Essays and Aphorisms

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141921757
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that human action is determined not by reason but by 'will' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women, suicide, books and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer's last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. These pieces depict humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, and each individual absolutely free within a Godless world, in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative - and pessimistic - view has proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, directly affecting the work of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Wagner among others.

Vectors

Author: James Richardson
Publisher: Ausable Press
ISBN: 9780967266893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
Our best-seller. The best bathroom book ever for serious readers.

Reflections

Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547711166
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 419

Book Description
The towering twentieth century thinker delve into literature, philosophy, and his own life experience in this “extraordinary collection” (Publishers Weekly). A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. Benjamin moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. “This book is just that: reflections of a highly polished mind that uncannily approximate the century’s fragments of shattered traditions.” —Time

I'll Be Your Mirror

Author: David Lazar
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496205189
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
In his third book of essays, David Lazar blends personal meditations on sex and death with considerations of popular music and coping with anxiety through singing, bowling, and other distractions. He sets his work apart as both in the essay and of the essay by throwing himself into the form's past--interviewing or speaking to past masters and turning over rocks to find lost gems of the essay form. I'll Be Your Mirror further expands the dimensions of contemporary nonfiction writing by concluding with a series of aphorisms. Surreal, comical, and urban moments of being, they are part Cioran, part Kafka, and part Lenny Bruce. These are accompanied by Heather Frise's illustrations, whose looking-glass visions of motherhood--funny and grotesque--meet the vision of the aphorist in this most unusual nonfiction book.

The View of Life

Author: Georg Simmel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226757854
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
Published in 1918, The View of Life is Georg Simmel’s final work. Famously deemed “the brightest man in Europe” by George Santayana, Simmel addressed diverse topics across his essayistic writings, which influenced scholars in aesthetics, epistemology, and sociology. Nevertheless, certain core issues emerged over the course of his career—the genesis, structure, and transcendence of social and cultural forms, and the nature and conditions of authentic individuality, including the role of mindfulness regarding mortality. Composed not long before his death, The View of Life was, Simmel wrote, his “testament,” a capstone work of profound metaphysical inquiry intended to formulate his conception of life in its entirety. Now Anglophone readers can at last read in full the work that shaped the argument of Heidegger’s Being and Time and whose extraordinary impact on European intellectual life between the wars was extolled by Jürgen Habermas. Presented alongside these seminal essays are aphoristic fragments from Simmel’s last journal, providing a beguiling look into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.

Essays of Schopenhauer

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1775417875
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
"These essays are a valuable criticism of life by a man who had a wide experience of life, a man of the world, who possessed an almost inspired faculty of observation. Schopenhauer, of all men, unmistakably observed life at first hand. There is no academic echo in his utterances; he is not one of a school; his voice has no formal intonation; it is deep, full-chested, and rings out its words with all the poignancy of individual emphasis, without bluster, but with unfailing conviction. He was for his time, and for his country, an adept at literary form; but he used it only as a means. "

HEART-SHAPED LEAVES:Aphorisms, Adaptations, Improvisations and Essays

Author: Shahin Khalilli
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1329351916
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
""'Heart-Shaped Leaves' is a wry and witty collection of aphorisms and observations. It's a unique compilation, somewhat like W. H. Auden's 'Commonplace Book'..."" David Damrosch Ernest Bernbaum Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature Harvard University ""This little book 'Heart-Shaped Leaves' is not an academic work but the work of a man who looks at literature with a loving eye. Prof. Khalilli's commentaries and thoughts, some profound some less so, demonstrate his love of literature. He has collected his thoughts over many years of study but has never before committed them to paper."" Dr.F. Alexander Magill Ege University, Izmir.Turkey

The Wisdom of Life

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Publisher: Washington, Dunne
ISBN:
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Book Description

Between the Devil and the Dragon

Author: Eric Hoffer
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 506

Book Description
Essays and aphorisms of America's longshoreman philosopher, including "The true believer, " and selections from his diaries.

Essayism

Author: Brian Dillon
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681372835
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
A compelling ode to the essay form and the great essaysists themselves, from Montaigne to Woolf to Sontag. Essayism is a book about essays and essayists, a study of melancholy and depression, a love letter to belle-lettrists, and an account of the indispensable lifelines of reading and writing. Brian Dillon’s style incorporates diverse features of the essay. By turns agglomerative, associative, digressive, curious, passionate, and dispassionate, his is a branching book of possibilities, seeking consolation and direction from Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, Roland Barthes, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Georges Perec, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Susan Sontag, to name just a few of his influences. Whether he is writing on origins, aphorisms, coherence, vulnerability, anxiety, or a number of other subjects, his command of language, his erudition, and his own personal history serve not so much to illuminate or magnify the subject as to discover it anew through a kaleidoscopic alignment of attention, thought, and feeling, a dazzling and momentary suspension of disparate elements, again and again.