1 comments about Adorno in America.

1. Written by David Jenemann (assistant professor of English, University of Vermont) Adorno in America is a biography of German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), who lived in exile in the United States from 1938 to 1953. Drawing upon Adorno's theories and archival materials ranging from Adorno's unpublished writings to FBI files, Jenemann reveals Adorno's experiences in New York and Los Angeles, and proffers not only the Adorno's story, but an evolving perspective on the rise of mass culture and consumerism. An exalting portrait of Adorno as a defender of intellectual democracy, as well as an intriguing portrait of mid-twentieth century cultural shifts, Adorno in America is highly recommended for philosophy and cultural criticism shelves as well as biography shelves.

2 comments about My Life as a Seer: The Lost Memoirs.

1. Much of the Kirkus review was accurate, although, the point that New Agers will find little that resonates is probably the most compelling reason to buy this book. It isn't New Age mystical garbage---I wasn't levitating when I read this book.

   Cayce is a fascinating character. Because of his deep faith, he wrestled with the concept of reincarnation and tries to reconcile a biblical explanation for what he experienced in the "life" readings. I found the final chapters of the book more interesting than much of the rest of the book. But it deserves better treatment overall than was given by Kirkus.




2. Have you ever wondered what it might be like to see inside the mind of a great psychic? To be able to access information about people and places that reaches far beyond the physical dimension? Edgar Cayce's biography, expertly compiled by a professional journalist and editor from Cayce's never-before-published autobiographical notes, a personal diary, and lecture records, allows us just such a rare glimpse. Cayce (1877-1945) is the world's best-documented psychic, with over 14,000 verbatim transcripts of 'readings' on topics ranging from health concerns, reincarnation, astrology, spiritual development, earth change predictions, and other metaphysical topics catalogued in the Library of the Association for Research Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, VA.

   Edgar Cayce is also known as the "Father of Holistic Medicine," whose unorthodox naturopathic cures, while helping many regain their health who had been given up as hopeless by the medical establishment, once led to his arrest on grounds of practising medicine without a licence.

   In "My Life As a Seer," we get to know the Edgar Cayce who struggled with self-doubts regarding his psychic gift, and with concerns about the impact which the information from his readings might have on those who sought his counsel. We meet Cayce the family man, a photographer by profession, whose deep faith sees him through a series of defeats, including the destruction by fire of his studio; the closure, for lack of funds, of the hospital he had spent years trying to build; an eviction from his home; and physical injuries suffered while being the target of a humiliating attempt to expose him as a fraud. Through it all, Cayce remained a sincere and humble man,who was motivated not by fame nor by riches (which eluded him all his life), but by an overwhelming desire to serve God and help his fellow human beings.

   "My Life As a Seer," as grandson Charles Thomas Cayce says in the foreword, represents "the first account of Edgar Cayce's life told completely in his own words. He does not dwell on all of the personal aspects of his life, but focuses primarily on those experiences that marked him since childhood as decidedly different from anyone else in his world."

   Reading this fascinating book is the closest most of us will come to talking with Edgar Cayce in this lifetime.

1 comments about John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice.

1. This book has been a great introduction to Rawls and his Theory of Justice. As a non-professional this book provided for me a great overview of the major important parts of the theory. It also provides a set of critiques brought on by others and by the author himself. Most objections to portions of the theory are addressed but Pogge has offered others that are still open to discussion. The book covers not just the Theory of Justice but the restatement and current topics relating to the theory. All-in-all a very good read.

5 comments about One Hundred Philosophers: The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers.

1. Well, I can't pretend that I understood it. I didn't understand "Sophie's World" either. I prefer the format of this lay textbook over the device of the bizarre story of Sophie's World as a structure for didacticism though I admit the bizarre stuff was there to illustrate the philosophical points. I read "One Hundred Philosophers" quickly to see what was available in it but would need to study it with additional texts to go in- depth and attempt to understand the actual philosophy.
   
   I bought the book because it links together disjointed pieces of information. I think it's a good starting point and I intend to use it as a reference book rather than having to go on the net to find the same information.
   
   It's amazing that I'm encountering beliefs out there that I've been reading about in the book and can easily refer to for discussions. There's some surprising individuals in the book to read about, real eye-openers. There are also patterns of biography depending on the era cited e.g. starting out as a theological scholar and getting side-tracked into philosophy.
   
