2 comments about Great Souls: Six Who Changed a Century.

1. very interesting biographies of wonderful people. i give this book as a high school graduation present in hopes that the recipient will become a great soul



2. The brilliance, charm and compassion of David Aikman shows clearly in his narratives of these bigger that life individuals who have left their mark on the world.
   The writing is compelling...the reader is drawn into the text as if he/she were present at the time.
   The moral is of course that the only thing that matter in this life is GOD.

2 comments about The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt.

1. _The Enemy_ provides an excellent and thorough introducion to the life and thinking of the German political philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt. The book traces the developments in his thoughts from his earliest days as a Catholic schoolchild in the Rhineland to his eventual professorship in constitutional law and his involvement with the Third Reich regime and the subsequent developments in his thought after the Third Reich had fallen. Schmitt is normally considered to belong with the "conservative revolutionaries" such as Ernst Junger, Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger, and several other important figures in the Weimar republic prior to the advent of the Third Reich. These thinkers were important for their political and philosophical thought which was firmly opposed to liberalism, bolshevism, and modernism. An important aspect behind Schmitt's thought was his Catholicism (however tenuous that link may have become for him at various moments in his life). Certain interpreters of Schmitt have made the claim that Schmitt's writings can be understood on the basis of a "fundamentalist" Catholicism , in which the crisis in the modern world is perceived in apocalyptic terms involving an encounter between Christ and Antichrist. Schmitt became a jurist and a professor of constitutional law and a great deal of his writing is concerned with the application of his political principles to the legal status of the constitution. Schmitt's thinking is heavily influenced by the German Romantics such as Schlegel and Hegelianism, but also has a Latin character influenced by such Catholic counter-revolutionaries as Joseph de Maistre and Donoso Cortes, as well as the writings of Thomas Hobbes in his _Leviathan_, and the writings of Machiavelli. Perhaps Schmitt is most famous for his understanding of the political in terms of the "friend-enemy" distinction. He outlined this distinction in his famous work _The Concept of the Political_. Schmitt came to occupy a central place in the Third Reich regime and was often regarded as the "Crown Jurist" of that regime. The particular problematic of Schmitt's involvement with the Third Reich and his adherence to certain anti-Semitic beliefs is firmly covered in this book. After the defeat of the Third Reich, Schmitt would come to partially renounce some of his earlier alignment with it; however, he would also come to regard the process of denazification which involved him spending several years in captivity as equally abominable. Much of Schmitt's work focused on a particular interpretation of Thomas Hobbes in hiw book _Leviathan_. Schmitt may have believed in an apocalyptic myth involving an obscure quasi-Messianic figure, the Katechon (see the discussion in the book; but also see Paul's epistle to the Thessalonians where it is explained that the Katechon refers to a "restrainer" who is to come). The book also discusses Schmitt's relationship with the new international order subsequent to the Nazi regime. The importance of Schmitt's thought here in regards to our modern era which is closely coming to approximate a New World Order and a system of international law based in the United Nations (i.e. the League of Nations in Schmitt's time) cannot be overestimated. Schmitt's later works include a book entitled _Land and Sea_ which outlines the differences between land and sea powers and a work entitled _The Law of the Earth_. The relationship between a landlocked continental German power and a seafaring English power rooted in the Calvinistic religion plays an important role in Schmitt's writings. Schmitt's later days were spent in relative obscurity as a figure who was considered anathema by the new intellectuals; however, he continued to write and work and gather a group of students around him. Carl Schmitt is a fascinating figure who encountered the dark side and whose thinking still poses interesting questions for the modern world. His distinction between friend and enemy continues to occupy an important place in the role of political theory and although some on the Left have attempted to usurp his ideas, his ideas remain firmly grounded in the tradition of right wing intellectuals of the conservative revolution. This book provides an excellent introduction and outline of his life and thought and is to be highly recommended to all those interested in this figure.



2. This is the best all-around survey of and introduction to Carl Schmitt's thought. Balakrishnan does a good job of identifying each of the many, many "turns" in Schmitt's thought and situating each of them within the contemporaneous political developments in German-speaking Europe. There is some basic discussion of Schmitt's personal and religious life, as well as his political allegiances and the vicissitudes of his unstable status within the German establishment. This book is scholarly, clear and readable. If there's a problem with The Enemy, it is that Schmitt's thought does not lend itself to summary. He seems not only to have 'evolved' intellectually over time, but also to have taken simultaneously contradictory positions in contemporaneous works.
   
