PRELUDE TO
AN INTEGRAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
by Michael Bauwens
FOURTH QUADRANT
THE EVOLUTION OF OUR COLLECTIVE CULTURE
(the inter-subjective)
-- part 2--
- 4.4 philosophical culture and conceptions, by
historical epoch
- ANTIQUE PHILOSOPHY
- Akolouthein o Theo. Suivre la Divinite. Introduction a l'esprit de la philosophie ancienne. J. Follon.
Paris: Peeters, 1997 (Antaios)
- Eloge de la Philosophie Antique. P. Hadot. Paris: Allia, 1998. (Antaios)
- La Philosophie comme maniere de vivre. Pierre Hadot. (Entretiens). Albin Michel.
(pourquoi s'occuper des philosophes de l'Antiquite - par un erudit qui a profondement modifier notre regard sur les textes
grecques et romains - stresses the living wisdom and oral basis of ancient texts - Le Monde)
subtopic: GREEK PHILOSOPHIES
- Bruno Snell. La découverte de l'esprit: La genèse de la pensée européenne
chez les Grecs
(Bruno Snell montre comment s'élabore peu à peu l'esprit européen et tous les grands concepts qui sont au fondement de notre
civilisation. La limpidité du raisonnement et de l'écriture ont fait de ce livre un classique des études sur l'Antiquité.)
- Giorgio Colli. La Sagesse Grecque. L'eclat.
(Les textes des penseurs grecs de l'Antiquité en édition critique, traduits et accompagnés d'une introduction et de commentaires.
« Notre intention par cette nouvelle édition est de cerner de façon exhaustive ce que l'on désigne habituellement - par une
indication chronologique réductrice - sous le nom de philosophie présocratique», mais qu'il me semble plus pertinent d'appeler
«la sagesse grecque»)
- Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Emile Brehier THE HELLENIC AGE (rec Kenneth Smith)
- Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, translated by Janet Lloyd, New York:
Zone, 1996. (rec Phil Agre)
movements
EPICURIANISM
- A. Etienne. La philosophie epicuriene sur pierre. Les fragments de Diogene d'Oenanda. Cerf, 1996.
FF100
- Rist, John. 1972. Epicurus: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
STOICISM
- JJ. Duhot. Epictete et la sagesse stoicienne. Bayard, 1996. FF95
SCEPTICISM
- r.j. Hankinson. The Skeptics. Routledge, 1996.
MATERIALISM
- Nizan, Paul Démocrite, Epicure, Lucrèce : les matérialistes de l'Antiquité Arléa 1991
individuals
- W K C Guthrie THE SOPHISTS / SOCRATES (rec Kenneth Smith)
ARISTOTELES
- Werner Jaeger. Aristote: Fondements pour une histoire de son évolution
(«L'Aristote de Jaeger » est quasiment une expression consacrée dans les études aristotéliciennes, tant son influence fut
déterminante, et les discussions qu'il suscita furent vives et nombreuses.)
- Philip Wheelwright HERACLITUS / ARISTOTLE
PLATO
- Louis Guillermit L'enseignement de Platon
(Ce volume rassemble les cours sur les dialogues socratiques que Louis Guillermit a dispensés pendant plus de trente années
dans les classes de khâgne, puis à l'Université. )
- Paul Friedlander PLATO: AN INTRODUCTION / PLATO (2 vols)
- François Châtelet. Platon (rec remi sussan)
subtopic: Hellenism
- Hellenistic Civilisation. W.W. Tarn. New American Library, 1974. ( rec David Ulansey)
- INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES
* J. Varenne. Le Tantrisme: mythes, rites, metaphysique. Albin Michel, 1997. FF98
* M. Eliade. Sur l'erotique mystique Indienne. l'Herne, 1997.
- History of Indian Philosophy. By Surendranath Dasgupta. Delhi: 1977 (reprint 1922, recommended
by Antaios. Dasgupta was the spiritual master of Mircea Eliade)
- MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHIES
- Histoire de la philosophie ancienne et medievale. L. Couloubaritsis. Paris: Grasset, 1998. (rec. par
Antaios)
- Johan Huizinga WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES
(a classic and mustr ead, rec K. Smith, preferably to read with a balancing book that shows how the Middle Ages carried the
seeds of the coming Renaissance)
- Frank O. Lovejoy THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING (rec K Smith)
- Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
- Raak me niet aan. Over middeleeuws en postmiddeleeuws transcendentiedenken. Jos Decorte.
Pelckmans-Klement, 2001.
(flemish author, deceased in 2001, known for christian and spiritually inspired histories of philosophy such as 'De Waanzin van
het Intellect'. In this book he not only explains the inner logic of medieval thought, based on transcendent feeling/thinking, but
also on how we interpret it now - recommended Standaard der Letteren)
- RENAISSANCE
- Les langues occultes de la Renaissance. P. Behar. Paris: Desjonqueres.
("Essai sur la crise intellectuelle de l'Europe au XVIieme siecle", Antaios)
- The Waning of the Rennaissance, 1550-1640. By William J. Bouwsma. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
Univ. Press.
(describes the turn to pessisism and anxiety in late Renaissance thought, 'fundamentally challenges a progressive interpretation of Western history',
recommended by The Atlantic)
- The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance by Joscelyn Godwin.
("This book is about a state of mind and soul that arose in fifteenth-century Italy, spread through Europe along certain
clearly-defined fault-lines, and persisted for about two hundred years. During this time, while no one believed in the classical
gods, many people acted as though they existed. Those privileged to create their own surroundings chose to have the gods
painted on their furniture and walls, made statues of them, read and declaimed about them, and impersonated them in pageants
and plays. A naïve visitor to a Renaissance palace or villa might well conclude that its owners were votaries of Apollo, Venus,
Hercules, and a host of attendants in human and semihuman forms. Yet if he stepped into the chapel, a very different set of
images would meet his eye, and he might wonder what exactly was going on.
The irruption of the pagan pantheon caused a bifurcation in the European psyche, which is documented and thoroughly explored
in this fascinating, highly illustrated study.")
- Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance by Lisa Jardine
("Jardine argues that the market and people's purely commercial urges drove the Renaissance (the biggest development in
Western culture outside of beach volleyball). As a summary of the book at Amazon.com puts it, "It was an urge to own, a
ceaseless quest for new horizons and exotic treasures, that fueled the cultural output of the Renaissance." Recommended by
Dynamist.com)
- Walter Mignolo. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. Univ
of Michigan Pr, 1995 (recommended Toni Negri)
- The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. by Jacob Burckhardt
- Bloch, Ernst La philosophie de la renaissance Payot, (P201) 1994
- Frances A. Yates. Raymond Lulle et Giordano Bruno. PUF.
