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Rating: 
Summary: well done
Review: De-sublimation is what Brown prescribes to his readers. The book is well researched and well written. Much of the book twists your mind.
You need a good background in psychology, religion, poetry and philosophy as well as a quick mind to be able to grasp many of the abstract concepts.
Read it.
Rating: 
Summary: good book
Review: I don't have much to say other than this was a good book. It combines theory of elves and leprechauns with modern industry. Just kidding. The other reviews give you the basic "plot".
Rating:
Summary: A Great Companion to Norman O. Brown
Review: I love Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death. A must-read. And I'll let you in on a big secret. An undiscovered gem called THE IMMORTALIST MANIFESTO by ELIXXIR (available on Amazon) takes Brown's thesis to its rational, ultimate conclusion. Find out why CORNEL WEST, HARVARD (NOW PRINCETON) philosophy professor calls the author Elixxir FIRST RATE! ORIGINAL...RAZOR-SHARP." If indeed our fear of Death and our desire for Immortality are as unquenchable as Brown rightly points out, then we shall never reconcile with Death, The Immortalist Manifesto argues. But instead humanity will track it down as "the last enemy" to be conquered. Only when Death is vanquished shall we be free from the bondage of Alienation, Repression, and Oppression. The Big Book we've been waiting for. Unlike Brown's book, which is great for intellectuals, The immortalist Manifesto has the intellectual prowess but also the potential to change the world. And as someone :) said, the point is not only to interpret the world but to change it!
Rating:
Summary: remembering the classic
Review: norman o brown is no longer in vogue, as he once was, back in the 60's, but intellectuals who criticize this book today, claiming their own mature wisdom and resignation, are the ones who have never read it, or read it carefully, in the first place. this is one of the most intelligent books ever written by an american professor. as a piece of work in the field of freud interpretation, it has a penetrating force unsurpassed by any other since the day of its publication.it's not likely that the official academic world will approve of it, but that doesn't matter. what the intelligent reader has to do, and all that he has to do, is to open the book and read it. yes, read this book, for it might be decades before another one of its caliber will come into this world.
Rating:
Summary: A primitive Freudian looks at history and culture
Review: Norman O. Brown was, for a few years during the sixties, a man with a cult following. His book Life Against Death, which can hardly be described in simple terms, had influence on both political processes and the sexual freedom movement. He popularized the term "polymorphosly perverse" to describe natural childhood sexuality before it has been channeled into the predictable forms of genitle sex. He argued that money had its origins in a child's natural interest in its feces. He managed, in this book, to turn everything we take for granted about normal life on its head. No question this is a very liberating book in a lot of ways. It is very well written and his arguments present a kind of proof by authority - he states his case so well you just darn better believe him. I can't recall another book like this, that works so many themes simultaneoulsy. I can't read it without wanting to stop and quote sections to whoever is around to hear. I can't say that I really believe any of his argument, but like Alan Watts, he manages to make his case seem so plausible and desirable that I really wish I did.
Rating:
Summary: LIFE vs. DEATH
Review: This book had an incredible influence on me. It's Freudian interpretation impacted my views of both society and history. The influence one man can have over a million. The ability to awaken and influence a crowd of individuals into a single mob. This book helped me understand both my own and the mass psyche. It's thesis that mankind must be viewed as largely unaware of its own desires, hostile to life, and unconsciously bent on self-destruction at the time I read it had great appeal for me. Brown wrote repression had not only caused individual neurosis but social pathology as well. From this I conclude that crowds could have sexual neurosis much like those of individuals, and that these derangements could be quickly and effectively diagnosed and then 'treated'. This book is a must for anyone interested in figuring out the human psyche.
