Publisher's Synopsis
The three essays that make up this volume all deal with the labyrinths of the mind, convoluted lines of reasoning that lead to eccentric and/or dangerous practices. The goal of the book is to present three cases of this; the Nazis brooding upon the idea of "a higher kind of man," a short, literary history of misanthropy and, traits of Jewish identity and self-understanding that often appear as antics. The methodical approach is hermeneutic, relying heavily on historical, associative and linguistic analyses. The style of writing is essayistic, more personal and generalist than what is normally found in academic papers. Rather than picking a lexical definition of the phenomenon, like a psychological account of aberrations and their root causes, the text takes the longer and more scenic route of its historical manifestations and their impact on humankind. The Nazi grail takes us from an annual celebration on a mountaintop in France to the dark outlook of the ancient Gnostics and the history of those ideas up until our day of age. The essay on misanthropy, from the ancient Greeks to the sociopath predator we all know today, discusses the hatred of humankind as it inevitably adapts to the changing discourses throughout history. The investigation into the genesis and culture of the Jewish Nation, as in their manifest identity, highlights their notion of being a chosen people. An epilogue debunks some mainstream ideas about "mind" and, with that, "labyrinth," as analyzed in this book.
