BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

The Principles of Taoism (2000) Paul Wildish The Principles of Taoism is an excellent and very readable basic account of Taoism in Thorsons' 'Principles of ...' series. It covers not only the basics of the belief system in both its philosophical and religious forms but gives a solid and rounded account of its history and its influence on Chinese medicine and martial arts. Personally, I find Taoism a highly amenable philosophy and approach to religion even if I cannot wholly engage with it myself. It is possibly the most humane of ancient philosophical paths but it is highly culture-specific in its general forms even if its basic philosophy can be studied with profit outside East Asia and the Chinese diaspora. It is not, however, without flaws. The most obvious one derives from what tends to happen when 'essentialist' a priori reasoning gets hold of reality and then tries to bend it to its will - this is the so-called Outer Alchemy, derived from an ove...

Introducing Eastern Philosophy (1992) Richard Osborne   Introducing Baudrillard (1996) Chris Horrocks   Introducing Nietzsche (1997) Richard Gane & Richard Appignanesi  Introducing Lacan (2000) Darian Leader & Richard Appignanesi Introducing Existentialism Richard Appignanesi Between 1965 and 1975, there was a series called 'The Bluffers Guide to ...' This provided short light-hearted introductions designed to get the middle classes through their dinner parties. Today we have the far more serious Oxford 'Very Short Introductions to ..." which started in 1995. Inbetween came instant graphic guides to intellectuals and ideas - the 'Introducing ..." series published by Icon which was an expanded British version of an American series 'For Beginners' that went back to the 1970s. These dominated the instant knowledge market in the 1990s. The series included graphic accounts of significant modern philosophers and ideas. The original idea be...

The World of Perception (2002 Publication of 1948 Radio Lectures) Maurice Merleau-Ponty   Mid-twentieth century revolutions in thought have overturned much of the basis for an easy acceptance of Descartes and later Kant as guides to life, with Kierkegaard and Nietzche as early pioneers in unravelling some of the presumptions of essentialism. This is not to denigrate these 'great thinkers' of the canon but only to say that new thinking will inevitable emerge from old thoughts. Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a very significant figure in this context, not merely within modern continental philosophy but in preparing the ground for what looks likely to be seen as a much wider and consequent cultural revolution, one derived from the extension of the insights of the existentialist, phenomenological and hermeneutic schools, first into art and culture and increasingly into society and politics. This slim volume represents seven radio lectures given by Merleau-Ponty in 1948. The for...

The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition in Hindu Religion (2005) Gavin Flood    The Tao Te Ching: 81 Verses by Lao Tzu With Introduction and Commentary (400BC original - this edition 2006) Ralph Allan Dale Gavin Flood's The Tantric Body is a fairly dense academic text and not cheap, even if you can get it second hand, as I did, at a store like Treadwells. I am also not entirely convinced by Gavin Flood's almost obsessive thesis of the 'entextualisation' of Tantra in the body although, if accepted in perhaps a less intense form, he offers some deep insights into how the Tantric tradition relates spirit to matter. However, this is a five star text if only because of its value as corrective to the soft core 'namaste' tantric culture that has developed in the West as a form of partner guidance counselling for anxious middle class liberals who clearly have great personal difficulty either in escaping Judaeo-Christian habits of mind or in understanding the r...

Sartre: A Biography (1986) Ronald Hayman   Barthes for Beginners (1997) Philip Thody and Piero   1968: Marching in the Streets (1998) Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins   How To Read Foucault (2007) Johanna Oksala I will get Hayman's 1986 biography of Sartre out of the way quickly. It has few real insights into the man or his thoughts (except perhaps giving us some indication of his curious turn towards support for Zionism in later life) but it does have the virtue of laying out the basic facts of his life clearly. One for the library as reference text but not otherwise particularly recommended.  We will lay Sartre aside for the moment.   Barthes for Beginners is equally unsatisfactory. It should have got three stars as a bog standard basic introduction to the semiologist, Roland Barthes, but the graphics really do let it down. Clear graphics are an essential element in this series which sells itself on using imagery to help get across complex ideas. The fact t...