Paradiso

by Gillian Rose

Shortly before her death, Gillian Rose began work on a new book - her Paradiso - thus fulfilling her promise at the end of Love's Work to 'stay in the fray, in the revel of ideas and risk'. Confident even only a week before her death that she could complete the work, all that remains are these fragments. In them, Rose combines the detached insight of one who is taking leave, or who has almost left, with a desire to participate in the joys of life until the last. Exceeding the injunction to 'keep your mind in hell and despair not', Paradiso sketches a movement through the hell and despair of terminal illness to an affirmation of the joys of companionship and memory. Paradiso contains some of Rose's most serene and affirmatory writing, and in that light completes one of the most remarkable philosophical oeuvres of the late twentieth century.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Memoir

57 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Gillian Rose (20 September 1947 – 9 December 1995) was a British scholar who worked in the fields of philosophy and sociology. Notable facets of this social philosopher's work include criticism of neo-Kantianism and post-modernism, along with what has been described as "a forceful defence of Hegel's speculative thought."

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth a read for any fans of Rose’s devastatingly elegant prose. The discussions of Augustine and Gnosticism are particularly exceptional.