DOCSLIB.ORG

Aldous Huxley, Representative Man Edited by Gerhard Wagner

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Aldous Huxley, Representative Man Edited by Gerhard Wagner James Hull Aldous Huxley, Representative Man Edited by Gerhard Wagner LIT TABLE OF CONTENTS General Editors' Preface i Editor's Note ii Foreword by Robin Hull iii List of Abbreviations vi INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE I. THE PREDESTINATION OF EVENTS 6 The Early Poems 10 II. SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE 24 Limbo 26 Crome Yellow 30 Mortal Coils 35 On the Margin 39 III. GONE ABROAD 45 Antic Hay 46 i) Paradise Lost 52 ii) Betrayal 55 iii) "What's He to Hecuba?" 57 iv) The Monster 58 v) Inferno 61 vi) The Last Ride Together 63 Little Mexican 66 IV. THE SEARCH FOR A NEW DIMENSION 78 Those Barren Leaves 78 i) "An Evening at Mrs Aldwinkle's" 78 ii) "Fragments from the Autobiography of Francis Chelifer" 82 iii) "The Loves of the Parallels" 89 iv) "The Journey" 93 Along the Road 97 Two or Three Graces 104 The Spectator: Jesting Pilate 110 i) Religion 112 ii) Art and Other Matters 114 iii) The Later Stages of the Journey 117 Proper Studies 118 i) The Idea of Equality 120 ii) Varieties of Intelligence 122 iii) The Way of the Solitary 124 iv) Personality and Ideals 126 V. LIFE WORSHIP 130 Point Counter Point 130 i) Philip and Elinor Quarles 132 ii) Returning from India 137 iii) Back Home 138 iv) Predestination 141 v) Rampion and Philip 144 vi) Walter Bidlake and the Siren 146 vii) Rachel Quarles and Marjorie Carling 150 viii) Spandrell 153 ix) Rampion 155 x) The "Spiritual Thermopylae" 160 xi) The Riddle of Burlap 163 xii) The Case of John Middleton Murry 166 xiii) Little Phil's Death 169 Do What You Will 170 i) Unity and Diversity 170 ii) The Two Humilities 174 iii) "Pascal" 176 iv) "Holy Face" 184 VI. THE DEFENCE OF REASON 187 Brief Candles 187 i)"Chawdron" 189 ii) "After the Fireworks" 194 Music at Night 199 The World of Light 204 The Cicadas 209 Brave New World 226 Huxley's "Introduction" to His Edition of D.H. Lawrence's Letters 231 Texts and Pretexts 235 i) "Visitations" and "Country Ecstasies" 237 ii) "The Individual" 240 iii) The Artist and His World 241 iv) Man and the Universe 242 v) "Earthly Paradise" 243 vi) Variations on the Theme of Love 246 vii) "Distractions" and Other Matters 249 VII. THE NOBLER HYPOTHESIS 254 Beyond the Mexique Bay 254 i)' The Plumed Serpent' 255 ii) Time and Eternity 257 Return to Sanary 259 Eyeless in Gaza 264 i) Anthony as a Little Boy 264 ii) Nine Years Later 267 iii) The Murder of Innocence 273 iv) What Is Personality? 276 v) More and More Antics 279 vi) The Uncomfortable Fact 283 vii) Deus ex Machina 285 viii) 'The Invisible Lover1 289 ix) Revolution for My Sake 292 x) The Good Cause 296 xi) Theory in Practice 299 xii) Helen and Anthony 303 xiii) Meditation 305 PART TWO VIII.CHANGING CONTINENTS 308 The Olive Tree 308 i) Bovarism 309 ii) "Justifications" 312 iii) "D.H. Lawrence" 316 iv) "The Olive Tree" 317 Ends and Means 318 i) "Beliefs" 320 ii) Pain and Pleasure 323 After Many a Summer 325 i) Part One 325 ii) Part Two 329 iii) Part Three 334 Grey Eminence 335 i) "Inward Abnegation" * 339 ii) "The Religious Background" 340 iii) Theocentric Man 342 iv) Evangelist and Politician 346 v) Justification by Detachment 352 IX. SILENCE IN THE DESERT 355 Time Must Have a Stop 355 i) Prologue 358 ii) The Civilized Human Being 361 iii) The Rejection of Forgiveness 370 iv) Patterns in Space 373 v) Sebastian 377 vi) Chapter Thirty: The "Epilogue" 382 The Perennial Philosophy 384 i) Huxley's Second Anthology 384 ii) Two Anthologies 393 Science, Liberty and Peace 396 Ape and Essence 397 i) "Tallis" 399 ii) "The Script" 401 iii) Mother's Boy 402 iv) "The Fire for Which All Thirst, Now Beams on Me, Consuming the Last Clouds of Cold Mortality" 411 X. THEENTELECHY 412 Themes and Variations 412 i) Maine de Biran 412 ii) "The Philosopher in History" 415 iii) "The Philosopher as Moralist, Metaphysician and Candidate for Salvation" 