Critical reviews of books
Through my profession as a librarian, but also thanks to my passion for books, I have been led for years to read and reflect on the works that I keep discovering, but also on those I catalog and that I regularly advise. readers or researchers.
This page opens a field of reflection around the critical reviews that I have written in recent years.
Review of François Rastier's work:
" Shipwreck of a prophet. Heidegger today. "
At the time of the publication of the " Cahiers noirs " of one who is still considered in France as the greatest thinker of the 20th century, F. Rastier, in the line initiated by E. Faye, takes Heidegger in flagrante delicto of anti-Semitism and philosophical pan-Germanism.
This work of deciphering an anti-rational thought, and which has always advanced masked, was essential in order to demystify this enterprise of Nazification of philosophy. A comparison with another author of French origin, René Guénon, who also had an immense influence, allows us to better understand the extent of the disaster represented by esoteric thoughts.
Review of the work by Bernard-Henri Lévy:
" The Spirit of Judaism ".
Almost forty years after his " Testament of God ", B.-H. Lévy returns to this religious question, but this time with a more personal book which intends to show a Judaism of "glory" and pride. The author analyzes his passion as well as this unrivaled religion.
In a style that combines Talmudic glosses, philosophical reflections and personal memories, he offers his vision of Judaism, the one he received from his fathers and the one passed on to him by his masters. It is from this representation of Judaism that this review is developed to ask the questions that are essential on such a profound subject.
Review of Thierry Falissard's book:
" Buddhist Thought . A Metaphysics of Deliverance."
This book is intended to be an introduction to Buddhism, but by way of metaphysics. The author offers a more philosophical approach to this wisdom by relying on metaphysical notions, supposed to enlighten Buddhist thought. In doing so, he introduces it through abstract notions, and takes the risk of distorting the doctrine of this wisdom.
In this short review, I question the author's relativist vision and the consequences that flow from it.
Reflections on Henri Le Saux's spiritual journey from a Memoir by Nicolle Carré.
Henri Le Saux, a contemporary Benedictine monk, is known to have been a pioneer of interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism. He represents a typical figure of the Catholic missionary turn initiated by Vatican Council II. Having lived for a long time in India, he attempted an original connection between the current of Advaita, which advocates a strict non-duality, and Christian mysticism.
This reflection takes up some strong ideas of this course from the University Memory of Nicolle Carré, and questions the theological presuppositions as the psychological consequences.
On the Balthasarian interpretation of the theology of Dionysius the Areopagite.
A theological hermeneutics at the service of a society of orders.
The Christian theology of the 20th century was not stingy with vast frescoes of synthesis. Among these, the dogmatic synthesis of Hans Urs von Balthasar represents one of the summits of this theology. But it is also symptomatic of the intellectual malaise of all contemporary theology. It is on the interpretation of Balthasar of the thought of one of the greatest Fathers of the Church - Dionysius the Areopagite - that thisreview bends over to show its limits.
Review of the book by J. Markale:
"The Celtic Woman".
If there is indeed an ideal which crosses the centuries while remaining intact, and over which time seems to have no hold, it is undoubtedly that of the eternal feminine.
In a work that has remained famous, J. Markale offers us a Celtic version.
But this one, marked by feminist and counter-cultural currents, struggles to convince. This brief review presents the main reasons for this.
Reflections on C. Lévi-Strauss's book:
"The elementary structures of kinship".
This work, like all the work of C. Lévi-Strauss, has deeply marked contemporary anthropological and ethnological thought.
Far from claiming to make a critical review of it, an intellectual project that goes far beyond my skills, I simply took up a theme from Freudian psychoanalysis to make it the common thread of my reflection. This is the theme of the murder of the primitive Father, which was rejected by Lévi-Strauss, who preferred that of the prohibition of incest.
It is this choice that I question when rereading this work representative of contemporary thought. I also take this opportunity to criticize in an "excursus" the thought of M. Foucault, thanks to a book, now forgotten, by G. Mendel ...
Review of LBG Tilak's books:
"Polar origin of the Vedic tradition ".
