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Samuel Beckett's work evokes passionate responses: readers and playgoers either revere it or consider it a load of pretentious nonsense. But his philosophy of pessimism will always find a new generation of young readers, for it bursts the rainbow soap bubbles of illusion, leaving us blinking with stinging eyes at unremitting reality. Beckett's defeatism was no soft choice: he had iron in his soul and the wry humor of those who withstand all misfortune,
...A highly sensitive and intelligent child, Virginia Woolf grew up in a large family prone to psychological instability. Throughout her life, she was subject to periods of mental breakdown, yet when she was lucid she was capable of a uniquely perceptive and frank introspection. Under the influence of the Bloomsbury Group and their progressive social attitudes, she became experimental in her life and art, breaking with convention to produce some of
...By the end of his life, Lawrence had despaired of Western civilization, which he felt had corrupted and weakened the human spirit. He believed that we had somehow lost touch with our instinctual being and no longer responded to the 'true voice' of our blood. We still possessed such truth deep within us, but it was smothered by a dead culture.
His works were an attempt to revive a life we have lost, and in them it is possible to glimpse something
...5) The Medici
6) Empire
García Márquez stands on the shoulders of a great Latin American literary heritage. But he is also that modern rarity, a writer with aspirations to high art who also remains hugely popular. For those who fall under his spell, his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is one of the richest literary dreams ever written. Its "magical realism" has influenced writers the world over.
In García Márquez in 90 Minutes,
...Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and...
Schopenhauer, the “philosopher of pessimism,” makes it very plain that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. But if the world is indifferent to our fate, it doesn’t thwart us on purpose. The world’s façade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the universal Will—blind and without purpose. This Will brings on all our misery and suffering; our only hope is to liberate ourselves from its power and from the trappings
...Confucius taught a moral wisdom that would become a predominant social force in China from the second century BCE until the mid-twentieth century. It would appear that his aim was to turn his pupils into good government officials, but his quaint humanistic platitudes, maxims, and quasi-enigmatic anecdotes made spiritual fodder for the next two thousand years of the culture.
In Confucius in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert
...One of two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and his fundamental question: "What is the meaning of existence?" For Heidegger, this question was beyond the reach of reason and was the primary "given" of every individual life. To confront it, Heidegger needed to develop an entirely new form of philosophy.
In Heidegger in 90
...Spinoza’s brilliant metaphysical system was derived neither from reality nor experience. Starting from basic assumptions, with a series of geometric proofs he built a universe which was also God—one and the same thing, the classic example of pantheism. Although his system seems an oddity today, Spinoza’s conclusions are deeply in accord with modern thought, from science (the holistic ethics of today’s ecologists) to politics (the idea that
...Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense, yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didn't write about the world, he wrote about life, about how we live, and how we choose to live. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even "the pretenses of
...During his lifetime, Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed unprecedented popularity for a philosopher, due partly to his role as a spokesman for existentialism—at the opportune moment when this set of ideas filled the spiritual gap left amidst the ruins of World War II. Existentialism was a philosophy of action and showed the ultimate freedom of the individual. In Sartre's hands it became a revolt against European bourgeois values.
In Sartre in 90 Minutes,
...With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ended up going mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms and insights than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and incisive. His major concept is the will to power, which he saw as the basic impulse for all our acts. Christianity
...We see our age as the greatest in human history, filled with seemingly unending originality. Yet such dynamism is not a necessary characteristic of great eras. Among the most long-lasting and stable civilizations was that of medieval Europe. There stasis was achieved, and with it a stability that permitted the development of structured thought and intellectual embellishment of unparalleled degree. Like the vast gothic cathedrals of western Europe,
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