You might not be fully convinced about all of the author’s points, but you may be less certain that there’s a “you” to...
This brief book challenges conventional ways of thinking about thinking and presents provocative alternatives.
How are humans conscious of consciousness, something that we have and that a rock does not? By the end of science writer Harris’ (I Wonder, 2013) book, readers may be less certain that consciousness distinguishes us from the rest of matter—or that there is any such thing as a conscious self, because “the idea of the self, as a concrete entity, is an illusion.” As the author notes early on, “this book is devoted to shaking up our everyday assumptions about the world we live in…[to] pass along the exhilaration that comes from discovering just how surprising consciousness is.” Some readers might even make the leap into “panpsychism,” which is “a perspective in which consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, as opposed to being confined to some level of information processing.” While Harris, whose husband is renowned neuroscientist Sam Harris, admits that “a panpsychic view…still carries the stink of the New Age,” she is on more solid scientific ground with her discussions on meditation and psychedelic drugs, both of which lead to a letting go of the idea of a self. The author delivers fascinating insight into binding, how the senses correlate their various impressions into a single experience, one in which we are always conscious of the experience just slightly after our senses have independently registered it. “Without binding processes,” writes Harris, “you might not even feel yourself to be a real self at all. Your consciousness would be like a flow of experiences in a particular location in space”—much like a meditation session or an acid trip, each of which tends to loosen those binds.
You might not be fully convinced about all of the author’s points, but you may be less certain that there’s a “you” to convince.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-290671-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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