This review of the book by LB G. Tilak, already old (2005), while exploring an unknown religious universe, seeks to redress an injustice.
Because this work, published in editions which have made themselves known for their choice of hermetic and esoteric works, has been unfairly kept away from the productions of the academic world.
However, this book represented for me, and in my own itinerary, an important moment which coincided with the discovery of a totally unrecognized religion: the Vedic religion. In this review, I review all the works and articles that have appeared on the question of a deity belonging to this now-defunct religion, the goddess of Dawn. And I apologize for Tilak's work and his brilliant intuitions which have inspired me for a long time ...
The contemporary practice of Yoga:
About Marie Kock's book: "Yoga: a world-story"
Along with Buddhist meditation, Yoga is a growing phenomenon in the West. M. Kock's book takes stock of this practice, which is enjoying unprecedented success. Yoga is part of the fashion for personal development, from which it has taken full advantage for years, by sharing with it several pragmatic presuppositions.
This review starts from a point of view other than media or sociology, which is that of the author. And she questions Yoga, not on the basis of its success or its recipes for therapeutic efficacy, but of its origins and an aspect generally neglected by its followers: sacrifice.
Going back to a past of Indo-European origin, I try to show what has been repressed by Yoga, not only in the West, but also in India where it is experiencing a revival. And I underline what is implicitly at work within these techniques which, according to psychoanalysis, are far from being religiously neutral.
Sacral and religious violence: theory of anthropological repression.
About some theses of R. Girard.
From the theory of mimetic rivalry to that of emissary victimization, R. Girard's anthropology has had a lasting and profound impact on the contemporary intellectual landscape.
And rightly so.
However, in his often relentless desire to assert his theses, in particular those of original violence and the birth of human societies with the emblematic murder of Abel by Cain, R. Girard incidentally neglected and then repressed the Freudian thesis of murder of the Father, of which he wanted, paradoxically, to be the defender. By taking again the Girardian assumptions and by comparing them with those of Freud, I try to put them in their right place by showing what this anthropology, following that of Lévi-Strauss to which it is opposed, has repressed. .
The illusions of spiritual awakening.
An example of using the commonplaces of contemporary Hindu spirituality.
About the book by E. Gilbert: "Eat, pray, love".
One will no doubt be astonished to find, among these reviews, a book which does not possess any of the philosophical or intellectual qualities specific to other works.
But, if the latter has found any interest in my eyes, it is because of the author's itinerary. And it is especially his visit to India that caught my attention, and which seemed to me perfectly emblematic of our current mentalities, where spirituality has become the pretext for a quest for oneself, but in a consumerist and superficial way.
Critical review of J. Kristeva's book:
"This incredible need to believe."
Author known for these feminist positions and her books which deal at the same time on feminism, psychoanalysis and literature, J. Kristeva offers in it a series of interviews on the subject of the Christian faith.
It is her representation of the people of the Trinity that I question, relying on Freudian psychoanalysis that the author does not respect, or that she tends to distort in a feminist version of what I have called "psychoanalytic theology".
Psychic constraint and the advent of autonomy.
Reflections on the book by P.-H. Castel:
"Scrupulous souls, lives of anguish, sad obsessives. Obsessions and inner constraints from antiquity to Freud"
P.-H. Castel engages in this first volume in an archeology of inner constraint since Antiquity. He shows the different aspects and analyzes their metamorphoses. But it is with the advent of the modern subject that a new psychic constraint appears: autonomy.
In this review, I take up and expose the author's ideas by discussing this scholarly thesis which sheds new light on our own modernity and post-modernity.
Review of M. Balmary's book :
"The man with the statues. Freud and the fault of the father."
Author representative of a psychoanalytic and Hebrew interpretation of the Bible, M. Balmary offers in this book a vision of Freud and his first major theories revisited by a psychoanalysis of the founder of this human science.
She thus shows the gaps as well as the repressions shown by Freud even in his analytical practice, and brings to light the paternal repressed and his fault, which reflected on his son in a form of transgenerational disease.