("chef d'oeuvre qui eclaire les fondements du Platonisme et de la philosophie occulte du temps de la Renaissance" - Astres)
- La survivance des dieux antiques: Jean Seznec.Champs flammarion
("Comment les dieux de l'antiquité ont pu survivre sous différentes formes au cours du moyen age, pour reprendre leur plein
puissance à la reanissance. - remi sussan)
- Eros et Magie à la renaissance. Ioan P. Couliano (Flammarion1984)
("Bien au delà d'une simple étude sur la philosophie de la renaissance, c'est peut être le texte le plus extraordinaire jamais écrit
sur la magie. Couliano établit la connexion entre magie et media et fait du magicien un véritable " ingénieur memetique " - remi
sussan)
- ENLIGHTENMENT
- The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. By Ernst Cassirer (Princeton Univ. Pr, 1959)**
- The Perfectibility of Man. By John Passmore (Scribner's, 1970)
(on the concept of progress and its roots in the Enlightenment)
- The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age. By Frances Yates. Routledge, 1979.
(describes the genesis of modern science in the works and lives of Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee
and John Milton. 'A landmark in intellectual history', recommended by Network).
- The Rosicrucian Enligthenment. By Frances Yates.
- Radical Enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity 1650-1750
Jonathan I Israel, Oxford University Press
(The author, a professor at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, argues that most approaches to understanding the Enlightenment have been
too nationalistic to grasp the essence of the movement. When you break away from the nationalistic approach, he says, Spinoza's dominating
influence - above Voltaire, Diderot, Hobbes or Locke - emerges clearly. Israel ranges from Spinoza's denial of miracles and his relationship with Boyle
(the chemist) to his critique of scripture and an analysis of the then new learned journals appearing everywhere, and he even has a section on what
he identifies as the "Spinozist" novel. Is it likely, he asks, "or even conceivable, that any single, 17th-century author, let alone an aloof, solitary figure
raised among a despised religious minority [Spinoza was Jewish] who lacked formal academic training and status, can have fundamentally and
decisively shaped a tradition of radical thinking which eventually spanned a whole continent, exerted an immense influence over successive
generations, and shook western civilisation to its foundations"? The answer, he says, "is arguably, yes". The scholarship is breathtaking. Israel has
read everything, absorbed every nuance, followed up every byway. This is the kind of history book that will take a while to sink in. But the general view
is that, five years from now, our views of the Enlightenment will have been enormously influenced by Israel.)
- Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment: By Emma Rothschild.
Harvard University Press, 353 pages, $45.00
("Should you care about the Enlightenment? Yes, you should, and more than alittle, says Emma Rothschild, the distinguished
British economist. In Economic Sentiments, Rothschild reinterprets the Enlightenment by breathing new life into Adam Smith,
Jacques Turgot, and a fellow named Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, somewhat better known as the marquis de
Condorcet. In her delicate and captivating portraits of these Enlightenment figures, Rothschild reveals an intellectual world of
skepticism, reason, and hopefulness about the human condition. The best thinkers of the era showed a strong sympathy with the
needs and aspirations of ordinary people. ")
- Karen O'Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History FromVoltaire to Gibbon,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- The Scottish Enlightenment: Arthur Herman Fourth Estate, 392pp, £20
ISBN 1841152757
("It remains a great mystery why Scotland, a small, impoverished country on the western extremity of Europe, should, in the 18th
century, have given Europe some of its greatest philosophers, scientists and men of letters. It was a truly remarkable
phenomenon. Adam Smith, the founder of economics;
David Hume, arguably the greatest philosopher of his time; Robert Adam, whose architectural achievements are all around us -
all lived, worked and conversed with each other in and around Edinburgh.
They were not alone. James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine; James Hutton, the founder of modern geology; Sir Walter
Scott, whose novels captivated Europe, and dozens of other original minds, transformed Scotland's reputation. No longer was it
seen as a backward, ignorant and superstitious country. Instead, it became, for a generation, the intellectual powerhouse of
Europe.")
- The Enlightenment. An interpretation. The rise of modern paganism. By P. Gay. London: Norton,
1977.
(on the rediscovery of paganism during the Enlightenment period, Antaios)
- Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. NY: Herder & Herder, 1972.
- Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. By Reinhart
Kosselleck. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988 (recommended by Negri)
- Hondt, Jacques d' Hegel et le siècle des Lumières PUF 1974 (same author has many other worls
about Hegel -rec Marx biblio)
- Elisabeth Badinter. Les passions intellectuelles. 2 vols (tome 2: 1751-1762)
(a detailed account of French intellectual history of the time which makes the debates of the time come alive - 'ouvrage savant
qui retrace l'avenement de l'esprit moderne' rec Nouvel Obs)
- Louis Sala Molins Misères des Lumières. Sous la raison l'outrage, Robert
Lafon1992. (rec Multitudes)
extra: KANT
- Immanuel Kant FOUNDATION OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS (rec K. Smith)
- Ernst Cassirer ROUSSEAU, KANT & GOETHE (rec Kenneth Smith)
- Richard Kroner KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG (rec Kenneth Smith)
- ROMANTICISM
- Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. By M.H. Abrams (Norton,
1971)
- Romanticism in Perspective. By Lillian R. Furst (Methuen, 1969)
- What is Romanticism? By Henry Peyre (Un. of Alabama Pr., 1977)
- The Mind of the European Romantics. By H.G. Schenk (Constable, 1966)
- Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition. Studies in Imagination. Paul Davies
(Spiritual quest is at the very heart of poetry, but in the materialistic climate of the late twentieth century this has been almost
forgotten even by those claiming to be experts in interpreting literature. How does the worldview common to the main esoteric
traditions of East and West correspond to the aims of such Romantic poets as Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth? In Romanticism
and Esoteric Tradition, Paul Davies maintains that only in the light of these traditions/secret teachings can Romantic poetry and
thought be understood as intended.)
- Le Defi Romantique. Michel Le Bris. Flammarion.
("somptueux album, courronne par de nombreux prix, salue comme un evenement, avec une longue conclusion intitulee, 'contre
le nihilisme', ou il s'en prend aux tenants de la deconstruction, une re-edition du titre original, Journal du Romantisme, publie en
1981" - rec Le Monde)
- IDEALISM
- Simmel, Georg. 1986. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Trans. Helmut Loiskandl, Deena Weinstein,
and Michael Weinstein. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
- Bourgeois, Bernard La philosophie allemande classique PUF (Que sais-je ? n°1466)
1995
HEGEL
- Introduction to the Reading of the Philosophy of Hegel. By A. Kojeve
- Stace, W. T. 1924. The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition. London: Macmillan.
