Complete Essays, Vol. IV: 1936-1938

Aldous Huxley Complete Essays #4

by Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker (Editor), James Sexton (Editor)

In this fourth volume of a projected six, Huxley registers his deep misgivings about the course of history in the late 1930s as the world moved toward a second global war. Many of his essays reflect his continuing interest in the conventions of popular culture as well as the philosophy of science and history, particularly as they inform developments in art and politics. But his larger concerns oscillate between empirical science and the particulars of social history, on the one hand, and his need for a grounding of absolute truth that would transcend both. His critique of politics and the prevailing ideologies of fascism and capitalism overlaps with his attempt to locate a foundational truth in a world of change and diversity. He embraced a form of political pacifism that intersected with an increasing attraction to religious quietism and mysticism. And he made a sustained effort to reconcile mystical experience with contemporary theories of physics and the philosophy of science. At their best, Huxley's essays stand among the finest examples of the genre in modern literature. "A remarkable publishing event...beautifully produced and authoritatively edited." Jeffrey Hart.

Genres: Essays

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

Reviews

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

After having read the first three volumes of Huxley's essays, I think there is a degree of diminishing returns. World War II is imminent during the course of the book, and much of Huxley's writing in this volume revolves around ways that human society can organize that would decrease the likelihood of devastating conflicts in the future. However, he is also getting closer to his fascination with a vague and unsatisfactory mysticism. It is, frankly, difficult to concentrate long enough to finish many of these pieces. Huxley's fiction is often fantastic; these essays are a much harder sell.

[Ward Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aldous Huxley is one of my favorite authors. He captured my imagination with Brave New World in high school, and took me on a trip through The Doors of Perception in college. These essays, one of my favorite forms, are still relevant today. Many of them come from Ends and Means. In fact, you will find the last three chapters of Ends and Means, 1937, on pg. 338 - 406. Here in these essays, Religious Practices, Beliefs, and Ethics, he does a marvelous job of reconciling science and mysticism. This is the Aldous that I know and love.

[Elvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The more I read Huxley the more disappointed I become. His inherent belief, that human actions stem from their ideology, just shows how deep Huxley wants to run circles and never explain anything at all. Diving in different types of ideologies and doctrines only to use language and cherry picked historical examples to run around and write the wrights and wrongs and never arriving at practical truths and applications.

He gives practical remedies for education and how to do more of it properly, but yet in other essays he writes how negatively education can affect society and economy.

The more Huxley writes the more he contradicts himself. He despises authors that don't explain their references and use confusing language, but yet he himself always writes in 4 different languages to confuse people who might know only English. He admires mentally ill people who live in their head too much and have hard time interacting with the world like a normal person would.

[Pavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would seem his failing eyesight afforded him greater vision.
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