Rating:
Summary: This makes Schopenhauer seem like a mere philosopher
Review: This book has been a paperback since 1960. I became a high school freshman in 1960 and graduated from high school in 1965, which isn't much of an achievement compared to reading this book. I took English, World History, Chemistry, Physics, Latin, mathematics, but when I wanted to take Modern Problems my final year, I was assigned to Family Living instead, so there would be a better balance of boys and girls in both classes. I doubt if LIFE AGAINST DEATH by Norman O. Brown has ever been assigned reading for either course. Chapter 13, "The Excremental Vision," and chapter 15, "Filthy Lucre," in which "the psychoanalytical theorems about money question the rationality of the norm itself, of which money is the center," work as strongly against the popular opinions propagated by public education as against any individual's sense of narcissistic needs. LIFE AGAINST DEATH was written during a very religious time, and Chapter 14 starts with the circumstances of illumination as revealed in a paragraph from Martin Luther which ends with: `But once when in this tower I was meditating on those words, "the just lives by faith," "justice of God," I soon had the thought whether we ought to live justified by faith, and God's justice ought to be the salvation of every believer, and soon my soul was revived. Therefore it is God's justice which justifies us and saves us. And these words became a sweeter message for me. This knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower.' While I find LIFE AGAINST DEATH enlightening, it seems to me that it was written ten or twenty years too early to include the historical circumstances that could allow an entire generation, the baby boomers, to illustrate the forms of consciousness which conclusively have now established "the doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind," or "it is a Freudian axiom that the essence of man consists, not, as Descartes maintained, in thinking, but in desiring." Norman O. Brown's attack on an overly civilized form of rationality makes play the ultimate form of freedom, and harnessing economic revenues to enrich those who possess the highest entertainment values has made the culture of celebrity far more observable than the forms of science and technology currently being pursued by modern society. Ultimately, the Freudian view of repression makes me wish for the opportunity to digress into everything that is supposed to be secret in modern society. Norman O. Brown provides an intellectual platform for viewing the ultimate comedy of our situation, in which the science of Eros is linked to the politics of bizarre behavior in a manner that can hardly avoid being pornographic. In 2004, the comic punch line for naked prisoners hiding their heads inside sandbags while a female guard points to the pixilated part of the picture ought to be: This is a stick-up. Back in the 20th century, people didn't joke about what the map of Vietnam looks like, but I think American policy in Nam was only possible because the American people had never seen a credibility gap that looked exactly like the map of Vietnam before, and those who had certainly weren't going to be allowed to say anything. American totalitarianism was demanding silence on secret circus stunt principles: anyone who explained how the trick is done would spoil the fun for everybody. Religion came to be treated like that kind of magic, in which God could be anything that we wanted him to be, and mental play became more like the "Vengeance is Mine" cartoon by Edward Sorel on page 10 of "The Nation" (July 5, 2004) which has five pictures of American flags, with thirteen stars in the first and forty-eight stars in the middle of the page, followed by four pictures of a God who is upset by death machines, but even more by other superpowers who insist on "BLAMING ME FOR THEIR ATROCITIES! That's when I began sending them global warming and schmuck presidents . . ." Anyone who is aware of the real problems that modern societies face can hardly help but smile at the final picture of God waving a finger and proclaiming: ". . . AND THAT'S JUST THE BEGINNING!!" Part Three: DEATH of LIFE AGAINST DEATH offers three chapters; the first is only ten pages on the theory of instincts. Conflict arises from ambivalences which have long been known. "Freud correctly found a model for his own view in the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, who found the ultimate principle of the universe to be the eternal conflict between love and strife." Chapter 8, "Death, Time, and Eternity," is considering the repetition-compulsion when it mentions a psychoanalytical abolition of time based on Kant's doctrine. "This Copernican revolution makes time a psychological, not an ontological, problem for psychoanalysis. It also, as Schopenhauer saw, opens up the possibility of man's emancipation from the tyranny of time." Chapter 5, "Art and Eros," suggests "that art is essentially an opiate of the people, an escape into an unreal world of fantasy indistinguishable from a full-blown neurosis, both art and neurosis having the basic dynamic of a flight from reality." A society based primarily on entertainment values functions best when people can adapt to roles in the fantasy conversations which provide its primary means of redemption, lines like, "These are not the droids you're looking for." Movies, comedy, and some great rock 'n' roll songs provide more modern examples of this mechanism than what people were taught about art in school, but there might be an art school somewhere which has a handle on this. People who seriously read this book should not be afraid to go on looking for things that are brilliant, whatever field they might be concerned with.