- Taylor, Charles. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Jean Hyppolyte. Genèse et structure de la Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel
(introuvable sauf en bibliothèque - rec remi sussan)
- "Alexandre Kojeve - The Roots of Postmodern Politics" by Shadia Drury (Westview Press, 1994).
("It is a devastating critique of post-modernism by a scholar who has written a booklength critique of Leo Strauss. The book
shows the "common" intellectual heritage of Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuymama (the Chicago mafia) Bataille, and M.
Foucault.
From the back jacket of the book: "Alexandre Kojeve is an enigmatic figure whose influence on postmodernism is better known
than understood. Reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and
Heidegger simultaneously, Kojeve formulated a wild if not hypnotic melange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of
Kojeve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had both on French and American intellectuals. According to Drury,
Kojeve believed that history was a tragedy in which a cold, instrumental and uninspired rationalism has conquered and
disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojeve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the
cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojeve's picture of this world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a
profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion and virility. In Drury's
view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterizes the postmodern world.")
- Karl Lowith FROM HEGEL TO NIETZSCHE (rec Kenneth Smith)
- MODERNISM
- The Making of the Modern Mind. By John H. Randall Jr. (Houghton-Mifflin, 1940)
- All that's Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Simon & Schuster, 1982)
- A Genealogy of Modernism. By Michael Levenson (Cambridge Univ. Pr, 1984)
- From Taylorism to Fordism, a rational madness. By Bernard Doray. (Free Association Books, 1984).
(on how the modernist conception of the body led to machinism)
- Fragments of Modernity. By David Frisby. (Polity Press, 1985)
("a thorough account of the relationship between modernity and the fragmentation of experience")
- Kosmopolis; The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. By Stephen Toulmin (1992)
(distinguishes between Rennaissance humanism of the 16th century and the 17th cy rationalists like Descartes, and how that led
to a 'wrong turn' in western civilisation. Must read according to Imediair magazine).
- Niklas Luhmann. Observations on Modernity. Stanford Univ Pr, 1998.
- LATOUR, Bruno. 1991. Nous n'avons jamais été modernes. Essais d'anthropologie symétrique,
Paris, Editions La découverte.
- Auguste Comte, Positive Philosophy. trans. Harriet Martineau. London, Trubner, 1875.
("The book and perspective that has outlined how the moderns think. For Comte there were three stages; the religious, the
philosophical and the scientific. Modern futures studies continues this model. Critical futures studies attempts to use the pre-
post- and differently-scientific to create alternative futures."- rec Sohail Inatulolah)
- John Lukacs THE PASSING OF THE MODERN AGE (rec Kenneth Smith)
FEMINISM
- Beauvoir, Simone de Le deuxième sexe. Gallimard
LIBERALISM
- Two faces of Liberalism - John Gray
("argues with increasing conviction that what he refers to as "the Enlightenment project" is a failure. Flawed in theory, liberalism's
pursuit in practice has led to unhappiness and social strain in the societies in which it predominates, and increasing poverty and
instability across the globe. Now, however, Gray claims to have identified an element of the liberal tradition that is worth rescuing
from the wreckage.
In Two Faces of Liberalism, he assumes the responsibility of bringing this older, more shadowed "second face" of liberalism into
the light. Liberalism's first face, which Gray identifies with John Locke and, in this century, with John Rawls, is the project of
designing a single, ideal, universally legitimate regime. The second face - which he calls modus vivendi or neo-Hobbesianism - is
an effort to create institutions that will permit different ways of life to coexist peacefully.)
subtopic: THE ANTI-MODERNS / 'CONSERVATIVE CRITIQUES'
- Revolt Against the Modern World: religion and social order in the Kali Yuga. Julius Evola.
The italian counterpart to Rene Guenon, a riveting traditionalist attack against the modern world that can leave no one untouched.
- l'Islam Traditionnel face au Monde Moderne. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Age d'Homme.
- MARXISMS / AND OTHER RADICAL CRITIQUES
- 1) Grundrisse. 2) '1844 Manuscripts'. Karl Marx
- Ernst Bloch. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986
extra: novels
- Het proces tegen Elisabeth Cree. Peter Acroyd.
(thriller set in Victorian London, described as a masterly description of the epoch and its ideas, and featuring Marx as a character
- rec Knack)
CRITICAL THEORY
- Assoun, Paul-Laurent L'École de Francfort PUF (Que sais-je ? n°2354) 1990
- Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists (2nd ed.) by Stephen Eric Bronner. Routledge
September 2002,
("Now in its second edition, this collection offers an overview of the Critical Theory Tradition. It furthers the idea and spirit of
critical theory as it weaves together a narrative from a series of examinations of the thoughts of many of the most important left
Western intellectuals of the twentieth century. Covering the work of major figures such as Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno,
Marcuse and Habermas and revisiting the contributions of lesser-known figures such as Karl Korsch and Ernst Bloch, Bronner
measures the writing of these theorists against each other, postmodernist philosophers and the critical tradition reaching back to
Hegel, and then connects the history of critical theory with important historical events and develops in the twentieth century. ")
- Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory (Studies in Contemporary
German Social Thought)
by Joel Whitebook
("In this sweeping challenge to the postmodern critiques of psychoanalysis, Joel Whitebook argues for a reintegration of Freud's
uncompromising investigation of the unconscious with the political and philosophical insights of critical theory. Perversion and
Utopia follows in the tradition of Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization and Paul Ricoeur's Freud and Philosophy. It expands on
these books, however, because of the author's remarkable grasp not only of psychoanalytic studies but also of the contemporary
critical climate; Whitebook, a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, writes with equal facility on both Habermas and Freud. A central
thesis of Perversion and Utopia is that there is an essential affinity between the utopian impulse and the perverse impulse, in that
both reflect a desire to bypass the reality principle that Freud claimed to define the human condition.")
- LIBERATING THEORY by Chomsky, Albert, Sklar, King, Cagan, Hahnel, et. al.
(from Southend Press) - rec postconpol
- Read the writings of theFrankfurt School: Adorno, Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin.
extra: WALTER BENJAMIN
- Benjamin, Walter Écrits autobiographiques Bourgois 1994
- Bensaïd, Daniel Walter Benjamin, sentinelle messianique Plon 1990
- Münster, Arno Progrès et catastrophe, Walter Benjamin et l'histoire. Réflexions sur l'itinéraire
philosophique Kimé (marx biblio)
- POSTMODERNISM
- Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. The Postmodern Turn. Guildford Press, 1997.
