Heart of Philosophy, the PB Reprint

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Daniel Raphael, May 1, 2006 (view all comments by Daniel Raphael)
If I were teaching an Introduction to Philosophy class and could choose only one text, this would be it. This would be so for the benefit of those students who were only taking Philosophy as a way of satisfying a Humanities requirement, and thus would likely never again be exposed to the subject--as well as for those who were specifically drawn to it. The great virtue of Jacob Needleman's book is that it lays out in clear and damningly accurate words, the true state of contemporary American "philosophy," an exercise academic in the fullest sense of the term.

Needleman writes: "In human civilization, and in the individual life of every human being, behind every problem to be solved, there is a question of philosophy to be asked--and not only asked as we usually ask, but to be pondered and lived with as a reminder of something we have forgotten, something essential. Our culture has generally tended to solve its problems without experiencing its questions. That is our genius as a civilization, but it is also our pathology. Now the pathology is overtaking the genuius, and people are beginning to sense this everywhere."

Lest this seem overly dramatic or perhaps obscure, let me ask whether a culture content to let most of the world's wealth be consumed by it, only to wake up one day to find the polar icecaps melting, its national identity the object of worldwide loathing, and its own much-vaunted political processes in dramatic decline, is not in fact a culture which is being overtaken by its unasked questions. I offer to you the thought that this is precisely the sort of thing that is happening, and which is the outcome of what Needleman addresses.

Questions are the sort of bird that demand to be fed. They can be quite insistent after a time, and even fatal--as Nietzsche discovered, and as any number of others could testify, having felt the unrelenting press of meaning's clamor to be uncaged. Jacob Needleman's book has grown more timely with the years, as the sustained neglect he addresses continues to create increasingly alarming cultural breakdowns. I commend this book to you without reservation; if you never read another text of philosophy, you will still be well-served to have read this one.

As a "heads up," I should mention that the original text employed the outdated practice of utilizing the male pronoun to designate human individuals and humanity as a whole. Not having read the more current version, I do not know whether this has been corrected.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9781585422517

Subtitle:

Notes on the Meaning of the Earth

Author:

Needleman, Jacob

Publisher:

Tarcher

Location:

New York

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Methodology

Subject:

Spirituality - General

Subject:

Mind & Body

Subject:

Philosophy : General

Subject:

General Philosophy

Copyright:

2003

Edition Description:

Trade Paper

Series Volume:

v. 10.

Publication Date:

20120927

Binding:

Hardback

Grade Level:

from 12

Language:

English

Illustrations:

None

Pages:

208

Dimensions:

7.13 x 5 in 1 lb

Age Level:

from 18