It is also the occasion for the author to take again fresh the founding myth of Oedipus. However, Mr. Balmary's method, as innovative as it is, is not without flaws. And it is on these that I rely to deliver a critical look at this work. In a second reflection, I deepen the question of the biblical reading of Mr. Balmary which seems to me tendentious.
About the book by Ch. Bobin :
"The most lively."
No one was apparently more touched by feminine grace, in the world of male writers of the late twentieth century, than the poet Christian Bobin.
In this book, which is among his best, the author exposes himself on the one who was at the same time his muse, his sister of heart and the love of his life.
In this brief study, I have focused on an aspect that always escapes the reader. Far from having been subjugated by the poetic charm of this book, I have on the contrary discovered the psychic flaws that I am trying to analyze here. And this, in order to restore this " missing part " dear to the poetic universe of Ch. Bobin.
About L. Silburn's thesis:
"Instant and cause. The discontinuity in the philosophical thought of India"
Few of the theses can match the value and depth of L. Silburn's. This contains at least three combined in one. This explains why it is so difficult to make a simple review of it.
For my part, I preferred to concentrate on two questions widely debated in the first schools of Buddhism, namely the question of the instantaneousness of things in time and that of the causal power of karma, of the act.
I was thus able to detect three errors of interpretation in the thesis of L. Silburn that I try to discuss in this review.
Review of the book by A. Brahm :
"Manual of meditation according to Theravâda Buddhism"
For several years, practical Buddhist meditation manuals have multiplied.
That of A. Brahm seemed to me to be of a superior quality to others, especially in that he relies on the Theravada tradition.
In this article which follows on from L. Silburn's thesis, I discuss the question of the discontinuity of things and karma. And I resume the debate on the subject of the notion of will, crucial in this wisdom.
Review of the book by Ph. Julien :
"The strange enjoyment of the neighbor. Ethics and psychoanalysis"
Here is a book which was very promising insofar as it set itself the objective of raising the impasses of philosophical thought on the crucial question of ethics. A first part also offers a very clear picture.
But as soon as the author borrows the thought of Lacan, and no longer that of Freud, this concern for clarity disappears in the stylistic mysteries of the master that the author hastens to imitate a little too slavishly.
The result is a brilliant and stimulating book, but which fails to answer the question it asks at the beginning of how to guard against this " strange enjoyment of the neighbor ", which can turn out to be as perverse as it is destructive.
The tragic fate of an imaginary Brittany :
"The Lying Horse" by Xavier Grall
Author known for his regionalist political commitments, his columns for the weekly "La Vie Catholique" and his passion for Brittany, Xavier Grall was a poet who enchanted my adolescence. Like other Breton or Celtic authors, his books and his poetry have often touched me. But his romanticism and naturalism, covered with a very Christian veil, are also the expressions of a melancholy and a nostalgia nourished by ambiguous dreams and fantasies of which he was never aware.
It was when I discovered a new edition of this book that it occurred to me to discuss this counter-cultural and libertarian thought ...
About P. Bayard's book " Enquête sur Hamlet "
On the notion of "inner paradigm".
There is undoubtedly no play more famous and undoubtedly performed more in the world than that of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
P. Bayard intends to take us into the little-known mysteries of this masterpiece which conceals as many secrets and paradoxes as the play suggests.
In doing so, he takes his reader on a complex quest to find the text, which ends in a sometimes disconcerting mise en abyme.
It is this mode of reading, very post-modern, that I criticize, whatever the depth of this book and its fascinating conclusion and to which, personally, I fully adhere ...
Melancholy and depression.
The example of Kierkegaard
It is one of the most common pathologies in the West since the 19th century. Its ancient name comes from the Greek mania , present in Antiquity, and which was used to specify not only a state, but a character: that of the genius, even of the hero, in all his hubris.
For our contemporary world, melancholy has become synonymous with depression and depressive states. It is from an emblematic Christian author of this pathology, Kierkegaard, that I analyze it by relating it to the Christian faith.
