Book Description
In this bold exploration of the political forces that shaped Impressionism, Albert Boime proposes that at the heart of the modern is a "guilty secret"--the need of the dominant, mainly bourgeois, classes in Paris to expunge from historical memory the haunting nightmare of the Commune and its socialist ideology. The Commune of 1871 emerged after the Prussian war when the Paris militia chased the central government to Versailles, enabling the working class and its allies to seize control of the capital. Eventually violence engulfed the city as traditional liberals and moderates joined forces with reactionaries to restore Paris to "order"--the bourgeois order. Here Boime examines the rise of Impressionism in relation to the efforts of the reinstated conservative government to "rebuild" Paris, to return it to its Haussmannian appearance and erase all reminders of socialist threat.
Boime contends that an organized Impressionist movement owed its initiating impulse to its complicity with the state's program. The exuberant street scenes, spaces of leisure and entertainment, sunlit parks and gardens, the entire concourse of movement as filtered through an atmosphere of scintillating light and color all constitute an effort to reclaim Paris visually and symbolically for the bourgeoisie. Amply documented, richly illustrated, and compellingly argued, Boime's thesis serves as a challenge to all cultural historians interested in the rise of modernism.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating Reexamination of the Roots of Impressionism.......2006-07-18
Professor Boime's book is quite an eye-opener. The gorgeous and "Modern Art" that we know today as Impressionsim is thrown up against the backdrop of the terrible events of the Paris Commune. Boime's major point, and a fair one, is that the absence of any images of the commune raises serious intellectual and political questions about the group. How can it be possible for open air painters to ignore the burnt out city streets of Paris and its environs? Yet with the exception of a few quick sketches the Impressionists completely avoid the ravages of revolution and repression.
Boime produces a wealth of useful material, particularly in the newspaper images of the times. These have an authenticity missing from the post Commune paintings of the Impressionists. Perhaps most shocking are the examples of now world-famous images, such as the railway bridges, where instead of the pleasant scenes of trains, boats and strollers Boime offers up original photographs of bridges broken in half from explosions.
The conclusions Boime draws are unpleasant - the Impressionists quickly returned to painting pleasantries and whitewashed the cruelties of the historical upheval by not depicting them whatsoever. Whether out of commercial necessity or distaste of the subject, the Impressionist group made a conscious decision to side with the desires of the victors to wash away the memory of the Commune.
This book covers a very ugly period in French history: readers should realize it is not a 'tone' normally associated with Impressionism. However; art teachers and students of modern art, particularly those focused on the political maifestations of art, would gain by a careful assessment of the implications of Professor Boime's work.
Sensitive evaluation of Seurat saves the book.......1999-12-24
This book is a somewhat anachronistic Marxist interpretation of Impressionist and Post-Impressionistic French painting on the basis of the old-fashined Base-Superstructure model. The author strives to prove that the Impressionits' concentration on landscape and private life painting was, above all, a kind of bourgeois whitewashing of the recent events of the Paris Commune. This would make the book too much one-sided, were it not for the author's later remarks on Seurat's paintings, that allow him to fully grasp the fact that the pseudo-organic character of these pointillist paintings reflect, more than bourgeois fear of a renewed Commune, the self-confidence of a sucessful bourgeoisie in creating an stable social order based on individualism and private accomplishements.
Book Description
With more than two hundred entries by leading intellectuals in the French- and English-speaking world, this new volume presents the authoritative guide to twentieth-century French thought. Unrivaled in its scope and depth, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought covers and critiques the intellectual figures, movements, and publications that helped shape and define fields as diverse as history and historiography, psychoanalysis, film, literary theory, cognitive and life sciences, literary criticism, philosophy, and economics. The contributors also discuss developments in French thought on such subjects as pacifism, fashion, gastronomy, technology, and urbanism.
