A clear and deeply informed account of a religious work that seems to have no expiration date.
A scholar of religious history rehearses the story of C.S. Lewis’ influential disquisition on the commonalities among all Christian believers.
In the latest entry in the Lives of Great Religious Books series, Marsden (Emeritus, History/Univ. of Notre Dame; Jonathan Edwards, 2003, etc.) follows a fairly conventional map. After identifying his perspective and approach and sketching Lewis’ life (including his striking conversion to Christianity), the author takes us directly to the horrors of the Blitz in London during World War II and describes how Lewis, teaching at Oxford University, accepted a request from the BBC to do a series of radio programs about the fundamentals of Christianity. Commencing on Aug. 6, 1941, the talks (15 minutes long) were later published as three separate paperbacks; other radio series would ensue for him. Marsden notes that Lewis’ audiences, though substantial, were much smaller than for entertainment programs. We also learn that no one really knows who suggested he combine his broadcasts into a single volume, but when he did, Mere Christianity (1952) sailed into publishing history. Controversial from the outset—Roman Catholic reviewers tended to be harsher than others—the book was adopted by evangelicals, including Billy Graham, and remains in print today. Marsden analyzes the enduring effects of the book, identifying people whom it altered. Among them was Watergate figure Chuck Colson (the authenticity of whose conversion Marsden does not question). The author also quotes liberally from the various reviews of Mere Christianity, both positive and negative; these passages, essential for scholars, occasionally slow the flow of Marsden’s otherwise fluid narrative. He ends with a chapter about what he sees as the “lasting vitality” of the work. Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien has some cameos.
A clear and deeply informed account of a religious work that seems to have no expiration date.Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0691153735
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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