Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Strange as it might sound, my constant concern in these seemingly morbid pages is the meaning and possibility of happiness.

This book harbored such high expectations for me, ones that sadly weren't met. Critchely dazzled me with his book on Political Theology and i turned to this appropriately whetted. The approach here lacked rigor and offered instead a popular history of philosophy through 190 vignettes of central figures. A brief segue into ancient Chinese philosophy and the inclusion of a half dozen relatively obscure women (outside of their more famous female authors) felt cobbled, a PC postscript. What was intriguing was the reverberation of certain thinkers. One thinks of Derrida and Foucault both reading Seneca at their end of their lives. Schopenhauer and Marx died in easy chairs (Melreau-Ponty was apparently reading Descartes) and Deleuze threw himself out of a window.

One further inecluctable truth remains: Heidegger made bad choices. It was the experience of Husserl and Levinas to bear witness to such. Simone Weil's response was medieval and sublime.