417 iv) What Biran Did Not Do or Think 420 v) "Variations on El Greco" 427 vi) "Variations on Goya" 431 vii) "The Double Crisis" 432 The Devils ofLoudun 433 i) Urbain Grandier: Priest and Seducer 433 ii) The Desire for Self-Transcendence 438 iii) The Cross That Is Mine 440 iv) The Possessed 444 v) The True and the False 450 vi) Paradise Regained 454 XI. THE VISIONARY 457 The Doors of Perception 457 Heaven and Hell 464 The Genius and the Goddess 466 i) John Rivers's "Amorous Image" 466 ii) April, Twenty-Third, 1922 476 iii) Epilogue 483 Adonis and the Alphabet 484 i) Spiritual Education and Understanding 484 ii) Futurists 490 iii) The 'Great Mother1 492 iv) Mallarme 494 XII. UTOPIA 498 After the Amputation 498 Europe Revisited 513 Literature and Science 516 Island 523 i) Towards the Yoga of Love 524 ii) With My Body I Thee Worship 530 iii) The Moks ha-Medicine 531 iv) Who's Who in Pala 536 "Wise Passiveness" 545 "Oh Herr, Gib Jedem Seinen Eigenen Tod" 551 XIII. CONCLUSIONS: MAKING SENSE OF IT 557 Huxley's Early Aim 557 Ethics 559 The "Nirvana-Addicts" 564 The Personal Conscience 569 Final Remarks 575 i) Intuition 577 ii) The Artist 578 CITED TEXTS 580 INDEX OF NAMES 585 INDEX OF TERMS 592.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Point Counter Point"
    University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1940 Aldous Huxley's use of music in "Point Counter Point" Bennett Brudevold The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Brudevold, Bennett, "Aldous Huxley's use of music in "Point Counter Point"" (1940). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1499. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1499 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A1D005 HUXLEY'S USE OF MUSIC IB F o m r c o i m m by Bennett BruAevold Presented in P&rtlel Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Arte State University of Montana 1940 Approveds û&^'rman of Ëxaminl]^^ ttee W- Sfiairraan’ of Graduate Ccmmlttee UMI Number; EP35823 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation RMishing UMI EP35823 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
    [Show full text]
  • Mysticism and Pacifism
    Chapter 4 Mysticism and Pacifism Huxley’s mystical turn in the mid-1930s was intimately associated with paci- fism, and his pacifist convictions were reinforced by the mystical philosophy of Gerald Heard and Jiddu Krishnamurti. As noted in Chapter 1, Huxley’s involve- ment with Ottoline Morrell and the Garsington set during World War i had led him to adopt a pacifist position, and the rise of Mussolini and Hitler and the imperial tensions of the 1930s had done nothing to change his mind. His disparaging article “What Gandhi Fails to See” (1930), would seem to contradict this statement, but Huxley was not objecting to Gandhi as a pacifist but as an “ascetic salvationist” whose spirituality blinded him to inconvenient facts, such as the “distressingly easy passage from non-violence to violence”,1 or the fact that reverting to a pre-industrial civilisation, as Gandhi was advocating, would entail the “death by starvation of millions upon millions of human be- ings” (in other words, the exponential increase in population made possible by industrialisation).2 Huxley’s interest in mysticism had been dampened by his trip to India and south-east Asia in 1925–26. In the article, Gandhi is pilloried as a representative of the kind of Hindu spirituality that Huxley had deplored in Jesting Pilate (1926): “To my mind ‘spirituality’ […] is the primal curse of India and the cause of all her misfortunes. […] A little less spirituality and the Indians would now be free – free from foreign dominion and from the tyranny of their own prejudices and traditions”.3 But as the 1930s progressed, Huxley was compelled by personal circumstances to re-evaluate his opinion of both Gandhi and mysticism and by 1936 he was publicly advocating satyagraha and practising meditation with Gerald Heard and members of the Peace Pledge Union (ppu).