   Schmitt's brand of legal nihilism is fashionably dangerous. But, in my view, he is an artifact of a bygone moment in German history and has little to teach contemporary Anglo-American lawyers. Schmitt is frequently cited as an intellectual ancestor of Bush's lawyers John Yoo and David Addington but I suspect any similarity is accidental. In any event, the comparison is less than enlightening. However dubious their legal advice, Yoo and Addington both speak the language of precedent, jurisprudence and constitutional authority. Schmitt's arguments were grounded in a muscular continental mysticism - the gestalt of force and submission. Yoo and Addington are perhaps overly concerned with the defense of the republic, but they take its legitimacy for granted. Schmitt was suspicious of the very possibility of parliamentary rule. He sensed that deliberation was an arbitrary process with no logical endpoint. He feared that parliamentary politics was foundationless - that it was, to steal a phrase from Steven Hawking, 'just turtles all the way down.' Schmitt sought sovereign power as the font of political legitimacy - the solid ground beneath the State's feet. He seems to have concluded that sovereign power comes into being through an act of will or faith. This notion is alien to Anglo-American legal thought, where legal authority is derived from text, tradition, history, or natural law. Schmitt is compelling because he shows us an alternative law and politics of reactionary postmodernism - critical legal theory in service to naked power.
   
   In the end, Schmitt is historically important for his two aphorisms: "He is sovereign who decides the exception." and "Tell me who your enemy is and I will tell you who you are." Meditate upon these long enough and you won't need this or any other book on Carl Schmitt.

1 comments about Critique and Conviction.

1. What a wonderful book!! Ricoeur talks about his life, his journey through philosophy, his thoughts, feelings and much more. He talks about his encounters with some of our centuries great philosophers, such as Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel and Gadamer. From his childhood to his experience as a prisioner during W.W.II; talks about his teaching years in both Europe and USA (he makes an excelent analysis of the two cultures). A must read for anyone interested in philosophy, ethics, history, phenomenology, psychanalysis, religion, art, education, politics, european and american culture. A great introduction to his work and life. Very pleasant book. I highly recomend it!!

5 comments about The Passion of Michel Foucault.

1. This book, based on the "philosophical life" of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, reveals the mind of a man who was, says Miller, "one of the most original---and daring---thinkers of the century." Far from being just another biography of Foucault's life, Miller's thoroughly researched project demonstrates time and again the intimate interconnection between the way a life is lived and the thinking and writing that can come from that life. But this is much more than just an intellectual history. One Can't help but share in the passion that speaks through Miller's writing, powerfully earning this book its title.

   Foucault said, "...there is not a book I have written that does not grow, at least in part, out of a direct, personal experience." Each chapter of Miller's book gradually unfolds the truth of this statement, beginning with Foucault's earliest writings on madness and mental illness, through his works on knowledge and criminality, to his final opus on the nature of human sexuality. Foucault's unorthodox approach to history is made clear, revealing a revolutionary philosophy based not on structured logic and reason, but growing instead from the realm of experience, in keeping with the "great Nietzschean quest [to] become what one is."

   I personally found this book quite disturbing, still accepting as I do many principles of existential humanism, especially those of free will and personal responsibility. But humanism as a whole is a philosphy Foucault and his contemporaries emphatically reject as "a diminution of man," made up of "everything in Western civilization that restricts the desire for power" and "every attitude that considers the aim of politics to be the production of happiness." In reality, says Foucault, happiness does not exist---and the happiness of man exists still less."

   "The individual," he is reported to have said, "is contingent, formed by the weight of moral tradition, not really autonomous." And we "can and must make of man a negative experience, lived in the form of hate and aggression."

   Somewhat stunned, I've nevertheless gained from Miller's book a new understanding of the world I live in, and of myself as part of that world. "Under the impact of civilization," he summarizes, "the will to power (Freud's 'death instinct') has been driven inward and turned against itself---creating within the human being a new inclination: to destroy himself." So, if Foucault is right, the basic truth that society tries to make humans homogenously "tame" is itself the very root of the violence and decadence of our times. If we are to point to the cause of these problems, we can only point at ourselves and at our structured ways of thinking. The problem is not what we have allowed to be, but rather what we have tried to deny and eliminate. "I am referring," says Foucault, "to all those experiences that have been rejected by our civilization, or which it accepts only within literature." This view throws the current move toward increased artistic censorship into new and unexpected relief.

