2 comments about On Sartre (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

1. I'm no expert on Sartre, but I decided to "review" this book because I found it a throughly enjoyable, informative and well-written introduction to the best known existentialist of the 20th Century.

   The book starts out with an introduction to Sartre and his place within existentialism. [pp. 1-6.] The second chapter is called "life and works" and is an excellent overview of Sartre's life which deals extensively with his literature and politics. [pp. 7-40.] The final chapters deal with Sartre's epistemology, ontology, psychology, and ethics. [pp. 41-95.] In these chapters, Prof. Kamber quotes extensively (but not excessively) from Sartre's works. The book contains equal amounts of praise and criticism and strikes me as fair and balanced. Although everything is cited, the book doesn't contain footnotes (which I find generally distract and aren't necessary in an introductory work).

   I have only a couple of criticisms of this work. First, Prof. Kamber is too easy on Sartre for his support of the Soviet Union. According to Prof. Kamber, Sartre did not break ties with the Soviet Union until the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. [p. 35.] Since the crimes of the Soviet Union were well-known (such as committing genocide in the Ukraine) one would think there would be no excuse for having any ties with such a government at any time. Why Sartre decided to offer at least partial support for years to a nation that committed crimes greater than Nazi Germany's is a question worthy of some discussion. Second, the book doesn't contain a list of recommended books about Sartre.

   Prof. Kamber clearly put a great deal of effort to make this book readable and informative. I recommend it highly.




2. Just finished this book. It was a very excellent summing up of the great one's work, and I especially enjoyed the author's personal takes and commentaries on Sartre's ideas. I really enjoyed reading it and learned a great deal even as I found my mind being refreshed with much of what I was taught years ago in courses on Existentialism. I found the writing to be quite fluid and the theses, summations, arguments and commentaries to be highly understandable and enjoyable to read. I discovered a great deal in the 'Life and Works' section that I had not known before, and the presentation of Sartre's defense of direct realism was very cogent. The author's section discussing Sartre on Nothingness was excellent, and I felt an old thrill running through me as I was re-acquainted with 'the theft of my world', 'le regard', 'shame and pride' and 'the body'. The 'Ontology' section really helped focus and clarify Sartre's ideas for me. The author's discussion of 'free will and determinism' and his presentation of Sartre's ideas on these concepts was excellent. That "the being of human beings is freedom", the concept of bad faith, Sartre on theology and ethics and humanistic Existentialism all made the blood rush to my ears. I had a lot of powerful feelings reading these wonderfully profound and moving insights again. I am quite taken with the author's final statement "Although I agree that obligation to others is central to ethics, I believe this focus needs to overlap with an ethic of self-realization. It would be a shame to lose sight of the imperative of Existentialism to confront our freedom and create ourselves." This speaks so much to us of how we should be "in the world". The author answers beautifully all those endless and careless remarks that are constantly being made by those with no knowledge of Existentialism, who use the word to infer a philosophy of despair, gloom and hopelessness. It is, as the author says, so much the opposite... what could be more stimulating, challenging, thrilling, promising and ultimately 'human' than confronting one's freedom and creating oneself? Could there be anything more important or meaningful in a human life? I want to thank the author for a wonderful book. It goes on my favorite bookshelf.

No comments about Averroes: His Life, Works, and Influence (Great Islamic Writings).

2 comments about On Rawls (Wadsworth Notes).

1. Talisse has written the best little introduction to Rawls I have read to date. While there is a sea of secondary writing on Rawls (much of it on my book shelves), for use in undergraduate courses in political philosophy or for use by the average reader who just wants to know where such notions and phrases as "veil of ignorance" and "difference principle" come from and what they are all about, none beats Talisse's concise exposition.



2. Having taken a course on the thought of John Rawls this semester, I was surprised by how often he repeated himself, restating his points over and over in formulations which varied only slightly. His work, Political Liberalism, in particular could have been significantly shorter if he had removed so much repetition. Understandably, it is a compilation of various lectures he delivered, but all the same, he could have edited them somewhat.
   
