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The End of Time
Three days after terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, David Horowitz discovered that he had prostate cancer. As America was rebuilding, he emerged from months of treatment with a “reprieve” from his disease. He emerged as well with this remarkable book of hard won insights about how we get to our end and what we learn along the way. A stunning departure from the polemics and social criticism that have made Horowitz one of our most controversial public intellectuals, The End of Time is a wide ranging, unflinching and lyrical meditation on subjects ranging from what parents inadvertently teach us in their deaths, to the forbidding reality of the cancer ward and the way in which figures like Mohammed Atta use death to become gods of their own mad creation. Hovering protectively over these ruminations and Horowitz’s personal crisis is his wife April, whose stubborn love reached into the heart of his medical darkness and led him back toward the light of this work. The End of Time is also about the redemptive power of language and literature. One of the writers appearing in its text is the Catholic philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal, whose Pensees functions as Horowitz’s model and guide. Citing Pascal’s famous observation that “the heart has its reasons of which reason does not know,” Horowitz “I do not have the faith of Pascal, but I know its feeling. While reason tells me the pictures will stop, I will be unafraid when death comes. I will feel my way toward the horizon in front of me, and my heart will take me home.
- GenresPhilosophy
156 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2005
8 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
David Horowitz
190 books337 followersDavid Joel Horowitz was an American conservative writer and activist. He was a founder and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC); editor of the Center's website FrontPage Magazine; and director of Discover the Networks, a website that tracks individuals and groups on the political left. Horowitz also founded the organization Students for Academic Freedom.
Horowitz wrote several books with author Peter Collier, including four on prominent 20th-century American families. He and Collier have collaborated on books about cultural criticism. Horowitz worked as a columnist for Salon.
From 1956 to 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left. He later rejected progressive ideas and became a defender of neoconservatism. Horowitz recounted his ideological journey in a series of retrospective books, culminating with his 1996 memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.
Horowitz wrote several books with author Peter Collier, including four on prominent 20th-century American families. He and Collier have collaborated on books about cultural criticism. Horowitz worked as a columnist for Salon.
From 1956 to 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left. He later rejected progressive ideas and became a defender of neoconservatism. Horowitz recounted his ideological journey in a series of retrospective books, culminating with his 1996 memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 9, 2020
Horowitz contemplates life and death. The lives of his parents and their passing and his own eminent passing from cancer.
Interesting to read how someone else ponders our time on earth and our inevitable leaving it.
Interesting to read how someone else ponders our time on earth and our inevitable leaving it.
August 22, 2012
Yet agian another fabulous philosophical dissection of life, death and religion. However, this did not move me as much as A POINT IN TIME. Perhaps the singular view of Horowitz as he recounts his hospitalization does not lend itself to as cosmic a view as his previously noted work. Still, a wonderful insight into the mind of one of our greatest contemporary political thinkers.
August 4, 2019
Burns with beautiful and painful intensity...
David Horowitz, the notorious reformer and self-proclaimed agnostic, having survived a brush with death, struggles to make sense of life.
I don't often pick up books that threaten to contain a long lecture, but I tried this one and was gripped by the way Horowitz illuminates the outline of a greater truth as he makes poetic connections between history and philosophy and personal anecdotes. I'm recommending his book with my highest praise.
(I'm being precise when I say Horowitz "illuminates the outline"; the greater truth is far too big for us to perceive it with clarity. The collective wisdom of our lives leads us to seek as David Horowitz has done, but we remain uncertain. Horowitz approaches the Great Questions most appropriately, understanding on one hand why human life is meaningless without answers, while at the same time remaining painfully aware that the answers, if they exist at all, are beyond our grasp. The great paradox is created because we must seek that which we will never truly find. To fail to seek is to be less than fully human; to declare that one has uncovered the complete and ultimate truth is the mark of a dangerous fanatic, and evil is sure to follow.)
