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 Avicenna and Medieval Muslim Philosophy (World of Philosophy).

1 comments about Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life (Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy) (Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy).

1. I have just finished reading "Voegelin Recollected--Conversations on a Life," edited by Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn (U. of Missouri Press,2008) 292 pp plus index, chronology and select photos.
   
   The book consists of transcripts of interviews conducted by Cooper in the US and Bruhn in Germany. This involved extensive travel. Bruhn also translated the German language interviews. Some of the interviews must have taken place at an annual convention of the American Political Science Association, while the contributors were in attendance.
   
   The book is organized in a surprising yet effective way. The chronology is reversed, the interviews running from Voegelin's death backwards to his early years as an academic. (Voegelin was born in 1901 and died in 1985.) The chronology is divided into four periods: Stanford, Munich, Louisiana and Vienna. There is also a chapter for Notre Dame, where he taught every third semester or so to protect his American citizenship while he was at Munich and continued the relationship for ten years after that. Not surprisingly, the Munich years are given the greater weight, because this was the time when he had the most intense interaction with graduate assistants and other students as well as his most intense interaction with the surrounding milieu (The "Hitler and the Germans" lectures). By comparison, the Vienna years are sparsely covered.
   
   You can add Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn (who was then Jodi Cockerill) to the list of contributors, because their questions are often revealing commentaries based on their own knowledge of Voegelin.
   
   I don't think Bruhn is old enough to have known Voegelin personally, but she brings an insight into human character and occasionally asks questions that deal with personal aspects of Voegelin's relationships. One example: Michael Hereth, an early student, believed many of Voegelin's students in Munich saw EV as a father-figure. In a number of instances, their own fathers had been killed in World War II.
   
   This would tend to explain the still evident bitterness of Manfred Henningsen in his 1995 interview, although his break with Voegelin (which he describes) had taken place a quarter century earlier.
   
   Lissy Voegelin tells us much about their life together for over fifty years. She was a wonderful wife for Eric. She accepted a life of being the "Frau Professor" and did everything for him. He didn't answer the phone or take out the trash. Later when he became relatively wealthy from stock market speculation, he tried to make it up to her for their many years of near penury. Paul Caringella helps Lissy with her recollections. It becomes evident that he had become her loving son and cared for her like no one else.
   
   Tilo Schabert is one of the better contributors. His memory seems to be especially good. The personality of Reinhold Knoll, a true Viennese scholar and gentleman, comes across warmly in his commentary. I hadn't known that his parents were friends of EV back in the 1920's. Ellis Sandoz, a student of Voegelin from 1949 and general editor of the 34 volume Collected Works, provides a steadying voice that helps maintain perspective.
   
   There are some funny stories, like the time when Miss Germany enrolled in EV's class. Or when the student asked EV whether Justinian preceded or followed Socrates.
   
   I was surprised to learn that Bruno Schlesinger, distinguished head of the Christian Culture program at St. Mary's Notre Dame, had been a student of EV in Vienna in the early '30's.
   
   There are certain thematic questions which recur through the book. One is EV's religion. To one student who could not deal with the trappings of Christianity, he said, "Christ is a true myth." This seems to have brought relief to the student, to have cut the Gordian knot. Some thought he was an agnostic. Some a sort of Lutheran. Many assumed he was Catholic and his position in Munich was likely procured for him by Bavarian Catholics who thought so.
   
   Another theme is his demeanor towards others. He was courtly at times (One remembered him as having dance student manners "Tanzstudent"!) and he could be nasty if he thought you were a provocateur (A tale told by Walter Nicgorski, former editor of the Review of Politics). Glenn Hughes also tells a horrendous tale.
   
   Quite unexpected are the accounts of the reasons for his decision to become an American. Apparently EV considered his flight from Vienna to be a life-altering exodus of the spirit from the land of Egypt. One way he expressed his gratitude for finding a new life in America was his apparent contentment with his living conditions. He never complained about anything when he was at LSU, according to his long time secretary, Joe Scurria (who emerges as a capable "gal Friday" and the only one who, even at the time of the interview, could read all his manuscripts). He would have preferred a better position at Yale or at Johns Hopkins (The latter position torpedoed, apparently on good evidence, by no one less than Leo Strauss).
   
   When he returned to Munich, he returned as an American, not as a German refugee coming home. It was said he read the Herald Tribune rather than the Munich papers. He apparently did not bind himself to the society of Munich and remained aloof. As one person put it, EV would have been happiest in a boat anchored in the middle of the Atlantic. Apparently with his inaugural lecture he managed to alienate many of his Catholic supporters. As a politician, he was inept or disinterested, and in either case the result was the same: he saw his dream of a Voegelin school in Munich erode to a point where he was ready to leave. Richard Allen worked to create a position for him at the Hoover Institution and he was happy to accept it following his mandatory retirement.
   
   Friendship is another recurring theme. Those interviewed seem to agree that he had no friends (except possibly Alfred Schütz or Gregor Sebba) in the sense of unguarded exchanges between sympathetic equals. Robert B. Heilman is interviewed and adds a few new notes to his long essay about EV. Heilman was a formidable scholar of English literature and yet was saddened by his inability to think and talk with EV at his own level. Quite different was EV's relationship with Strauss. It is brought out here, and evident in their published correspondence, that EV was open and enthusiastic and detailed while Strauss was quite the opposite. Apparently at Notre Dame EV spent a lot of time in the faculty cafeteria with Anton Herman Chroust, whom I remember as rumpled and unshaven and dirty, though certainly a genius. A picture is drawn here of the sartorially splendid EV passing the time with the grungy Tony Chroust.
   
   In the book there is a photo of EV sitting in a lounge chair at Notre Dame. No exact location is given but I think I recognize the coffee urn in the background so I am guessing the photo was taken in the law student lounge at the law school, a few paces from the auditorium where EV lectured.
   
   At the end of the book there is a chapter listing the 52 contributors and it gives a sentence or two about their careers and present whereabouts. Most of the interviews were conducted between 1995 and 1997. I didn't realize this until I reached the contributor list and was surprised and a little shocked to read remarks such as "He died in April 2005."
   
   One would like to know why ten years passed before this book finally appeared. We are told there was an attempt to organize the book by topics and that didn't work. That alone would have consumed time. Perhaps the editors needed an inspiration and that proved to be the idea of the reverse chronology.
   
   What we do know is that they conducted their interviews before it was too late.
   
   I believe this book will become the affectionate memorial to Eric Voegelin.
   
   Highly recommended.

No comments about Paracelsus: His Personality and Influence as Physician, Chemist and Reformer.

2 comments about On Freud (Wadsworth Philosophers Series).

1. I'm not sure why this book is included in Wadsworth Philosopher's Series. From the editor's description: "ON FREUD is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker". I can't find any evidence that Trupp is such a philosopher.

   He takes the sloppiness of Freud and updates it for the early 21th century; but without Freud's poetic force and depth of detail. Instead we get high-school descriptions of lasers, neurotransmitters and numerology - or at least, facile patternphilia ("The skyscrapers of Manhattan are pure mathematics. Also music. And time. The number and length of the ladybug bear an infinitesimially exact mathematical relation to its polka carapace as does the angle and size of its six knees to its six ankles." - These are all given as pure fact, even though self-contradictory).

   It is as if scientific theories over the last 75 years have been specifically mined to find the slightest snippets of correspondance - metaphor, homophony, vague quotes - where they bear any relation to something in Freud (Trupp's wordplay with sign/sine, co-sign/cosine seems to instigate a meaningless foray into Fourier analysis a few pages later). Sometimes he even goes back in time to find a correspondance (witness Wikan's book called The Duality of Mind - which Trupp calls prescient but never actually illuminates) only to point out that Freud would not have had access to this information. What kind of research is this?

   There are about 25 pages in the beginning middle which are useful: Trupp delivers a quick description of Freud's psychological models. But none of these examined philosophically.

   I have liked most of the books I've been exposed to in this series (On Heidegger, On Descartes, On Spinoza, On Quine, On Dennett) but this one is even poorly edited and organized, I'm afraid. There is a bizarre use of quotes all over the place - as if the author suffers from the primary process mentation he attributes to children and dreams - "words seem to equal 'things'".

   I was looking for a philosophy book, one that would delineate the principles of Freudianism, describe the philosophy thus implied, criticize of both, and provide the tehory's buttressing against the criticism if need be. But I got a fawning, near freakish - dare I say, doped up? - diatribe instead.

   I am considering getting my money back from Amazon, and ordering the Cambridge Companion to Freud, or Foundations of Psychoanalysis by Grunbaum, instead.




2. The person who wrote the previous review pretty much got it right. I am very dissapointed by the superficial understanding of Freud related in this volume. The Wadsworth title "On Marx" is the only other book in the series I have been exposed to and seemed quite helpful. "On Freud" however, looked more like either a freshman psychology term paper or a junior high text book.

3 comments about Ludwig Von Mises: The Man and His Economics (Library of Modern Thinkers).

1. by Joseph R. Stromberg-- Israel Kirznerýs Ludwig von Mises is a welcome addition to the literature on Mises and economics. It is a very useful book, not only for the academic reader unfamiliar with Misesýs work but also for the intelligent layman. What is quite startling is just how much the author manages to accomplish within the compass of a fairly short work (220 pages).

   Kirzner announces at the outset that he intends to tell "the story of Mises in his role of economist" (p. ix). His aim is to expound the "subtlety and depth of Misesian economics" while clarifying issues he thinks many readers of Mises have failed to grasp. Furthermore, Kirzner makes the case that Mises was the greatest free-market economist of the twentieth century.

   The book begins with a thorough summary of Misesýs life (1881-1973) and of his achievements. It covers his education in Vienna in the shadow of the German Historical School and his break with that outlook after becoming acquainted with the opposed views of the Austrian School through reading and talking with Carl Menger (p. 3). Mises attended Böhm-Bawerkýs seminar and began publishing technical papers in economics. His first important work, The Theory of Money and Credit, came out in 1912, breaking new ground and extending the Austrian paradigm.

   Kirzner introduces the years following World War I, during which time Mises advised the Austrian Chambers of Commerce, helping to avert runaway inflation in Austria; conducted his famous seminar; and published many important books and papers. The Nazi Anschluss drove Mises into exile in Switzerland, but in 1940, he came to the United States and later became a citizen. His masterwork, Human Action, was published in English in 1949, the same year that he began his famous New York seminar. That seminar continued into 1969.

   Following the biographical sketch of Mises, Kirzner drops back to set Misesýs work in the broader context of early twentieth-century economic thought. Kirzner gives thumbnail sketches of the competing schoolsýGerman Historical, Marshallian, and Walrasian. This setting allows him to zero in on what was new and revolutionary in Misesýs writings. According to the author, Misesýs first great accomplishment was to integrate money and monetary theory into general Austrian economics, grounded on insights about marginal utility, subjective value, and acting human beings. Kirzner shows how and why Mises did this and how this led to his breakthrough into the Austrian theory of business cycles.

   The author continues with a discussion of Misesian economics as a system self-consciously built upon rigorous, if unpopular, epistemological foundations. Kirzner contends that Mises shored up these foundations "because he came to be convinced that the vitally important lessons which economics can teach are likely to be dismissed on methodological grounds by those representing special interests" (p. 69). Mises believed that the rise of economic theory was, in itself, revolutionary in that it undercut earlier moralistic and power-political approaches to the study of human societies.

   Kirzner proceeds in a straight line to an excellent summation of the Austrian systemýs architectonic structure. Apparent detours turn out to be necessary background to Misesýs views and shed more light on them by giving an account of competing ideas and traditions. There is a generous evenhandedness in the way in which Kirzner sorts out differences and agreements between Mises and Hayek. The lucid presentation of difficult concepts make this a useful book even for those who already know a great deal about the subjects covered.




2. ISI Books has just come out with a series called Library of Modern Thinkers, which will contain summaries of the thought of important (for lack of a better term) conservative and libertarian thinkers - kind of like an Oxford University Press "Past Masters." According to the jacket, current and forthcoming titles will cover Nisbet, Ropke, Oakeshott, de Jouvenal, Lytle. Francis G. Wilson and Will Herberg (in other words, thinkers that wouldn't be included in a series that contains volumes on such worthies as Foucault and Derrida).

   If Prof. Kirzner's work on von Mises is representative, then this series will be an important contribution to the publishing world. Prof. Kirzner received his doctorate in economics in 1957 under von Mises and has written a number of important studies. This book is well organized and informative. It starts out with a chapter on von Mises' life, a chapter on his role in economics, and chapters on specific facets of his economic thought. It concludes with an overview of von Mises as the 20th century's preeminent free-market thinker.

   As a layman in economics, I learned a lot about von Mises the man and economist. For example, there is a discussion on methodological differences between Hayek and von Mises, a discussion of the pioneering nature of much of his monetary thought, and how his thought differs from neoclassical economics. I found particularly insightful Prof. Kirzner's comment that Human Action isn't simply a compendium of Austrian thinking, but is truly a brilliant extension of Austrian thought to a vast swath of economic and sociological issues.

   I have one big problem with the book. It is over 200 pages long, but it is double-spaced! In fact, there are no block quotes. Another quibble: according to the jacket, Friedman and Becker are "exponents" of the Austrian School.




3. This is a good overview of Mises, his life and background and his economics. It is workmanlike, basic and easy to read. It is not spectacular but it is very solid.

   I did enjoy reading it, however. The first two chapters give alot of background information on von Mises's life and work and I found that interesting because it is always nice to know a bit about an author as a person rather than just his work. And the bottom line about von Mises is that he was a couragous, honest and brilliant man and the proof is in the tremendous admiration earned by worthy friends and supporters.

   The Third chapter takes up von Mises's ideas on methodology, his a priorism and his commitment to value free economics. The two page section "The Intellectually Revolutionary Character of Economics" is really good. Section 5 of the chapter, "Mises' Methodological Defense" didn't really help me understand Mises's case for a priorism as opposed to empiricism, but I already know that from "Human Action" (huan events are complex and variables can't be held constant so it is always possible to come up with different plausible explanations for happenings; you can never isolate specific causes and their effects because it is not clear what is causing what). Section 6 "Mises and the A Priori: The Extremist?" explains what Hayek thought was a critique of Mises and Kirzner shows how it wasn't but I couldn't follow him. The one page section "Mises and the A Priori: Not So Extreme!" was appreciated because it gives alot more plausibility to Mises's claims about economics having to proceed a priori; I like the idea of economic logic but I think empirical studies and just common sense observation have got to play a role in economics, though I need to think about this more.

   Chapter Four was pretty familiar but "The Entreprenurial Character of the Misesian Market Process" was welcome because it just emphasized for me how central the entreprenuer is to Mises's conception of how the market works.

   I skipped Chapter Five on monetary theory, the business cycle and interest rates but it looks pretty good.

   Chapter Six tries to address how Mises reconciled his idea of value free economics with his passionate arguments for capitalism and against socialism and interventionism. Socialism can't work and interventionism produces consequences the intervenionists didn't want and eventually leads to socialism (which doesn't work ;) I accept the arguments by Ayn Rand on the foundations and standard of ethics and so I can argue rationally for capitalism but I don't know that von Mises can.

   In the end, I think that one has to read von Mises himself to get an appreciation of just how deep and comprehensive his grasp of human action and economics is. But this book does provide a little context and a useful overview. Maybe I was expecting too much; after all, how are you going to do justice to one of the greatest thinkers of all time in 200, double spaced pages? Can't be done.
   
   

3 comments about An Autobiography.

1. This is an amazing book and I am surprised it is not better known. It tells about the life of a Polish Jew who escaped from what he considered the stifling atmosphere of Polish Hasidic life and went to Germany to become part of the German Enlightenment. He translated Kant into Yiddish for the edification of his compatriots back home. The scenes depicting Maimon's marriage at the age of 12 and of Jewish life in eighteenth century Poland are very memorable. Someone told me recently that this book might not actually have been written by Maimon at all but by the "editor," the German writer Karl Philip Moritz, who apparently had a similar life. Perhaps that is why the book has not been reprinted.



2. This autobiography seems to me more important as a historical document than as a work of art. Maimon despite his great intellect and his courage in going where his mind led him does not seem to me to speak of himself or his life with great psychological depth or insight. I too think that he did not understand truly the nature of the Hasidic movement he criticized harshly. Still this is an important work as a document which gives insight into the Jewish world of his time.