- David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989.
(" Excellent introduction to postmodernity: the death of the author, metanarratives and the grand unity of modernity. Easy to
read, well written, and excellent comparison of enlightenment and postmodern discourses. As might be expected, unable to
include third world critiques of the postmodern.")
- Frederic Jameson. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke Univ Pr, 1991.
- Zia Sardar, Postmodernism and the Other: The New Imperialism of Western Culture. London, Pluto,
1998.
("Devastating critique of postmodernism. Argues that while it claims pluralism, it does so in the western context of liberal
secularism. " - rec. Sohail Inatullah)
- "Alexandre Kojeve - The Roots of Postmodern Politics" by Shadia Drury (Westview Press, 1994).
("It is a devastating critique of post-modernism by a scholar who has written a booklength critique of Leo Strauss. The book
shows the "common" intellectual heritage of Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuymama (the Chicago mafia) Bataille, and M.
Foucault.
From the back jacket of the book: "Alexandre Kojeve is an enigmatic figure whose influence on postmodernism is better known
than understood. Reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and
Heidegger simultaneously, Kojeve formulated a wild if not hypnotic melange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of
Kojeve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had both on French and American intellectuals. According to Drury,
Kojeve believed that history was a tragedy in which a cold, instrumental and uninspired rationalism has conquered and
disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojeve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the
cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojeve's picture of this world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a
profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion and virility. In Drury's
view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterizes the postmodern world.")
subtopic: related philosophies
STRUCTURALISM/POSTSTRUCTURALISM
- Henri Lefebvre. L'ideologie structuraliste. Paris: Anthropos, 1971.
- Peter Dews. Logics of Disintegration: Poststructuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory.
London: Verso, 1987
- Jean-Claude Milner "Le Périple structural : Figures et Paradigme", Seuil 2002.
("Pour la plupart d'entre nous, dont semble-t-il aussi Alain Finkelkraut, le structuralisme est à ranger au magasin des paradigmes
ayant perdu toute vertu d'explication scientifique dans le domaine des sciences humaines, ethnologie, sociologie et même
linguistique. L'idée qu'il existerait dans les cultures humaines des entités extérieures à l'observateur, dont l'organisation renvoie à
des logiques internes fermées sur elles-mêmes, et que ce même observateur pourrait décrire sans les déformer, n'a plus grand
sens aujourd'hui. Il y a certainement des structures, mais ce sont des phénomènes évolutifs." rec Automates Intelligents)
CONSTRUCTIVISM
- Berger Peter, Luckmann Thomas La construction sociale de la r> éalité Méridiens Klincksieck
1996
DECONSTRUCTION
- Roland Barthes, Critical Essays trans. Richard Howard. Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University
Press, 1972.
("Among many postmodern writers who begin to deconstruct self and text creating the possibility for new futures. " - Sohail
Inatullah)
subtopic: the postmodern philosophers
BAUDRILLARD
- Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. Ed. by Mark Poster. Stanford Un. Press, 1988.
- Le paroxyste indifferent. Entretiens avec Philippe Petit. Grasset, 1997. (English: Paroxysm. Verso
Books)
DEBORD
- Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle.`
DELEUZE/ GUATTARI
- Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: Un of Minn. Pr., 1987.
- Badiou, Alain. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Minnesota University Press. Minnesota, 1999, 160
pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 0816631395.
- Hardt, Michael. 1993. Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy. London: University College
London.
- Deleuze and Guattari. By Ronald Bogue, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989. Pp. xiii, 196.
(ISBN 0415020174).
("Bogue's study is the first booklength consideration of Deleuze and Guattari's work available in English. Following chronology,
Part One of the book deals with "Deleuze before Guattari" -- here Bogue gives accounts of the work on Nietzsche (15-34), Proust
and SacherMasoch (35-54), along with Différence et Répétition and Logique du Sens (55-80). Part Two offers a brief look at
"Guattari before Anti-Oedipus" (85-87), then treats that work (87-106) and two other collaborative volumes: Kafka (107-123) and
Mille Plateaux (123-149). Deleuze and Guattari offer a coherent body of new concepts, new units of analysis, argues Bogue,
which are rooted in an interpretation of Nietzsche.")
- The Two-Fold Thought of Deleuze and Guattari . Intersections and Animations
Charles J. Stivale
("French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari worked together extensively from the 1960s into the 1990s, and the
resulting "intersections" of their different sensibilities and modes of knowing fueled powerful alternatives to Marxian and
psychoanalytic orthodoxies. Yet readers approaching Deleuze and Guattari's works are often frustrated by the paucity or
unfamiliarity of specific examples that might clarify their complex arguments. This timely volume "animates" key concepts and
terminology by applying them to provocative readings of literary texts, films, and cultural phenomena--from APOCALYPSE NOW
to Cajun music and dance. Drawing extensively from primary and critical sources to elucidate Deleuze and Guattari's theoretical
contributions, Stivale reinvigorates their "two-fold thought" for use as an analytical tool in the humanities and social sciences. The
book also offers a clear introduction to the precollaborative phase of each thinker's work, an interview Stivale c!
onducted with Guattari, and the first-time English translation of a 1967 essay by Deleuze.")
FOUCAULT
- Michel Foucault. The Order of Things
(on the notion of the 'episteme' - shows how the boundaries of knowledge create and limit the possibility of the future. This is a
history of the epistemes, of the peculiarity of knowledge regimes. Foucault believes that "man" will soon cease to exist and other
less universal categories will frame us. - rec Sohail Inatullah)
- Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish.
- Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader. ed. Paul Rabinow. New York, Pantheon Books, 1984.
("A mix of essays which outline archeology and genealogy. A great beginner to understanding one of the most influential thinkers
in the late 20th century. Almost every page has insights, of particularly note his essay on "truth and knowledge" and "the death of
the author." - rec Sohail Inatullah)
- Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Harvard University Press, 1991)
- James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (Simon and Schuster, 1993),
- Michael Clifford, Political Genealogy After Foucault: Savage Identities, New York: Routledge, 2001.
(Phil Agre)
- Dreyfus and Rabinow. Michel Foucault. (cited by Wilber)
HEIDEGGER
- *Gianni Vattimo : Introduction à Heidegger
- *George Steiner : Martin Heidegger
(*two excellent intro's to his thought, recommended by Georges Leclercq)
NEGRI
- Du retour. Abécédaire biopolitique, par Toni Negri, Calmann-Lévy,
246 p., 16 euros.