Rating:
Summary: This makes Schopenhauer seem like a mere philosopher
Review: This book has been a paperback since 1960. I became a high school freshman in 1960 and graduated from high school in 1965, which isn't much of an achievement compared to reading this book. I took English, World History, Chemistry, Physics, Latin, mathematics, but when I wanted to take Modern Problems my final year, I was assigned to Family Living instead, so there would be a better balance of boys and girls in both classes. I doubt if LIFE AGAINST DEATH by Norman O. Brown has ever been assigned reading for either course. Chapter 13, "The Excremental Vision," and chapter 15, "Filthy Lucre," in which "the psychoanalytical theorems about money question the rationality of the norm itself, of which money is the center," work as strongly against the popular opinions propagated by public education as against any individual's sense of narcissistic needs. LIFE AGAINST DEATH was written during a very religious time, and Chapter 14 starts with the circumstances of illumination as revealed in a paragraph from Martin Luther which ends with: `But once when in this tower I was meditating on those words, "the just lives by faith," "justice of God," I soon had the thought whether we ought to live justified by faith, and God's justice ought to be the salvation of every believer, and soon my soul was revived. Therefore it is God's justice which justifies us and saves us. And these words became a sweeter message for me. This knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower.' While I find LIFE AGAINST DEATH enlightening, it seems to me that it was written ten or twenty years too early to include the historical circumstances that could allow an entire generation, the baby boomers, to illustrate the forms of consciousness which conclusively have now established "the doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind," or "it is a Freudian axiom that the essence of man consists, not, as Descartes maintained, in thinking, but in desiring." Norman O. Brown's attack on an overly civilized form of rationality makes play the ultimate form of freedom, and harnessing economic revenues to enrich those who possess the highest entertainment values has made the culture of celebrity far more observable than the forms of science and technology currently being pursued by modern society. Ultimately, the Freudian view of repression makes me wish for the opportunity to digress into everything that is supposed to be secret in modern society. Norman O. Brown provides an intellectual platform for viewing the ultimate comedy of our situation, in which the science of Eros is linked to the politics of bizarre behavior in a manner that can hardly avoid being pornographic. In 2004, the comic punch line for naked prisoners hiding their heads inside sandbags while a female guard points to the pixilated part of the picture ought to be: This is a stick-up. Back in the 20th century, people didn't joke about what the map of Vietnam looks like, but I think American policy in Nam was only possible because the American people had never seen a credibility gap that looked exactly like the map of Vietnam before, and those who had certainly weren't going to be allowed to say anything. American totalitarianism was demanding silence on secret circus stunt principles: anyone who explained how the trick is done would spoil the fun for everybody. Religion came to be treated like that kind of magic, in which God could be anything that we wanted him to be, and mental play became more like the "Vengeance is Mine" cartoon by Edward Sorel on page 10 of "The Nation" (July 5, 2004) which has five pictures of American flags, with thirteen stars in the first and forty-eight stars in the middle of the page, followed by four pictures of a God who is upset by death machines, but even more by other superpowers who insist on "BLAMING ME FOR THEIR ATROCITIES! That's when I began sending them global warming and schmuck presidents . . ." Anyone who is aware of the real problems that modern societies face can hardly help but smile at the final picture of God waving a finger and proclaiming: ". . . AND THAT'S JUST THE BEGINNING!!" Part Three: DEATH of LIFE AGAINST DEATH offers three chapters; the first is only ten pages on the theory of instincts. Conflict arises from ambivalences which have long been known. "Freud correctly found a model for his own view in the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, who found the ultimate principle of the universe to be the eternal conflict between love and strife." Chapter 8, "Death, Time, and Eternity," is considering the repetition-compulsion when it mentions a psychoanalytical abolition of time based on Kant's doctrine. "This Copernican revolution makes time a psychological, not an ontological, problem for psychoanalysis. It also, as Schopenhauer saw, opens up the possibility of man's emancipation from the tyranny of time." Chapter 5, "Art and Eros," suggests "that art is essentially an opiate of the people, an escape into an unreal world of fantasy indistinguishable from a full-blown neurosis, both art and neurosis having the basic dynamic of a flight from reality." A society based primarily on entertainment values functions best when people can adapt to roles in the fantasy conversations which provide its primary means of redemption, lines like, "These are not the droids you're looking for." Movies, comedy, and some great rock 'n' roll songs provide more modern examples of this mechanism than what people were taught about art in school, but there might be an art school somewhere which has a handle on this. People who seriously read this book should not be afraid to go on looking for things that are brilliant, whatever field they might be concerned with.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: This is not really a review - time is lacking. Just a strong recommendation. If the question "What is the human animal?" is on your mind, read this book! In my opinion, Life Against Death ranks among the most important modern contributions toward an understanding of the human condition. It is on the same short list as Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and Camus' Myth of Sisyphus. Like these works and indeed the subject, it is not an easy read. I am ordering a fresh copy and looking forward to the introduction by Christopher Lasch which I have not read. I also recommend Norman O. Brown's other works - in particular, Love's Body and the collection of essays, Apocalypse And/or Metamorphosis. I first read Brown in the 1960s and revisit him often. There are those who dismiss Brown as a 1960s enfant terrible (Life was in fact written in the 1950s) but listen to them not!
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