Existentialism Books

Just as a previous reviewer stated, this book focuses too much on the biographical Sartre, and not enough on the philosophical Sartre. The pictures don't really add much to the text either. If you are looking for an intro to Sartre's life, this book is adequate, but if you want to learn about his philosophy, then you should look elswhere.

If you are looking for a good, quick introduction to Sartre's Philosophy, I would not start with _Introducing Sartre_ from Totem Books, but with _Sartre For Beginners_ from Writers and Readers Publishing.

_Introducing Sartre_ focuses more on Biographical information, and brief Literary analysis of Sartre's novels and plays, than on his Philosophical works and their meaning. The illustrations are frequently just "fluffy" caricaturization instead of helping us understand characterization. Why would I want to struggle with trying to determine which figure is supposed to be Aron, Nizan or Sartre?

The book lacks a Glossary (which is further indication of its Biographical/Literary approach rather than Philosophical), and there is no Bibliography (all references must be gleaned from within the text.)

While as a whole, the book was a somewhat interesting read, the weakness of its philosophical examination allowed me to only rate it 3-Stars.

_Introducing Sartre_ is an interesting concept: use the format of a graphic novel to expound on the ideas of one of the 20th century's greatest minds. Unfortunately, the concept falls flat in execution.

I won't go into detail about the relative merits (or not) of the artwork. The book, however, left much to be desired. It is essentially a biography of Jean - Jacques Sartre, with only cursory attention paid to existentialism as a philosophy. Admittedly the two are related, but I had really hoped for a closer and deeper examiniation of his ideas - instead I got medicore biography.

If a summary of Sartre's life is of interest, this would be a great place to begin. If, however, you are looking for information about his ideas, go elsewhere.

I just finished reading this and was amazed at how much I enjoyed reading about this man's intellectual challenges. While I didn't agree with everything he put forth, I did appreciate his attempt to say what he felt regardless of what others might say in response. While at times [many to be honest] he comes off as a whining, melodramatic, lonely, malcontent there is still something about his body of work that coerced me into attempting to understand the origin of my thoughts and actions over the years. Well worth the few bucks it takes to make it your own!

i read the 1962 version--and apparently the text was never updated (but it has stayed in print). i found it a useful and clear presentation of the subject. the first twenty pages are worth the purchase, as the author is very good at orienting existentialism within the context of other philosophies. the chapters on anguish and freedom are especially good. some of the text's language is archaic. phrases such as the "common man" and the exclusive use of the male pronoun are used throughout. these are a bit distracting to the contemporary feminist trained ear, and reminds one of the sexist sensibilities of even the best educated individuals in the early 1960s. if one wants a literary-critical (as opposed to a strictly philosophical) reflection on existentialism, i would recommend TO DENY OUR NOTHINGNESS by maurice friedman. also written in the 1960s, friedman's book is a profound critical reflection on existential novels and poetry popular in his day (such as camus' THE PLAGUE and the novels of herman hesse).

I just wanted to learn about existentialism. As the name suggested "an introduction", it is not for beginners. The language is more acedemic and hard to understand. For sure it was a waste of money for a biginner like myself.

Robert G. Olson does justice to the philosophy of Existentialism in his stellar novel, "An Introduction to Existentialism". By examining each individual aspect of the Existentialist interpretation and also introducing the main arguments against Existentialist points, Olson helps to create a solid base for the novice philosopher. Utilizing the works of Sartre, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Hursserl and Marx, the novel gives in depth analysis and conclusionary support to even the most complex areas of Existentialist thought. This novel makes one question the conformist views of our society while presenting an alternative solution through Existentialism.

if you want a literary introduction to Existentialism, not bogged down by complexities, read a book like 'Toilet: The Novel' by Michael Szymczyk, or 'Siddhartha and Goldmund' by Herman Hesse.
Otherwise, for an introduction to the Philosophy, check this one or Walter Kauffman's book.

