Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
Pan Books (1972)
Description
Two years after The Collector had brought him international recognition and a year before he published The Magus, John Fowles set out his ideas on life in The Aristos. The chief inspiration behind them was the fifth century BC philosopher Heraclitus. In the world he posited of constant and chaotic flux the supreme good was the Aristos, 'of a person or thing, the best or most excellent its kind'.'What I was really trying to define was an ideal of human freedom (the Aristos) in an unfree world,' wrote Fowles in 1965. He called a materialistic and over-conforming culture to reckoning with his views on a myriad of subjects - pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, Christianity, humanism, existentialism, socialism
User reviews
LibraryThing member Porius
Freedom of will is the highest human good; and it is impossible to have both that freedom and an intervening divinity. We, because we are a form of matter, are contingent; and this terrifying contingency allows our freedom.
Old Fowles is always thoughtful. I usually prefer reading Wodehouse and
Old Fowles is always thoughtful. I usually prefer reading Wodehouse and
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looking around for a loophole. Show Less
LibraryThing member cainmark
One person's thoughts about everything. He was dead on about the function of art, though extremely biased for poetry over the other forms.
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
I mostly agree with Fowles and think this contains several good reminders and tools, especially the idea of existentialsm as an approach to philosophy rather than a philosophy itself and the deal of "nemo, " the fourth corner to Freud's tripartite self, that which the self is not and is conscious
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of not being.. But sometimes you wince at how prefeminist he is (I know, I never usually care about that stuff), and he is wrong as TJ in a silver bodysock on religion, which is far, far from dead. Show Less
LibraryThing member jacques.yerby
Excellent ideas although I don't agree with everything he states.
Subjects
Original publication date
1964
Physical description
8.43 inches
ISBN
0330020331 / 9780330020336