An article by psychoanalyst J.-D. Causse gives me the opportunity to explore a part of the psyche of this author, whose Christian existentialism has deeply marked his philosophy.
This reflection also comes to complete what I had initiated with the " Greek Christ ".
Review of Gérard Mendel's work:
"The revolt against the Father".
This book, which had some success when it was published, is intended to be an introduction to socio-psychoanalysis. And this is how the author is recognized today.
If the work may seem somewhat outdated, some of its theses are nonetheless stimulating. And it is on two of them - his critique of structuralist thought, all-powerful in the 1960s and 1970s, and his interpretation of the myth of the origins of man - that I focus on in this review.
The metamorphoses of Tristan and Yseult.
Reflections on Denis de Rougemont's book.
Denis de Rougemont's masterful work, written at the start of the Second World War, was for me an aesthetic, literary and spiritual revelation. The analysis he undertakes of the oldest and most beautiful novel in the history of Western literature, and which inaugurated this one, "Tristan et Yseult", is absolutely remarkable and has not aged a bit. .
I deliver in this short article some of the reflections that these two major works inspired me.
Review of Anika Lemaire'book:
"Jacques Lacan"
By its style and form, Lacan's thought invites an almost infinite exegesis. Many have risked it, with varying degrees of success.
The work of A. Lemaire has the merit of not putting off the informed reader, despite his technicality. But by that very fact it tends to espouse the thought of the master by not questioning it, in my opinion, sufficiently.
I try in this article, the first part of which is devoted to the review of this work, to show the limits or some weaknesses of this imposing monument of contemporary psychoanalysis.
Reviews of works around the notion of intentionality.
With the concept of interdependence, promised great success since the introduction of Buddhism and Eastern wisdoms in the West, that of intentionality, which preceded it, shows the philosophical stake with which Western thought has since measured itself. several centuries.
From scholastic thought to phenomenology and psychology, intentionality represents a key concept that crosses the classical boundaries of philosophy and the human sciences.
This article aims to take stock from the review of three works: that of Pierre Jacob, which represents a reference, of Valérie Aucouturier, which explores the notion of intentionality , and that of F. Varela, E. Thompson and E. Rosch, who is based on the notion of interdependence and emptiness, specific to Buddhist thought. The latter represents the new thoughts of enaction and co-emergence and proposes to go beyond the limits of the philosophies of representation.
About the book by G. Agamben
"Karma. Short treatise on action, fault and gesture"
In view of the widespread use of this term, a book was needed that would make the genealogy and archeology.
This project is realized thanks to the remarkable work of G. Agamben. In this reflection, I take up one of his principles that he develops at the end of his book, the policy of " pure means" , and I analyze it by developing it to its possible end.
About the work of M. Godelier
" Metamorphosis of kinship"
the myth of the murder of the Father to the test of anthropology.
After the works of C. Lévi-Strauss and R. Girard, it is that of M. Godelier that caught my attention.
This one analyzes the theories of Lévi-Strauss to relativize them with regard to the contributions of anthropology. But it is essentially his critique of Freudian theories of the origins of humanity that I am taking up again to discuss them.
AT About M. Dapsance's book
"The Sacred Heart and the reinvention of Catholicism"
This Christian devotion, which took off in the 17th century, is representative of a whole current of piety which served as a spiritual bulwark for the Reformation.
M. Dapsance, a specialist in contemporary Buddhism, presents it under a very apologetic face. She wrote this book as if this devotion represented the heart or the essence of Christian Revelation, while being perfectly adapted to our time moreover.
I discuss this idea in this review and I propose a certain number of points which seem to me to be prohibitive regarding this type of totally obsolete devotion. and ambiguous aspects.
About the book by A. Didier-Weill:
" What is the superego?"
If there is a fundamental notion in psychoanalysis, along with the unconscious and the transference, it is the superego. Coming from the second Freudian topic, it has given rise to numerous interpretations, starting with Freud himself.
A. Didier-Weill, in this book which combines clinic, theory and theater, offers a vision influenced by Lacanian thought. It is this strangely anti-Pauline, Talmudic and Dionysian approach that I question in this review.