   That being the case, Robert Talisse, provides a fantastic introduction and summary to the thought of Rawls. He effectively places Rawls thought in the context it emerged from, and makes some of Rawls' more abstract concepts, much clearer.
   
   Rawls is worth reading if you want to understand many of the currents behind modern society, Talisse is worth reading to understand many of the currents behind and within Rawls.

5 comments about The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy.

1. This book is both a memoir and yet another introduction to philosophy. McGinn tries to come at introducing philosophy in a different way: through his autobiography and through the issues that prompted his interests in philosophy, the ideas he found interesting as a young man studying philosophy, and what he has thought about at particular times in his career as an academic.

   The results are rather mixed. You don't get much of substance here, and so you should look somewhere else if you're searching for a serious and comprehensive introduction to philosophy. But this book does cover enough ground to give you a taste of what current academic philosophizing is like. It includes a breezy, straightforward picture of the life of an academic along with brief sketches of lots of interesting philosophical issues. Furthermore, there's not a lot of history covered here; the emphasis is on a few historically important philosophical issues and the more striking arguments and positions that have been defended in contemporary analytic philosophy. So this really gives you an account of what professional life is like for people working in contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, the tradition in which McGinn works.

   It appears McGinn intends the reader to come to philosophy in the same way he did. We go from the vague, somewhat confused ideas and concerns that first led McGinn to philosophy to immersion in ideas and concerns of current-day professional philosophers. Now, this emphasis on the intellectual development might seem too limited a perspective from which to introduce a subject. But this isn't such a problem here since specialization isn't as extreme in philosophy as it is in other parts of the academy. Since the division of intellectual labor here isn't as extreme as it is in the sciences, all philosophers tend to know a lot of the same stuff.

   The book is quite interesting at the beginning, and I think the first couple of chapters would be a good introduction to just what philosophical thinking is like. Here there are very few details about McGinn's early life, and he concentrates on only those elements of his autobiography that are relevant to his intellectual development and his eventual interest in philosophical questions. So these chapters are concerned with the kinds of philosophical problems that are likely to be of interest to those without much, or any, background in the subject. Skepticism, free will, the existence of God--these are the sorts of issues that are introduced in this chapter. McGinn doesn't say a great deal about these issues here, though he says enough to reveal how philosophers attempt to answer them and how they criticize or defend the answers given by others.

   The latter chapters come to focus more on the nature of life in academia and the issues that get discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy along with McGinn's own intellectual development as an academic. So we really get two stories here. The first story is the one of McGinn's rise to prominence in academia, and the other is the story of major issues in U.S. and U.K. philosophy from the sixties to the present. And these stories are interconnected since McGinn is a prolific thinker who has published on nearly everything of central importance in contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Some of the highlights he mentions are Davidson and Quine on meaning, Wittgenstein and Kripke on rule-following, Kripke and Putnam on reference, David Lewis on possible worlds, Dummett's anti-realism, Nagel's views about the mind and its relation to the body. And whenever McGinn discusses someone's ideas, he attempts to provide a brief portrait of them.

   Whatever one thinks about McGinn's personality--and some aspects of it can be off-putting--his discussions of issues here is pretty even-handed. While he occasionally says unflattering things about other philosophers, but he's more even-handed when it comes to their ideas--even those ideas with which he isn't sympathetic. He doesn't ridicule the ideas of others; nor does he use the book to push his own ideas on the topics he discusses.




2. I learned about McGinn via the work of Jerry Fodor. "The Making of a Philosopher" was the first book I read from him. This book is a rather good portrait of the intellectual development of a person. It is fascinating to see how his interests in philosophy develop and the persons involved. The book has the additional benefit of containing philosophical explanations that are short, to the point and clear.
   McGinn also comes across as a very likable chap, unlike some of the pompous gits one finds frequently in philosophy (for a sample of these individuals just take a look at the reviews in this page).