The book drew me in and compelled me to continue. While my eyes moved across the pages, I felt I was in the presence of something overwhelming. It's as if Horowitz is my guide, urging me ever-closer to the curtain behind which God Himself must reside. But somehow there remains a boundary that we cannot cross in life, and so we have no choice but to return unfulfilled to our routines.
Read the book. It's a brief journey that leads to an essential vantage.
P.S. It has been noted that this is not a political book, and that's an accurate statement, insofar as its subject matter doesn't touch on any contemporary political battles. You won't find here the names of presidents or candidates or mainstream parties. But there is, among other topics, exploration of the human quest for utopia/Eden. Horowitz considers both the religious and secular extreme visions (as exemplified in our modern world by radical Islamists on one hand or Communists on the other), and contemplates how we come to perpetrate hell on earth when we were so intent on delivering heaven. As a one-time radical whose idealistic dreams were shattered when a close friend was murdered by erstwhile allies (which he has written about elsewhere), this contemplation is part of Horowitz's long journey. He is not writing about what's wrong with "the other guy"; his comments are addressed to every human heart, most of all his own.
David Horowitz, the notorious reformer and self-proclaimed agnostic, having survived a brush with death, struggles to make sense of life.
I don't often pick up books that threaten to contain a long lecture, but I tried this one and was gripped by the way Horowitz illuminates the outline of a greater truth as he makes poetic connections between history and philosophy and personal anecdotes. I'm recommending his book with my highest praise.
(I'm being precise when I say Horowitz "illuminates the outline"; the greater truth is far too big for us to perceive it with clarity. The collective wisdom of our lives leads us to seek as David Horowitz has done, but we remain uncertain. Horowitz approaches the Great Questions most appropriately, understanding on one hand why human life is meaningless without answers, while at the same time remaining painfully aware that the answers, if they exist at all, are beyond our grasp. The great paradox is created because we must seek that which we will never truly find. To fail to seek is to be less than fully human; to declare that one has uncovered the complete and ultimate truth is the mark of a dangerous fanatic, and evil is sure to follow.)
The book drew me in and compelled me to continue. While my eyes moved across the pages, I felt I was in the presence of something overwhelming. It's as if Horowitz is my guide, urging me ever-closer to the curtain behind which God Himself must reside. But somehow there remains a boundary that we cannot cross in life, and so we have no choice but to return unfulfilled to our routines.
Read the book. It's a brief journey that leads to an essential vantage.
P.S. It has been noted that this is not a political book, and that's an accurate statement, insofar as its subject matter doesn't touch on any contemporary political battles. You won't find here the names of presidents or candidates or mainstream parties. But there is, among other topics, exploration of the human quest for utopia/Eden. Horowitz considers both the religious and secular extreme visions (as exemplified in our modern world by radical Islamists on one hand or Communists on the other), and contemplates how we come to perpetrate hell on earth when we were so intent on delivering heaven. As a one-time radical whose idealistic dreams were shattered when a close friend was murdered by erstwhile allies (which he has written about elsewhere), this contemplation is part of Horowitz's long journey. He is not writing about what's wrong with "the other guy"; his comments are addressed to every human heart, most of all his own.
May 11, 2008
This is a memoir that is broken into nicely paced vignettes that cover his childhood, prostate cancer, and the story of his romance with April, his wife.
After reading about his intellectual life in the realm of ideas it struck me how his own redemption is manifest in the heated polemics he writes against totalitarians, utopians, and radicals. And it never hit me until I read this, when he said there is nothing he can do to change the inexorable reformers spirit, that he does this as pennance and not to change peoples' minds.
Early on he reveals a central flaw in agnosticism as a worldview - namely, you say you don't know and then make a declarative statement. He speaks of our collective uncertainty about the afterlife but in the same paragraph concludes that our shared humanity is to not know who we are or what we will become. I suspect he means that it is unknowable until you get there but that doesn't excuse the rueful mistake of saying we don't know who we are. It is forgivable and addressed right after this, yet a problem to be sure.
