¿Por qué esta obra es tan importante y el autor, uno de los más serios de este siglo? Porque se trata de una comprension cabal del funcionamiento de nuestra civilización occidental. El libro (los tres volúmenes)es una desmitificación de ciertos conceptos harto conocidos, de clara tendencia socialista, a través de los cuales se ha pretendido transformar sociedades enteras. El concepto de justicia social es uno de ellos, en virtud del cuál se han encarado acciones políticas con resultados conocidos por todos. Esta obra de Hayek es la obra de alguien que ha entendido profundamente al ser humano y su sociedad, y que ha comprendido que es un estado de libertad su ámbito natural. La teoría de la Evolución, parece confirmarle esto al autor. De todos modos, uno se encontrará con grandes argumentos y exposiciones a partir de los cuáles, si es que todavía no se ha convencido de las bondades del liberalismo; tendrá un gran motivo para empezar a hacerlo.

My sweet friends, the ones who concern themselves with themselves, critically, have seen to it that Nietzsche remains under careful supervision. Why does Nietzsche remain the "mechanized philosopher"? Why does Nietzsche seem to be the founding father of a system of thought but does not have any representable systems of thought disseminated in his work? Why is Nietzsche "a woman"? All these questions can be answered, possibly, if you read LOOKING AFTER NIETZSCHE.

This is the first serious, critical book I have read which I would liken to the experience of reading a comic-book. It almost seems like you're a gossip when you read this book. While addressing very complex issues concerning Post-Modernism's recent memory: Signature-context, the transcription of care into the family totem, and the "ghost in the machine", the book retains a lively, mischeivous tone while remaining dead-serious and poker faced.

I recommend this book not only for its wonderful contributors, or its breadth and insight (check out Sarah Kofman's, "Metaphoric Architectures"), but because, in spite of everything, this book seems to be a collection of thoughts about a very intense friend who sometimes needs some wary yet loving attention.

Stanley Gemmell

At first I became interested in this book due to my interest in Feuerbach but was immediately overwhelmed by Engels' command of the history of European philosophy from the Greeks to his present time. From what little I have read of Marx himself, it seems an irony that history has placed Engels subordinately to Marx. Engels is a first rate intellect not to be overlooked. This brief, content filled book, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy," is an excellent overview of continental philosophy and the brilliant zeitgeist that permeated pre-turn of the century European thought, and which has lamentably fallen into disuse in our own time. This book, published in 1888, takes us from Hegel to Feuerbach, to the most sublime manifestations of idealism and pragmatic materialism (hence Marx's dialectical materialism), conditioning for us all along the way religion and ethics; and all of this in the span of 50 pages. This book is well written, informative, and highly recommended for any student of European history, philosophy, sociology, and political science. It rather poops out at the end as Engels makes his final sales plug, but this weakness is tertiary to the overall scope and historical exegetics offered here.

The book really reads like a collection of four essays.

I). From Hegel to Feuerbach: This chapter is an overview of the failure of Hegelian thought that German philosophy was so imbued with in the mid-19th century, which also serves as a kind of marker for the beginning of modern philosophy.

II). Idealism and Materialism: This chapter is Engels version of sociology and psychological anthropology. His expectation of the emergence of a pragmatic materialism parallels that of Feuerbach's. This chapter leads through the death of idealism to the birth of materialism.

III). Feuerbach's Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: As the first chapter gives us an overview of Hegel, so this third chapter outlines the successes and failures of Feuerbach's thought. We also see the emergent thrust that led to Marxism in its organic position at the time of its advent, not as the polemics of conservative, Christian historians of today have painted it.

IV). Dialectical Materialism: Finally, chapter four outlines Engels's sociological expectations in the context of the preceeding three chapters; from feudalism to the industrial modernity of his time. Not only does Engels scetch out how Christianity became the possession of the ruling class as a means of government, but how philosophy too became a tool of their hegemony. His expectation that science would eventually meld with the worker rather than commercial interests belies the naivete that saw the failure of modern Marxism. His conclusion that philosophy too would emerge victorious along with the worker is certianly puzzling in hindsight, and can still be seen in the tenacious frustrations of post-modernism over the failure of Marxism.