First I feel obliged to say something nice about this work and have to say that any work that looks at one complex writer's ontology through the challenging frame of a concept like emptiness in Buddhist philosophy deserves some commendation. Laycock's work is, however, too dry, scholastic and obscurantist. Whatever his subjective experience, if he writes for the general public then he should try to imagine the needs of his reader. He should do a basic writing course as well. I also found more accessible accounts of Sartre's work and its similarity to early Buddhist epistomology and ontology by Asisan authors. I also found Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" much easier to read than Laycock's flight of associations.

This book is rich in insight and throughness. Yes, you need time to read it, but Laycock has taken an idea that I've thrown around in my own mind for some time and expanded on it with a philospher's throughness.
I am aware that similar arguments are available in Asian texts, but with a Westerner's skepticism, I needed a good Western argument to convince me!

The book reads like an academic journal whose audience enjoys reading in the jargon of its highly specialized field. I don't recommend this book at all. Boring...I want my money back.

I actually quite enjoyed this. No, it's certainly not for someone with a passing interest in Philosophy; likewise for someone with a minor vocabulary. It is, absolutely, a difficult work. But Laycock seems interested in preserving his ideas in the honeycombed Literary modes of Phenomenology, Existentialism and (a relatively esoteric form of) Buddhism, and succeeds by acheiving a work as complex as it is. This defines the barrier for the average reader though, regardless of how versed they are in "jargon." Laycock is painstaking in his analysis, both in its poesis and its content, and the book is certainly worth the time if you are deeply interested in any of the aforementioned doctrines. However, as the other reviewer exemplifies, if you're not able to really dig in and spend a few minutes with each page (literally so, it's a SLOW read), you may as well use it as a fan instead. Overall, though, _Nothingness and Emptiness_ turns out to be a wonderful experience of rich, meditative philosophy, challenging and rewarding in its complexity and linguistic depth. Laycock's assertions and conclusions (especially those involving Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka Buddhism) are absolutely fascinating even if one is compelled to disagree at times. But the end result is an expanded and appreciative view of Mahayana Buddhism, and an absolutely exploded take on Sartrean Existentialism/Phenomenology. I feel the book is deserving of far better than one solitary, short-sighted bash--give it a try. If you've any interest in either half of Laycock's equation (i.e.- Buddhism OR Sartre) you'll be surprisingly welcomed if you attempt it with patience and an empty mind.

You must have read Being and Nothingness if you are considering this book so I won't describe Sartre's scholastic interest in preliminary formal considerations; as usual it takes up 3/4 of the total work. Sartre is also an imaginative writer, however, and his analyses of group terror, top-ten lists, and respectability (in vol 2) almost make up for it. I find Sartre's apparent devotion to Marxism troubling in an "objective" philosophical work, especially since much of Marx is obsolete. In other words, I don't know why you would buy this book. It used to be tedious; now it's just interesting to specialists.

Sartre was primarily a moral philosopher - not a metaphysician, epistemologist, or political philosopher. Yet, he was a bit of all these. He is a political thinker by way of his profoundly thought moral philosophy. Thus, I claim: 1) While it may be his last extensive philosophic work, Sartre's CDR is not his "last great philosophic work" - big is not always best. The tragically neglected, "Saint Genet: Actor & Martyr" is perhaps the most important book of moral philosophy since Kant's "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals". This book was published in French in 1953, but for reasons evident to me but obscure to many, was not published until 1963 in English (i.e., America of the 1950's was for all it's extroversion, an uptight place - for all its "loss of innocence" - still is). There is a magnificent review of Saint Genet on this site to which I could not add more. Saint Genet, not Being and Nothingness is Sartre's magnum. 2) We're dealing with a generation who grew up in the heyday of Reagan's media robots - not only do they not understand Marx, his enormous stature and insight - they haven't dared to read him. The fact is the corporate/service divide which is really central to all our problems today - is none other than the reappearance of the old bourgeois/proletariat divide, "the antagonism of capital and wage labor" once again. Think about it at the pump. 3) Sartre was left with the problem of trying to reconcile his Marxism, with his very egocentric existentialism - really a syncretism - and he tries in this huge tome. (I am always amazed at how prolific Sartre was - and how good!) 4)Oddly, although existentialism conflicts with Marxian utopianism and its vision of unity (after all one could call many of our contemporary corporate anarchists existentialist), it radically opposes statism which Marx notoriously failed to do, allowing his ideas to serve as justifying ideologies for some of the worst human rights transgressions in history, in Russia, China, Cambodia, etc., transgressions which most certainly have Marx and those who truly understood him in his time "turning over in their graves". This insight, leads Sartre into a radically deep (hundreds of pages) analysis of the roots and manifestations of statism in our civilization. 5) The reviewer is right in saying that few manage to wend their way through Sartre's Critique. Rather, he wrote a neat, user-friendly Introduction, much more feasible for the general reader, covering in some depth all the main points in the argument, and his thinking as a whole. This exordium, originally a postscript to CDR - was published separately and went through a number of revisions - and is now available in English under the title, "Search for a Method". But please - please, do yourself a favor - before you attempt Being In Nothingness (Heidegger's Being and Time - is more essential - and in many ways "the original version" of Sartre's epistemology and metaphysics) or CDR - read Saint Genet - a masterpiece of honesty and critical investigation.