("écrit en français, où il revient sur les années de plomb comme sur son enfance lombarde, et développe la vision du nouveau
système capitalistique mondial qu'il avait formulée
dans «Empire» (1), écrit en prison avec l'Américain Michael Hardt. Un livre qui, devenu entre-temps le véritable «Petit Livre
orange» des militants no global, aura brutalement arraché le «survivant triste» à
la nostalgie, le faisant revenir au premier plan des débats sur la globalisation. «C'est quand les amis recommencent à sourire, et
les ennemis à vous craindre, que l'on peut vraiment parler de retour...» - Nouvel Obs)
- Job, la force de l'esclave» par Toni Negri, Bayard, 188 p., 18 euros.
subtopic: OTHER CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHERS
- Twee zielen. Gesprekken met hedendaagse filosofen. Sun, 2002.
(highly recommended series of interviews/conversations with leading contemporary philosophers: Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor,
Paul Ricoeur, Kristeva, Rene Girard, Gadamer)
- Le Philosophe et le Reel. Entretiens de Jacques Bouveresse. Hachette-Literature, 262 p.
(autobiographical conversations with an important French explainer of philosophy who describes his encounters with
Wittgenstein, Lichtenberg, Musil and Kraus - highly recommended by Le Monde; from this author "Wittgenstein: la rime et la
raison", 1979; "Le Mythe de l'interiorite", 1976, and "Rationalite et cynisme", 1985)
DEEP ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENTALISM
- Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep: concerning deep ecology and celebrating life. By
Dolores La Chappelle (Kivaki Press, 1992)
('a major book full of original thinking ... essential reading about the cultural realignment that turned man against nature)
extra: french author Serge Moscovici (rec Multitudes)
- Serge Moscovici. "essai sur l'histoire humaine de la nature". Paris : Flammarion, 1977
("a en sociologue abordé la question des rapports avec la nature, sous l'angle historique (histoire des idées, mais aussi des faits
sociaux)" - rec Multitudes)
-Moscovici, Serge (Hommes domestiques et hommes sauvages [Texte imprimé] ; [Le Marxisme et la
question naturelle] ; [Quelle unité de l'homme ?] / Serge Moscovici. - Paris : C. Bourgois, 1979
- Moscovici, Serge Réenchanter la nature [Texte imprimé] : entretiens avec Pascal Dibie / Serge
Moscovici. - La Tour-d'Aigues : Éd. de l'Aube
(Texte des entretiens diffusés par France culture au cours de l'émission "A voix nue")
- Moscovici, Serge. La société contre nature [Texte imprimé] / Serge Moscovici. - Ed. rev. et corr. par
l'auteur. - Paris : Ed. du Seuil, 1994
NEO-HEDONISM
- Michel Onfray
"Michel Onfray était donc là pour présenter Politique du rebelle, Traité de résistance et d'insoumission
(éditions Grasset, cf. Regards de septembre 1997), prolongement politique de l'hédonisme qu'il développe de livre en livre
depuis presque dix ans (le Ventre des philosophes, Cynismes, l'Art de jouir, la Sculpture de soi, la
Raison gourmande). Entendons-nous: Onfray est " hédoniste ", mais n'en reste pas à Aristippe de Cyrène; de même qu'il
est "cynique" mais se démarque de Diogène sur bien des points; il est "libertaire", sans se satisfaire des cadres de pensée
hérités des diverses traditions anarchistes; il est "de gauche", mais ni communiste ni socialiste; "non engagé", mais acteur de
telle ou telle lutte, et semeur de résistances. Ni mouton ni berger, c'est bien comme pensée singulière que nous l'avions invité,
comme artisan de ce que Deleuze appelait le "devenir révolutionnaire des individus", avec, en exergue, la devise nietzschéenne:
"Il m'est odieux de suivre autant que de guider." "Réconcilier chacun avec son corps en son entier", ainsi Onfray définissait-il
l'hédonisme en ouverture. Ou encore: "Jouir et faire jouir" sans faire de mal à quiconque (Chamfort), puisque la jouissance de
l'autre donne sens à la mienne. C'est ce qui, pour Onfray, fonde la possibilité de passer de l'hédonisme personnel à l'hédonisme
politique: le monde est plein de misère "sale", non médiatique, celle des sans-grade, privés de tout et accablés dans leur corps,
hors et dans la sphère du travail. Après Proudhon, Weyl et Bourdieu, Onfray entreprend de développer la philosophie dont cette
misère est porteuse. Michel Onfray parle à la première personne: il a connu la misère familiale, les dominations patronales, la vie
dans l'entreprise, la tentation d'adhérer au PCF, détruite par sa découverte des réalités soviétiques, la découverte de la pensée
libertaire française, de Deleuze et Foucault. Michel Onfray raconte tout cela avec simplicité et clarté, se réclame d'une "mystique
de gauche", dans la mesure où cet engagement n'est pas illusoirement déduit de considérations théoriques, mais
"épidermiques": "On ne choisit pas ses engagements, on est choisi par eux", résume-t-il. Ses engagements: loin de toute
"moralisation" comme de toute "théologie négative" sur l'horreur ineffable mais peuplant les discours, Onfray regarde aussi bien
les camps de concentration que le capitalisme, d'abord comme une réduction du corps à l'état d'objet, et ne voit guère d'issue
libératrice sans la révolution des individualités et de leur rapport à autrui: car les relations de pouvoir sont partout et il n'est pas
de pouvoir central sans elles. Autrement dit, on se saurait espérer de révolution sociale authentique si ces relations "entre
individus" se dissolvent dans des "fonctions" ou des "structures" hiérarchiques. D'où son "éloge absolu de Mai-68", non
nostalgique (Onfray avait neuf ans...), comme trace à réactiver dans l'ensemble des relations inter-individuelles, à l'entreprise
comme au lycée ou dans le couple. En ce sens, ajoute-t-il, "la révolution n'est pas pour demain mais pour ce soir, dans nos
rapports à autrui".
Un tel projet ne saurait que se défier des petitesses politiques, de tout pouvoir (social, de parti, de syndicat, etc.), et de tout ce
qui ne préserve pas l'individualité dans la lutte collective, pour des objectifs concrets (logement, droit des immigrés, emploi, 35
heures, etc.). Michel Onfray entend "faire entendre une voix libertaire au quotidien".
- Birch and Cobb. The Liberation of Life
("In my opinion, one of the most urgent tasks of post-modernity-arguably the most urgent-is the development and establishment
of a genuine environmental ethics.