   Some of the woman philosphers' lives make sad reading, early deaths and in one case matyrdom. In contrast, some of the men lived to great ages.
   
   As well though, I saw a pattern of philosophers being repeatedly exiled, tortured, imprisoned and executed for their beliefs though this isn't happening with the latest Continental and Anglo-American ones featured! I found this book so worthwhile I felt inspired to buy one for my 14 year old neice as a great introduction to the valuable and deep subject of philosophy.
   
   Funnily enough, I bought it as one of a selection of books available in the tea-room at work among the usual recipe and typical prosaic lifestyle selection. It was a great buy for $NZ12 (New Zealand).



2. This is the kind of book you - as a philosophy lover, I assume - can keep on your centerpiece or desk somewhere easily accessible for reference. It's very visually pleasing and organized, so you can spend hours reading about this and that philosopher. Its limitation lies in the explanation of the philosophers' views, which summarizes a lot and as a result you cannot hope to learn much from it content-wise. If your goal is to learn some philosopher's views well, this is not the book for you, but if you want a quick reference for philosophers' time periods, historical heritage, theoretical orientation, etc., it is great.
   
   Conclusion: a good pick if its purpose is understood as a reference, as a poster noted below. The point is to talk about the people rather than the ideas. It will not engage you in deep ideas, but will tell you a bit about a great many thinkers.



3. I bought this book after taking an introductory philosophy course in college. I had a deep interest in the subject, but not a very strong background. If you are like me, then this book will be a great starting point for you. Do not expect to find any great analysis of any philosophical theories, or even any opinions on the theories of the various philosophers. In fact, some of the philosophers are covered very briefly, and we are given only the most basic information about them (where they were born, where they studied, what kind of family they came from, where they died, etc.). However, having said that, this book WILL provide you with the basic knowledge of the most influential philosophers so that you may embark on your greater journey into the world of philosophy. It clearly deliniates the beginning of philosophical thought and it's transition to modern philosophy and as most reviewers have stated, it is very well structured and organized. Every major philosopher that you have ever read about/heard of is in this book. I strongly encourage any and all readers interested in a philosophy background to purchase this book!



4. I got this as a Christmas present to my dad, but found myself wishing I had got it for me. I'm one of those kinds of people that wish I knew more about this and that philosopher, but aren't sure where to begin. I've heard lots of the names in this book but never really knew what they believed, but the book goes over it quite well.



5. The book provides a thumnail sketch that is very helpful. However, if you need in depth information this is not the book. It offers an easy to read format and concise.

1 comments about Slavoj Zizek (Routledge Critical Thinkers).

1. Myers begins with quick reviews of the major influences on Zizek: Hegel, Marx, and Lacan. Thorough for those unfamiliar with these theorists but not insulting to those who know them well, these introductions set the stage for several chapters focusing on main themes, particularly on Zizek's exploration of Lacan's the Real and the Symbolic. Read with The Zizek Reader, it was very useful. Zizek's genuine contributions to Lacanian thought are powerful and politically practical.

5 comments about Symposium (Oxford World's Classics).

1. Plato's "Symposium" will always be read because there will always be people who question the nature of Love. Agathon's dinner party is the scene of a conversation between a small group of men, who go around the table offering their views on Love. What does Love mean to us to-day? Reading over the responses of the dinner-guests and their host, we find the same range of answers in Ancient Greece that we are likely to find now.

   Phaedrus and Pausanias are utilitarians and materialists. Phaedrus looks at love between people and a proto-Burkean love for government and state. Pausanias complicates the argument, saying that there are two different kinds of love, one which is common and one which is heavenly - yet still oriented towards the real and the tangible. Eryximachus is a proto-Swedenborg, trying to reconcile or harmonize the two kinds of love.

   The jewels of Plato's "Symposium" are Aristophanes and Socrates. Aristophanes gives us the profoundly moving depiction of Love as a fundamental human need, a desire for completion. For a writer of comedy, whose aim as an art form is forgiveness and acceptance, Aristophanes's explanation is no surprise, though its depth is amazing. While women are generally discounted throughout the "Symposium," not only does Socrates, as we might expect, completely astound his audience (both inside the book and out) with his progressively logical and ascendant view of Love, but he also does it through the voice of a woman, Diotima. When we realize that Socrates is a character in this fiction, and that his words originate in a woman, the egalitarianism and wisdom of Plato the author truly shines forth, like the absolute beauty he claims as the ultimate goal of Love.