   For Foucault, then, the issue is the same, whatever the subject at hand: the concept of madness, our systems of language and knowledge, law and the punishment of crime, or the idea and expression of our individual sexuality. Regardless of our lifestyle, history has told us the limits of what we can be, and as individuals and as a culture we are paying a great price for believeing it. According to Foucault, the solution can only be to "free ourselves from...cultural conservatism, as well as from political conservatism. We must see our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things." We must find the "limits" of our thinking and learn to transcend them. Says Foucault, "...the unity of society [is] precisely that which should...be destroyed."

   Miller's book is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!




2. This book had been recommended me, as a Foucault freak, and I must say that I was immensely disappointed. As one of the above reviewers said, he's just digging up a bunch of dirt that doesn't have much redeeming value in the end. I love S&M myself but 200 pages detailing Foucault's odd and disturbing behaviors in his personal life did nothing whatsoever to illuminate, for me, the connections between his personal life and his works. Follow Martin Heidegger's advice here: don't learn anything about the life of the philosopher you seek to know, let his works speak for him! A lot of academics were offended when Heidegger taught Plato this very way- way back in the 1920s- but believe me, it is an approach which is not yet outdated.



3. I read this work as part of a postmodern philosophy of the self class, and, among the esteemed company of Nietzsche and Heidegger, this book truly stands out as a great illumination of Foucault's life. The truth of the matter is, no matter whether or not you believe learning about an author adds to your understanding and enjoyment of his works, people will always want to know more. I found Miller's writing to be extremely precise and erudite without being unnecessarily technical or prosaic as biographies can sometimes be. Miller ties in Foucault's thought and philosophies to the story of his life in a way that allows one to really understand more about what Foucault was writing and why, and provides context to said works in a way that allows the reader to grasp it. Of course, reading "The Passion of Michel Foucault" isn't the same as reading the works of Foucault--nor is it a substitute--but I found it to be a fitting start--or end--to a study of the great philosopher he was.



4. Despite the late philosopher's explicit request to not compose a biography of his life, James Miller has compiled a highly competent study of Foucault's life and thought. While not purporting to be a traditional biography, Miller frequently falls into the trap of imposing a cogent narrative onto the work of this great mind in a way that is not always convincing. We are provided with very fine material on Foucault's complex youth, as well as his various political engagements as an activist/academic, but I never got the sense that Miller had really penetrated the essence of Foucault's profoundly Nietzschean project. Perhaps it is because of his background in political science that Miller tends to fall back onto Foucault's politics and let the philosophy awkwardly sit there. We are given more description of Foucault's acid trip in Death Valley than the meaning of 'The Birth of the Clinic,' for instance. Still, this is a fairly reasonable approximation of Foucault's career and why it will remain a formidable presence in the humanities for ages to come.



5. James Miller, apparently familiar with homosexuality, drugs, and sadomasochism, undertakes a project which he acknowledges Foucault would have disdained--a biography. Rigorously disciplined, Miller excellently, and commendably, correlates Foucault's ideas with the man's moment in history. Puzzlingly, Miller's approach becomes a fetish--he remains focused on the finger of the prophet, rather than seeing that Foucault unconsciously points to an answer to Nietzche's questions: how did I become what I am and why do I suffer so for it? The Foucault that emerges from the biography clearly understood what it meant to be a commodity, cultivating himself as a work of art (with its attendant commercial value.)

1 comments about Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship (New York Review Books Classics).

1. This is the story of a friendship between two of the most remarkable intellectual figures of the twentieth century , Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin. It begins in Berlin in 1914 and continues through their separation until Benjamin's tragic death twenty -five years later. Both of them were greatly interested in the historical processes of their times, in philology , in the meaning of signs and symbols, in Socialism, in Zionism. Scholem left Germany for the Jerusalem of pre- state Israel and became a central figure there in the development of the Hebrew University. He became too the great scholar who opened a new field that of Jewish Mysticism. Benjamin hesitated and seemed to always find the way to misfortune. But their conversation and their friendship illuminates fundamental issues of life and thought. This book should be read by everyone for whom the life of the mind is important.

