Being and nothingness. Review on 5 Best Books

Minor glitch. Since I wanted to kick around with Jean Paul Sartre's classic tome'Being and Nothingess' and not finding the relevant category anywhere on MS I resorted to the next best thing. Gee.I regret if it caused any hair-splitting but you can go soak your head.

Being And Nothingness

A mind numbing book. I successfully went through all of one small passage before throwing in the towel and abdicating to the showers.(Then I realized my folly and had to barge out in my b'day suit.but that's' another story).Franz Kafka said about someone or somebody said about Franz Kafka that'the whole idea was to get the reader to re-read'.

This applies equally well to Jean Paul Sartre, only with added firepower. Sartre I believe was an existentialist. I still get my mountains and oceans mixed up when it comes to philosophy. In fact one of the first books on philosophy that I could actually manage to laugh my way through

was'Bluff your way in philosophy.' A hand-guide sorts by a university of Texas, Austin prof. who

had learnt the necessary ropes in Cambridge, UK, where he had secured a suma cum laude.( He off -

handedly attributed this to his thesis on such an arcane subject that nobody was able to test him

on it.)

Anyway it was Albert Camus's' The Outsider' which re-opened the old wounds. Albert too was an existentialist of the first order. Later many blamed it on the prevailing fashion in chic-french society. Talk through your hat and get wined and dined on the house. It was a done thing.'Outsider', inspite of all the trepidation I had felt when I picked up the book, turned out to be just like any other novel. Meaning an average reader could easily wade through and not feel breezy on top. This brings us to, as many intelligent readers would have easily guessed by now, What made Sartre play with fire.

Establish the premise and then enter with guns blazing:

Time was when books were written either for self or for a very closed circle of friends. Literacy still had a long way to go before reaching endemic proportions and majority of people who could read belonged to the house of god, the clergy. By the way no love was ever lost between the two, the clergy and the existentialists. The closest they ever came to touching each other, maybe with a barge pole was when existentialists labeled themselves as agnostics.

Meanwhile best-sellers as a phenomenon was still a few centuries away, so writers cared two hoots about the readership. No more no less.

That's the sleeve up where our trump is - make Philosophy one tough nut to crack. Who the heck is gonna read it anyway. One way or the other it's all the same. Besides, if somebody's bonnet does buzz one gets to hold court for all the time on offer. Throw in some dazzling foot-work, add few cart-wheels and you have them from their short and curlies.(crude but absolute truth)

Another basic thing. It's a universal rule that members of each profession try to make their job as exclusive as possible. Just like the court magician who resorted to hocus - pocus, everyday doctors, lawyers, clergy-men et al resort to greek - latin. It's the wow-awe-gape factor. We all love it when we are told how difficult a thing we are doing, what big mountains we are scaling. In that respect Philosophy is no different.

Only more fun than others.