3. Ontogeny describes the origin and the development of an organism from the fertilized egg to its mature form. Ontology is the philosophic study of being or existence. Colin McGinn takes the reader on a ontogenic journey from his youth in a mining town in northeast England to his arrival as a Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. His journey takes us through his choice of philosophy as a career, his personal philosophic questions, his answers (or non-answers), his initial rejection and later rise in prominence at Oxford University. We can sense his existential questions as he tries to apply the philosophy he teaches, the questions of ontology, epistomology, free will, fate and luck, to his own life. This personal history is very engaging and serves to humanize the scholar and soften the aloofness and arrogance we usually associate with a world class academic.



4. In his book The Making of a Philosopher, McGinn seamlessly weaves in and out of autobiography and concise explication of the most notable contemporary philosophical concepts with uncanny agility. In doing so, McGinn creates a new and entertaining genus of philosophical writing. Very often, philosophy seems so cold and abstract; almost inhuman. In addition to McGinn's extremely clear treatment of the most notable contemporary philosophical concepts, the Making of a Philosopher defies tradition by putting a human face to such popular contemporary philosophy, from describing Saul Kripke's table manners (p. 66) to David Lewis' driving habits (p. 101) and much, much more.
   
   I happened to stumble across this book just after I graduated from Berkeley, and as it happened, reading it was a great way for me to reflect on and summarize a good deal of material that I was exposed to as an undergraduate. Feeling somewhat burnt out and jaded about philosophy at the time, what sold me on the book initially was the very beginning of the preface (a section of the book that can make or break a purchase for me), "The purpose of this book is to explain philosophy in an accessible, engaging way. But how best to do that? After trying out a number of plans for such a book, I hit upon the autobiographical format. More orthodox formats inevitably became too textbooklike, and while there is a place for such books I didn't want my book to remind the reader of school."
   
   Needless to say, given my current mood at the time, I was sold. I was happy to buy the book too, because I had been meaning to read more of McGinn's work anyway, since I found the few scraps of his work that I had been exposed to exceptionally clear and intriguing. It was a natural purchase for me.
   
   One negative about the book: I do wish that McGinn had taken it upon himself to go into greater detail about his life. To his credit, he does a good job of highlighting the good and the bad, but you finish this book with a sense that McGinn has left out many, many important details about his life. Not that it's that philosophically important, but he fails to mention any of those gritty details that make biographies so interesting--he fails to mention anything about his love life, for example. Before I give too much away, let me just say that biographies in philosophy are extremely rare. If anything, I recommend that anyone remotely interested in the subject should read this book to get a different perspective of philosophy that isn't very common.



5. How do people become professional philosophers? Why are some so strongly compelled by the analytic (philosophy of language) tradition in philosophy? It is these questions that CM illuminates in his brief but very readable 'intellectual' memoir. If these questions don't interest you -- as it appears they did not interest certain reviewers on this page -- don't bother reading TMoaP. If they do, read on. You're sure to be rewarded for the few hours' effort. 4 stars, not 5, only because the rewards -- in my view -- were not as ample as they might have been. By which I mean: I greatly enjoyed reading TMoaP; I only wish it had gone longer and at greater depth into the areas of CM's philosophical interest. Guess I'll have to give CM's 'serious' philosophy a read sometime. TMoaP succeeds on two levels: it is an interesting and entertaining memoir, and a spur to further -- and deeper -- reading in philosophy. What more should a reader expect?

1 comments about Ernest Hemingway: Rediscovered.

1. This coffee table book utilizes wonderful pictures of Ernest Hemingway to show "Papa" is numerous lights. Most pictures center around Hemingway in his years at the Finca Vigia. We see candids of Hemingway aboard the Pilar, or at work in his standing position in his Finca's tower. There are a few questionable facts.(They said that Hemingway's pet "Blackdog" was found around the Finca, when most scholars say he was rescued in Idaho). Still, this book is a must simply for the pictures alone. Out of numerous biographies about Hemingway, Fuentes chooses woderful candids I had never seen, plus wonderful photos of Hemingway's personal possesions, and the Finca as it is today. A must for Hemingway buffs.