   Was Plato a feminist? I don't know. I do know that the "Symposium" is a tremendous book. I picked it up and did not stop reading it until I was finished. The style of the Penguin translation is smooth, with a lighthearted tone that can make you forget that you are reading philosophy. Plato's comedic masterpiece in the "Symposium" is the character of Alcibiades, who provides the work a fitting end. Get the "Symposium" and read it now. You cannot help but Love it...in a Platonic sort of way.




2. Enthralling, entertaining, educational, and thought-provoking, "The Symposium" is one of Plato's classics. A group of men gathered at a dinner party in ancient Greece discuss the topic of love. Each man offers his view or definition of love, and the results are all different, engaging, and full of symbolism. Although it is a short book, one must not read it once and put it away; it ought to be be read again and again just to compare to what is "picked up on" each time. One thing always puzzles me: I will never know why Plato included the doctor (his name escapes me at the moment) have a bout of hiccups during someone's speech. I have never come up with a satisfactory answer - nor has any one I know, either. Nevertheless, this is an excellent read that I highly recommend for anyone - student and nonstudent. Enjoy!



3. Perhaps the most "literary" of all Plato's works, "Symposium" is the story of a dinner party gathering of great (and a few not so great) minds, whom engage in a discussion in praise of eros, or passionate love. It is considered literary because it is highly metaphorical, it's characters are drawn well and in some cases unforgettably, and it succeeds on many levels. It is not uncommon for Socrates to elevate the subject of discussion in any given dialogue to that of our earthly existence, and how we should go about it. Perhaps shocking to readers unfamiliar with the Greeks is the prevalence of homosexual love, particularly with young boys. But, if nothing else, this is an insight into ancient culture. And the absolutely magnificent speeches given by Aristophanes and Socrates remain profound and beautiful to modern readers, regardless of whether or not the other speeches are unpalatable to some. Also, Alcibiades, drunken, hilarious rant is not to be missed. Read in a single sitting, this work is almost sublime.



4. .
   Plato's "Symposium" is the story of Agathon's dinner party where conversation takes place with a small group of men, who recline, eat and drink around a table offering their views on Love. This story is an amazing account of how intelligent and yet so different a culture the men from ancient Greece were compared to our society today. Each speaker has this most amazing ability to tell two stories at the very same time, an creative artistic movement of what love 'is' in each and every story. applying and , metaphorically. intertwining a cultural, mythological story of the gods, giving far deeper meaning. In addition to this, the love relationships and sexual nature of these men also permeate an entire cultural feel to the story, enveloping a radical differentiation from our de-mystified and de-enchanted world back into a once existing world of substantial meaning and profundity.

   Phaedrus, speaks first and relates how love is the greatest good, the beautiful, is shameful of ugly things and how only lovers are willing to die for one another.

   The second speaker, Pausanias, applies two types of love, one Aphrodite, a common base love working at random with men's feelings, for money, for loving physical bodies, boys, men and women. The other type of love, from a much younger goddess, being a higher type, the heavenly, who only loves other men and boy love, but this is not physical body love but from affection of the mind of virtue and wisdom..

   Aristophanes has the hiccups, so it is Eryximachus, a doctor, who speaks third, applying the idea of love as a double love; "for bodily health and disease are by common consent different things and unlike, and what is unlike desires and loves things unlike." p.82 The god of art was said to implant love as a healing art, all such love guided by this god. "It is quite illogical to say that a harmony is at variance with itself or is made up of notes still at variance." "So love as a whole has great and mighty power, or in a word, omnipotence ."

   Aristophanes, the comic writer, gives a moving account of Love as a absolute human need, a desire for completion to the point of each person once shaped differently being cut in half, taking our current shape, in need of the other to complete the whole of what we once were. "For first there were three sexes, not two as at present, male and female, but also a third having both together," and they were violent, strong and forceful and would even attack the gods. So Zeus and the other gods held a meeting and decided to cut them in halves and make them weaker. From then on, they were sexually drawn to one another, both heterosexual and homosexual, reasons all due to the way of the cutting of the halves.Lesbianism and boy to man love is freely spoken of and justified according to this story of the gods. His moving speech on the beauty and virtue of love however, is according to Socrates, true only in the sense of romanticism and fictional idolatrous admiration of what love should be. For Socrates found such a romantic explanation of love as untrue to what love really is and what love contains, as it does not contain all the beauty and good.