More than just a reference volume, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought offers original and imaginative explorations of a variety of topics. Contributors include prominent French thinkers, many of whom have played an integral role in the development of French thought, and American, British, and Canadian scholars who have been vital in the dissemination of French ideas. The book brings together such pairings as
Etienne Balibar on Althusser;
Jean Baudrillard on the futures of theory;
Judith Butler on Hegel in France;
Régis Debray on mediology;
Julia Kristeva on Proust;
Michael Morange on the life sciences;
Paul Ricoeur on ethics;
Elisabeth Roudinesco on psychoanalysis; and
Roger Shattuck on humanisms.
The book is divided into four parts:
Movements and Currents (including all the major schools of thought, such as the Annales, deconstruction, Gaullism, négritude, the New Right, psychoanalysis, and structuralism);
Themes (ideas that helped define intellectual work in the twentieth century, such as anti-Semitism, the avant-garde, everyday life, film theory, and nationalism);
Intellectuals (including critical accounts of the lives and work of such figures as Aron, Barthes, de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Levinas, and Proust); and
Dissemination (covering influential journals, television shows, radio programs, and newspapers).
Customer Reviews:
How to make sense of some important 20th century intellectual movements.......2006-04-05
This is an incredibly well organized and thought through reference book, not only for Francophiles, but also for everyone who is interested in - or even confused by - some of the most intriguing and complex intellectual and literary movements of the 20th century.
More than 200 articles have been written by Anglo-Saxon and French-speaking academics and non-academics. They cover 30 movements more than 60 themes, and profile around 110 intellectuals. The last part of this 787-page book touches on the role of media in the French intellectual life, from newspaper to radio and TV, via journals.
The style is enticing and to-the-point (well done to the group of editors). And each article provides a short list of useful references for those who want to learn more.
I can't see any drawback - definitely a 5-star volume.
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Bataille: A Critical Reader (Critical Readers)
Scott Wilson
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Story of the Eye
ASIN: 0631199578 |
Book Description
An elegant introduction to Bataille's major concepts and concerns, Bataille: A Critical Reader underlines the powerful impact his work has had, in different ways, on an entire generation of thinkers. It reveals a fascinating genealogy, marking Bataille's pivotal position for theorists whose own work has enabled the transformation of literary and cultural studies in the Anglo-American academy in the last twenty years. The Critical Reader thus redresses what has been a gaping oversight in the reception of French thought since the 1960s. Keying their selections to The Bataille Reader, the editors provide students and general readers of both volumes with an essential and consistently clear source of reference and elucidation. Chapters included are by: Jean Baudrillard, Maurice Blanchot, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-Joseph Goux, Denis Hollier, Jurgen Habermas, Philippe Sollers, with an extensive introduction by the editors.
Book Description
Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Mr. Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.
The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole source of Greek moral and technical instruction--Mr. Havelock shows how the Illiad acted as an oral encyclopedia. Under the label of mimesis, Plato condemns the poetic process of emotional identification and the necessity of presenting content as a series of specific images in a continued narrative.
The second part of the book discusses the Platonic Forms as an aspect of an increasingly rational culture. Literate Greece demanded, instead of poetic discourse, a vocabulary and a sentence structure both abstract and explicit in which experience could be described normatively and analytically: in short a language of ethics and science.
Customer Reviews:
Plato would substitute reason for emotionalism.......2001-02-28
Frequently I receive comments via the Internet some of which prove to be of value. One such was the Class of 2000/2002 that points out that these graduates have very little direct knowledge of even their recent past. It only proves that if they are to be enculturated, they must first be taught. In Plato's day, the means was by oral transmission, the effect of which was to perpetuate what might not be true. "Memesis," the total act of representation, that part of of our individual consciousness to which it is designed to appeal, is the area of the non-rational, of the pathological emotions, the unbridled and fluctuating sentiments with which we feel but never think. It is the affect imagery of emotion that hits us directly in the gut before being filtered through the brain, there to be digested before accepted. When indulged in this way emotion weakens and destroys that rational faculty in which alone lies hope of personal salvation and scientific assurance. Memesis is the "active" personal identification with which the audience sympathies and is enculturated because it is taught. He who cannot justify his own conclusions cannot be considered a totally educated person. Still, there is a need for guidance if the pupil is not to get in over his head and tend to drown rather than learn to swim and particpate for the good of all.