Nowhere are the difficulties of the "Eco camp" more obvious than in its attempts to develop an environmental ethics, which is
embarrassing in that this should be, one would think, their strong suit. But with a few notable exceptions (such as Birch and
Cobb's wonderful book The Liberation of Life), most approaches center exclusively on the principle of "bioequality," a reworking
of the very old tenets of the Descending path of Plenitude (divorced and dissociated from any true Ascent" - ken wilber).
- 4.5 philosophical topics and disciplines
- EPISTEMOLOGY
- Science and Sanity. Alfred Korzybsky
(By 1933, Korzybski accomplished what few had done in all the history of civilization. He did in the 20th century, what Aristotle did
in the 4th century BC, and what Francis Bacon did in the 17th century: he codified the methods of evaluation of Western thought.
In other words, he unveiled the structure of our system of thought, the basis of how we give significance and make meaning of
the elements of our experience. His book Science and Sanity, published in 1933, was about 10 years in the making. It became
one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century as acknowledged by scientists all over the world. Relatively speaking,
few people have even read the book, most noticeably world leaders and educators.)
- Michel Foucault. 1989. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan
Smith. London: Routledge.
- Michel Foucault. The Order of Things
(on the notion of the 'episteme' - shows how the boundaries of knowledge create and limit the possibility of the future. This is a
history of the epistemes, of the peculiarity of knowledge regimes. Foucault believes that "man" will soon cease to exist and other
less universal categories will frame us. - rec Sohail Inatullah)
- Collin, Denis La théorie de la connaissance chez Marx L'Harmattan 1996
- Roy Baskar?
- ETHICS
- Evil After Post-Modernism: Histories, Narratives, and Ethics . Jennifer Geddes, Editor
(Geddes brings together a collection of six essays by a group of distinguished scholars who address our understanding of evil in
the light of postmodern thought. The essays in this volume ask what might be lost without the concept of evil and what dangers
might be incurred by continuing to use it. The essays are organized around three themes - Histories of Evil, Narratives of Evil,
and Ethics of Evil. In each section the first essay illustrates certain theoretical difficulties faced by thinking about evil in the
postmodern age, while the second offers a constructive response to these difficulties.)
- Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Birch and Cobb. The Liberation of Life
("In my opinion, one of the most urgent tasks of post-modernity-arguably the most urgent-is the development and establishment
of a genuine environmental ethics.
Nowhere are the difficulties of the "Eco camp" more obvious than in its attempts to develop an environmental ethics, which is
embarrassing in that this should be, one would think, their strong suit. But with a few notable exceptions (such as Birch and
Cobb's wonderful book The Liberation of Life), most approaches center exclusively on the principle of "bioequality," a reworking
of the very old tenets of the Descending path of Plenitude (divorced and dissociated from any true Ascent" - ken wilber).
- Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by English ethicist Jonathan Glover (September
2000, Yale University Press,
- HUMAN RIGHTS
- Bourgeois, Bernard Philosophie et droits de l'homme de Kant à Marx PUF 1990
- 4.6 key historical events and their
interpretation
- MAY '68
- Le Goff, Jean-Pierre Mai 68, l'héritage impossible La Découverte 1998
- Mouriaux, René Mai 68 : l'entre deux de la modernité. Histoire de trente ans Presses de la
F.N.S.P. 1988
- The Imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968. South End Press, 1987.
(rec Richard Barbrook)
- 4.7 religious and spiritual cultures (by
region)
***EUROPE
- Religion and the rise of western culture. Christopher Dawson. Sheed and Ward, 1950
(Gifford lectures 1948-49, rec auteurs et penseurs de la droite: also in French: La religion et la formation de la civilisation
occidentale. Payot, 1953.)
- 4.8 (histories of) religious and spiritual
cultures
- 4.8.0. RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY (GENERAL)
- Jean-Jacques Wunenburger. Le sacre. Que sais-je?
- La Lumiere vient de l'occident. Daryush Shayegan. Editions de l'Aube.
(how to re-integrate East and West, and the crucial role of the West in cultural/spiritual renewal - strongly recommended by Le
Nouvel Observateur)
- Varieties of Religion Today . William James Revisited by Charles Taylor . Harvard University Press
("A hundred years after William James delivered the celebrated lectures that became The Varieties of Religious Experience, one
of the foremost thinkers in the English-speaking world returns to the questions posed in James's work to clarify the circumstances
and conditions of religion in our day. A mix of the philosophy and sociology of religion, Charles Taylor's book maintains a clear
perspective on James's work in its historical and cultural contexts, while casting a new and revealing light upon the present.
Promising to transform current debates about religion and secularism, Varieties of Religion Today is much more than a revisiting
of James's classic. Rather, it places James's analysis of religious experience and the dilemmas of doubt and belief in an
unfamiliar but illuminating context, namely the social horizon in which questions of religion come to be presented to individuals in
the first place. Taylor begins with questions about the way in which James conceives his subject, and shows how these questions
arise out of different ways of understanding religion that confronted one another in James's time and continue to do so today.
Evaluating James's treatment of the ethics of belief, he goes on to develop an innovative and provocative reading of the public
and cultural conditions in which questions of belief or unbelief are perceived to be individual questions. What emerges is a
remarkable and penetrating view of the relation between religion and social order and, ultimately, of what "religion" means.")
- PRE-HISTORIC RELIGIONS/SHAMANISM
- Clottes. J, et Lewis-Williams, Les chamanes de la préhistoire, textes intégral, polémiques et
réponses, Ed La maison des roches, 2001.
(Texte initial : Les chamanes de la préhistoire, Transe et magie dans les grottes ornées, Ed Seuil, 1996 (Très bel ouvrage
d'illustration de l'art préhistorique. Dialogue between french and south african paleontologist, recommended by Automates
Intelligents)
4.8.1 WESTERN META-CIVILISATION
- CHRISTIANITY
- Le Desenchantement du Monde. By Marcel Gauchet.
(this is a most important classic, a political history of the christian monotheistic tradition, and how it was itself responsible for the
ulterior secularisation)
- THE NEXT CHRISTENDOM by Philip Jenkins. Copyright © 2002 by
Philip Jenkins.
("The globalization of Christianity is addressed in a new book by Philip Jenkins called " The New Christendom." The growth of
Christianity is now primarily of the fundamentalist strain - Evangelical and Pentecostal - and its growth is primarily in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America, not North America
and Europe. The repercussions of this development, according to Jenkins, will be two strains of Christianity, with the Western
variety only about 20% by 2050. The political repercussions could be attempts made for Fundamentalist Christian states. Unlike
Huntington, he believes that the
number of Christians will be greater than Muslims in the future. ")
- Teachings of the Christian Mystics. ed. by Andrew Harvey. Shambhala.
(anthology from church fathers to modern mystics such as Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths.)
- THE GNOSTICS
- The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from early Christianity to Modern Nihilism. By Ioan P.
Couliano. NY: Harper, 1992. (survey of dualistic mythologies until modern times, recommended by
Todd Pratum)
-Les gnoses dualistes d'occident Ioan Couliano.Plon.1990
("En plus d'une excellent e étude sur le gnositicisme, Couliano inaugure ici une nouvelle méthodologie en science des religions,
basée sur l'utilisation de systèmes formels inpsitrés de la bilogie theorique et des mathématiques fractales. - remi sussan)
- Filoramo, Giovanni. 1990. A History of Gnosticism. Trans. Anthony
Alcock. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Jonas, Hans. 1970. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of
Christianity. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
- Pagels, Elaine. 1979. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books.
- Williams, Michael Allen. 1996. Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious
Category. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
extra: Novel
- Het Qumram-mysterie. Eliette Abecassis. Westland, 1997
("indrukwekkende roman over de Dode Zee-rollen, geschreven door een Joodse filosofe - een theologische thriller)
- ISLAM
- The Origins of the Koran. Ed. by Ibn Warraq.
Important anthology of scientific writings on the Koran and its background.
- Fazlur Rahman. Islam and Modernitym Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Univ of Chicago
Pr, 1984 (recommended Negri)
- Akbar Ahmed. Postmodernism and Islam. Routledge, 1992. (recommended Negri)
- La Psychanalyse a l'epreuve de l'islam. Fethi Benslama. Aubier, 2002.
(an extension of Freud's work 'l'Homme Moise et la religion monotheiste', in which the author tries to understand fundamentalist
excesses but also the general attitude to women for example, he traces it back to the disavowed relationship of Abraham with
Azar, a slave woman - recommended by Le Monde)
- JUDAISM
- Contributions a l'histoire du judaisme. Arnaldo Momigliano. Ed. de l'Eclat.
("autobiographie intellectuelle d'un grand historien de la culture greco-romaine qui interroge ses propres racines, et ses
rencontres avec des figures tel que Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, etc... - Nouvel Obs)
- WESTERN POLYTHEISM
- Armstrong, A.D., ed. Classical Mediterrean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman. New York:
Crossroad, 1989.
- Barkan, Leonard. The Gods Made Flesh: metamorphosis and the pursuit of paganism. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale, 1986
('deep contemplation and history of the pagan idea and its transformation over the last 2000 years', Pratum)
- Chuvin, Pierre. A Chronicle of the Last Pagans. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr, 1990
- Fox, Robin Lane. Pagans and Christians, 1986.
('Oeuvre monumentale', Antaios) (french translation: Universite de Toulouse)
- L'Impensable Polytheisme. Paris: Ed. des Archives Contemporaines, 1988.
(Antaios mentions it particularly looks at how polytheism has been considered either progress or degeneration across the ages)
- Jones, P. & N. Pennick. A History of Pagan Europe. London: Routledge, 1995.
('extraordinaire synthese, a lire absolument' , Antaios)
- Smith, John Holland. The Death of Classical Paganism. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976
- The Conversion of Europe. From Paganism to Christianity 371-1386 AD. London: Fontana Press,
1998.
- Le Paganisme dans l'Empire Romain. R. MacMullen & R. Fletcher. Paris: PUF
- Paganisme et Christianisme du IVieme au VIIIieme siecle. R. MacMullen. Paris: Belles Lettres,
1998.
("Comment la repression chretienne pu tres difficulement liquider l'heritage paien", Antaios)
- L'autorite et le sacre. Peter Brown. Paris: Ed. Noesis, 1998.
(one of the recognised experts on late antiquity, deals with the incomplete process of christianisation of pagan E urope, amongst other subjects.
Recommended by Antaios.).
E. D. Dodds. / PAGAN & CHRISTIAN IN AGE OF ANXIETY (rec Kenneth Smith)
subtopic: Greece
- Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: Univ of Calif Press, 1951
- Martin, Luther H. The Hellenistic Religions: an introduction. New York: Oxford Univ Pr, 1987
- Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
subtopic: Egypt
- The East Face of the Helicon. M.L. West. Oxford Univ. Pr., 1997.
(reviews Egypt and its conceptions of death and bur ial- rec by expert in Hellenism)
- Ancient Egyptian Religion. Stephen Quirke. British Museum Press, 1992.
- Death in Ancient Egypt. A.J. Spencer. Penguin Books, 1982.
comparison: Hindu Polytheism
- Alain Danielou. The Gods of India. New York: Inner Traditions, 1985.
- Alain Danielou. Le Polytheisme Hindou (also: Mythes et Dieux de l'Inde). Flammarion. ("Fondamental"
,dixit Antaios)
4.8.1 EASTERN META-CIVILISATION
- Chemin du Labyrinthe. Alain Danielou
("souvenirs d'orient et d'occident", these are a sort of memoirs of a very rich spiritual life, by someone, a perennialist
conservative a la Rene Guenon, who mostly rejected the western, and particularly post-enlightenment western tradition and
encountered the East, becoming a student of Shivaism, one of the earlier traditions within Hinduism, highly recommended by
Antaios)
-BUDDHISM
- Stephen Batchelor. Buddhism Without Beliefs
("argues that all the superstitious stuff can be set aside as irrelevant to a selective personal appropriation of the good (humanistic, rational) stuff in the
Buddhist tradition." - postconpol)
- A Concise History of Buddhism. By Skilton (Shtiramati). Windhorse Pubn. (rec Western Buddhism
order)
- New Currents in Western Buddhism. Sangharakshita. Windhorse Pubn. (rec Western Buddhist
order)
extra: explanatory/canonical
- Meeting the Buddhas: a guide to buddhas, bodhisattvas, and tantric deities. Vessantara. Windhorse
Pubn.
(introduction to the deities and the correct practices related to them - rec Western Buddhist Order)
- The Eternal Legacy. An Introduction to the Canonical Literature of Buddhism. Sangharakshita.
Windhorse Pubn. (rec Western Buddhist order)
- The Three Jewels. The Central Ideals of Buddhism. Sangharakshita. Windhorse Pubn. (rec Western
Buddhist order)
- The Ten Pillars of Buddhism. Sangharakshita. Windhorse Pubn. (rec Windhorse Pubn.)
- HINDUISM
- Alain Danielou. The Gods of India. New York: Inner Traditions, 1985.
- Alain Danielou. Le Polytheisme Hindou (also: Mythes et Dieux de l'Inde). Flammarion. ("Fondamental"
(dixit Antaios).
- Y. Tardan-Masquelier. L'Hindouisme. Paris: Bayard, 1999.
- Windows into the infinite: the guide to hindu scriptures. By Barbara Powell. Jain Pubn. (Tricycle)
- Teachings of the Hindu Mystics. Ed. by A,ndrew Harvey. Shambhala.
(anthology)
- TAOISM
- Le Dompteur des flots: Lao Tseu et le taoisme. Max Kaltenmark. Seuil, 1965.
- Le Taoisme et les religions chinoises (Henri Maspero), 1971
- Taoist meditation Isabelle Robinet. State Univ of New York 1993
(France : meditation taoiste, dervy 1979, albin michel 1995)
("A very scholarly study about the mystical practice of the Mao chan sect of Taoism. Adepts of this school tried to gain illumination and immortality by
visualizing various gods in their body. A strongly poetic and magical form of Taoism, far from the bastardized westernized versions trying to, present
Taoism as a kind of "spiritually correct" religion, synthesis of gymnastic and new age fuzziness ..." Remi Sussan)
- The taoist body. Kritofer Shipper. University of California Press 1994(France : Le Corps taoiste
Fayard 1982)
("By using the metaphor of the body, Schipper tries to describe the taoism in its entirety. Schipper begin with the social body, explaining how Taoism
regulates life of Chinese villages, before entering in more esoteric considerations on spiritual alchemy or visualization. Schipper is not only a scholar,
working in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes etudes (Sorbonne) he has also been ordained as a Taoist master in 1967" - Remi Sussan)
- ZOROASTRIANISM
- Zoroastre. Prophete de l'Iran. Jean Varenne. Paris: Dervy, 1996.
("Varenne a tenu a presenter le Zoroastrianisme de la maniere la plus pedagogique possible", Antaios)
- 4.9 religious and spiritual topics
- DEATH AND DYING
- Death in Ancient Egypt. A.J. Spencer. Penguin Books, 1982.
- EVIL/THE DEVIL
- L'histoire generale du diable. Gerald Messadie. Laffont.
- Le Mal. Marcel Neush. Centurion.
- GOD
- Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, Ballantine Books, NY, 1993.
- God and the Unconscious, by Victor White, O.P. (Chicago, Regnery, 1953.), 1-2.]
(Recommended by William Ducey: "Therefore it seems logical that in the growth of the personality structure according to the Wilber-Bellah scheme,
there
comes a take-off point when the self can no longer grow within the protective confines of religious authority. At this point, it is driven by the central élan
of the human spirit to go off on its own into a new form of experience that is able to carry it deeper into the tracklessness of human existence
And indeed, gods must die that men may live and grow. Image-breaking is no less a part and parcel of human life and history than image-making; it is
also no less part and parcel of man's religion, and no less essential to it. For the fixed image evokes the fixed stare, the fixed loyalty which may blind
man's vision to the claims of further and wider loyalties, and so paralyze the human spirit and crush its inherent will to advance and to venture. The
painful recognition of the clay feet of old idols is indispensable to human growth; it is also indispensable to the emergence of more appropriate
figures for human awe, devotion and service. This is the inexorable law of growth both in the individual and the group.")
- GODDESS
- The Philosophy of Compassion: The Return of the Goddess. By Esme Wynne-Tyson. London:
Stuart, 1962.
("Superior scholarship with complete history of Goddess worship and how it was overcome.")
- Shlain, Leonard, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, Viking,
1998, p. 1
("Argues that the alphabet promoted the left-masculine brain functions.")
- Erich Neumann. The Great Mother: an analysis of an archetype. Bollingen Foundation / Routledge,
1996.
- Pierre Solie. La Femme essentielle. Mythanalyse de la Grande Mere et de ses Fils-amant.
Seghers-Laffont, 1980. (rec Pascal Houba)
- Marija Gimbutas. 1) Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 BC University of California
Press, 1974.; 2) The Language of the Goddess San Francisco, 1989.
3) The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, Harpercollins, 1997
- Twilight Goddess. Spiritual feminism and feminine spirituality. By Thomas Cleary and Sartaz Aziz.
Shambhala,
("a guided tour of feminine principles, symbols, and imaginary" as found in the major non-christian world religions, including
Sufism)
subtopic: MARY
- In Search of Mary: The Woman and the Symbol. by Sally Cunneen. New York: Random House,
1996. 403 pp.
- Mary Through the Ages. By Jaroslav Pelikan.
(Crosscurrents recommend reading both Pelikan's and Cunneen's books, the first for its comprehensive 'intellectual narrative', the second for its more
subjective approach which 'complements and sometimes surpasses Pelikan's work)
- HEAVEN AND HELL
- Kohler, Kaufman, Heaven and Hell in Comparative Religion, Macmillan Publishing, NY, 1923.
- Le Goff, Jaques, The Birth of Purgatory, University of Chicago Press, 1984.
- Moore, Clifford Herschell, Ancient Beliefs in the Immortality of the Soul, Longmans, Green and
Co., NY, 1931.
- Turner, Alice K., The History of Hell, Haircourt & Brace, NY, 1993.
- Heaven and Hell. Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg Foundation Publ. 2000
(the classic by the Swedish mystic visionary that Suzuki called the 'Buddha of the West'; see also 'Debates with Devils, what
Swedenborg heard in hell' and Conversations with Angels, both from Chrysalis Books)
- GENDER
- Marinus et Marina. Claude Louis-Combet. Flammarion, 1979.
(an account of the spiritual experience with androgyny, based on the lives of Christian saints, highly acclaimed - also
recommended is his autobiography "Le Recours au Mythe", Jose Corti, 2002, dedicated to a lifelong encounter with the power of
mythology)
- NON-DUALITY
- Anthologie de la Non-dualite. Ed. par V. Loiseleur. Paris: Table Ronde, 1997.
(receuil de texte des differentes traditions, Antaios)
- PANTHEISM
- M.P. Levine. Pantheism, a non-theistic concept of deity. London: Routledge, 1994.
"un fameux travail de debrousssaillage", un livre du plus haut interest (Antaios)
- PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS / SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION
- Sacred Quest. The Evolution and Future of the Human Soul. L. Robert Keck. Chrysalis Books.
(the evolution of the human soul in three stages, Swedenborg inspired)
- THE SACRED
- L'Homme et le Sacre. By Roger Caillois.
- WOMEN IN RELIGION (role of)
- The Moon and the Flowers: a woman's path to enlightenment. Ed. by Kalyanavaca. Windhorse
Pubn.
("vivid portrait of what it means to follow the Buddhist path as a woman in the modern world" - rec Western Buddhist order)
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