book-of-the-month

Death Desire and Loss in Western Culture
by Jonathan Dollimore

The German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer once said that "without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing." Dollimore attests to this thought in his engaging study of death and its corresponding link to desire. In presenting funereal discourses of thinkers, writers, poets, and other literati throughout the ages, he offers a substantial contribution to Western intellectual history. As he examines the conversations between philosophers and writers, beginning with the pre-Socratics and finishing with postmodern theorists, his findings prove interesting--death has always been linked to desire in Western culture. He touches upon the work of almost every conceivable thinker: Heraclitus and Camille Paglia, Machiavelli and Marx, Shakespeare and Wagner, and, of course, the venerable Foucault. He concludes with a study of homoeroticism and AIDS, perhaps the most poignant modern example of desire linked with death. Although a little shaky on facts that are not within his usual academic milieu, and despite some antiquated bibliographic sources, Dollimore presents a marvelous, enrapturing, and accessible work for both the scholar and the armchair philosopher. Michael Spinella-From Booklist