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Voltaires Bastards
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Book Synopsis Voltaire's Bastards by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book Voltaire's Bastards written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that blind faith in reason has resulted in problems in every phase of social life, suggests reason is an administrative method rather than a moral force, and proposes some solutions.
Book Synopsis Voltaire's Bastards by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book Voltaire's Bastards written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new Introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) expertly dissects the political, economic, and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise. With a new introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) astutely dissects the political, economic and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise. The Western world is full of paradoxes. We talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet we’ve never been under more pressure to conform. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are deteriorating. All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the result of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the past 400 years, our “rational elites” have turned the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts—“Voltaire’s bastards”—whose cult of scientific management is empty of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are increasingly excluded from the decision-making process. In this wide-ranging anatomy of modern society and its origins—whose “pages explode with insight, style and intellectual rigor” (Camille Paglia, The Washington Post)—Saul presents a shattering critique of the political, economic and cultural establishments of the West.
Book Synopsis Voltaire's Bastards by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book Voltaire's Bastards written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West is a sweeping and provocative exploration of nothing less than the political, economic, social, and cultural origins of Western society. With great daring and originality, John Ralston Saul dissects the contradictions, delusions, and illusions that have brought the world to the brink of confusion and crisis, and shatters the myths surrounding the icons and institutions that we have been taught to revere and cherish.
Book Synopsis The Unconscious Civilization by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book The Unconscious Civilization written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-05 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Ralston Saul argues that while Fascism was defeated in World War II, its "corporatist" doctrines powerfully influence our own society today. Saul explores how these corporatist priorities have now become so woven into our social fabric that they threaten the practice of Western democracy. Our civic order, Saul argues, has been remade to serve the needs of business managers and technocrats. In turn, other parts of society have come to mimic this arrangement as they themselves fracture into competing interest groups and ethnic blocs, virtually eliminating the role of the citizen. This largely unseen social order has deep and vexing roots in Western thought. Saul examines how this structure is bolstered today by political and intellectual charlatans who misleadingly describe it as a "common sense" arrangement, rather than what it is: an insidious war of attrition against the individual as citizen and the delicate system of open dialogue and doubt that alone guarantees the future of democracy.
Book Synopsis The Doubter's Companion by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book The Doubter's Companion written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A long and distinguished tradition of writers have used the form of a satirical dictionary to undermine the received ideas of their day. Voltaire wrote a sharply humorous "Philosophical Dictionary," while Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language was derisive and opinionated. These early dictionaries and encyclopedias were really weapons in a struggle for the soul of civilization between forces of humanistic enlightenment and the forces of orthodoxy and dogmatism. Their authors attacked and exposed the half-truths of their day by showing that it was possible to think differently about the social and political arrangements that everyone took for granted. But as John Ralston Saul argues in this decidedly unorthodox book, modern dictionaries have once again been captured by the forces of orthodoxy—albeit this time a rationalist orthodoxy. Our language has become as predictable, fragmented, and rhetorical as it was in the 18th century, divided as it is by special interest groups into dialects of expertise that are hermetically sealed off and inaccessible to citizens. In The Doubter's Companion, a marvelous subversive contribution to the great 18th century tradition of the humanist dictionary, Saul skewers and discredits the accepted content of common terms like Advertising, Academics, and Air Conditioning (defined as "an efficient means for spreading disease in enclosed public spaces"); Cannibal, Conservative, and Croissant; Dandruff, Death, and Dictionary ("opinions presented as truth in alphabetical order"); and several hundred others, including Biography ("a respectable form of pornography"), Museum ("safe storage for stolen objects"), and Manners ("people are always splendid when they're dead"). There is much in this volume that will stimulate, offend, provoke, perplex, and entertain. But Saul deploys these tactics of guerilla lexicography to advance the more serious purpose of reclaiming public language from the stultifying dialects of modern expertise.
Book Synopsis On Equilibrium by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book On Equilibrium written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This international bestseller and “intellectual tour de force” (The Montreal Gazette) is both an attack on our weakness for ideologies and a manual for humanist action.
Book Synopsis Erasmus and Voltaire by : Ricardo J. Quinones
Download or read book Erasmus and Voltaire written by Ricardo J. Quinones and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2010-01-30 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite comparisons between Erasmus and Voltaire having become common-place in the course of the nineteenth century, this is the first full study to bring them together in their careers, their works, and their historic afterlives. Each was a force for change in his time and thus ranks among the masters of modern liberalism. Beginning with the continuities between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, award-winning scholar Ricardo J. Quinones joins Erasmus and Voltaire as voices of moderation and reason that remain capable of addressing the philosophical crises of twentieth-century thought. A companion piece to Dualisms, Quinones' 2007 book, Erasmus and Voltaire differs in method: where its predecessor looked to inveterate, unyielding differences, this new work looks to similarities. In delving beneath the obvious differences between these two intellectual giants, Quinones uncovers the great practical and spiritual vocations that unite them.
