No comments about Jacob Behmen, An Appreciation.

No comments about Rudolf Steiner and Initiation.

No comments about Studies In John The Scot (Erigena): A Philosopher Of The Dark Ages.

No comments about Russell H. Conwell.

No comments about Nicholas of Cusa: A Medieval Thinker for the Modern Age (Waseda/Curzon International).

2 comments about Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius.

1. I read this book about two years ago in high school. It caught my eye because it was a completely black hardcover book with the title "Young Nietzsche" on the back (of course). Afterwards I had to skip a few classes to read the Hollingdale biography - so great was the inspiration this book provided. This was the first Nietzsche commentary/biography I read. I had struggled with the birth of tragedy and carried it around in an attempt to make myself look smart a few times but I was too lazy to do anything real, and only succeeded in impressing teachers, and I slowly realized that there was really no one to impress. Anyway, I remember the book as being fairly inspiring and very interesting from a purely biographical point of view (can I be more vague or ridiculous?). If you are perhaps a lowly high schooler living in the total darkness of American public education and would like to shine a little light onto you and your fellow prisoners, check this book out. I'm not sure I'd like it as much now that I have become less pretentious... but anyway it is worth reading and its not too long. I think the editorial above gives a good summary but is a bit harsh. The book develops what has become typical as far as hypotheses go, but it offers some sagacity for anyone who wants to learn or find out what it means to learn in that it provides the means - a step up from this is Monk's biography of Wittgenstein. The absolute worst thing about the book is that it leaves you hanging and so you had better buy the Hollingdale biography too (I don't work for amazon, BTW) and then read the real stuff. Well I hope you like the book if you buy it. I hadn't even thought of Harold Bloom until I read that editorial... You won't get a lot out of the book, but you might get a LITTLE, if you catch my meaning. It's the style the gets you out of the cave. The more scholarly person will turn a cold shoulder and avoid second hand ambition.



2. If there is a problem with this book, it is that its conclusion, "Redefining Genius" is still too vague to make any particular genius of much significance. Due to media influences, social thought now is largely a matter of public opinion, and I may have few companions in the belief that, of course, it was quite proper for Nietzsche to rise to an attack upon his own age, its public opinions, and all the ways in which people prefer to fool themselves. I am grateful to this book for its outlook; merely mentioning its title is often enough to convince others that I don't have to agree with them. The index doesn't have a listing for jokes, and the author seems to associate them quite closely with the scandalous life of the composer, Wagner. On page 120, we are told, "If that was not enough, there were Wagner's coarse jokes, which frequently involved Cosima." My own interest in developing the idea of a fetish involving Nietzsche's relationship with the Wagner family has relied on the information in this book, on that very page, that Isolde was born in April 1865, so she was four when Nietzsche first stepped into that family circle. Other sources indicate that Nietzsche stopped visiting the Wagners before Isolde turned twelve, when the composer began trying to teach Nietzsche something about religion. Things which may have been left out of this biography might not be helpful for understanding the nature of genius. Or maybe the worst idea of a genius would be someone who knew what all these people were thinking and wrote it down.

5 comments about On Dewey (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

1. A recent on-line review of this book made reference to the "historical" Dewey, a privleging that is unwarranted. Dewey was first and foremost a philsopher, and understanding Dewey can best be accomplished by engaging him philosophically. No book on Dewey does this better than Talisse's ON DEWEY(though many do it well, and from different perspectives). Thus, I mean this as no intended slight to works by Bernstein, Campbell, Boisvert, Stuhr, etc., but in under 100 pages, Talisse tackles the heart of Deweyan philosophy, illuminating it for the novice and engaging with it for the more sophisticated. While it cannot be denied that some of the concerns are addressed from what we might now called an "analytic" perspective, that Dewey would not himself engage the issues in this way is foolish to speculate about. This work addresses the concerns of Dewey and the concerns of contemporary philosophical debate in a way that is accessible to a wide audience (the purpose, I take it of the ON PHILOSOPHERS series by Wadsworth). If you want to get to know the "philosophical Dewey," this book will help.

   "be cool
   read this book"




2. I spent years trying to work through Dewey's sloppy writing, thinking that there must be something of deep importance underlying all the murky run-ons. Robert B. Talisse's book helped me see why people find value in Dewey. If, as a reviewer below says, this book is actually an introduction to Talisse parading as a book on Dewey, then so much the better for Talisse and so much the worse for Dewey.



3. On Dewey is a compact and clear introduction to John Dewey's thought. It represents Dewey fairly (it is *not* polemical) and has been written with the student's interests at heart.

   While Talisse's intelligent style makes this interpretation interesting--it is not a book report on Dewey--he leaves readers room to see where they might differ with him.

   The end product is that enthusiasm in Dewey is furthered; what better result for any book?




4. This book indeed is short and simple. The problem is that it is too simple--i.e., simplifying--and that it treats Dewey out of context and pretends that Dewey was somehow engaged in the kinds of things that now occupy professional philosophers who study so-called deliberative democracy, worry about neutrality and communitarianism, and believe they are constructing logically compelling arguments. This book does not really grasp Dewey's central understanding of the nature of experience, his commitment to experimentalism, and the interrelations between that experimentalism and democratic societies. In effect, this book is 'Dewey for Dummies.' Fine, but if you are not a dummy, you would do well either to read more Dewey or to read any number of the fine studies and analyses of Dewey's work by contemporary writers such as Alexander, Boisvert, Campbell, Dldridge, Hickman, Rockefeller, Sleeper, Stuhr, Sullivan, or Westbrook.



5. This book places John Dewey's philosophy right where it belongs: in the context of enduring philosophical problems. The previous reviewer suggests that this book is about deliberative democracy, communitarianism, and logic. No where in this book are any of these discussed. So I doubt the previous reviewer read the book. Whatever problems this book has, lack of context is not among them.

No comments about In Memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

No comments about Aquinas (Outstanding Christian Thinkers).

No comments about Confucius.