Monday, September 24, 2007

Norman O. Brown

We approach the 5th anniversary of his death.

Brown's mind was extraordinary. He faced the Big Questions head on. He saw the repetition in human history that we all see, and he went out, through vast reading and unfettered thinking, to explain why this should be so. The result, a very provocative and "new" view of man, which immediately was misinterpreted and misused.

I'm overdue for a reading of LOVE'S BODY. I can count on one hand the books that were major influences on my own thinking about the Big Questions: Russell's MARRIAGE AND MORALS and WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN; de Rougemont's LOVE IN THE WESTERN WORLD; Brown's LOVE'S BODY; Camus' THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS.

Yes, time to look at Brown again, to be reminded of his grasp for it all.
Norman Brown, Playful Philosopher, 89, Is Dead
October 4, 2002
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Dr. Brown was a master of philosophical speculation, mixing
Marx, Freud, Jesus and much else to raise and answer
immense questions. Alan Watts, the popular philosopher,
sang his praises. His works joined David Riesman's ``Lonely
Crowd'' and J.R.R. Tolkien's ``Lord of the Rings'' on the
reading lists of undergraduates aspiring to the
counterculture.
Scruffy pilgrims streamed to commune with him, only to
discover a short-haired man who lived in a split-level
house and avoided drugs. A meticulous student of ancient
Greek who was given to long, meditative walks with his
golden retriever, he was not a little perplexed when
magazine and newspaper articles linked him to the new left,
LSD and the sexual revolution.
``I have absolutely no use for the human-potential
movement,'' he said in an interview with Human Behavior
magazine in 1976.
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