Recomendaciones

Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.

Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Born of a terrible insomnia—"a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell"—this book presents the youthful Emil Cioran, a self-described "Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to a metaphysical revelation. "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity... His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."—Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix "The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming... Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."—Publishers Weekly, starred review "This is self-pity as epigram, the sort of dyspeptic pronouncement that gets most people kicked out of bed but that has kept Mr. Cioran going for the rest of his life."—Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review

„Carnetul unui afurisit este ultima carte scrisă de Cioran în limba română. Manuscrisul restituit aici este mai voluminos decât ineditele apărute la Humanitas – Despre Franța, Îndreptar pătimaș II și Razne. Un manuscris fără titlu, așadar, numit astfel în virtutea unui pasaj pe care Cioran îl scoate, dacă se poate spune astfel, din carnetul afurisitului care este. Contextul e legat de un episod oarecum erotic (cititorul îl va descoperi singur), în ciuda orientării metafizice pe care textul o capătă mai apoi, în deplin contrast cu începutul amoros. Demn de reținut, prin urmare, și de utilizat pentru un titlu de carte pe care autorul nu a vrut să-l dea, din motive nu tocmai limpezi.“ — CONSTANTIN ZAHARIA Un om care crede absolut în ceva se poate socoti superior oricui, chiar lui Dumnezeu. Convingerea lui nestrămutată îi pune în mână cheia cu care să descuie toate porţile vremii şi ale veşniciei. E drept că acel om – deodată ce n-a suferit ispita îndoielilor – s-a născut blagoslovit de o atât de atotputernică neştiinţă încă din măruntaiele naive ale maicii sale, încât nici o întorsătură a lucrurilor n-ar avea ce să-l înveţe. — CIORAN

La Filosofía de la redención es la obra más importante del filósofo alemán Philipp Mainländer (1841-1876), cuyo pensamiento, olvidado durante más de un siglo, comienza a ser valorado actualmente en su justa dimensión. Seguidor de Arthur Schopenhauer, Mainländer ejerció una notable influencia sobre autores como Eduard von Hartmann o Friedrich Nietzsche, quien reorientó su filosofía después de leer y estudiar intensamente este libro. El profesor Franco Volpi, por su parte, lo sitúa en la corriente del nihilismo decimonónico; pero su filosofía conecta, más allá de dicha adscripción, con numerosos parámetros de la cultura contemporánea, sobre todo en un momento como el actual, en el que nuestro mundo atraviesa una crisis de fundamentos que ha vuelto a centrar la atención sobre el pesimismo filosófico. La presente traducción (a cargo de Manuel Pérez Cornejo, en cuidada edición de Carlos Javier González Serrano) incluye, por primera vez en español, la edición original del texto central de la Filosofía de la redención. Una obra imprescindible para comprender el devenir del pensamiento en el siglo XIX y para poder atender, con rigor y profundidad, a autores como Schopenhauer, Nietzsche o E. von Hartmann.

Man and His Symbols owes its existence to one of Jung's own dreams. The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book. Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, Jung felt that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. Thus, the reader will gain new insights into himself from this thoughtful volume, which also illustrates symbols throughout history. Completed just before his death by Jung and his associates, it is clearly addressed to the general reader.

'What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?' Either/Or is the earliest of the major works of Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most startlingly original thinkers and writers of the nineteenth century, and the first which he wrote under a pseudonym, as he would for his greatest philosophical writings. Adopting the viewpoints of two distinct figures with radically different beliefs—the aesthetic young man of Part One, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section—Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer's Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman. A masterpiece of duality, Either/Or is an exploration of the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical—both meditating ironically and seductively upon Epicurean pleasures, and eloquently expounding the noble virtues of a morally upstanding life. This lightly abridged edition fully conveys the vigour and eloquence of the original. Alastair Hannay's introduction explains the philosophical background to the work and places it in the context of its times.

Als der sechzehnjährige Alfred Rosenberg wegen antisemitischer Äußerungen, die er während einer Schulrede gemacht hat, ins Büro seines Schulleiters gerufen wird, muss er zur Strafe Passagen über Spinoza aus der Autobiografie des deutschen Dichters Goethe auswendig lernen. Rosenberg ist verblüfft, als er entdeckt, dass Goethe, sein Idol, ein großer Bewunderer des jüdischen Philosophen Baruch Spinoza aus dem 17. Jahrhundert war. Noch lange nach seinem Schulabschluss wird Rosenberg von diesem „Spinoza-Problem“ verfolgt: Wie konnte das deutsche Genie Goethe von einem Angehörigen einer Rasse inspiriert worden sein, die Rosenberg seiner eigenen für so unterlegen hielt – einer Rasse, die er zu vernichten entschlossen war? Auch Spinoza selbst war zu Lebzeiten mit Strafe vertraut. Wegen seiner unorthodoxen religiösen Ansichten wurde er 1656 im Alter von vierundzwanzig Jahren aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Amsterdams ausgeschlossen und aus der einzigen Welt verbannt, die er je gekannt hatte. Obwohl sein Leben kurz war und er mittellos in großer Isolation lebte, schuf er dennoch Werke, die den Lauf der Geschichte veränderten. Im Laufe der Jahre stieg Rosenberg in den Reihen auf und wurde zu einem unverblümten Nazi-Ideologen, einem treuen Diener Hitlers und dem Hauptverfasser der Rassenpolitik des Dritten Reiches. Dennoch ließ ihn seine Besessenheit von Spinoza nicht los. Indem er sich die unerwartete Überschneidung von Spinozas Leben mit dem Rosenbergs vorstellt, erkundet der international erfolgreiche Romanautor Irvin D. Yalom die Denkweisen zweier Männer, die dreihundert Jahre voneinander trennen. Mit seinen Fähigkeiten als Psychiater erforscht er das Innenleben Spinozas, des heiligen säkularen Philosophen, und Rosenbergs, des gottlosen Massenmörders.

אחרי "הדברים" וזוג גיבורים שהוא אולי לא יותר מהשתקפות בחלון הראווה, ואחרי "איזה טוסטוס קטן עם כידון מצופה כרום בקצה החצר?" וגיבור אלמוני שאפילו המחבר אינו זוכר את שמו, ב"איש ישן", הרומן השלישי שלו, מתמודד ז'ורז' פרק לראשונה עם דמות אמיתית, שאין לה שם אבל יש לה נפש. ברומן, הכתוב כולו בגוף שני, צולל פרק לתוך תודעתו של איש ישן. הגיבור הוא "אתה", סטודנט פריזאי בן עשרים וחמש, אולי בן דמותו של המחבר, שמרדים את חייו בהדרגה ומבקש לשקוע בריקנות המוחלטת. ב"איש ישן" מנסה ז'ורז' פרק לתאר את הבלתי ניתן לתאור ולהראות את מה שרואים כשהעיניים עצומות. המסע אל השינה עובר דרך אגמים של בדידות ודיכאון, אך מתגלה עד מהרה כשטף חלומי, עשיר ויפהפה של זכרונות, מחשבות ומראות. ויש גם סוף טוב עם גאולה קטנה.

Tristes Tropiques begins with the line ‘I hate travelling and explorers’, yet during his life Claude Lévi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin and the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found ‘human society reduced to its most basic expression’. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of ‘primitive’ man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.