3. Solomon Maimon is known in the history of German Idealism as the person to whom Kant himself attributed the deeper understanding and penetration of the main problems of his Critique of Pure Reason. Moreover Maimon's internal criticism of Transcendental Idealism and his proposed solution to its major, according to him, problem paved the way for the theories of the post Kantian Idealists. So he was one of the thinkers who helped the thansformation of 'critical' to 'dogmatic' idealism. Now this may seem to many a step backward but this is another story.
   In this small book just a few pages are devoted to Kant's reception of his manuscrispts. What we have instead is a concise, well written with brevity, wit and humor recounting of the memorable events of his extraordinary life. The form of the narrative is similar to that of a bildungsroman. He tells how he left the confines of his backward, isolated and ridden with prejudices small hometown in Polish Lithouania in search of knowledge.
   Maimon was a man of exceptional intelligence and that was obvious not only to himself but also to his countrymen whose high esteem he commanded from a young age due to his excelence in the talmoudic studies. Yet he grew sceptical towards the latter and set out to seek rational and scientific enlightenment in Germany. In this endeavour he even managed because of his destitution to follow a beggar for six whole months, "two such heterogeneous persons were nowhere to be met in the world, I was an educated rabbi, he was an idiot".
   His story from successes to misfortunes hovers from the hillarious to the tragic and reveals a personality of a genius whose naivety in social relationships and incistence never to pursue anything but knowledge kept him in almost constant destitution.
   It is enjoyable reading and also contains much information about the jewish intellectual world in 18th century Europe.

No comments about Duns Scotus and Medieval Christianity (World of Philosophy).

5 comments about Pythagoras: The Mathemagician.

1. While reading this book, my surprise and delight went increasing. My surprise first, for discovering Pythagoras represented much more than his well known theorem as he also was a philosopher, a great traveller through space, time, spirits and dimensions. The author Karim, like Pythagoras a seeker of harmony, provided me with great delight as sweet thoughts wandered in my imagination when his book made me dive back into ancient civilisations and traditions described so precisely and so charming, in a state where these two worlds of reality and mysticism brush against each other often and mix with each other sometimes. A great thank to the author and to his thorough and complete research and work in its description of what was Pythagoras life.



2. In Pythagoras: The Mathemagician, Karim El-Kousa has written a delightful story about a great philosopher. But he has also managed to convey vibrant details of a great civilization that I am most proud to be one of its descendents: The Phoenicians. Having lived the first twenty one years of my life in the great Phoenician city of Byblos and being the grandson of a Saydounian family makes this story really personal.



3. The first question I ask myself when I face a book on Pythagoras: "did the Author subjectively limit Pythagoras to a particular specialization like math, music or philosophy? In this book on Pythagoras, the author has succeeded to present Pythagoras as a "polymath"... breaking the bonds of subjectivity to reach a global view... In this context, the familiar image that often presented the "scientific" and the "spiritual", the "tangible" and the "subtle" as diametrically opposed, is replaced with a view that unites both in the oneness of knowledge and the Love of Wisdom - the ultimate Philo-Sophia.
   Someone attached to numbers, like the Pythagoreans, would have felt comfort if they read page 7 which elucidates the "spiritual royal purple color" - the 7th ray... Even if we neglect the page numbers and count the pages from the beginning of the book up to the special number 33, we will find ourselves in front of the famous quote graved on the plate above the entrance...: "Man, know thyself...", and the author did not hesitate to proceed at the end of the same page with "... you will know the secrets of the universe and the gods"
   WATCH OUT! The book may grab you by the thought and leads you to the "Pytha-Goras" concealed deep in each of us... You start reading a book on history and philosophy and you end up - somehow - I do not know how - hearing the music of the spheres...



4. When I first heard about the book, I didn't give it much attention. Of course I was excused, because in my opinion, the author's previous book titled "blooming planes" was a disaster. It is true that Karim's debut with "Reflecting Unitas" was excellent, but it was very depressing with the second one.
   
   Anyway, the author is a friend of mine, and I had to buy the book just to see what's inside. But when I started reading, I was kind of amazed because this book was very different from both its predecessors.
   
   Storyline:
   The storyline is well built. The life of Pythagoras is astoundingly described based on historical facts. No doubt Karim has made lots of research and interpreted tons of history books before writing this book. The events are accurately placed in the chronological timeline. Furthermore, the story is of an exploratory nature in a way that the reader is always yearning to read more.
   
   Style:
   The writing style is firm even though it is written in simple English, no complicated expressions, just simple and clear with good descriptions and dialogues. Simplicity and solidarity are both present in the author's script.
   
   Conclusion:
   All in all, a stunning book that really deserves all the awards it has won. And a must-have to every person interested in Greek or Middle Eastern history.



5. A writer that can actually make a person reading his words, feel like they are walking along with the characters, is very gifted. I believe Karim has an extrodinary gift of mixing reality with mystisism giving us all the feeling of being apart of his books. I look forward to reading more of your books, keep writing.

No comments about McDowell and His Critics (Philosophers and their Critics).