    [Show full text]
  • The Traces of the Bhagavad Gita in the Perennial Philosophy—A Critical Study of the Gita’S Reception Among the Perennialists
    religions Article The Traces of the Bhagavad Gita in the Perennial Philosophy—A Critical Study of the Gita’s Reception Among the Perennialists Mohammad Syifa Amin Widigdo 1,2 1 Faculty of Islamic Studies, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta 55183, Indonesia; [email protected] 2 Wonderhome Library, Yogyakarta 55294, Indonesia Received: 14 April 2020; Accepted: 28 April 2020; Published: 6 May 2020 Abstract: This article studies the reception of the Bhagavad Gita within circles of Perennial Philosophy scholars and examines how the Gita is interpreted to the extent that it influenced their thoughts. Within the Hindu tradition, the Gita is often read from a dualist and/or non-dualist perspective in the context of observing religious teachings and practices. In the hands of Perennial Philosophy scholars, the Gita is read from a different angle. Through a critical examination of the original works of the Perennialists, this article shows that the majority of the Perennial traditionalists read the Gita from a dualist background but that, eventually, they were convinced that the Gita’s paradigm is essentially non-dualist. In turn, this non-dualist paradigm of the Gita influences and transforms their ontological thought, from the dualist to the non-dualist view of the reality. Meanwhile, the non-traditionalist group of Perennial Philosophy scholars are not interested in this ontological discussion. They are more concerned with the question of how the Gita provides certain ways of attaining human liberation and salvation. Interestingly, both traditionalist and non-traditionalist camps are influenced by the Gita, at the same time, inserting an external understanding and interpretation into the Gita.
    [Show full text]
  • The Thought of Aldous Huxley M
    The Thought of Aldous Huxley M. M. Kirkwood University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 6, Number 2, January 1937, pp. 189-198 (Article) Published by University of Toronto Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/549974 [ Access provided at 12 Oct 2020 10:12 GMT from USP-Universidade de São Paulo ] THE THOUGHT OF ALDOUS HUXLEY M. M . KIRKWOOD N an article which appeared in the London Mercury of January, 1933, G. K. Chesterton placed Huxley I among the young moderns whom he attacked as "witty, brilliant and fashionable bankrupts." This view of Huxley in particular has been a common one, for brilliance and wit animate whatever he writes, and, having written for a world that wanted to be amused, he has become fashionable. Mr. Chester to ~' understood him merely to mock, as one having no religious belief and seeing no purpose in the world or in the will. Whether this be a real aspe.ct of his work or not, readers have not found it easy to resist a writer who remarks in connection wi th one of his characters that "no chameleon can live with comfort on a tartan," and who concludes his descrip­ tion of his own agonie,s during a first ride on an elephant with the comment, "I returned full of admiration for Hannibal. He crossed the Alps on an elephant." Numerous quips by Huxley include the statement that "Puritans like to wear the fig-leaf over the mouth," while in a serious essay on the evolution of theologies, he uses the astonishing figure, "Men's religious life works on the principle of a hot-water system." Huxley's voca bulary is no less en tertaining than his figures of coml?arison, and we find ourselves stimulated if not always illuminated by "minusculous" and "callipygous," "wamblingly" and "bombinating," "geodesic" and "mixo­ Iydian." It is as if the creator of "brillig" and "slithy toves" had come to life again, challenging us to under­ stand as well as to enjoy him.
