Product Description

Finished only weeks before his death in 1994, this autobiography traces the trajectory that led Feyerabend from an isolated, lower-middle-class childhood in Vienna to the height of international academic success as one of this century's most influential intellectuals. He writes of his experience in the German army on the Russian front, where three bullets left him crippled, impotent, and in lifelong pain. He recalls his promising talent as an operatic tenor (a lifelong passion), his encounters with everyone from Martin Buber to Bertolt Brecht, innumerable love affairs, four marriages, and a career so rich he once held tenured positions at four universities at the same time. Although not written as an intellectual autobiography, "Killing Time" sketches the people, ideas, and conflicts of 60 years. Feyerabend writes frankly of complicated relationships with his mentor Karl Popper and his friend and frequent opponent Imre Lakatos, and his reactions to a growing reputation as the "worst enemy of science."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259996 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 203 pages

Customer Reviews

A refreshing free-thinker
Paul Feyerabend's autobiography is remarkably open and frank, fitting with the way this man wrote, thought, and led his life. Feyerabend was the man who, perhaps more than anyone else, has clearly pointed out that science has become the religion of western culture. His autobiography let me learn a little about what made this man so unafraid of thinking differently from other people. I also found it to be poignant, particularly in the picture of a boy raised without love, who as an adult is captivated by his love of beauty in music and the theater, and who finally begins to grasp what love is at the end of his life.

Scènes de la vie de bohème
In his book `Reason and Culture', Ernest Gellner points his finger at certain philosophers of science for undermining reason. One of the culprits is Paul Feyerabend.
This autobiography is very revealing indeed. It gives an in depth view of Feyerabend's eventful life, his difficult character, his fierce philosophical battles, his profound (physical and intellectual) loves and his (self-) inflicted deceptions.
As a young soldier, he was physically heavily marked by World War II, but astonishingly his fighting spirit was enhanced. On the other hand, was this experience not the main reason for his deep pessimism: `Me? A family? Children? Not on this planet!' He called himself an `icy egotist'. All his life he had violent outburst of inner rage: `We shall act in a barbaric way. We shall punish, kill, meet violence with violence.'
During the war, he was lived, as Nietzsche said: `the aims of Nazism - I hardly knew what they were.' Already then for him, `a clean moral vision implies simplifications and acts of cruelty and injustice.'
After the war, he had to choose between a career as a professional singer (he had a beautiful voice and loved opera) or as a scientist. He became a philosopher of science.
But now the intellectual caste became the target of his violent attacks: `intellectuals prepare a New Age of ignorance, darkness and slavery.' His main foe was the man he saw as the new POP(p)E(r) of philosophy.
Overreactions and exaggerations made him even return to animism: `two types of tumors to be removed - philosophy of science and general philosophy (ethics, epistemology etc.) ... Nor is there one way of knowing, science. There are many such ways, and before they were ruined by Western civilization, they were effective in the sense that they kept people alive and made their existence comprehensible.'??
His anger culminated in his best known book `Against Method', called by his caste `anything goes'. Already the title is a provocation. It provoked an avalanche of devastating reviews which traumatized him deeply. He defends himself: `I never denigrated reason, only some petrified and tyrannical versions of it.'
After meeting the love of his life, the rebel (sometimes without a cause) became less caustic, and even wanted children.

All in all, this book is a fascinating read.