Seeking to give Marxism what Michael McGee called "a more rigorous intellectual defense," Sartre wrote volume one of Critique of Dialectical Reason (CDR) between 1957 & 1960; it was published in France in 1960. The first English edition appeared in 1976. A second, unfinished volume appeared posthumously in 1982.

CDR was a massive attempt to describe the dynamic of various levels of human interaction & what characterizes these levels, from a mere chance collection of people to the social entity we call an institution. The ultimate objective was to show why Marx's categorization of "class" as some kind of hyperorganism was wrong. Its thesis statement can be drawn from its thematic antecedent, Search for a Method: cultural order is irreducible to natural order.

In CDR, life was endless occasions of totalizations, detotalizations, & retotalizatons on a field of scarcity. These various totalizations were instances of human groupness, whether people waiting @the bus stop, a soccer team, or the "mob" storming the Bastille. We called the temporalization of events "history."

First half of the volume, or Book I, is devoted mainly to ennui-provoking explanation of the dialectical investigation: hidden there in a footnote was Sartre's curt dismissal of Darwinism. However, he got wound up in Book II & showed how task assignments, division of labor, & the institution came about.

I know of no other original study, treatise, or even novel that uses the themes & concepts of CDR. A CDR-oriented examination of, say, American domestic relations court proceedings (with its forced as opposed to mediated reciprocity) might be a worthy endeavor.

Most introductions to Existentialism make either of a couple of mistakes: they either focus on the style rather than the substance of the thinkers subsumed under the label or they focus on the mood evoked. Anyone who has read much about the philosophy knows that it is all too easy to degenerate into a meditation on the angst of human existence. By centering their discussions on moods and attitudes rather than concrete philosophical positions, Existentialism as it emerges from far too many introductions become anything and everything, yet nothing at all. Not so with Flynn.

The book is broken into six (necessarily) short chapters. The first five justify the cost of the book. The last one, on "Existentialism in the 21st Century," is an unhappy addendum. It seeks to hint at ways that Existential thought can engage some of the ongoing philosophical debates that continue into the 21st century. But the various ideas are simply dealt with too briefly and the possibilities of engagement are more gestured at than explained. The intentions were good, but there simply wasn't enough room to produce more than an outline of a chapter. But the first five chapters are all lucid and sharply focused. The first chapter deals with the central tenet of all thinkers who can be considered Existentialists (it is important to remember that most "Existentialists" did not so consider themselves), that philosophy is a practical discipline, dealing with actual lived life, not an inhuman scienticity far removed from concrete human concerns. The second deals with what it means to become an individual and how that is achieved. The third begins with Sartre's famous lecture on humanism and uses this as a springboard to talk of both theistic and atheistic forms of existential thought, but showing how both nonetheless place human beings at the center. The fourth chapter delves into the important ethical concept of authenticity. Finally, the fifth chapter deals with an aspect of Existentialism that many books on it neglect, the social philosophy promulgated by many of the movement's leading thinkers.