   The fourth speaker, Agathon gives a moving speech on the beauty and virtue of love however, it is according to Socrates, true only in the sense of romanticism and fictional idolatrous admiration of what love should be. "For all the gods are happy . . and love is the happiest of them all being the most beautiful and best . . the youngest of gods." In his speech, love is every good, virtuosos and beautiful thing.

   The last speaker, Socrates, found such a romantic explanation of love to be untrue, for what desires good, virtue and wisdom is only something that does not contain such, something lacking, and therefore lacking it desires such things. Love only desires what it lacks. Love is neither beautiful nor ugly. "To have right opinion without being able to give reason is neither to understand nor is it ignorance. Right opinion is no doubt something between knowledge and ignorance."

   It is so interesting how common and free sexuality and homosexuality were, how each man present commented on the beauty of the young men in their glory of youth. Alcibiades, jealous of Agathon, also a young beautiful male, makes a moving speech how Socrates refused his love and how other like young men, also were moved with his amazing wisdom and prose.

   While women are generally discounted, and the bonding of affection in male love was considered a higher love by Pausanias, Socrates explanation of love, by far the most profound, was one he received from a woman named Diotima. Here, as another reviewer has stated, shows Plato's the egalitarianism and wisdom, like that of the beauty and ultimate goal of Love.

   Later a group of men crash the party and the drinking really gets started. Some leave, while Socrates stays all night, never loosing integrity from his drinking and leaves with all his integrity.




5. The Symposium of Plato is a profoundly thought-provoking, entertaining and inspiring piece of philosophical writing. It is very short, yet infinitely more substantial than many longer works.
   
   We are in Athens, 416 B.C.E. The scene is a banquet at the house of Agathon, who had the day before celebrated the victory of his tragedy. By the end of the party, seven men - and one absent but central woman - will have presented their views on the nature and meaning of Eros, or love.
   
   There is no difficulty in keeping the characters distinct in our minds. Plato has great fun contrasting the opinions - and verbal styles - of tragic poet, comic poet, politician, physician and the rest, allowing absurdities and profundities to mingle freely. Socrates is very appealing, saint-like, yet utterly down-to-earth, playing his usual role of a 'philosopher' - one who 'knows only that he does not know' - always in passionate search of the truth, but catching only revelatory glimpses of its perfection.
   
   Phaedrus gives the first speech, praising lovers' (especially homosexual) passion and loyalty, which makes them perform mighty and heroic deeds. Pausanias differentiates between virtuous, or spiritual love, and common, or bodily love. Virtuous love between men should not be primarily about sex, but about improvement and education of the soul. Eryximachus, the doctor, makes a mostly irrelevant (and boring) speech, claiming nature's contrasting elements illustrate the need to balance the healthy and unhealthy aspects of love. Aristophanes then delivers a brilliantly memorable speech, hilarious and poignant by turns, telling of how humans were once two-in-one, back to back, with two heads, four arms and four legs, with three combinations of sexes, male/male, male/female, and female/female. Their strength and speed made them threaten the gods, so Zeus cut them in half, leaving them to search forever for their other halves, and through love attempt to regain their original oneness. Agathon then gives an over-the-top, ecstatic speech, praising love as the youngest, most graceful of the gods, saying he brought order to heaven itself, 'empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection', etc, climaxing with the suggestion we all follow in love's footsteps, 'sweetly singing in his honour'.
   
   It is then Socrates' turn. He performs for all conversations that took place between himself when much younger and Diotima, a 'wise' woman from Mantineia, to whom he had gone for instruction in the highest truths of love. In sum, the lesson is that love is the desire for the everlasting possession of the good and beautiful, which brings happiness. We crave immortality, in order to be happy eternally. We love our offspring, artistic works, laws and institutions, because they are all attempts to achieve an immortal name. These, Diotima claims, are the 'lesser' mysteries of love.
   