3 comments about The Comte De St. Germain: The Secret of Kings.

1. Cooper-Oakley's biography on Comte de St. Germain is the first biographical sketch written about this enigmatic character. Called by Frederick the Great "The man who does not die" Saint Germain was said to possess the Elixir of Life, and to be virtually immortal. Germain was the friend, confident, and spy of European rulers for a generation. Two hundred years after his disappearance from the scene of politics, his reputation as an emissary from the Invisible Brotherhood intrigues us even more. While there is a definite Theosophical spin to her work, Cooper-Oakley's "Comte de St. German" remains to this day seminal reading for those interested in this "Unknown Superior" of Western Esotericism - Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism in particular - almost a century after it was written. A very good book and well worth reading by any one interested in the mysterious occult forces behind history. Jean Overton-Fuller's historical biography on Comte de Saint Germain is a fine follow-up to this one.



2. This book is valuable for those who are searching for the practical life and evidence of Comte de St. Germain. An immortal who is still very active in the world today.



3. This book was delivered promptly and in excellent condition. The Count is very dear to my heart, so I was happy to receive the book in such a positive way.
   
   I am an editor and love to read, so I use Amazon a lot. Oakley is the expert on this subject.

1 comments about Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Vol. 2: Books 5-8 (Loeb Classical Library).

1. _This is the definative, unabridged translation of Philostratus' _Life of Apollonius_ for your permanent library. The Jones translation was made from the Teuber text of C.L. Kayser.
   
   _Philostratus completed this work in C.E. 220, while the historical Apollonius was generally thought to have left this world around C.E. 98. Apollonius is presented as an example of the ideal spiritual and good man in the classical world. In a Roman Empire ruled increasingly by force, violence, and greed, this Apollonius would be the ideal role model. Indeed, that is what you encounter in the books, example after example of Apollonius encountering worldly and wicked men and setting them straight. It is still rather inspiring, even though you realize that this Apollonius is probably a composite character of many philosophical and religious characters of the classical world. This is not to categorically state that there was no original, Pythagorean, named Apollonius that served as the original inspiration- it is just that we do not know how much of the original is still there.
   
   _Apollonius was to be understood as the champion of traditional "pagan" cults and philosophy against the new religion of Christianity. Apollonius is shown to be tolerant to other religions and faiths- something that the new cult, even then, was not. Perhaps his very name reflected this tolerance and defense of the traditional. This is also no doubt why he visits India during his travels, for even in those days the Vedic tradition was seen as the "root" of all religious tradition.
   
   _In any case, the account is still quite edifying in its depiction of what was considered the archetypical example of the good, just, and tolerant man in the late classical world.

No comments about The Essential Writings (Oxford World's Classics).

5 comments about Kant: A Biography.

1. Kuehn has taken on a handful with this project, yet the outcome is superb. This is a careful and scholarly text. Contrary to what one of the reviewers commented here, I think the book was an interesting and entertaining read. I highly recommend this biography to anyone with even the slightest interest in Kant (or his contribution to Enlightenment Philosophy). And it would make a great text for an Introduction to Kant course (just as Monk's bio on Wittgenstein is often used in intro courses).

   We sometimes think of Kant as having lived a boring and dull life--that he was in fact as mundane and interesting a person as the schedule he kept (shop owners in the marketplace would often set their clocks to his daily walks). But the picture of Kant that Kuehn provides us with here is radically different. Sure, Kant lead a regular and ordered life, but Kuehn breathes accurate life into pedestrian images of Kant that we may have learned in school (or in textbooks).




2. This book is an interesting guide to what we now know about Kant's life, and a scholarly summary of what he might have meant in his own time and place. Kant was the philosopher selected by Nietzsche for section 193 of THE GAY SCIENCE: "Kant's joke. Kant wanted to prove in a way that would dumfound the common man that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of the popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for popularity." (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, p. 96). In TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS, Nietzsche named Kant in his explanation of "How the `true world' finally became a fable:" (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, pp. 485-6). "Any distinction between a `true' and an `apparent' world ~ whether in the Christian manner or in the manner of Kant (in the end, an underhanded Christian) ~ is only a suggestion of decadence, a symptom of the decline of life." (THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, p. 484). What set Nietzsche apart from the scholars of his own day, at least as long as he was considered sane, was his willingness to display a sly contempt for the kind of clarity which any functioning society demands, which suggests that Nietzsche had some different ideas. If anyone who wrote philosophically at the level of Kant could still be understood well enough to be called "an underhanded Christian," it is ironic that a more modern philosopher would consider Kant "an embodiment on a large scale of what is wrong with philosophy" for the opposite reason: "Suppose he had not insisted on certainty, necessity, and completeness!" (Walter Kaufmann, DISCOVERING THE MIND, VOLUME ONE, GOETHE, KANT, AND HEGEL, p. 195).

