What is Man?, by Mark Twain
Spending the extra time by reading What Is Man?, By Mark Twain can supply such fantastic encounter even you are only sitting on your chair in the office or in your bed. It will not curse your time. This What Is Man?, By Mark Twain will certainly guide you to have even more precious time while taking rest. It is really enjoyable when at the twelve noon, with a mug of coffee or tea as well as an e-book What Is Man?, By Mark Twain in your gizmo or computer screen. By enjoying the views around, here you can start reading.
What is Man?, by Mark Twain
PDF Ebook Online What is Man?, by Mark Twain
What Is Man?, first published by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in 1906, is a dialog between a young man and an older man jaded to the world. It involves ideas of destiny and free will, as well as of psychological egoism. The Old Man asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objects, and asks him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.
What is Man?, by Mark Twain- Amazon Sales Rank: #990857 in Books
- Published on: 2015-07-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .17" w x 5.25" l, .19 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 74 pages
From the Publisher **Performed by 2001 Grammy nominated Carl Reiner, for Best Performance in spoken word audio, for Mark Twain's Letters from Earth.**
About the Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (pen name Mark Twain) was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. In 1839 the Clemens family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River where young Sam experienced the excitement and colorful sights of the waterfront. Like many authors of his day he had little formal education. His education came from the print shops and newspaper offices where he worked as a youth. He first wrote under the pen name, "Mark Twain" (meaning "two fathoms" in riverboat-talk) in 1863. "Twain" wrote his first popular story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County in 1865. He continued to travel as a correspondent for various newspapers and in 1869 his travel letters from Europe were collected into the popular book, The Innocents Abroad. Encouraged by his success Twain married Olivia Langdon and settled down in Hartford, Connecticut to his most productive years as a writer. Between 1873 and 1889 he wrote seven novels including his Mississippi River books as well as The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). As Twain's life and career progressed he became increasingly pessimistic, losing much of the humorous, cocky tone of his earlier years. More and more of his work expressed the gloomy view that all human motives are ultimately selfish. Even so Twain is best remembered as a humorist who used his sharp wit and comic exaggeration to attack the false pride and self-importance he saw in humanity.
From AudioFile Is man nothing more than a machine, incapable of free will? What are the factors shaping his actions and decisions? Mark Twain entertainingly posed and answered these questions in a volume published anonymously. Twain's biting view of mankind spares no one, but it contains rays of hope. Carl Reiner takes the roles of both teacher and pupil in Twain's Socratic dialogue. Reiner captures both the humor and the serious underpinnings of Twain's work, although in giving the more natural voice to the teacher while making the student seem unbelievably naive, Reiner tips the scales toward the cynical view. This audio production will provide much thought, as well as laughter. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Where to Download What is Man?, by Mark Twain
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. The American 'Free Will' By Jerry This essay was introduced to me through a blog about the philosophical question of 'free will'. At first glance, I thought I was being entertained by another one Twain's latest satires. Instead, I felt like I was engaged in a modern lecture between a seasoned philosophy professor and his most accomplished student.Through the dialogue, you get a sense that this piece of writing is the epitome of Samuel Clemen's look on life, although debatable. Regardless of how you feel at the end of the essay, if read carefully, you will at least question your own daily motives and perhaps everyone else's that has come before you. I have been trained to thoroughly enjoy this read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A highly unusual unexpected idea about people By Israel Drazin Mark Twain is widely known as a humorist, but there is one very serious book that he wrote, “What is Man?” He held off publishing the book for many years and constantly made changes in it because he felt, correctly, that people would reject his ideas, and he later only released the book in a limited edition of two hundred and fifty copies. When he died in 1910, the New York Tribune wrote an article that focused on the incongruity that the greatest American humorist had such dark seemingly irreligious opinions.The book contains Mark Twain’s strange concept of life and his view of the inability of people to think and make decisions, a concept we would never had expected from this wise, open-eyed man. He felt that people lack free will and that they act like machines, like animals do.Twain contended that people do not have free will, cannot control their thoughts, and are not born with a sense of right and wrong. People learn what they learn from outside, and are compelled by their nature to do what they have absorbed no matter what its source, like a machine: “From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one – to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF…. He will always do the thing which will bring him the most mental comfort” only those things he was taught (highlights and italics in Twain’s text).People, according to Twain, are incapable of developing their own ideas. Their feelings about morality are ideas that they are taught and trained. No one ever utters a thought of his own, but “The utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand one…. It is in his human environment which influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets him on his road and keeps him on it.” Put differently: “man is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. They train him downwards or they train him upwards – but they train him; they are at work upon him all the time,” outside influences mold people and once absorbed make him do what he has been trained to do (italics in original).Twain adds that beside training, a person’s behavior is influenced by his temperament. Temperament is always present – one has either a hot or cold temperament.According to Twain, man has no dignities, grandeurs, or sublimities. He is no better than a rat. He is a machine. He acts on habit and instinct, like a cow who heads toward food. He “walks in his sleep, so to speak…. With memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects upon them, adds to them, re-combines them, and so proceeds, stage by stage” but this is exactly what an ant does.Even a man who rushes into a fire to save a woman does not do so because of free will because people do not have free will. His “temperament, his training, and the daily influences which had molded him made him what he was, compelled him to rescue the old woman and thus save himself – save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness…. He did not make the choice; it was made for him by forces which he could not control” (italics in original).Put in other words for Twain repeats his idea many times: “Man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms; the moral and mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of born-temperament and the accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a machine whose one function is to secure the spiritual contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always is obeyed” (italics and capitalizations in the original).While Twain did not develop his philosophy from the Bible, people who read the Bible literally and who are convinced that God is involved in everything that happens on earth, and who accept as true the Bible’s statement in Exodus that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he could not change his mind and did the same thing in Samuel to the two sons of the priest Eli, would also believe that people are controlled like puppets.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Also, very empowering. By Louie Louie One of my favorite books. Rather than repeat what others have said, let me just add that his ideas of external influences in life are very well made. It gives readers the the knowledge that what they say to and do for others can become an influence that can change others' lives in ways they couldn't have imagined possible.
See all 11 customer reviews... What is Man?, by Mark TwainWhat is Man?, by Mark Twain PDF
What is Man?, by Mark Twain iBooks
What is Man?, by Mark Twain ePub
What is Man?, by Mark Twain rtf
What is Man?, by Mark Twain AZW
What is Man?, by Mark Twain Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar