![]() 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. 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. ![]() It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. 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. 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. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. ![]() We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Important ground traversed better by other scholars, notably Delores Williams in Sisters in the Wilderness (not reviewed). Fiorenza's insistence on feminist theological positions as valid for all people merely substitutes a new hegemony for the patriarchal one she seeks to displace. The book provides a good survey of current theological thinking across a broad spectrum, but its turgid, obtuse, and jargon-laden prose obscures many interesting points. Fiorenza also seeks to recover the real woman Mary through a process of deconstruction and demythologizing. Jesus' death on the cross, for instance, was in her view not an atoning sacrifice required by God in order for humanity to be reconciled with their creator rather, it was merely the outcome of prophetic practices that offended and threatened those in power. In viewing Jesus as the proclaimer of Sophia, a feminine image of the divine, the author reshapes some of the most familiar doctrines of orthodox Christianity. These points, which seem simplistic when stated outright, recently have become the focus of intense controversy in theological and ecclesiastical circles as women seek to find in the biblical text stories and images of God that empower them. Her reimaginings of Christological discourses lead her to view Jesus as the son of Mary (the Miriam of her title) and the prophet of Sophia (God as divine wisdom). To do so, she maintains, is to submit to the patriarchal patterns of interpretation and oppression that have too long characterized the field and society in general-pluralism thus becomes a trap for the unwary. ![]() A radical feminist, she argues that feminist theologians must not abandon the claims that their theologies are universally valid. Fiorenza (Biblical Studies/Harvard Univ.) returns to Christian origins in this sequel to the noted In Memory of Her (not reviewed). A provocative but opaque feminist examination of the figure of Jesus that adds more heat than light to current theological debates. ![]()
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