The place to start with Plato.......1999-12-04
If you want to start with Plato, this is the place. Plato, through Socrates, indulges in a huge polemic. The problem with a polemic is that unless you have a clear idea of who he is arguing against and why you won't understand what is being said. Havelock's aim is to situate you in the ancient Greece of Plato's day and explain exactly what Plato is on about. Suddenly Plato doesn't seem quite so bizarre if you have some idea why he says what he says. Havelock starts with the tenth book of the Republic: why does Plato ban poets and poetry (especially Homer) from his utopia? Plato was no mean poet himself, so what does this mean? Havelock tells you in technicolor the why's and wherefore's of the historical situation so that you can read Republic (and the other dialogues as well) without flying blind.
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- Belongs In Everyone's Library: The Perfect Essays
- Essays
- Brilliant translation, but the editing is annoying.
- The definitive philosopher
- One of the world's great comforts
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Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics)
Michel de Montaigne
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Gargantua and Pantagruel (Penguin Classics)
ASIN: 0140446044 |
Customer Reviews:
Belongs In Everyone's Library: The Perfect Essays.......2007-03-13
What's not to like about Montaigne? Everytime I pick through parts of his essays [and it does not matter where one begins] I find myself in deep thought. Sometimes I feel as if Montaigne were speaking to me. I have the Donald Frame translation. Although I have read the Cohen translation too, and I do have a copy of it somewhere in this jungle I call my library. I have just recently purchased this Penguin edition, with another yet another translation. But no matter, the words and wit of Montaigne are, and will be as timeless as long as people are willing to open these pages and gather meaning from them. And I will always continue to do so.
These essays were meant to be read and re-read. And you know, I never tire of reading Michel de Montaigne. This mans works have been a part of my life for as long as I can recall. And how many times can you remember picking up the same books over and over again to reach words of wisdom? And Montaigne's humble wisdom and honest look at himself is what makes these essays so profound and enjoyable to read. Why? Because he took a long hard look deep into his own soul and wrote for himself, and to himself: And in turn, he imparted these essays to the rest of us. Which I am forever grateful to him for. If you have never read Montaigne, it's time you do. Highly recommended. Should be required reading in all schools today.
Essays.......2006-03-15
Montaigne. He has lessons for us all, I've found.
Some of the lessons are hard. He writes about everything, but most of all, he writes about himself. There is a painful clarity to his work - but that cliche term does nothing to properly explain what it is he accomplishes with his writing.
At thirty-three, Montaigne decided to retire to his home and write. He had vague ideas about writing a gentleman's book on warfare, and the first few essays reflect that. But, as he progressed, he kept going on little side journeys into his own thoughts and opinions. At first, Montaigne reigned himself in, struggling to stay true to the path he had decided for himself.
Happily for us, he failed.
He abandoned the idea of writing for gentlemen - though there are still slight evidences of this throughout the work. Instead, he decided to focus on the one thing he knew better than anybody else in the entire world - Montaigne. Who else could know more, or would bother to take as much time exploring this one man than the man himself? And why not explore his own mind - every day, he has to live and deal with the advantages and disadvantages, the habits and the thoughts, the opinions and the ironies of being Montaigne. Thus, he decided, it was worth exploring. In his view, there was nothing more important than understanding one's self. If you cannot understand yourself, how can you expect to understand anybody else?
There are moments of 'painful clarity', as I said above. Montaigne discusses (his) impotence, his imperfect marriage, the disappointments he has created in others, the times when he did not do what he should. But he also talks about how he can make himself a better person, and how, in a lot of ways, he is an admirable person. It is important to realise that Montaigne is not writing an apology for himself. He is putting himself on to paper, 'warts and all', and declaring it true. There is a point in one of the essays where he declares that he wouldn't want anyone to lie about the person he is, even if they flattered him or praised him. This is, in a nutshell, Montaigne's thinking. He is not concerned with being the greatest person ever known - he is concerned with understanding himself.