No comments about Quine (Arguments of the Philosophers).

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

1. 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!




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. 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.

3 comments about Teller of Many Tales: The Lives of Laurens van der Post.

1. I found this book difficult to put down. It is very well written and impressively researched. The light it throws onto the times, places and people spanned by the life of Laurens van der Post are valuable indeed. But it simply is not a do-it-justice, adequately balanced biography. Even if 80 percent of the prevarication, lying, [misunderstandings], and hypocricy claimed by Jones against Van der Post is true, it simply doesn't cut it for any serious biographer to essentially attribute the profound impact of such a high quality literary figure, and half-century-long luminary, almost entirely to some quality of "charm" or honed talent to [mislead]... even some of the most sophisticated human beings of his time. Jones, of course, may deny that characterization of his work, but such is clearly the underlying impact of his ill-balanced treatment of Van der Post's life. To put it another way: to basically attribute the remarkable insightfulness, giftedness and international impact of Laurens van der Post's long and illustrious life so largely to a sort of hypnotic deceptiveness (The rather glib, satirical - or is it sarcastic? - title of the book advertizes just such a seriously limiting thesis) comes close to producing a biography that borders on a species of shallowness, even if the author claims that he wrote the book largely to disclose these realities. Of course Laurens had serious flaws, and I sincerely thank Mr. Jones for opening my eyes more fully to that fact; but to make such faultiness, serious as some of it is, the unrelenting theme of an "authorized biography" (see Foreword) on the life of a man as complex and obviously outstanding as Van der Post, is not to write a biography fully worthy of the art and science of biography writing, at least as I and many others might understand it. There are literally miriads of places to which one could go in Jones' book that call for alternative conjectures about the "facts," true or not, that Jones cites; alternative, that is, to Jones'monotonously predictable conclusion, page after page, that Laurens was invariably the consummate international and personal con man. But the tasteless, anecdotal quip Janet Campbell, Laurens' housekeeper, claims to have made to a "very old" Van der Post, that is quoted in the first sentence of the Introduction to Jones' book is quite damningly pace-setting for the book as a whole: That Laurens should remember he was, after all "just a farm boy from the Karoo." Is that really all he was? It's no wonder such a characterization is said to have "incensed" him. Once the book is read, it is almost inescapable to conclude that this describes pretty much how Jones would like to reduce the life of Laurens van der Post. And if a reader accepts the clear implication of this kind of "logic" (a species of implied hubris expressed elsewhere in the book) there'd be a lot of people who'd have to be stricken from the rosters of the great among us: Abraham Lincoln (back woods, log cabin, and all), Jesus Christ ("Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?") and William Shakespeare (son of a merchant in a diminutive village). All in all, it seems to me that J.D.F. Jones' approach to the on-balance greatness of the life of Laurens van der Post, is archtypical of the malady crouching in the spirit of contemporary, civilized humanity (mine included!); the malady Laurens van der Post himself so insightfully exposed: that developed human beings today are so "civilized," so "objectivistic," so "rationalistic," so starry-eyed about the capacities of research that we are left virtually untrusting of, and therefore unmoved by our own intuitive, spiritual and "primitive" powers. We have therefore become largely incapable of perceiving, or have lost much of our capacity to experience anything except that which we are able to skeptically and even cynically squint at through eyes only part way open. This, I'm afraid, describes much of the reason for J.D.F. Jones' inadequate, or should I say, truncated but brilliantly elaborate biographical "tale" of the life of Sir Laurens van der Post.



2. This is how the book leaves one. As a lifelong admirer of van der Post (I was even fortunate enough to briefly meet him once in New York and attend his lectures on the denigration of the feminine since the time of St. Paul, as well as the Bushman of the Kalahari myths), I have to admit I found his personal life to be quite shocking, especially his treatment of women close to him, and even more so, his total neglect of his illegitimate children, and that of his own son, John, who died prematurely in adulthood.

