Excellent reading for religious scholars and students.
The forgotten value and purpose of sacred scripture.
In her latest, esteemed religion writer Armstrong (Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, 2014, etc.), an ambassador for the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, once again demonstrates her encyclopedic knowledge of the world’s religions. Here, she argues that modernity—and its tendency toward rationalism, literalism, and left-brain thinking—has robbed religions worldwide of the mystical and elastic power of scripture. The author champions “the forward-thrusting dynamic of scripture, which has no qualms about abandoning the ‘original’ vision but ransacks the past to find meaning in the present.” Throughout most of history, Armstrong shows, scripture did just that. It changed over time and in so doing helped adherents cope with changing times. In recent centuries, this quality has been altered, and “scripture, an art form originally to be interpreted imaginatively, had now to be as rational as science if it was to be taken seriously.” Armstrong argues that the trend of many movements to return to the source of the faith traditions behind their scriptures led believers to look backward when they most needed to look ahead. This mistaken view of scripture was further compounded by modernity’s elevation of science and reason, forcing people of faith to read scriptures literally as opposed to allegorically. Literalism, argues the author, leads either to fundamentalism or skepticism, either of which have negative consequences for any religion. Though the author adroitly switches among Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, and many other faith traditions, Western religions and Western thought are her primary reference points. Armstrong’s grasp of global religious history and thought is beyond impressive, but the depth of her analysis will overwhelm many general readers—though the 25-page glossary is helpful. For those willing to travel this road with the author, the journey is expansive and worthwhile and will make them reconsider what scripture means to those who admire it.
Excellent reading for religious scholars and students.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-49486-3
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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