Four hundred years on, what is there to offer us, the modern reader, in Montaigne? An infinity of wisdom. Could I, in honesty, completely and unwaveringly disect myself for the consumption of both myself and others? I don't think so. I very much fear that the answer is no. And yet - why not? Is it shame? I don't think so, as I have nothing major to hide. Perhaps, then, it is simply the fear of unrealised ideas and thoughts. If I am unaware of myself, I cannot present it. Montaigne was and is aware of himself and thus manages to accurately describe the person that he is.
Montaigne's essays are invaluable not only for the man that they portray, but for the wisdom in what is spoken. Montaigne has thought about so many aspects of what it is to be a human and alive, and we can all learn from this. The topics he discusses go beyond mere 16th century issues, and deal with concepts, ideas and concerns that affect us now, and will affect us always. Absolutely essential reading.
Brilliant translation, but the editing is annoying........2006-01-20
This English translation of Montaigne's Complete Essays is wonderful. Although I like it better than Donald Frame's version, I actually prefer J.M. Cohen's to either. Cohen's translation is only a selection, unfortunately. If you need the Complete Essays, go with Screech.
Screech's version, however, has a very annoying problem. As in Frame's translation, letters are used within the text to note differences between the three major editions of the Essays (A, B, C). Frame's version uses small capital letters inserted within the text; they are unobtrusive and can be ignored. Screech's version, however, uses full-sized letters within brackets with a lot of space surrounding them. They are just too darned disruptive. Why in the heck did they do this? Perhaps they intended it for academic or scholarly use. It's a shame. I hope that Penguin will issue a new edition or revision that will take care of this problem.
Use the "Look Inside" feature of this book to decide for yourself.
The definitive philosopher.......2005-11-29
In the entire history of western philosophy, there is not one person I can praise more than Michel de Montaigne. Normally, any book over 500 pages tends to become tedious to me, and works of philosophy over that length become insufferable. The best praise I can give this book is to say that at 1200 pages, I was not the least weary of it. In fact, I wished it was longer! Montaigne is the definitive philosopher, a man driven to write out of boredom, who presents his essays as his views, never trying to categorize and name realities, but simply marvelling over everything, from literature to pets. His broad learning and wonderfully disorganized style lead the reader on a journey into the what ifs, and whys of existence. Montaigne is the epitome of a renaissance man. His views in most situations are more modern than yesterday. He speaks out for the virtues of women, carefully denounces war, subtly questions the more extraneous doctrines of Catholicism, and even denounces colonialism and promotes respect of racial and cultural differences. This is not a man one would have expected to find in the 1500s. But here he is. And his text! Often saying that his memory was weak, MOntaigne demonstrates it by going off on wild tangents for thirty pages, only to realize that he has succeeding in proving his original idea without his knowledge. His sentences and rich prose leap across the pages, and dance with ideas of the sublime and the ridiculous, ideas which he does not so much attempt to resolve as ponder upon a page. He never once falls into the philosopher's folly of stating his views as though they were fact, and is often very careful to say, "This is what I think" in one way or another. He never attempts to convince the reader, for he originally never intended his essays to have a reader. In situations where he would challenge authority, he is always careful to say, for instance, "But my own views are nothing, the church of course knows better". More than any other work of philosophy, the Essays are an adventure, leading one through the soul of a man, a man who thought so little of himself but was so great. It reads almost as a novel, and at the end, after 1200 pages of Essays, Montaigne stands before the reader as clearly as any historical or fictional figure ever has. This is the true Magnum Opus of western philosophy.
One of the world's great comforts.......2005-11-29
I cannot praise this book highly enough. It is one of those rare books that can change your life. Sure, many people say something similar about a particular book, but it is genuinely true in this instance. Montaigne is wise, humane, and very humourous. If I had to live on an island and could only take three books with me, this would be one of them. And, it would be an easy choice to make. I have read the Essays cover to cover twice already and plan to do so again many times in my life.