   The 'greater' proceed from the 'lesser' in ascending steps. From one beautiful body the lover creates 'fair notions', then he sees all bodies are similar and equally worthy of love. From bodies he proceeds to the beauty of the virtuous mind, then the beauties of institutions and laws, climbing from there to the beauty of the sciences, until, after much growth in wisdom, he reaches the vision of all creation as beautiful. The final step is to rise to the contemplation of unchanging, eternal, absolute beauty itself. To spend your life in union with perfect beauty allows you to bring forth 'real' things, not 'images' and 'be immortal, if mortal man may'.
   
   A drunken Alcibiades bursts in at this point, and gives a rambling, often funny, speech about his love for Socrates and how he - a very beautiful man - was spurned sexually by him. He describes Socrates' near-supernatural control of himself, totally above the effects of pain and pleasure. The book ends with a description of Socrates' companions all falling asleep as dawn breaks (after all-night drinking) and his going about his usual day.
   
   Throughout the Symposium, Plato makes it clear that sexual relations are not the best thing at all for 'lovers'; they who wish for the highest happiness must seek to grow in virtue and wisdom and become increasingly detached from earthly pleasures. This is the origin of the phrase 'Platonic love'. Women were not considered their intellectual and spiritual equals in Athens at the time, so men of sophistication had to look to each other for emotional sustenance.
   
   What then, we may ask, can the Symposium offer human beings today who are not interested in purely mystical/intellectual living and prefer the sexual and emotional satisfactions found in personal relationships?
   
   A great deal, I believe. In his introduction Benjamin Jowett states that Plato 'is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as a spiritual form of them'. In other words, earthly pleasures and transcendent ones are inextricable. Plato used words such as 'good' and 'virtue' to describe freeing oneself from the world of the senses, by using our reason to choose correctly who - or what - to attach to as we move through life. If we choose correctly, be it friends, sexual or lifetime partners, we strengthen our sense of inner freedom, until finally we experience it at the deepest, mystical level - the profound shift in consciousness that Plato was pointing to as the highest good - which in and of itself is morally and values-neutral.
   
   The genius of Plato is that he communicates the total commitment required to attain perfect freedom, and the moral obligation of all human beings to strive for the happiness it alone can deliver.

2 comments about Three Women in Dark Times: Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil.

1. I am no philosopher, but have read the works of the three women who are the subjects of the book.
   I was hoping to put the three lives into the context of the intellectual and social world they lived in, and how and why they made their individual decisions on philosophy, religion, and their approach to the questions posed by both Nazism and the feminist movement.
   But little detail is given about the intellectual life. We are told the names of their mentors: but not any details of what these mentors taught (a major flaw for the non philosophy student who is not familiar with Heddiger etc.).
   At the same time, except for some fine passages on Simone Weil, there is little detail on the inner lives of the women: we see only the outline of their parallel lives, often mixed together in a confusing manner. Arendt's affair with her professor, a subject recently treated in detail in a recent Atlantic magazine article, is given one sentence. Stein converts, with no more detail on her inner life than one could read in a blurb in the Catholic encyclopedia.
   In summary, the author fails to provide details for the novice to understand the lives of these women, but does not go into sufficient depth for a philosophy student to learn anything new.
   However, the passages on Simone Weil are an exception to my criticism. I did learn a lot about both her writings and why she thought and wrote her famous letters.



2. This is not an easy book. It is a glance into the lives of 3 women, Hanna Arendt, Simone Weil, and Edith Stein, each of Jewish descent and, in particular, at the response each one made to Nazism. There is a review of each woman's life and her career. A lot of space is given to the education of these women, which is especially interesting since each studied under some of the biggest names in philosophy in the 20th century. It is not easy to follow, however, unless you have some basic knowledge of Heidegger, Jaspers, Alain, Husserl. But it is still interesting. Each of these women chose a different response (not just to nazism, but to the world, actually). Arendt became strongly Zionist, and an author of wonderful books; Simone Weil, strangely at odds with her heritage, but whose essays are marvels of clarity, chose a strange path of starvation (whatever the philosophical underpinnings, one wonders about anorexia); Edith Stein converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite nun, devoting her life to prayer (though still writing). Each of these responses is fascinating in its own right. I highly recommend this difficult, but rewarding book.

5 comments about The Only Woman in the Room.

1. A concise, elegant autobiography by Beate Sirota Gordon, an Austrian who grew up in pre-war Japan as a child and later returned to what she very much considered her home to find her parents (music teachers who refused to abandon their Japanese students as pre war tensions mounted and were held prisoner). It chronicles not only her battle with the entrenched Japanese male authority but battles with the entrenched American male authority, who weren't necessarily any less sexist than the Japanese. She took a job with the American army as a translator and ended up helping draft Japan's post war constitution. And she did all this at the age of 22!

   Gordon escaped the war by going to an all girls school in California. There she encountered the feminist movement and learned a lot about women's rights issues. Upon returning to Japan, she was asked by the American government to help with the constitution. The Americans wanted the constitution written and adopted quickly, fearing the Soviets last minute entry into the war would give them influence. She went to town, drafting about a dozen articles for the Japanese constitution guaranteeing women rights in the work place, politics, health care, child custody, etc. Many were stripped out but two key articles she drafted remained. What's more amazing is Gordon takes so little credit for her accomplishments and instead agonizes more about what was left on the cutting room floor.

   For several decades after, the creation of the Japanese constitution was not well publicized. The Americans feared the haste with which it was written and the fact that the job was basically given to a group of found amateurs would cause the Japanese people to reject it. It's only now that her story has been able to come out.

   All in all a fascinating account and hard to put down. If there's a downside it's that Gordon doesn't pump up her autobiography with more fascinating and telling anecdotes.




2. I found this book to be inspiring. A book not to be missed!



3. Ms. Sirota Gordon has a facinating tale to tell but, ultimately, its telling has little depth and skims the surface of events in her life. Her story deserves another author.



4. I first learned of Beate Sirota Gordon from a Japanese woman friend who told me she was well loved by the women of Japan. They know she is responsible for insisting that they have a voice in their democracy. Unlike the previous writer, I found her straight forward prose to be very readable. She may not have a fancy literary style, but its her story and I appreciate the way she told it.



5. In Oct. 2007 I had the privilege of hearing Ms.Gordon speak at a renowned women's college in Tokyo. Now in her 80s, Ms. Gordon traveled from her home in the US to visit again the country of her youth, Japan. She spoke in Japanese for over an hour, giving a summary of her life, but most importantly, stressing the importance of the Equal Rights Clause of Japan's consititution, which by quirk of fate she had written.
   
   The Only Woman in the Room, a brief memoir, which includes her contribution to the history of post-war Japan, is refreshingly modest. For some 50 years after the Pacific War, the details of the drafting of Japan's constitution by the 'allied powers' (General MacArthur) had been kept quiet, much of it classified secret documents. To the world, appearances were kept as if the Japanese had drafted their own constitution, but in reality it was strictly managed by MacArthur.
   
   Given the prevailing gender chauvinism of Japan (and even the west) at that time, if Ms. Gordon and another woman (economist Eleanor Hadley) had not been present, articulate, and assertive, there would possibly have been no 'equal rights clause' set forth in Japan's constitution. Had Ms. Gordon not had experience growing up in Japan, fluency in the language and knowlege of the plight of women, equal rights in Japan might have taken many more years to arrive.
   
   Speaking before a group of future women leaders of Japan, Ms. Gordon was living testimony to the fact that today's Japanese women have rights of marriage, divorce, voting, owning property, etc., which was not true prior to 1946.
   
   It seems she has always been the type of person so involved in living life that to stop and record all of it in detail would have gotten in the way of living it. Certainly her biography would be a sweeping epic, from her parents' roots in Russia, her father's respected talent as a musician and teacher, through the chaos of the war in Europe, loss of family in Hitler's halocaust, her parents' surviving the war as "non-persons" in Japan, her US college education, her linguistic contributions to the war effort, and so on. Despite all this, I believe perhaps Ms. Gordon does not view herself as being that different from thousands of others who lived through those years, but she did have extraordinary talent and the luck to be in the right place at the right time.

1 comments about Plato's Republic: A Biography (Books That Changed the World).

1. This book is NOT a copy of Plato's Republic, but a commentary on the Greek text. The title of this book leads us to believe it contains Plato's Republic as well as biographical information. This is NOT the case. Blackburn's work is, as always, insightful and worth reading, but it is NOT a copy of the Republic.

1 comments about Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (P.S.).