Feuerbach aside, this little book is an excellent read full of vitality.

In the endless denunciations of totalitarianism even as neo-liberalism demolishes the achievements of a century of labor, we forget that it was the self-organization of the working class that spearheaded the real emergence of democracy and universal suffrage. This book attempts to demonstrate that Marx and Engels were the leading protagonists in that process. The book surveys the whole drama from the 1840's to the final period of Engels and German Social democracy, stressing the activist political role of Marx, whose passive British museum life as an uninvolved philosopher is exposed as the myth it is. Curiously mordant is the comparison of the reactions of Marx and Engels compared to that of Tocqueville to the period of revolution in 1848 and the coming of Napoleon. Tocqueville is seen for who he was then, not the author of his famous book, and now the democrat, Marx the svengalian. It seems hopeless to ever set any of this straight. This book presents a clear snapshot of the full sequence of events.
This reviewer has also reviewed "The Myth of the Proletariat". This commentary is a useful response to the thesis of that work.

This work is an essential history of the usage of the term 'democracy' as this crystalized in the era of the 1840's leaving Marx and Engels stranded with a series of acute but now misleading assertions and critiques of its meaning and actual content. The more is the pity since these views of Marx and Engels were at the onset far more democratic than those who fixed the word's meaning. Small wonder a legacy of bitterness festers here. To this is added the unfortunate confusion over the term, 'dictatorship of the proletariat, and the thinking of Marx is indeed ambiguous in this regard. The perceptions of those passing through the revolutions of 1848 are hard to reconstruct, as the brief alliance of classes led to the victory of one and the betrayal of the rest. This factor is what is responsible for the mistruct of 'democracy so-called'in the name of democracy in Marx and Engels, in a period before universal suffrage was an intrinsic part of the word 'democracy'.

This is the play that was used in the 1987 (?) movie, "Anne of Avonlea." It's really neat!

An excellent academic reference that is of special interest to English Majors studying Greek Mythology. This guide explores the meaning of Aphrodite and its connection to female sexuality, tenderness, procreation and subjectivity. Friedrich explores how the meaning of Aphrodite arose, how it is constituted and how it is motivated. Throughout, Friedrich gives special attention to Homer, the richest and most authoratative and to Sappho, whose poetry explores the sensous aspects of Aphrodite. Friedrich devotes some chapters, particulary chapter four, to contrasting Aphrodite to the other queens of heaven: Hera, Athena and Artemis and with this weaves aspects of virginity, intimacy, wisdom and worriorship together.

I'm not that fond of Lázaro Cárdenas or his legacy, but this book showed me a different side of him that made me realize he was a far more complex, shrewd, practical and wiser man than I initially thought him to be.

However slanted the author's appraisal of his subject may seem to me (I'm sorry but Mr. Cárdenas was more of a cacique than a democrat, if he ever was one), the book is full of facts, many of them unknown to most Mexicans, and makes an interesting reading. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Manifiesto Comunista (en alemán, Manifest der kommunistischen Partei), declaración de principios y objetivos de la Liga Comunista (organización secreta de artesanos e intelectuales alemanes emigrados) publicada en Londres, poco antes de la Revolución de 1848 de París, que tuvo lugar en febrero. Escrito por Karl Marx en colaboración con Friedrich Engels, el Manifiesto del Partido Comunista (su nombre completo) está dividido en cuatro partes, precedidas de una introducción.

As a film-maker, Murnau's films have been textbooks for my work in features. Eisner's book made me see "Nosferatu""Last Laugh" and "Sunrise' clearer. It showed how Noferatu was not just a "cool horror film", but an important step in growing film grammar. Read the book once, in 1983, and haven't forgotten it.