    [Show full text]
  • Progress, Elitism and Ideology in Point Counter Point As a Novel of Ideas
    Progress, Elitism and Ideology in Point Counter Point as a Novel of Ideas Peter Grosvenor Throughout Huxley’s forty-year career as a novelist there was always an identifiable connection between the ideas he wanted to convey and the literary medium and technique through which he sought to convey them. As his ideas metamorphosed so did his approach to writing. As a result, Huxley is a moving target for those who would categorize his work, either in intellectual or stylistic terms. The challenge confronting students of Huxley is to place any given Huxley work in the context of the author’s evolving worldview at the time. After Brave New World (1932), Point Counter Point (1928) is undoubtedly Huxley’s most widely read and most controversial novel. There is no consensus among critics concerning what the novel tells us about the nature of Huxley’s thoughts as the first decade of the interwar period drew to a close. Neither is there a consensus about its literary merit. The work nonetheless provides an important freeze-frame of a pivotal moment in Huxley’s development as a social and political thinker, and as an experimenter in literary form. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to examine the ideas contained in Point Counter Point, their mode of expression, and their place in the context of Huxley’s earlier and later work. Ultimately, what kind of novel one judges Point Counter Point to be depends very much upon whom one takes to be its central character. If it is Philip Quarles, the novelist within the novel, the work becomes the reductio ad absurdum of the novel of ideas, in 2 which the central preoccupation is the genre itself—a disengaged, even solipsistic, exercise, and an essentially derivative one at that—having been preempted by André Gide in Les Faux Monnayeurs in 1925.
    [Show full text]
  • Brave New World Essays
    Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays edited by DAVID GARRETT IZZO and KIM KIRKPATRICK McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London McFarland has also published the following works: W. H. Auden Encyclopedia (2004), Christopher Isherwood Encyclopedia (2005), and The Writings of Richard Stern: The Education of an Intellectual Everyman (2002), by David Garrett Izzo. Henry James Against the Aesthetic Movement: Essays on the Middle and Late Fiction (2006), edited by David Garrett Izzo and Daniel T. O’Hara. Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work (2003), edited by David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Huxley’s Brave new world : essays / edited by David Garrett Izzo and Kim Kirkpatrick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-¡3 978-0-7864-3683-5 softcover : 50# alkaline paper ¡. Huxley, Aldous, ¡894–¡963. Brave new world. 2. Huxley, Aldous, ¡894–¡963—Political and social views. 3. Huxley, Aldous, ¡894–¡963—Philosophy. 4. Dystopias in literature. I. Izzo, David Garrett. II. Kirkpatrick, Kim, ¡962– PR60¡5.U9B675 2008 823'.9¡2—dc22 20080¡3463 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2008 David Garrett Izzo. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover illustration ©2008 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Carol A.