Here are some general points you might want to keep in mind when reading Montaigne's Essays: First, he doesn't always stick to the topic announced at the beginning of an essay. Sometimes, an essay appears to be about a particular topic but ends up being about something else entirely. Second, even when Montainge makes a half-hearted attempt at staying on topic, the journey is still the scenic route instead of a straight shot (but, this is half the fun of his Essays). Third, Montaigne's Essays are a perfect crash course on the wisdom to be found in the writings of the Latin authors. Finally, Montaigne is surprisingly skeptical and relativistic on many issues. This is obviously why his Essays are so relevant even today.
Now for a word on translations. The two primary translations that are easily available are this Penguin edition translated by Screech and the Stanford University Press edition translated by Frame. Each edition has its advantages and disadvantages, and it's a shame the editions can't be combined to create the perfect translation.
The Penguin/Screech edition includes the original and a translation of all Montaigne's foreign language quotations. The vast majority of these are in Latin; so, if you know some Latin, this is helpful. It also includes very helpful notes on obscure literary and historical issues, which provides for greater understanding. However, if you read the introduction and Screech's notes carefully, you will realize he does have an agenda. Screech plays down Montaigne's skepticism and tries to portray Montaigne as being more religious than he was.
As to the Stanford/Frame edition, its translation is much closer to the original French than Screech's. If you put the French text and Frame's translation side by side, you'll see what I mean (even if your French is pretty weak like mine). And, Frame does not play down Montaigne's skepticism - he lets Montaigne speak for himself. But, Frame's translation does have some flaws. It does not include the original for foreign language quotations. And, when Frame translates Latin poetry, he almost always makes it rhyme even when the original Latin does not rhyme. I find this jarring and not true to the original. Frame also does not include any helpful notes.
All in all, I'd like to combine Frame's translation of Montaigne's French with Screech's original and translation of all foreign language quotations. This would be the best possible version of the Essays.
This book is one of the finest products of the human mind. You will not regret the significant amount of time it will take to read these Essays. And, if you read them carefully, you'll never look at the world the same way again.
Book Description
Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others.
Download Description
Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others.
Customer Reviews:
..seeds for homeschooling?.......2005-07-09
From:
http://www.apricotpie.com/jennifer/ABookReviewbyJenniferGil.html
I have always been of a mind to enjoy reading the works of "anti-academics." Often, this takes the form of perusing a library shelf, picking a few titles, unceremoniously discarding those which do not arouse my interest in the first few pages, and following up on the bibliography of those that do. That is how I discovered the writing of John Holt, and if memory serves me correctly it was through his bibliography that I discovered such authors as George Dennison, Paul Goodman, and James Herndon. However, that study left me rather disappointed because of the almost historical place their works seemed to assume. My first year away at college after being home schooled my entire life Holt was like finding Atlantis, then realizing its antiquity. I treasured the sentiments, but was disillusioned into inaction. Last semester a frame of melancholy sent me on another one of those errands through library shelves, and thus was born my discovery of John Taylor Gatto. The greatest joy was in realizing that he was a contemporary author. After reading "Dumbing us Down," I was searching for other books of his online and ran across johntaylorgatto.com. This site included a partially published version of his book "The Underground History of American Education." I was hooked... apparently so were others, as getting hold of a library copy to supplement the online portions took some patience. This book had so much theory, so many facts, Gatto could write the moving experience-based narratives of Holt and associates, but there wasn't time because he had so much MORE to tell! Anyway, one book which he mentioned was Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As I had never read any Rousseau, and had an independent desire to know something of classical philosophies, I decided to read "Emile".
First and foremost, Emile is a work on education - in the ideal. I say this as a grammatical parallelism to the expression "in the abstract," because I wish to emphasize how abstract an idealization always is. Therefore, you really cannot take anything he says quite seriously. I read the EVERYMAN version, and they include a bit of historical context, author's biography, etc. Between that and the text itself, you get the feeling that the book was written in the spirit of "If I had it to do over again..." The truth is that Rousseau was the biological father of five, but the active father of none. Yet, regret can house a wealth of wisdom, let it not be too harshly scorned, only let us realize that every prescription is untried.
