Revelatory, well-written account of the controversial life and writings of French historian and philosopher Foucault. Miller (``Democracy is in the Streets'', 1987, etc.) makes it clear from the start that this is not a full-fledged biography but, rather, a study that focuses on certain biographical details in order to illuminate essential features of Foucault's thought. For a quarter century, Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, was the source of heated intellectual debate throughout the world for his writings on power, knowledge, madness, personal identity, and sexuality. Along the way, he profoundly influenced scholarly approaches to literature, history, political science, anthropology, and other fields. Perhaps most influential were Foucault's writings on how power circulates through society, flowing through public and private institutions, permeating cultural works and intellectual disciplines, shaping the most intimate thoughts, desires, and feelings. Miller shows how these themes were related to—indeed, prompted by—aspects of Foucault's private life. He concentrates on Foucault's uneasy relations with society and his own self, detailing the philosopher's lifelong obsessions with death, suicide, rebellion, and the elusive nature of his own identity. There are also numerous passages devoted to Foucault's homosexuality, his interest in sadomasochism, his fitful forays into radical activism, and his experiments with drugs. This emphasis is bound to produce controversy, particularly among those who believe that Miller's relentless focus on biographical details distracts from the substance of Foucault's works. Anticipating this charge, Miller argues persuasively that his goal is to fashion a largely sympathetic view of a brilliant and often courageous thinker. A riveting portrait marred only by occasional lapses into redundancy, and likely to spur even greater interest—both within and outside the university—in the writings of this influential, enigmatic man.
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-69550-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
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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