    [Show full text]
  • Palacký University Olomouc Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies Social Reform in Aldous Huxley's Brave
    Palacký University Olomouc Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies Social Reform in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Island Diploma thesis Bc. Kristína Barkolová English Philology Thesis supervisor: Mgr. Pavlína Flajšarová, Ph.D. Olomouc 2018 Prohlašuji, že jsem magisterskou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně a uvedla uplný seznam citované a použité literatury. V Olomouci, dne 2 Mé poděkování patří Mgr. Pavlíně Flajšarové za odborné vedení, trpělivost a ochotu, kterou mi v průběhu zpracování diplomové práce věnovala. 3 Contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 5 2 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 6 3 Context for Brave New World and Island ...................................................................... 9 4 Brave New World ......................................................................................................... 13 4.1 History .................................................................................................................. 13 4.2 Education .............................................................................................................. 17 4.3 Fordism ................................................................................................................. 19 4.4 Science .................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Theology
    BEYOND THEOLOGY “Mysticism and the Perennial Philosophy” (#109) Host: Have you ever heard of the perennial philosophy? Do you know what it is? Stay tuned and see how it relates to the mystic’s vision. Announcer: Production funding for this program has been provided in part by the Shumaker Family Foundation – promoting social and environmental justice, education, spirituality and the arts. Host: With innovations in transportation and communication, the world has in effect become a smaller place than it used to be. It’s easier for people to travel and to see what’s happening in other parts of the world. In the process, people of different religious faiths have been rubbing shoulders with each other more often and sometimes coming into conflict. This has stimulated a greater interest in the study of other religions. Huston Smith published a well-known text on world religions back in 1958. In this program, we explore the views of this mystic philosopher and his perennial quest for truth. Huston Smith (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religion): From as far back as I can remember, what I most wanted … outside of family and the intimacy there … was truth, but with a capital T -- The Truth about the ultimate nature of reality. Narrator: Born in China in the spring of 1919, Huston Smith grew up in a rural Chinese community, where his parents served as missionaries for the Methodist Church. Huston Smith: Yes. My parents were missionaries. And actually, I'm third generation of missionary parents because she was born in China, too, of missionary parents that went out in the 19th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Pledging Peace in Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza
    109 Pledging Peace in Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza Charles Andrews Whitworth University Nineteen thirty-six was a pivotal year for Aldous Huxley. Much of his en- ergy prior to this year was spent writing the satirical novels upon which his reputation still rests, including Crome Yellow (1921), Point Counter Point (1928), and Brave New World (1932). Huxley produced many of his nearly fifty books under contractual obligations to write two or even three books per year, a pace that seemed to cause him little concern. Yet Eyeless in Gaza, his under-read masterpiece, took four years to complete. Begun in 1932, published in 1936, Eyeless is in most ways typical of Huxley’s fiction—eru- dite, philosophical, and semi-autobiographical. His title alludes to Milton’s Samson Agonistes, and his characters each take competing positions on the issues most important to Huxley and his cohort of artists and intellectuals: human relations, mystical spirituality, and radical politics. Eyeless in Gaza also shows off some of Huxley’s most formally adventurous writing, par- ticularly with regard to narrative chronology. Each of the novel’s fifty-four chapters is set on a specific day between November 6, 1902 and February 23, 1935. Lacking any readily discernible regular pattern, the chapters jump back and forth within this thirty-three year range. The earliest dates show our main character Anthony Beavis as a young boy at his mother’s funeral, by the 1910s we see him at Oxford, by the 1920s Anthony is a struggling writer, and by the 1930s he is in a love affair with Helen, is briefly involved in a Mexican revolution, and ultimately converts to pacifism.
    [Show full text]
  • HUXLEY the Perennial Philosophy
    ALDOUS HUXLEY The Perennial Philosophy 194? Chatto & Windus LONDON PUBLISHED BY Chatto & Windus LONDON * Oxford University Press TORONTO Applications regarding translation rights in any work by Aldous Huxley should be addressed to Chatto & Windus, 40 William IV Street, London, W.C. 2 FIRST PUBLISHED 1946 SECOND IMPRESSION 1947 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN IN COMPLETE CONFORMITY WITH THE AUTHORIZED ECONOMY STANDARDS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Contents Introduction page i Chapter i That Art Thou 7 ii The Nature of the Ground 29 in Personality, Sanctity, Divine Incarnation 45 iv God in the World 69 v Charity 95 vi Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood 113 vii Truth 145 vin Religion and Temperament 168 ix Self-Knowledge 185 x Grace and Free Will 190 xi Good and Evil 202 xn Time and Eternity 212 xin Salvation, Deliverance, Enlightenment 230 xiv Immortality and Survival 242 xv Silence 247 xvi Prayer 251 xvn Suffering 260 xvm Faith 268 xix God is not mocked 273 vi THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY Chapter xx Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum page 279 xxi Idolatry 287 xxn Emotionalism 292 xxni The Miraculous 298 xxiv Ritual, Symbol, Sacrament 301 xxv Spiritual Exercises 314 xxvi Perseverance and Regularity 334 xxvn Contemplation, Action and Social Utility 337 Bibliography 346 Index 353 Acknowledgments For permission to use the following selections, grateful acknowledgment and thanks are extended to the following authors and publishers : George Allen & Unwin Ltd.: MONKEY and THE WAY AND ITS POWER, translated by Arthur Waley; LETTERS, by Spinoza. Burns, Oates & Washbourne Ltd. : THE CLOUD OF UNKNOW- edited McCann THE OF ST. ING, by ; WORKS JOHN OF THE CROSS, translated by Allison Piers.
