You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
None
Jean Francois-Revel, a pillar of French intellectual life in our time, became world famous for his challenges to both Communism and Christianity. Twenty-seven years ago, his son, Matthieu Ricard, gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism -- not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters. Meeting in an inn overlooking Katmandu, these two profoundly thoughtful men explored the questions that have occupied humankind throughout its history. Does life have meaning? What is consciousness? Is man free? What is the value of scientific and material progress? Why is there suffering, war, and hatred? Their conversation is not merely abstract: they ask each other questions about ethics, rights, and responsibilities, about knowledge and belief, and they discuss frankly the differences in the way each has tried to make sense of his life. Utterly absorbing, inspiring, and accessible, this remarkable dialogue engages East with West, ideas with life, and science with the humanities, providing wisdom on how to enrich the way we live our lives.
None
An English translation of Jean-Francois Revel's 1999 essay in which he examines the response of French intellectuals to the collapse of Soviet communism in the decade after its end.
In this father-son dialogue, Revel and Ricard explore the most fundamental questions of human existence and the ways in which they are embraced by Eastern and Western thought. In this meeting of minds, they touch upon philsophy and spirituality, science and politics, psychology and ethics. They raise the eternal questions: Does life have meaning? What is consciousness? Is man free? Why is there suffering, war, hatred? They present and practical answers that offer revolutionary approaches to how we can enrich the way we live our lives.
A distinguished French philosopher argues that the greatest threat to modern democracy is the dissemination of false information, myths that endanger the viability of freedom and the democratic way of life.
For while admittedly imperfect, democracy is still the only self-correcting system, while totalitarian societies are always forced to the catastrophic end of their own logic. Yet despite this worldwide rejection of utopian illusions, the victory of democracy is by no means historically inevitable. Vigorous alternatives remain, particularly in the Third World, where Islamic fundamentalism offers perhaps the most serious contemporary challenge to democratic values. In order to ensure its success, Revel argues, we must identify our interests with the flourishing of democratic principles. Thus, our foreign aid must place political reforms ahead of economic development, and we must establish a right to intervene in the internal affairs of nondemocratic regimes, respecting only those that are rooted in popular sovereignty. But even under democratic governments, we are unlikely ever to construct a world that is much better than ourselves.