Not all those considered Existentialists receive equal attention in this intro. There is a great deal more about Kierkegaard and Sartre than any other thinkers, though there are significant discussions of a host of additional philosophers including Merleau-Ponty, Camus, Heidegger, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, and Marcel. I have read fairly widely in all of those thinkers except Merleau-Ponty and can attest that his discussions of all these individuals are consistently accurate and fair. I admire how clearly he is able to get to the crux of their central ideas without distorting their thought. I'm especially conversant with Kierkegaard and while I often would have like to seen certain points expanded, I cannot say that he says anything misleading.

I recommend this as an introduction to Existentialism over all other such books with which I am familiar. Though still of value, some of the older intros by people like Walter Kaufman and William Barrett are definitely showing their age. They also suffer from the disadvantage of having been written while Existentialism was still in its hey day and they had less of a sense of what would be deemed of ongoing value in the movement. Flynn has the advantage of hindsight and knowledge of what parts retain interest. I have read several outstanding entries in this series by Oxford and feel that this is one of the best volumes yet.

It has been years since I marked up a book as much as I did this one. This is so much more than an introduction to a subset of philosophy. It is a tour of the mind of man wrestling with the questions that inform our lives as we live them. This tour crackles with life at every turn. The intensity and import of the insights revealed simply leap from the page. I can't imagine any true seeker after knowledge and meaning failing to be moved by this book. I can imagine hardened cynics, stoics, and uber-sophisticated postmodernists failing to be moved (and what would move them, anyway?) -- they would probably prefer a treatment other than Flynn's. My takeaway on this book is that Flynn's version of existentialism has the power to serve as an antidote, perhaps as the antidote, to all that has gone wrong with postmodernism.

You'll do much better reading about existentialism elsewhere. First off, the opening chapter of this book is draining. It's written in philosophical jargon that's takes a lot of energy to decipher. And what's worse is that Flynn seems to know this. Too many times he reels off a vague and ambigious sentence then follows it up with the ever famous: "In other words..." Things do clear up a little in the second chapter but then you face the problem of Flynn not knowing how to structure an argument. He rarely gives examples of what he's talking about and when he does they're not enlightening. By the time he finished with Nietzsche, about 40 pages into the book, I decided to throw it in the trash. $10 wasted. Trust me, there is too much information on the web (Stanford Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy) to put yourself through this.

One of the best sartre bios out there (and the official one). Volume One- It has the dual fortune of being both a quick read and a decent intro to Sartre's life and thought. It also calls him on his *ish*, which is rare for biographers. (Gerassi's parents were Spanish -ok his mom wasn't but married into it- friends of Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir, in fact both his mother and father as well as Jean hismelf became the basis for characters in sartre's 'Roads to Freedom' Series of novels).

While not as massive a compendium as the Annnie Cohen-Solal bio, this has much to reccommend it. In fact, preciseley that it is not the massive compendium reccommends it in my eyes. Who has time for that but the intellectual janitors in their ivory towers? Gerassi knows Sarte's works quite well, but primarily- he knew the man himself and he gives interesting insights into many anecdotes and ideas.

My feelings towards Sartre tend to be passionately ambivalent. I don't care for his philosophy, which will always be 'cool' to the pseudo-sophisticates who don't even possess a thorough grasp of it... I was enchanted with him in my teens mainly because of his persuasive skill with words (the man was an extraordinary wordsmith), and I will always be deeply enamored of his novels. 'nausea,' alone I feel should secure his place in the history of literature.

There are tons of works on Sartre purporting to unveil his thought and life. Most of the ones I've read are inadequate- they come off as hack-kneyed and reactionary, and try to compensate for their faults with an over-abundance of fruitless linguistic play that goes nowhere- does nothing, or they take him to task overly for a variety of his personal failings (and there are plenty from which to choose). Few thinkers and biographers attempt to tackle the man as a writer and an activist... Few try to work with Sartre's all-too-human imperfections and put them into context.

...And few see any kind of logic in Sarte's later years but Gerassi, because of his close involvement with both Sartre and De Beauvior, is able to show the heart and soul of the man at work, especially in his darker years (involvement with revolutionary Maoists and loss of his sight and mental faculties, most likely due to his extensive use of drugs, ampetamines, alchohol etc in his 30s and 40s)...

