| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Penguin English Library features the best novels in the English language. Get lost in the amazing stories, browse the Penguin English Library. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
About the Author
IT was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Written by Poland's foremost poet, who emigrated to America after the war, it is presented as an analysis of intellectual life under Stalin. It serves, though, as an analysis of the life of the mind under any intellectually oppressive dictatorship, and the processes which force, cajole and woo thinking men and women to believe self-evident lies.
If you've ever wondered how people can have believed such culturally self destructive nonsense as Stalin's progroms, and convinced themselves that it is socially necessary not only to do so but force others to do so too, this is the book for you. By extension, though - and Milosz won't allow his case to remain in the East or the past - whether we believe the lies of left or right, liberalism, libertarianism or the 'third way', we can all potentially persuade ourselves to deceive ourselves and others for the good of our cause.
This book is a wonder, and deserves careful study by any one who aspires to political office or intellectual leadership. More importantly, it should be read by all of us who have a vested interest in the integrity of our political life. The temptation to by dazzled by a hypothetical future, and to make ourselves and others in the present pay horrific prices for that, is ever present, and requires constant deconstruction and examination.
Only someone who had lived in Stalin's thought-world could analyse it so clearly; perhaps only someone who had also lived in the West could see the increasing relevance of those lessons for the deomocratic countries too.
He tells a great account of how he and his friends who during the german occupation witnessed and lived within the german system which they fought and propagated against,which demanded only slavery of the body .
Then after that occupation they were occupied by the soviet union.which demanded slavery of both body and mind and to conform and then propagate for it.He gives a account of four friends(mainly part of the polish intelligencia)he spent his childhood and the war with and how they sold there pre-war beliefs and talents to help stalin and his minions in the mastery of the polish people.
Many intellectuals believe that their interests are best served by socialism or communism. Milosz explains why they are frequently fooled into believing this, and why many of the very components of socialism and communism that intellectuals most covet--freedom from vulgar market forces and important roles in the administration of society--are the very forces that strip them of their liberty. He illustrates this process with four character examples.
Though written in the throes of the Cold War, this work could not be more timely. And though it is written as an attack on Communism (with a big "C") and is rife with often knee-jerk anti-Russian rhetoric, it's arguements can be easily applied to all forms of totalitarianism, both left and right. Mostly, Milosz is attempting to defend the chaotic human condition from idealogical molding and, considering contemporary encroachments of politics, government, and religion into the lives of human beings, this book is as valid and important today as it was in 1953. Not to be missed.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