Having said that, "Emile" is an early advocacy of home schooling. Emile is the pupil, Rousseau is the surrogate father. Gatto, however, did not seem to be giving a very positive recommendation of the work. I think Gatto was primarily alarmed at the contrived nature of Emile's education. That is a point well worth considering and one upon which I am not yet free of indecision. But the sentiment of Rousseau's aims I could not call anything other than praiseworthy. In the first part I think he tends to get carried away with analogies in the proper care of an infant. But always in view is the idea of making Emile self-reliant. In this respect, it would not be at all practicable a method for the parents of more than one child, nor for those who did not have the money or leisure to carry out the method in contrived solitude.
However, in promoting independence it does seem strange how utterly dependent Emile is in regards to his tutor. Also, how his age is always taken into consideration, as if experience judged by the experienced (before the pupil is even a real person) had sovereign right to dictate what was and wasn't natural. Furthermore, although Rousseau professes to have a plan for acquainting Emile with other men, the workings of society, and eventually woman, once again we should remember that his method is untried. Even so, Rousseau is always quick to point out that his pupil is a specific case, that each pupil would be different and that the main goal of a tutor should be to observe and know his pupil rather than to teach any specific material.
The book is subdivided into five books, the last of which is almost a romance novel. Emile has more-or-less an arranged marriage, though he does not know it. If we grant that Rousseau could be capable of pre-picking a girl to Emile's liking, it is a rather enchanting tale, a treatment of courtship in the classic sense of the word. I even think he does a reasonable job of portraying the girl's feelings - although he seems quite insensitive to her embarrassments, a quality I hope he does not expect Emile to share. Oh, and her father has a deplorably cruel sense of humor!
...but on the whole, it is a good read for anyone interested in the history of educational philosophy.
The Educator's Gospel!.......2004-10-28
Reading Rousseau is best done before reading anything about Rousseau. This singularly original thinker has been so often maligned and misunderstood that any potential reader is usually scared off. Having heard the ugly rumors (Jean-Jacques as the the 'father of totalitarianism'), I must admit that I approached this work with some trepidation. What I found instead, was a delightful and penetrating look into the craft of educating.
Divided into five books, Rousseau accompanied his mythical Emile from the nursery to the wedding chapel, chronicling every step of the way as his pupil's sagacious tutor. Rousseau proved himself a psychologist of the first order laying open the vagaries of the child's (and possibly, every 'romantic's'!) mind. With his almost biblical use of parable and metaphor, Rousseau underscores his central theme of humanity's intrinsic nobility. This innate 'goodness' should not be educated out of the child, nor left to its own devices. Instead, Rousseau argues that it must be nurtured into fruition. Be too strict, and you murder the spirit; be too lenient, and you create a tyrant. Rousseau lays out a doctrine of wisdom, kindness, and truth. Make the child 'feel' his/her errors and he/she will err no more. With aphoristic brilliance, Jean-Jacques provides a blueprint for correct child-rearing and for a wise education. 'Reverse the usual practice and you will almost always do right...You instill vice by forbidding it...To control the child one must often control oneself.'
Jimack's translation gives the English reader a taste of just how refreshing and enlightening the original French text must be. Each sentence rolls off the page with a natural elegance and effortlessness as if it were a leaf falling to the forest floor, paving the reader's way with the bricks of a very practical wisdom. Written in the spirit of the Enlightenment, that most optimistic of times when humanity felt she had re-entered the Garden of Eden, 'Emile' does have its difficulties for the modern reader. The book's treatise on faith, 'Thoughts of a Savoyard Vicar,' fails to thoroughly examine all aspects of why we believe what we believe, while Book Five, where the grown Emile meets his partner-to-be, Sophy, amuses and often frustrates the reader with Rousseau's thinly disguised chauvinism. Rousseau held to a view distinctly unpopular nowadays; sexual roles are set by nature and best left undisturbed.
