Blithe Power, Tortured History: A New Key for Effective Action

by James Clark

This book begins with a close consideration of a fundamental issue of world history, namely, the mustering of sufficient grounds or reasons for effectively dealing with the world. In the course of that beginning, it listens carefully to the attempts in this area by three prominent thinkers of the recent past, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl and Jacques Derrida. From there it proceeds to work through factors of intentional consciousness misplayed by the three abovementioned stalwarts and ignored by a surprising percentage of the population. Along the way, it draws upon the efforts in this regard by novelist, Marcel Proust, physicists, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, John Gribbin and David Darling, choreographers, George Balanchine and David Parsons, graphic designer, A.M. Cassandre, composer, Olivier Messiaen, Bill Evans, jazz pianist and composer, and film directors, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson, Robert and Luc Dardenne, Agnes Varda and Billy Wilder.

327 pages, Paperback

First published October 24, 2006