   I found the many lies surprising, but was relieved that not everything was a lie, and many of the the truths in his writing stand the test of veracity. Even if some of the Bushman myths which he claimed to have learned directly from them were myths that he read in the books of Bleek, they still are very beautiful. Most surprising is that the Mantis is not to be found in Bushman cosmology. Wherever did van der Post find this non-Bushman god whom he accredits to their culture?

   Oh well, he seemed to have a capacity to attract great and life-long love from others which one wonders if he could ever have returned in such proportion. His relationship with Jung was not so close that he should have called himself "Jung's messenger boy."

   Above all, I feel a deep sympathy for his extremely loyal wife, who was kept much in the dark about his goings on. Although she intuited there was another woman (though not that they had had a 30 years affair, or that there were many others as well), and knew of at least one of his illegitimate children, she said she was not jealous. If you read her autobiography, "The Way Things Happen," the last two chapters actually written by Laurens van der Post as she had fallen into her dementia by then), much is revealing. For instance, she notes that she was aware of her first husband's (Jimmy Young) affairs, and states in that book as well that she felt no jealousy, but believed that was in the area of his reckoning with himself and was his own business. Her book is a fine one, from her childhood in India, her great love of her second husband, her work as a playwright and then after six month's study at the Jungian Institute in Zurich, her work as a not fully trained psychoanalyst (she had some professional meetings with Prince Charles, while Diana, Princess of Wales, had several sessions with van der Post's close friend and analyst, Dr. Alan McGlashan), up to her old age.

   Unlike van der Post, Jung was honest with his wife about Toni Wolff. They all learned to live with it. But then, he was not a habitual liar. Ingaret thought of her husband as "a great man." I beg to disagree. Though I respect him for staying with her during her last years when she had sunk into dementia, instead of 'ducking out,' as he had a tendency to quickly do in sticky situations.

   Jung was perhaps a great man. In my opinion, van der Post excelled in his non-fiction works. I do not think he reached any great heights in his books of fiction. But over and above all his faults and problems, he gave us the African myths one way or the other. And this helped some of us with our lives.




3. Frankly, the book is long, costs a lot, and is boring. I would rather spend $20 on learning about Africa than reading a biographer who keeps an odd tone through the book that I would associate more with a polemic than with a balanced biography. I think ok when Joe Campbell died how creepy people came out of the woodword who had been jealous of his fame, and said creepy envy-ridden things about him that some who had an ax to grind took up as fact. I think this author does the same. The minuntae in the book is deadening. This book is in that style, petty gossip that the author inflates into many pages to slap a high price on the volume. I would suspect this book would not have been published if it didn't play on so much gossip. I would reather reaad Van der Post's books firsthand and decide for myself

1 comments about Plutarch.

1. Robert Lamberton writes an excellent literary and historical criticism on one of the best biographers of antiquity, Plutarch. Plutarch in his "Lives Of The Noble Grecians And Romans" written around 100C.E., sheds new light on Greek and Roman history from their Bronze Age beginnings, shrouded in myth, down through Alexander and late Republican Rome. Plutarch's "Lives", served as the sourcebook for Shakespeare's Roman Plays. Plutarch is the lens that we use today to view the Greco-Roman past; his work has shaped our perceptions of that world for 2,000 years. Plutarch writes of the rise of Roman Empire while Gibbon uses his scholarship to advance the story to write about its decline. Plutarch's vast collection of neglected essays known as the "Moralia" is written in similar fashion to Plato's "Dialogues" and it gives us the best picture of Plutarch's beliefs and observations of the world around him. Plutarch is a complex character with an extraordinary broad experience. He was a proud Greek that was equally effected by Roman culture, a Delphic priest, a leading Platonist, a moralist, educator and philosopher with a deep commitment as a first rate writer. Being a Roman citizen, Plutarch was afforded the opportunity to become an intimate friend to prominent Roman citizens and a member of the literary elite in the court of Emperor Trajan. Robert Lamberton does an excellent job of elucidating Plutarch's contribution and attitude to history. He also concludes this book by pointing out Plutarch's influence and reputation through the ages.
   