Download or read book The Comeback written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once again, John Ralston Saul presents the story of Canada’s past so that we may better understand its present – and imagine a better future. Historic moments are always uncomfortable, Saul writes in this impassioned argument, calling on all of us to embrace and support the comeback of Aboriginal peoples. This, he says, is the great issue of our time – the most important missing piece in the building of Canada. The events that began late in 2012 with the Idle No More movement were not just a rough patch in Aboriginal relations with the rest of Canada. What is happening today between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals is not about guilt or sympathy or failure or romanticization of the past. It is about citizens’ rights. It is about rebuilding relationships that were central to the creation of Canada. These relationships are just as important to its continued existence. The centrality of Aboriginal issues and peoples has the potential to open up a more creative way of imagining ourselves and a more honest narrative for Canada. Wide in scope but piercing in detail, The Comeback presents a powerful portrait of modern Aboriginal life in Canada, in contrast with the perceived failings so often portrayed in politics and in media. Saul illustrates his arguments by compiling a remarkable selection of letters, speeches and writings by Aboriginal leaders and thinkers, showcasing the extraordinarily rich, moving and stable indigenous point of view across the centuries.
Book Synopsis The Unconscious Civilization by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book The Unconscious Civilization written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Voltaire's Bastards comes a philosophical examination of how corporatism has become so deeply ingrained into our society, how it's destroying democracy, and how we can fight against it. In this intellectual tour de force John Ralston Saul argues that our society is only superficially based on the individual and democracy, and the West now toils unconsciously in the grip of a stifling “corporatist” structure that serves the needs of business managers and technocrats as it promotes the segmentation of society into competing interest groups and ethnic blocks.
Book Synopsis The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time by : Will Durant
Download or read book The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time written by Will Durant and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-11-07 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds, and greatest books of all time—listed in accessible and succinct form—by one of the world's greatest scholars. From the “Hundred Best Books” to the “Ten Greatest Thinkers” to the “Ten Greatest Poets,” here is a concise collection of the world’s most significant knowledge. For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon—and wrote about—the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. His selections have finally been brought together in a single, compact volume. Durant eloquently defends his choices of the greatest minds and ideas, but he also stimulates readers into forming their own opinions, encouraging them to shed their surroundings and biases and enter “The Country of the Mind,” a timeless realm where the heroes of our species dwell. From a thinker who always chose to exalt the positive in the human species, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time stays true to Durant's optimism. This is a book containing the absolute best of our heritage, passed on for the benefit of future generations. Filled with Durant's renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events and ideas in simple and exciting terms, this is a pocket-size liberal arts and humanist curriculum in one volume.
Book Synopsis Seeing Like a State by : James C. Scott
Download or read book Seeing Like a State written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Download or read book Straw Dogs written by John Gray and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British bestseller Straw Dogs is an exciting, radical work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche and Marx, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the Earth. John Gray argues that this belief in human difference is a dangerous illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. The result is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question our deepest-held beliefs. Will Self, in the New Statesman, called Straw Dogs his book of the year: "I read it once, I read it twice and took notes . . . I thought it that good." "Nothing will get you thinking as much as this brilliant book" (Sunday Telegraph).
Book Synopsis Voltaire Almighty by : Roger Pearson
Download or read book Voltaire Almighty written by Roger Pearson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During much of his life Voltaire's plays and verse made him the toast of society, but his barbed wit and commitment to reason also got him into trouble. Jailed twice and eventually banished by the King, he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. His personal life was as colourful as his intellectual one. Voltaire never married, but had long-term affairs with two women: Emilie, who died after giving birth to the child of another lover, and his niece, Marie-Louise, with whom he spent his last twenty-five years. With its tales of illegitimacy, prison, stardom, exile, love affairs and tireless battles against critics, Church and King, Roger Pearson's brilliant biography brings Voltaire vividly to life.
Book Synopsis A Fair Country by : John Ralston Saul
Download or read book A Fair Country written by John Ralston Saul and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this startlingly original vision of Canada, renowned thinker John Ralston Saul argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by Aboriginal ideas: Egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all Aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. An obstacle to our progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink it's future.
Book Synopsis Toleration and Other Essays by : Voltaire
Download or read book Toleration and Other Essays written by Voltaire and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Age of Stagnation by : Satyajit Das
Download or read book The Age of Stagnation written by Satyajit Das and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global economy is entering an era of protracted stagnation, similar to what Japan has experienced for over a decade. That is the message of this brilliant and controversial summary of our current economic predicament from an internationally respected consultant and commentator on financial markets, who predicted the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. The author challenges the assumption that growth can be perpetual and questions the ability of political leaders to enact the tough structural changes needed. He is particularly critical of the "easy money" approach to dealing with the great recession of 2008, citing the dangers of excessive debt and deep-seated fundamental imbalances. The fallout of these poor policies, he argues, will affect not only the business sector, but also the lifestyles and prosperity of average citizens and future generations. The author concludes with a thought experiment illustrating the large-scale changes that will be necessary to restore economic, financial, and social sustainability. This experiment has already been tried in Iceland, which went bankrupt in the wake of the 2008 crisis, and now, after a painful adjustment, is on the road to recovery. Written for the lay reader and peppered with witty anecdotes, this immensely readable book clearly explains the missteps that created the current dilemma, why a recovery has proved elusive, and the difficult remedies that must eventually be applied to ensure a stable future.
Download or read book Bolivar written by Marie Arana and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative portrait of the Latin-American warrior-statesman examines his life against a backdrop of the tensions of nineteenth-century South America, covering his achievements as a strategist, abolitionist, and diplomat.
