EXISTENTIALISM FOR BEGINNERS is an entertaining romp through the history of a philosophical movement that has had a broad and enduring influence on Western culture. From the middle of the Nineteenth Century through the late Twentieth Century, existentialism informed our politics and art, and still exerts its influence today.
Deconstruction is so labyrinthine (and rumored to be fatal) that it's become the monster that murdered philosophy. When Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, uses buzz-words such as “phallogocentrism” and “transcendental signified,” humanities students and aspiring philosophers may get weak in the knees.
Jacques Lacan is probably the most influential psychoanalyst since Freud (of the roughly 20,000 psychoanalysts in the world, about half are 'Lacanians') yet most people know nothing about him. The 10,000 analysts who use Lacan's ideas work mostly in France, Spain, Italy, and South America.
From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the druids and the gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries.
The Diamond Sutra, a mainstay of the Mahayana tradition, has fascinated Buddhists for centuries because of its insights into dualism and illusion: the "diamond" can cut through any obstacle on the road to enlightenment.