Stil, Sartre is a writeer and thinker worth exploring, and he was one of the more interesting men of his time. If you are at all interested in learning more about this maddening intellectual of the 20th C- this is a fine place to start. Gerassi was chosen by sartre mainly because he was not an acolyte- he had his own opinions and had frequent arguments (some quite vitriolic) with J.P. A couple of which gerassi recounts.

The book has a lot of meat. Most don't. Let me reiterate that is written cearly and concisely- a quality MUCH LACKING in most books of this kind, and a quality that I value highly, outside of experimental fiction... I have read this a couple times, always enjoy it, find it interesting and illuminating.

just one man's five cents, as always.

When you read over a hundred books a year like I do, you sometimes find yourself looking for "bargain" books to save a few bucks, especially if the subject is rather controversial. Who'd have thought you could find yourself feeling that you overpaid for a book that cost $2? This is such a book. Sartre is a phase that most kids go thru, like pimples, before they grow up and understand the world. Yes, we are here a short time and then we die. Get over it.
For Gerassi, a noted leftist, this book is more of an admission that he, like his friend Sartre, never grew up. While it is hard to read this book and not feel sorry for someone who will die an adolescent, I feel even worse knowing that the kind of nonsense Gerassi expounds about his fellow traveler in this book is probably standard fare dished out to the unsuspecting innocents in his political science classes at CUNY. What can you say about a book which fawns over a person like Sartre, whose entire life consisted of his fawning over mass murderers and criminals of the left? This book is a classic example of leftist snobbery, where Stalin's extermination of millions of Georgians, Ukrainians and others by starvation is ignored and the extermination of millions of Jews by an equally evil totalitarian criminal like Hitler is condemned. Sartre's equal admiration of mass murderers like Mao and Castro is made to look "enlightened" when it is simply outrageous. The only redeeming part of the book is that you can understand Sartre's narcissism and self-loathing to be possibly attributable to his warped childhood and excessive use of drugs and alcohol. I'd be nauseated and depressed too if I were as screwed up as he was.
What an unfortunate end of being and nothingness for a poor, naked, innocent little tree to give up its life to provide the paper this book was printed on. But maybe it will have a happier end and become a doorstop or some other higher purpose.

I don't know what's wrong with the next reviewer (I suspect it's Anne Coulter with a fake moustache- Hi Anne!). Yes, Sarte supported some bad people, and some not so worthy causes- but then if we are to judge the Soviets and China for their victims- does that mean turning a blind eye to the countless dead in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, El salvador, Columbia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iran, and God knows how manyother places where regimes were overturned and dictators installed and bombs dropped either with US Aid/money/training or directly by us.

Choose your evils. Sartre had more gumption than most when it came to calling out his age on its evils. Are we to blame him because, post-WWII he turned away from a non-poitical stance and embraced a left-wing ideology?

This is a short, consise bio, and I think the best on the market of its kind. If you are looking to round out your perception of this enigmatic thinker- pick up a copy!

-Ed Niles

A book previously written in German by Stanley Hubbard had established that Nietzsche had read Emerson's Essays, underlined them and quoted from them in several of his books. It is the opinion of George J. Stack that the great American sage of Concord was more than simply words upon a page for Nietzsche, who is widely studied by those who have some interest in philosophy. As a professor of philosophy (chair of that department at the State University of New York at Brockport, according to the back cover of this book), Stack sees how the important elements of philosophy can be pulled from Nietzsche's works as from a house of cards, and the entire deck can be handed over to Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of his points about Emerson: "Quite often he attacks social institutions, freely knocking down the `house of cards' of which, he believes, they are made. Society is viewed as at war with individuals, as a leveling force that resents genuinely independent people." (p. 37) The major fault of this book is its failure to realize how long philosophy has been pulling the same trick, with similar results, on different houses of cards.

Perhaps this book reflects a level of scholarship that has no qualms about being in a young country, based on a single language. It is easy here to forget that Nietzsche was born in Germany, as was Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980), an American professor who allowed his students to know when the ideas that they acquired had a German background. Nietzsche was once a young professor lecturing on the ancient Greeks, and it is most surprising here to find Stack criticizing Kaufmann for calling attention to a Greek, Aristotle, in the midst of Nietzsche's thoughts on "greatness of soul." In Stack's opinion, "his portrait of greatness owes far more to Emerson than to Aristotle." (p. 298) Perhaps Emerson, in a more modern setting, was able to put the idea of greatness into words which it was easier for Stack, a thoroughly modern professor, to understand, while Aristotle was having to put the concept into word that his pupil, Alexander the Great, could apply in practice when Alexander was king from the age of 20 until his death at the age of 33. Stack shows a very liberal idea of leadership when he reports, "Alexander the Great's intense desire for military conquest is mild compared to Plato's intellectual `ambition.'" (p. 156) Stack knows this because of something that he read on page 317 of The Portable Emerson.

Emerson also wrote, in "Of Friends," about friendship, a topic which has been a classic since Florian wrote "My friends, there are no friends." I believe I found this on page 46 of POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP by Jacques Derrida, translated by George Collins (1997) as well as on page 48 this book by Stack, whose sage is always Emerson. So many times, when Stack is thinking of Emerson, the real experience is one of Nietzsche, and "One can understand, Nietzsche writes, the bitter remark of `the sage': `Friends, there are no friends.'"

In my own experiences, instead of doing this, I should be working on THE NEW VIETNAM WAR COMEDY TEAM JOKE BOOK. In my humble opinion, Nietzsche and I would make a better comedy team in a joke book than Emerson and I could ever be. Possibly Stack never meant to have Nietzsche and Emerson evaluated as a comedy team. I'm not recommending it.

I'm much more excited about this book than the first time I reviewed it. It was written back in 1992, and I could have considered it one of the most American studies of Nietzsche to be produced in the late 20th century. What made my first review exciting was how well I managed to ghost Walter Kaufmann in writing that review. Kaufmann had chosen to be a professor in the philosophy department of a great American university, at a time when cultured people everywhere might expect a modern philosophy to be enthralled with the idea of philosophy forming a basis for world order striving for the kind of educated greatness enhanced by Emerson. Since reading more of Emerson, I must rate him more highly than in my first review of this book, particularly in his work on Plato. Nietzsche might join Emerson in the view "the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth." That is what Emerson noticed after: "so all this mammoth morsel has become Plato. He has clapped copyright on the world." Walter Kaufmann and I may have differed from each other generationally in our views on how well rock 'n' roll might also claim the world. Philosophy is much more difficult to discuss than the most recent songs, and the people who might read this book for professional reasons wouldn't have much excitement to talk about, so the years passed this book by in stony silence until I came along and compared it to what Walter Kaufmann said about this kind of simple comparison of the views of another with Nietzsche. Hegel set the standard for making philosophical comparisons, and Kaufmann kept trying to show how German this approach is. I really liked the idea of Kaufmann having an American alter ego who was going to make decisions based on the line, "Common, it'll be fun." This worked for me better after I tried it than before.

Only recently I came across Stack's Nietzsche and Emerson and was intrigued by the linking of the radical German philosopher and the supposedly "genteel" American poet and essayist. It came as a surprise to see how much R.W. Emerson influenced Nietzsche in regard to many themes - the will to power, fate, the way unvirtuous drives are converted into good traits or consequences, the aesthetic ideal of the "beyond-man," and much more. Apart from some repetitions of themes and terms, Stack has done a solid job -- scholarly, but not tedious -- in making his case. One thing this book does is to give us a very different and much more radical picture of Emerson. At the same time, Stack takes some of the shine off Nietzsche's reputed super-originality. The philosophy in N & E is accessible and the discussions of Emerson's insights are revealing and supported by many references to the Essays of the writer who has been called the "quintessential American" literary hero. For a comparative study, Stack's book manages to break new ground and go beyond the typical academic effort. I'd recommend it highly as illuminating where some of Nietzsche's thinking came from and placing a neglected American literary philosopher in a new, dramatic light. As far as I know, this is the only book length treatment of this rich topic in English.

I've always thought of semiosis as being, basically, tertiary. Okay, I could make the case for it being secondary, on a good day. But if someone starts talking about the *primacy* of semiosis, I feel like he'll need a darned good case.

Bains makes an effort, but I just have to say he didn't make the sale.

Semiosisology is a difficult theme for most writers of light reading, but the circumspect Bains handles the concepts with flair.

On the other hand, his dialog is very stilted.

I liked the part where the rhino puts out the fire.

Excellent, well-researched book. Rickey's writing is clear and concise. An essential reference work for the discussion of Heidegger's politics.

This book is a very good attempt to piece together Martin Heidegger's political ideas and present them in a comprehensive fashion. Unless one is a Heidegger scholar and specialist, it would be difficult to do this on one's own because of the nature of Heidegger's very obtuse writings, which read like a riddle--a far cry from anything one could read straight through in a day or two. _Revolutionary Saints_, on the other hand, makes Heidegger much more accessible in this way. The end result, or big picture, given by Christopher Rickey is not the expected. In a nutshell, Heidegger was a self-professed National Socialist, however this brand of "nazism" was his private version that had little in common with the murderous totalitarian state that comes to mind. His use of the words national and socialist read like homeland (=national) community (=socialist), which he contrasted against "rootless" modern technological society. For Heidegger, poetic "shepherds of being" are the founders of a people and polis, hence the title: REVOLUTIONARY SAINTS.

I approached this book with much interest, but was ultimately disappointed. Rickey's basic thesis is that we must understand Heidegger's political activism on the basis of his earlier religious commitments. As it stands, this appears like a promising line of investigation. Rickey's analysis, however, ultimately fails to deliver on this promise.

Rickey is quite correct that many commentators have failed to fully appreciate what Gadamer once called the "religious dimension" of Heidegger's thought. He is also correct in calling for a deeper appreciation of the social or communal aspects of Heidegger's elusive concept of "authenticity." According to Rickey, the way out is to see Heidegger's political ideal as that of a "radical religious community."

Difficulties ensue, however, when a reader tries to learn what we mean by "religion" or "religious" here. "Religion," "religious experience," "theology," and "authenticity" tend to form a "tight circle" of ideas in Rickey's exposition, and one tries in vain to discern any differentiating content. For example, Rickey discusses an (alleged) contrast between religion and theology in Heidegger's thinking, while completely ignoring Heidegger's self-idenfication as a "theo-logian" and his idealization of theology in a 1927 essay.

Things become even more confusing as Rickey's discussion wears on. In his exposition of "Being and Time," Division Two, the main argument seems to be that Heidegger rejected Christianity in the name of an updated Aristotelian virtue ethic. How, one might ask, can such an ethic be "religious," much less Christian?
Yet, Rickey assures us that "Authenticity is the religious way of life which cares for the self."

Similarly, the use of "antinomianism," far from providing a helpful clarification, only further muddies the waters. Facile appeals to Luther's influence on Heidegger serve no clear purpose here, particularly since the question of Luther's (again, alleged) "antinomianism" is not something that has a self-evident answer.

On the whole, Rickey's account is marked by conflations, inaccuracies, and dubious scholarship. What could have been a fresh and insightful reading of one of the 20th centuries most controversial and exciting philosophers turns out to be yet another exercise in obfuscation. People who really want to understand Heidegger's views on religion and politics would do better to read the man himself.

"Political correctness" has made it difficult to challenge even that part of the thesis of the Fullbrooks' book, Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend, which relates strictly to the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, challenged it must be, and has been, contrary to the claims of Sharon Wright in her online review. What she calls their "impressive scholarship" has come under serious and precise attack from a number of quarters. What follows is simply the lead-in to an article that I myself published as early as 1995 ("Sartre and Beauvoir: Refining rather than 'Remaking' the Legend", Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 12, 1995, pp. 91-99); the rest of that article goes on to justify my claims in detail.

"The crux of their argument is the assertion that Sartre's reading of the draft of L'Invitée during his leave in Paris between 4 and 16 February 1940 was what provided him with all or most of the crucial ideas that were to form the substance of L'Etre et le Néant. [...] Now, there are least four MAJOR flaws in this line of argument: (i) we do not know with certainty exactly what was in the parts of L'Invitée that Sartre read in February 1940; (ii) the argument ignores completely Beauvoir's acquaintance with drafts of Sartre's L'Age de raison, and also seriously underplays the philosophical content of those of Sartre's Carnets de la drôle de guerre that Beauvoir had read before February 1940; (iii) we DO know that Sartre had been working since the mid-1930s on the ideas that were to be central to L'Etre et le Néant; (iv) the momentous philosophical system that the Fullbrooks ascribe to Beauvoir is simply not to be found in even the final version of L'Invitée."

