Reviews
Book reviewed by Rob Mason on 5 November 2011
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a political philosopher. Her major work, ‘The Human Condition’ (1958) is about the ‘active life’; the ‘active’ life is described in her book under three forms of activity;
1) Labour, which corresponds to the biological life of man as an animal;
2) Work, which corresponds to the artificial world of objects that human beings build upon earth;
3) Action, which corresponds to our plurality as distinct individuals. Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever…Read
Book reviewed by Michael Bruce on 1 July 2011
With a title and theme like Pessimism, not everyone is going to jump at this book. This is unfortunate, since they will be missing a very unique and engaging narrative that discerns a conceptual history of the ominous worldview entitled pessimism. Professor Dienstag clearly delineates pessimism as a specific stance in relation to time. Opposed to optimism and its confidant progress, pessimism is the position that things may not improve as time passes. It is not that humanity is doomed or even in decline; pessimism holds that progress is an illusion and the human condition is getting worse or…Read
Book reviewed by Santi Tafarella on 1 July 2011
Pessimism (Princeton 2006), by Joshua Foa Dienstag, is excellent on many levels, but its chief value is in the way it locates “pessimism” as an identifiable philosophical position.
In chapter 5; Nietzsche Dionysian Pessimism we read that “Time is the destructive power that stands behind any particular cause of suffering in the world. If one accepts the pessimistic assessment of the time bound world as a place of chaos and dissonance, one faces the choice of retreating from it or embracing it and trying to let harmony sound forth from every conflict. Pessimism fortifies us,…Read
Book reviewed by Kenan Malik on 1 July 2011
Two voices echo through Roger Scruton’s new book: those of Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott. A nation, wrote Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, ‘is a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.’ For Oakeshott, perhaps the pre- eminent conservative philosopher of the twentieth century, ‘To try and do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise.’ These two sentiments bind together Scruton’s argument in The Uses of Pessimism.
The theme at the heart of the book…Read
Book reviewed by Tracy Strong on 1 July 2011
Pessimism claims an impressive following - from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet 'pessimist' remains a term of abuse - an accusation of a bad attitude - or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species - who would actually counsel pessimism? Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In "Pessimism", he challenges the received wisdom…Read
Book reviewed by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein on 1 February 2011
Example one: "A young black man strolls down the street in Oakland, California's African American community. He is wearing a Chicago Bulls athletic suit with expensive matching sneakers. The sneakers are untied and he walks with a light limp, leaning just a bit to one side. His arms take turns trailing behind him as he ambles on his way. He knows he is cool and looks good. He follows the popular rap groups and knows all the latest dance steps. Since he lost his job as a stock clerk…Read
Book reviewed by Jason Ward on 1 February 2011
Don’t be put off by the fact that this book is a ‘Russian classic’, it is truly worth a read. Plus, it isn’t a thousand pages of depression like some others I could mention.
The book, not surprisingly given the title, is concerned with the generation gap. But it is also concerned with Russian society at that time, embracing the modern world, disillusionment, the power of emotion, family dynamics, and change both individual and…Read
Book reviewed by Stuart Hanscomb on 1 February 2011
I find it surprising that it has taken so long for someone to dedicate a book to intellectual themes in rock music. That thought-provoking issues have often found expression in and formed the substratum of rock lyrics since the mid-sixties is certainly not news to most rock fans, and yet it has taken nearly thirty years for this to be formally acknowledged in an academic format. I can only assume that Harris’ very rock‘n’roll opening line: “Rock music has…Read