Yet, despite such anachronisms, 'Emile' is still the best educator's handbook around. It is the tree from which all modern educational theory has grown. Nurture nature and your pupils will blossom!
A pivotal personality in education!.......2001-11-01
This work by Jean Jacques Rousseau probably represents the single greatest work in defining what we would call education today. I am a Francophone living in Northern Ontario and so I have read just the french version, but barring that I believe that Rousseau was ahead of his time. His simple theory of education was the floor from which many other pedagogues would follow(Pestalozzi, Montessori, Itard, Séguin, among others). His theory of child development established him in all fairness, as the first psychologist of all time.
'The punishment is the natural consequence of the error' Such a novel concept for a time so tumultuous. One other statement is the following' You must begin by first knowing your children, because on the whole you do not'. Rousseau passions me and I believe him to be the reason why education turned towards the children rather than the teachers.
To conclude, I can say most assuredly that Rousseau, with his avant-garde tactics, awoke the world to the concept of an education centered around the child. If you lose the child, you lose the concept of education.
A must read.......2000-07-20
Rousseau's "Emile" is a must read for everybody who is interested in education. The book may be more than 200 years old, but many of its insights could come up in any brand new treatise about modern methods of teaching.
"Emile" is the fictitious account of the ideal education of a boy. (Maybe it was Rousseau's way of dealing with his own failures as a father.) Rousseau believes that education must be to blame for the deplorable state of the world, as "Everything is good that the Lord has made, it only degenerates in the hands of man." So Rousseau rejects the drill and cruelty of the schools of his times, he opts for freedom and learning by doing. Much of this is utopian, of course, but in one of his brilliant remarks Rousseau claims that "saying: Suggest something that can be done, is like saying: suggest what we have been doing all along."
This is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. If you read just one book about education, make it this one, even if you are not prepared to agree with Rousseau.
Note that the translation (Everyman's Library) is abridged........2000-06-19
(Ignore my 2-star rating, I had to put in something in order to get this review online.)
As I cross-checked the passages that most interested me with the French edition, I was surprised to find that *entire paragraphs* are left out of the Everyman's Library English translation. Allan Bloom's translation is complete, and is also quite good. And it's available in paperback. Definitely purchase the Bloom translation instead of this one.
Book Description
When Rousseau first read his Confessions to a 1770 gathering in Paris, reactions varied from admiration of his candor to doubts about his sanity to outrage. Indeed, Rousseau's intent and approach were revolutionary. As one of the first attempts at autobiography, the Confessions' novelty lay not in just its retelling the facts of Rousseau's life, but in its revelation of his innermost feelings and its frank description of the strengths and failings of his character.
Based on his doctrine of natural goodness, Rousseau intended the Confessions as a testing ground to explore his belief that, as Christopher Kelly writes, "people are to be measured by the depth and nature of their feelings." Re-created here in a meticulously documented new translation based on the definitive Pleiade edition, the work represents Rousseau's attempt to forge connections among his beliefs, his feelings, and his life. More than a "behind-the-scenes look at the private life of a public man," Kelly writes, "the Confessions is at the center of Rousseau's philosophical enterprise."
Customer Reviews:
Great edition of this classic.......2000-04-04
What can one say about The Confessions? I would recommend this particular edition because of the inlusion of the letters to Malesherbes, which can shed some light on the process Rousseau's writing of The Confessions. We can also see where the text differs from what actually happaned: there are some discrepiences in his re-telling of the same event. There is as well an excellent introductory essay.
Book Description
Under the pretense of defending an obscure treatise by a Catalan theologian, Montaigne attacks the philosophers who attempt rational explanations of the universe and argues for a skeptical Christianity based squarely on faith rather than reason. The result is the Apology for Raymond Sebond, a classic of Counter-Reformation thought and a masterpiece of Renaissance literature.
This new translation by Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene achieves both accuracy and fluency, conveying at once the nuances of Montaigne's arguments and his distinctive literary style.
