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  & 19 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Authors: Albert Camus Stuart Gilbert Albert Camus

Tags: religion french philosophy literature death novel suffering ethics

2007-04-08

  & 1 users

• Current

Type: educational

Status: favorite

Author: Jean_Paul Sartre

Tags: french philosophy nonfiction suffering ethics

2006-05-25

  & 2 users

• Current

Type: special

Status: I recommend

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Tags: philosophy german

2005-11-14

  & 52 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Hermann Hesse

Tags: philosophy college novel german own

2005-09-30

  & 1 users

• Current

Type: educational

Status: I recommend

Author: Susan Sontag

Tags: illness philosophy nonfiction

Description: I flew through the first half of this book and am now reading the AIDs section and for someI flew through the first half of this book and am now reading the AIDs section and for some reason am lagging in interest -- probably because the first section is more directly applicable to my life since I have an undiagnosed illness that is probably MS.

Sontag's argument throughout the book, an argument that appears elsewher in her thought is that of being against interpretation. That is, she is against giving "meaning" to illnesses that we do not fully comprehend (cancer in the present, TB in the past, mystery illnesses) by making up explations for them that are unrelated to what they actaully are.

If the disease is a disease and nothing more, then we should not describe it with war metaphors (ie winning the war against cancer) because a single metaphor can blossom into a multitude of other unintended metaphors. War, for instance, denotes an enemy and a victor. If the enemy if suppresing someone then it naturally means that the patient must either be a victim or a hero. Neither of these labels are accurate or have any meaning other than their association with the "war" society is fighting on cancer and do not help patients, but rather add to their suffering....

2005-09-09