1. This well-researched and detailed portrait of a remarkable and unique relationship between two remarkable and unique people is never less than engaging. It is well worth reading for anyone who has even a passing interest in the intellectual climate in France just preceding, during and after WWII, a period that produced an amazing list of artists and philosophers: Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, Lanzmann (all of whom figure in this narrative), the nouvelle vague in cinema, and many more. For that matter, it is well worth reading for anyone who is interested in life, and the details of these lives are intrinsically fascinating (which is not always to say admirable). Rowley had an almost unprecedented access to historical materials, and to many of the people involved, and put together a sensitive and coherent picture of Sartre and Beauvoir from roughly the time they met to their deaths. That she is able to paint such an intimate and compassionate portrait that does not shy away from depicting faults and inconsistencies in their lives and thought is a testament to Rowley's skills as a writer and as a historian.
   
   The major weakness of the book is that her talent with philosophy is not equally on display here. In the course of telling her story, Rowley mentions the philosophical works of Sartre and Beauvoir, but says very little to illuminate the connection between their thinking and their lives. Even where she does discuss such connections, the links are fairly superficial. (Or, the connections are of the sort that can be made at the level of pop psychology between an artist and his or her work.) Existentialism comes across in her book in its fairly popular form: that there is no essence of human being and that we define ourselves through our actions. The connection between Sartre's existentialism and phenomenology gets summarized in the claim that Sartre learned from phenomenology that philosophy could be about everyday life. What she doesn't note is that beyond the fact Sartre learned from phenomenology to focus on everyday life, he also engaged in a systematic effort to redescribe life -- to show that our ordinary ways of conceiving everyday life are deeply flawed. Beauvoir's own significant and original philosophical work (apart from "The Second Sex") is hardly discussed -- her "Ethics of Ambiguity," for example, is never even mentioned. What she doesn't note is that Beauvoir had developed a powerful typology of ways in which one might respond to and realize freedom in one's life, in her "Ethics of Ambiguity" -- and it would be interesting to consider where she must have fit on that continuum. Perhaps most egregiously, she fails to emphasize that for both Sartre and Beauvoir, existentialist freedom is not primarily about the rejection of traditional bonds but about the recognition of the ways in which we bind ourselves to others through our projects and commitments -- so that "authenticity" is not just about being oneself but about the discovery that one cannot avoid belonging to others and to deny one's commitments to others is bad faith. If Sartre painted this inevitibility as a kind of hell in "No Exit," Beauvoir especially in the "Ethics of Ambiguity" depicts an acceptance of the ambiguous commitments that emerge from our being with others as the only genuine freedom and the only possible salvation. (In spite of her desire to depict Beauvoir as independent of Sartre, and her emphasis of Sartre's unwavering respect for her as a thinker, Rowley doesn't really give a sense of the independence of Beauvoir as a thinker -- and what comes across for the most part here is the popular but I think misleading picture of Sartre as the philosopher and Beauvoir as the memoirist who occasionally also applied philosophy to subjects like women and aging.) On this reading, then Sartre and Beauvoir come across primarily as writers whose ideas and commitments evolved over time to become more political, who rejected standard morality including and especially the moral prescriptions that reinforce the family, and who shared a unique form of relationship (that involved fidelity to each other in the sense that they would always tell each other the truth, even where they were willing to lie to others with whom they had secondary relationships). One might have wished for a more detailed account of their thinking if only because such an account would help to pose the question how their life must have been conceived by themselves, in accordance with their own thinking. Otherwise, and in spite of the book's other merits as a piece of history and biography that can complement a study of their work (or of the period), the book ends up reading like a soap opera for intellectuals. While I think this point deserves emphasis I don't want to overemphasize this. One of the merits of Rowley's book is that she takes as her model of biography the autobiographical works of Beauvoir -- and to that extent she does employ a similar approach to reflection on their lives that Beauvoir employs in her published works. I just would have liked to see a bit more reflection in the book about the relation between their lives and their more focused philosophical reflections. First and foremost, Sartre and Beavoir are engaged thinkers and a biography that rarely engages with their deepest thinking except at the superficial level of brief summary, seems to me to be lacking. Having said that, I should reiterate that apart from such misgivings I found the book to be very well written and thoroughly enjoyable and could hardly put it down.