Customer Reviews:
Anything But ... The Apology for Raymond Sebond.......2005-11-03
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was never famous for staying on topic. The titles of his essays, and this book is his longest essay, are pretexts for writing about what interested him at the time. If you don't know any more about Raymond Sebond after reading this essay than you did before, don't worry about it! If you gave it a slow, thoughtful read, you have experienced one of the greatest minds in all of history asking what was the value of man's mind to arrive at the truth.
The answer could be expressed as the saying for which Montaigne is most famous: "Que scais-je?" or "What do I know?" Reason may be what separates man from the animals, but what benefit has man derived from it? Is he any happier for it? Is he any closer to the ultimate truth?
As one who has loved the _Essaies_ (French for "attempts") for many years, my advice to readers is to take them a little at a time. Don't be put off by all the quotes from Classical Antiquity. This was, after all, the Renaissance; and Montaigne was, like many of his contemporaries, delighted to see reflections of his thoughts in the writings of the Greeks and Romans. (Rabelais in _Gargantua and Pantagruel_ did the same thing.) Many of those quotes are interesting enough to make we want to follow up on Lucretius, Cicero, Marcus Manilius, and others whose names predominate through the essay.
Montaigne had the motto "Que scais-je?" inscribed on the walls of the tower on his property. He was the ultimate skeptic, but (forgive the pun) he essayed to explain his thoughts more thoroughly, perhaps, than any man who ever lived. I heartily suggest you read this, and follow it up with a reading of his greatest essay, "Of Experience."
An old guide to religion, nature, and classical philosophy........2002-05-19
The Apology which Montaigne wrote for the work of Raymond Sebond arose from his understanding of a book, Theologia Naturalis, written in an obscure form of Spanish, which Montaigne's father ("in the `last days' of his life") requested that Montaigne translate into French for the benefit of those who were engaged in the struggles of the Reformation, "a period of intellectual ferment and of religious and political disarray." (p. ix). Montaigne finished and dedicated his translation on the day of his father's death, 18 June 1568, when Montaigne was 35, married, and engaged in a legal position. The Apology does not identify which of its ideas were original with Sebond. There is no index, so I am unsure of how often the name Sebond appears in the text The Introduction on pages ix to xxxiii explains the circumstances and theology of the book philosophically, as understood at All Souls College, Oxford, on Easter 1986. The dedication and "Montaigne's translation and adaptation of the Prologus of Raymond Sebond" appear on pages xl to xliv. Those who have a complete edition of the ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE should be able to find the material in this book at II:12, though this book is clear in which portions appeared in 1580, 1582, 1588, or from the "text of the manuscript edition being prepared by Montaigne when he died, interpreted in the light of the posthumous editions." (p. xxxv).
On the doom or dumber question, we can find, "Philosophy in general agrees that there is an ultimate remedy to be prescribed for every kind of trouble: namely, ending our life if we find it intolerable." (p. 62). This is associated with, "As the Greeks said at their banquets: `Let him drink or be off! (Aut bibat, aut abeat!')~That is particularly apt if your pronounce Cicero's language like a Gascon, changing your `B's to `V's: Aut vivat ~ Let him live . . ." (p. 62). The long latin poems are provided with English translations in brackets, so it is possible to understand that a poem by Cicero ends with him worrying "lest you start to drink too much and find that pretty girls laugh at you and push you away." (pp. 62-3). This might be typical of philosophy, but Montaigne is capable of grasping more difficult situations. On learning, this work declares, "even our system of Law, they say, bases the truth of its justice upon legal fictions. Learning pays us in the coin of suppositions which she confesses she has invented herself." (p. 111). Civilization might be based on a belief that law is a better solution than suicide for every kind of trouble, but a lot of news is about people who have opted for some form of suicide or something worse. Our appreciation of knowledge about these things might be so small that this book will only appeal to those who might find it entertaining. People who can look back on life and realize that some of the best jokes that they ever heard were in latin ought to try reading this book, too.
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