Reviews

Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays by Sigmund Freud

piccoline's review against another edition

4.0

I mean, come on! This is one of those books you read with your jaw just dropping open at times. It's bold, creative, and maybe utterly nuts but so interesting! It also makes you a little sad. This is the kind of big, bold, bonkers moves that thinkers and "public intellectuals" used to carry out. These days all we seem to get is Chicken Soups or 12 Rules or some Pinker rah-rah-ing how great everything is now, amazing, better than ever (as long as you're rich and male and cis and white, he always forgets to add). I got some of the same thrill, in reading this, that I got from Julian Jaynes' incomparable [b:The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind|22478|The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind|Julian Jaynes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388305401s/22478.jpg|1311139]. Probably this shows I am a sucker for bold and irreverent theories that recast all of human history, all the way back before we were writing or even talking much. But aren't you tired of the timid nibbling around the edges of the known that you usually get? Here's someone going big!

I got to this book via [a:Adam Kotsko|1033716|Adam Kotsko|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1354437420p2/1033716.jpg]'s very useful policial theology reading list , and it's a wild ride. Enjoy it. (Kotsko's done some really nice work. Definitely check out [b:The Prince of This World|30072537|The Prince of This World|Adam Kotsko|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462376428s/30072537.jpg|50490659].)