   One of the things that makes philosophy interesting is the range of ideas which it offers to anyone who is trying to think of something to say about his enemies. Fichte was a contemporary of Kant, in trouble with the authorities from 1997 to 1800 when he was suspected of being an atheist because he thought a moral world order provided a more godly deity than the underhanded Christians of his day were used to. This was very close to the end of Kant's life, and Kant's circle of friends consoled themselves with ideas like: "The name `Fichte' means pine, and bad proofs were sometimes called `proofs of pine.' Furthermore, to `lead someone behind the pines' could mean to be deceptive. Some of Kant's acquaintances agreed." (Manfred Kuehn, KANT, A BIOGRAPHY, p. 391).

   I was most interested in examining this book because it considers an early work, included in Kant's THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1755-1770, on Emanuel Swedenborg, DREAMS OF A SPIRIT-SEER ILLUSTRATED BY DREAMS OF METAPHYSICS. The existence of the work itself, like Freud's summary ON DREAMS (1901), drawn from Freud's on INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS (1900), shows a strong affinity for the kind of thinking about Christianity which is much closer to a modern understanding than most people would expect from the contemporaries of Kant and Swedenborg. Kant might be much more modern than Swedenborg because he willingly states a conclusion, as "a matter of policy, in this as in other cases, to fit the pattern of one's plans to one's powers, and if one cannot obtain the great, to restrict oneself to the mediocre." (p. 174). Anyone who would consider this book mediocre ought to reflect on the scholarly norms that preclude this kind of writing from exhibiting the outrageous emotional tricks which are usually displayed in rock 'n' roll, movies, state lotteries, election campaigns, or exciting books. It is the scholars who live in a separate world, and Kant will always be a great example of how it can be done.




3. Superb, biography !!! In which the writer seems to heading for a definitive biography on one of the greatest masters that ever touched a Philosophical matter. Kant has earned the reputation as a very complicated thinker. I have read a few of his works and I can do nothing else than agree in this.

   After I read this book I really seemed to understand his philosophy much beter. I feel I have a good idea about what were his major concerns and what was it that he tried to solve and prove. I have a good idea now about what the Critique Of Pure Reason is, such as other works as the other 2 Critiques & Groundworks.

   If you want to read the works of Kant himself, make sure you pick this one up first and learn it by heart. Its as best as any introduction can get on his work, A truly homage to a great master.

   There are besides that plenty of details about his personal life. His love for Frederik The Great, plenty of stuff from his students, how they thought about him, and what kept him occupied in his free hours. And there we get a very different Kant than the one that went into history for so far.




4. Kuehn begins his comprehensive and engaging volume, adjectives not generally associated with Kant studies, with a clever Dickensian inversion: "The year 1724 was not one of the most significant years in the history of the human race, but it was not wholly insignificant either." He goes on to offer a most compelling look at the life and thought of one of the modern era's most important contributors respectfully, yet without a trace of the schmoozing so tempting in Kant scholarship. A look not only at the minutae of a man's private life, but also a convincing examination of many well-worn historical interpretations, sometimes lending credence, often challenging some of our most basic assumptions about the influences at play for Kant and his broader philosophical project.



5. I found this book engaging. It was recommended to me by a former philosophy professor. For anyone looking for a solid, accesible introduction to the life and mind of a great thinker, this is the place to start. Kuehn delves into Kant's family background, the society, his ideas, his relationships with women and the Prussian upper-classes. We learn about Kant's health, his weak digestion and the strained relationships he had with his siblings. He lived a quiet life but Kuehn illustrates how rich and human his daily life truly was.
   
   Of all the biographies I have read over the past few years, this remains my favourite and the most memorable. Ideal for those interested in philosophy or the social history of Prussia in the 18th century.

No comments about On Fire for God: The Story of John Hus.