    [Show full text]
  • Finding Aid to the Aldous Huxley Letter on the Clinical Availability of Psychoactive Substances, 1961
    FINDING AID TO THE ALDOUS HUXLEY LETTER ON THE CLINICAL AVAILABILITY OF PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES, 1961 Purdue University Libraries Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center 504 West State Street West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2058 (765) 494-2839 http://www.lib.purdue.edu/spcol © 2011 Purdue University Libraries. All rights reserved. Processed by: Kristin Leaman, December 16, 2011 Descriptive Summary Creator Information Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963 Title Aldous Huxley letter on the clinical availability of psychoactive substances Collection Identifier MSP 101 Date Span 1961 Abstract This letter documents the pharmaceutical companies that were manufacturing LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin in 1961. The reference to Harvard presumably refers to the early work of Timothy Leary, who had begun to study the impact of controlled LSD dosages in early 1961. Extent 1 folder Finding Aid Author Kristin Leaman, 2011 Languages English Repository Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center, Purdue University Libraries Administrative Information Location Information: ASC Access Restrictions: Collection is open for research. Acquisition Purchase, Bromer Booksellers, Inc., December 15, Information: 2011 Accession Number: 20111215 Preferred Citation: MSP 101, Aldous Huxley letter on the clinical availability of psychoactive substances, Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries Copyright Notice: Copyright restrictions apply. Consult a reference archivist for details. 4/11/2012 2 Subjects and Genres Persons Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963 Topics LSD Mescaline Psilocybin Form and Genre Types Letter (correspondence) 4/11/2012 3 Biography of Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on July 26,1894 in Godalming, England to T. H. Huxley and Julia Arnold Huxley. He was the third of four children and lost both his mother and his sister in 1908.
    [Show full text]
  • Aldous Huxley” in Connection with His Landmark 1932 Novel
    Introduction by David Garrett Izzo Life, Work, Thought Many people know the name “Aldous Huxley” in connection with his landmark 1932 novel, Brave New World . Few know much more than this and that at one time Huxley was one of the most revered and respected figures in 20 th century literature and philosophy. An irony of his present neglect can be found by noting that the day he died—22 November 1963—was the day John F. Kennedy was murdered; hence, Huxley’s passing was ignored. On any other day, his death would have likely been acknowledged with front-page articles and a retrospective of his life and work. The highlight of this work, Brave New World , is often selected as one of the greatest novels in all of literature, but there was much, much more to Huxley as a writer, philosopher, and influence. There is not a writer who came after Huxley that does not owe to him directly or indirectly the new tangent in the history of the novel that his work impelled. There is not a person who learned about Eastern philosophy in the 1960s that is not directly or indirectly indebted to Huxley the philosopher. Anyone who admires the philosophy of Horkheimer and Adorno, particularly their essay, “The Culture Industry,” is actually influenced by Huxley, as these two German refugees from Hitler have said that their ideas came from Huxley. There is an academic Aldous Huxley Society with a home base in Muenster, Germany that does appreciate his impact on our world and spreads the gospel of Huxley through a book length Huxley Annual and a conference every year so that he will not be forgotten.
    [Show full text]