion of itself as a text, one that will inevitably change the very nature of the subject it purports to study, and one that requires a reader to complete its meaning. With this in mind, "On Eco" admits that, like all books, it must be "incomplete and potentially endless."

   A concise and often charming book, I recommend "On Eco" to any fan of Umberto Eco the novelist who wants to know more about Umberto Eco the professor.