I find it curious that he writes of the knowledge of joining his parents in death though he's been espousing relativism in knowledge. And not just his parents - as would be a wish fulfillment - but Christopher Hitchens's mom as well, sounding strangely like the Christian conception of the communion of believers. Is he borrowing that belief from other traditions and then calling it his own? There is no speculation to that passage so it is another singular instance of him leaving his doubt behind.
His prose is unrelentingly honest and he makes passing reference to Saul Bellow, Genesis and Psalms, Pascal, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson, and others, and in the end leaves me with the thought that someday soon he might abandon his agnosticism for belief in God.
After reading about his intellectual life in the realm of ideas it struck me how his own redemption is manifest in the heated polemics he writes against totalitarians, utopians, and radicals. And it never hit me until I read this, when he said there is nothing he can do to change the inexorable reformers spirit, that he does this as pennance and not to change peoples' minds.
Early on he reveals a central flaw in agnosticism as a worldview - namely, you say you don't know and then make a declarative statement. He speaks of our collective uncertainty about the afterlife but in the same paragraph concludes that our shared humanity is to not know who we are or what we will become. I suspect he means that it is unknowable until you get there but that doesn't excuse the rueful mistake of saying we don't know who we are. It is forgivable and addressed right after this, yet a problem to be sure.
I find it curious that he writes of the knowledge of joining his parents in death though he's been espousing relativism in knowledge. And not just his parents - as would be a wish fulfillment - but Christopher Hitchens's mom as well, sounding strangely like the Christian conception of the communion of believers. Is he borrowing that belief from other traditions and then calling it his own? There is no speculation to that passage so it is another singular instance of him leaving his doubt behind.
His prose is unrelentingly honest and he makes passing reference to Saul Bellow, Genesis and Psalms, Pascal, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson, and others, and in the end leaves me with the thought that someday soon he might abandon his agnosticism for belief in God.
September 15, 2010
A very moving tale. I rarely agree with Horowitz on political or social issues, but in this work I found in him someone with whom I could commiserate. The book is a memoir that wrestles with meaning to an existence that is bound to finitude:
"I do not feel that life is a down-hill run. Nor do I think of it as an arc that rises steadily until it reaches it apogee, tapers, and arches back to earth. The fate we choose is inscribed in multiple flights. Some follow the gravity of rise and fall, while others – those of the spirit for example – may never head downward, but climb steadily to the end, where they just drop cliff-like into the dark."
In the end, he concludes, it is our companionship, our unique ability to transcend physical limitations and know the heart of another, that makes our lives meaningful. Given this, and the recognition of our ever-approaching corporeal demise, "there is no designated moment to set down the summary thoughts of a mind still counting. Whether you begin to die at the beginning … or whether you burn brightly to the end, you can’t wait forever to pass to others what you have learned."
I highly recommend The End of Time to anyone who has struggled with existential ponderings and, as a result, has felt like a lone traveller on a barren road. Horowitz, for a while, will be your companion.
"I do not feel that life is a down-hill run. Nor do I think of it as an arc that rises steadily until it reaches it apogee, tapers, and arches back to earth. The fate we choose is inscribed in multiple flights. Some follow the gravity of rise and fall, while others – those of the spirit for example – may never head downward, but climb steadily to the end, where they just drop cliff-like into the dark."
In the end, he concludes, it is our companionship, our unique ability to transcend physical limitations and know the heart of another, that makes our lives meaningful. Given this, and the recognition of our ever-approaching corporeal demise, "there is no designated moment to set down the summary thoughts of a mind still counting. Whether you begin to die at the beginning … or whether you burn brightly to the end, you can’t wait forever to pass to others what you have learned."
I highly recommend The End of Time to anyone who has struggled with existential ponderings and, as a result, has felt like a lone traveller on a barren road. Horowitz, for a while, will be your companion.
September 18, 2011
I read this awhile ago. Working on getting my updates logged. I remember enjoying the book.
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November 27, 2014Interesting musings by an intelligent man
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews