Harry Mulish
THE PROCEDURE

Internationally renowned novelist Harry Mulisch's The Procedure is a haunting and fascinating novel about two men who try to create life but fail. In the late sixteenth century, Rabbi Jehudah Löw, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, creates a golem
by following a procedure outlined in a third-century cabalist text.

Four hundred years later,Victor Werker, a Dutch biologist mourning the loss of his stillborn daughter, causes an international uproar when he creates a complex organic clay crystal that can reproduce and has a metabolism. But his unsettling discovery takes its toll as his inner and outer demons pursue him around the world, from California to Venice, Cairo, and Jerusalem.

Gaston Bachelard
LA PHILOSOPHIE DU NON
(THE PHILOSOPHY OF NO)
LE DROIT DE REVER
(THE RIGHT TO DREAM)

The matrix of Bachelard's thought is twentieth-century science, the "new scientific mind" that he dates from 1905 and Einstein's special theory of relativity. Like the discovery of America five hundred years before, the discoveries of mathematics and physics today have undermined our familiar epistemologies. Modern science has forced us to revise our conception of the rational subject and of the relation between reason and reality, subject and object. A "psychic revolution" has accompanied this revolution in reason.
If we try to grasp the dialectics of matter and energy in physics, or the dualism of waves and particles, we shall learn to maintain difference and handle complexity; we are shaken out of the reductive, identity-ridden habits of ordinary life and thought.

Andre Comte-Sponville
PETIT TRAITE DES GRANDES VERTUS

“Direct and clear . . . This is no ordinary work of philosophy.”
Anthony Gottlieb, The New York Times Book Review

Drawing on thinkers from Aristotle to Simone Weil, by way of Aquinas, Kant, Rilke, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Rawls, among others, Comte-Sponville elaborates on the qualities that constitute the essence and excellence of humankind. Starting with politeness—almost a virtue—and ending with love— which transcends all morality—A Small Treatise takes us on a tour of the eighteen essential virtues: fidelity, prudence, temperance, courage, justice, generosity, compassion, mercy, gratitude, humility, simplicity, tolerance, purity, gentleness,
good faith, and even, surprisingly, humor. Sophisticated and lucid, full of wit and vivacity, this modestly titled, yet immensely important work provides an indispensable guide to finding what is right and good in everyday life.

Jaques Attali
LES JUIFS, LE MONDE ET L’ARGENT

Jaques Attali is a prolific writer, former political adviser for Francois Mitterrand. ‘Attali’ is a common name among Sephardic Jews from Maghreb. Again, I would not have chosen
the topic, but as a visitor to Vagabond sent it to me, then „noblesse oblige“, I feel a duty to discuss it. I am not sorry though; sometimes the chance brings better fruits than free choice. Ethnicity doesn’t interest me as linked to money and/or crime. Nobody holds a grudge against Italians because of the Mafia, and who remembers today that in 19th century New York the gangs were Irish, often engaged in formal battles with the police.Making money is a legal procedure in itself within the free market system and if somebody shows particular skills for it it’s their business. If it makes others jealous, that’s only normal. Jealousy is
one of the most corrosive powers in the world, and the best repellent for jealousy is not to stop being good at something or to hide oneself in a mousehole, but to challenge the jealous.