Since, as Sharon Wright points out, the Fullbrooks were far from the first to argue for the philosophical originality of Beauvoir, those of their claims that are demonstrably false have done nothing to promote this case. Rather, they have tended to obscure, and direct attention away from, many of the complex and fascinating questions concerning the relationship between the thought of Beauvoir and that of Sartre. What is more, some of the sensationalist, journalistic features of the style of the book have served to inflame sensitive issues that require particularly cool, rational treatment.

The surprise of this book is the extensive myth-making engaged in by Simone de Beauvoir in regard to the founding of French existentialist theory. It would seem that as school examiners noted, she was the better philosopher of the two, and it was she who devised existentialism in her novel SHE CAME TO STAY.

The cat was out of the bag, so to speak, when the war journals of Sartre were published just after his death. Simone de Beauvoir did some fast jockeying of dates which was not totally convincing to her biographer, these authors write. It would seem that she had gotten so used to the falsities presented to the world she could not bear to have the truth revealed, even when the truth was complimentary to her.

It is necessary to understand how revolutionary she was when she began writing in the 1930's and took the position that for the sake of freedom she must refuse the offer of marriage given to her by Sartre. It turns out that he was a very good at articulating the philosophy the couple devised. False stories did more than cover up de Beauvoir's evident orginality, they also covered up her sexual adventures which could have been misconstrued by the public in general.

The book is a delight. The writers give full praise to previous biographers. It is comforting to learn some truths since the myth-making did strike this reader as far-fetched. Nonetheless, one is left with a nagging sense that surely if philosophers fail to tell the truth, should not this mean that their works be taken less seriously.

No book on Beauvoir or Sartre has led to so much discussion, provoked such consternation or so changed the way we see these cultural icons as has Kate and Edward Fullbrook's "Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend". The basis of this recently republished book (which I had the pleasure of rereading last week) is disarmingly simple. The Fullbrooks checked out Beauvoir's and Sartre's newly-available letters and diaries and found that the traditional story that says the Beauvoir constructed her first novel "She Cme to Stay" on the basis of philosophical ideas she took from Sartre's essay "Being and Nothingness" is the exact opposite of the truth. Sartre only began, the Fullbrooks carefully document, to compile notes hor his philosophical treatise after studying the second draft of Beauvoir's novel. The Fullbrooks also, and again drawing on the letters, make the case that it was Beauvoir's sexual promiscuity, rather than Sartre's that initially dictated the famous open terms of their 50-year relationship. All this radical post-patriarchal revisionism, which the Fullbrooks refused to play down, was too much for many critcs when this book appeared in 1994. Some reviewers were apoplectic, others deeply sceptical, and the "New Yorl Times" twice ran long reviews warning their readers against this "feminist claptrap". But in fact the Fullbrooks, in claiming philosophical originality for Beauvoir, were themselves not so original as perhaps they and certainly their critics imagined. Margaret Simons, Linda Singer and Sonia Kruks had previously argued the case for Beauvoir as an innovative philosopher and the source of some of Sartre's later ideas. The Fullbrooks' discoveries gave new significance to this prior scholarship and inspired Simons to go off in search of Beauvoir's student diaries. (See Simons 1999) Simons's subsequent discoveries and the slow but continuing cultural shift away from presuming that women are never the source of original ideas has taken away some of the shock value of the Fullbrooks' first book. Indeed, seven years on and their impressive scholarship has never been seriously challanged. By now scores of Sartre scholars much have checked out the letters and diaries and found, to their dismay, that the Fullbrooks did not make any of it up. But although "Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend" through its success no longer enjoys the controversy it once did, it remains, with its compelling narrative and writerly qualities, one of the best books evr written about either Beauvoir or Sartre. Even the "New York Times" had to admit that it was good read. For capturing the spirit of these twentieth-century giants and their extraordinary relationship, this book is yet to be beaten.