   I recommend this book and R. H. Barrow's book, "Plutarch and His Times" to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history.

2 comments about Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche.

1. This book is real fun to have, and shows a side of Nietzsche that is hard to come across in his formal works and the countless biographies. You can read first-hand the conflicts with his sister's anti-semitic husband, read his own giddyness about finishing a new book, and follow his decline into a state of insanity (during which he wrote the strangest letters of all). His wierd sense of humor is much more visible in his letters, which helps one to recognize when he is humoring himself at the expense of the suprised reader in his other works.

   "Dear Professor: Actually I would much rather be a basel professor than God; but I have not yet ventured to cary my private egoism so far as to omit creating the world on his account. You see, one must make sacrifices, however and wherever one may be living..." (Jan. 6 1889, To Jacob Burkhart, from Turin).

   Also, the index in the back of this book is very thorough, making it easy to find any person or concept that he deals with.

   Note: If you are looking for other writers that write as intangible and beautiful as Nietzsche's works but less harsh on the world, try reading some Emmanuel Levinas, a briliant French Jewish Philospher who died in 1995, (Good book: Dificult Freedom)




2. If you want to gain insight into Nietzsche's thinking outside of his usual philosophical writings, or follow his chain of thought throughtout his life, this collection of letters is somewhat helpful, but he does not seem to engage in the manner in which he does in his formal philosophical works. One of the features I found surprising in his letters is the courtesy he showed to his recipients. It is evident that Nietzsche treasured the friendships he had, and this is very apparent in his letters. And interestingly, I did not find any hostility in any of the letters addressed to Richard Wagner, considering the history of their relationship.

   The book is well-edited, and there is an index of recipients near the end of the book. The editor also includes a general index with subentries that allow the reader to scan an entire topic. This is a helpful aid for amateur readers of Nietzsche, such as myself, but could also be helpful I think to dedicated scholors of Nietzsche.

   I was only disappointed that more letters did not address more of Nietzsche's thinking on Dionysus and Apollo. It would have been interesting to read what he had to say about them via the "freestyle" of letter writing. Nietzsche's philosophical writings are actually the most frank and unrestrained of all in nineteenth-century philosophy. He is very honest with himself, and because of this he might be viewed as somewhat narcisstic by some readers. This may be true to some degree, but Nietzsche is refreshing in his style of writing, and actually it is quite entertaining to randomly move through his books and read his maxims and opinions.

   The most interesting letter is the one addressed to Carl von Gersdorff on April 6, 1867. He is writing about what he has called "the scholarly forms of disease", and tells of a story about a talented young man who enters the university to obtain a doctorate. He puts together a thesis he has been working on for years, submits it to the philosophical faculty. One rejects the work on the grounds that it advances views that are not taught there. The other states that the work is contrary to common sense and is paradoxical. His thesis is therefore rejected, and he does not therefore earn his doctorate. Nietzsche describes the "not humble enough to hear the voice of wisdom" in their negative judgment of his results. Further, the young man is "reckless enough", in Nietzsche's view, to believe that the faculty "lacks the faculty for philosophy. Nietzsche uses this story to emphasize the virtue of independence: "one cannot go one's own way independently enough. Truth seldom dwells where people have built temples for it and have ordained priests. We ourselves have to suffer for good or foolish things we do, nor those who give us the good or the foolish advice. Let us at least be allowed the pleasure of committing follies on our own initiative. There is no general recipe for how one man is to be helped. One must be one's own physician but at the same gather the medical experience at one's own cost. We really think too little about our own well-being; our egoism is not clever enough, our intellect not egoistic enough."

   He's right.