Spiritual experience as Absolute.
On the phenomenology of M. Henry.
M. Henry's thought is considered today as a monument of phenomenology. I myself have long respected it as such, so impressive was it to me.
But my gaze has changed over the past few years on these "summits" of thought which hardly respect the criteria and requirements of philosophical thought. By having wanted to integrate the processes of transcendence into immanence, M. Henry transformed his phenomenology into a spiritual path. And this encourages its reader more to convert than to think rationally.
Review of the work of L. Luciani-Zidane:
"Acedia. The vice of form of Christianity"
It is a term which is used only in the field of moral theology, and which remained for a long time confined to the monastic world.
Acedia, that disgust of the soul and for things of the soul or spiritual, was seen as one of the most terrible ordeals for hermits and monks.
It is by analyzing it from its Greek origins to its more modern avatars that L. Luciani shows that this mental torpor never leaves the charitable love that was opposed to it. One never goes without the other. Worse still, it would seem that there is no antidote to this spiritual poison, and that the latter can even prevail in the fight which opposes the believer to his own inner demons.
With acedia, would we finally have found the defect of form in the Christian faith? That blind spot that would definitely embarrass that same faith and contradict the gospel promises? That's what I'm trying to do in this review...
The work of Didier Treutenaere:
A work of understanding and dissemination of Theravada Buddhism.
Few authors, like D. Treutenaere, in recent decades have devoted so much time and energy to the knowledge of Theravada Buddhism. And few will have defended the idea of an authentic Buddhism to oppose it to its counterfeits or its late and controverted productions, of which Tibetan Buddhism undoubtedly represents the summit.
In my own reflections on Buddhism in general, I made a point of citing the works of D. Treutenaere as essential references. But rather than embarking on a review of one of these books, I preferred to publish our exchanges of letters on the themes that I have often discussed, such as dharma , karma or rebirths.
Here is a selection of letters that address these issues and set out our agreements and disagreements on these fundamental issues.
The Iranian Sufism of Henri Corbin.
An esotericism at work in philosophy.
Trace the route of H. Corbin is a difficult task. However, between his commitment to a Shiite Islam with its mystical Sufism, and his passion for esotericism and alchemy, but also for the thought of Heidegger, of which he was one of the translators, we can already glimpse a certain logic at work in this contemporary theosophist.
This review only skims over some problems that appeared to me when reading this thought, especially in its confrontation with the Christian faith as well as with Mazdeism from which it is inspired.
Temptation of idealism and ancient Buddhism.
About H. Gunaratana's book: "Daily meditation".
There are countless introductory meditation books that have invaded bookstore shelves.
That of H. Gunaratana is illustrated by his intellectual honesty and his desire to bring rational elements to this practice which has become universal.
However, when reading it, I was able to identify elements from another current of Buddhism on which this book does not feed and which inclines the practice towards an idealism that does not exist as such in ancient Buddhism.
Dolorisme mystique et justification du mal.
Sur la pensée de Simone Weil.
Simone Weil est reconnue comme étant l'une des plus grandes philosophes chrétiennes et l'une des plus profondes mystiques du XXe siècle
C'est dans l'un de ses "Cahiers", reconstitués après sa mort, que j'ai trouvé une tentative de justification théologique et spirituelle de la souffrance.
Dans ce bref article, je tente de montrer les limites de cette pensée entachée de dolorisme.
A propos de la pensée de R. Bultmann.
Réflexions sur le livre de J. Florkowski.
Rudolf Bultmann reste l'un des plus importants penseurs chrétiens du XXe siècle.
Son oeuvre marque une rupture avec un passé théologique protestant libéral, au point que l'on peut affirmer que toute la théologie postérieure comme l'exégèse chrétienne, qu'elles soient d'obédience réformée ou catholique, se sont employées d'une manière ou d'une autre à répondre à Bultmann.
C'est la lecture de l'excellent ouvrage de J. Florkowski, qui synthétise la pensée de Butmann, qui m'a donné l'occasion de questionner cette pensée toujours stimulante.