Customer Reviews

"Divine Madness": Plato's Case Against Secular Humanism

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pieper's interpretation of Plato's late Dialogue Phaedrus, and how Plato's views of where and how divine inspiration comes about, or what he calls "being-beside-oneself". Of all of Pieper's books I have read, thus far, none conjured up similarities of thought to Von Eschenbach's "Parzival", or Joseph campbell, or Allan Watts as this book does. His discription of the complications of staying in the state of "being-besides-oneself" may be the sort of advice Parzival might have used on his first experience of being in the Grail Castle; or, for that matter, for a surfer riding a wave. Pieper says the trouble is, "He can on condition (of being-besides-oneself) that when recieving the impetus born of emotion, he accepts and sustains it in lasting purity. In this context the possibilities of corruption, adulteration, dissimulation, pretension, and psuedo-actualization lie dangeriously close." It reminds me of Joseph Campbell saying "the privilidge of a life-time is being who you are"; or Allan Watts discussing the benifits of living in spontaneity, trusting in one's first thoughts, without the duelistic inner voice of self-doubt that makes one a splintered person; or, for that matter, "The Force"; or, further, the Kaballa's admiration of chaos; or Albert Camus' facination with the absurd. Pieper, in a nutshell, states that this divinely inspired "being-besides-oneself" may come from an unforseen act of chaos or "ecstatic frenzy"; or submission to god, creation; or Poetic mania; or beauty (of a very specific nature). Peiper, seemed to be saying, that like the Holy Grail, this "being-besides-oneslef" is a difficult thing to find if one is, on the whole, consciously looking for it. Pieper seemed to struggle to find a voice for this book, and it didn't seem entirely complete, thus the 4 stars.

This is a short essay on the real location of happiness. Pieper writes this book in a sofisticated way (perhaps is the translation) but his ideas are clear and deep.