Omnipotence For The Millions - Softcover

Ziporyn, Brook

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595184146 ISBN 13: 9780595184149

Publisher: iUniverse, 2001

Synopsis

Omnipotence for the Millions is best described as a weeping man's bedroom farce, a tale of infuriatingly ineluctable agape and abortive misanthropy, of a love-hate triangle of rivalrous comrades and wives, of human intersubjectivity conceived as a world wherein everyone is constantly enacting exasperatingly ambiguous atrocities on everyone else and everyone's kind of pissed off about it probably but nobody's quite sure. It is the story of a certain Mr. Smithers and his close associate and rival Mr. Smith, and their unfortunate intertwining in the fast-paced back-slappingly fulfilling industry of late night self-help infomercial production. Smithers mercy-begging detestation of his putative buddy is, it would seem, no match for the latter's obliviously cheerful ability to just not get it. At various points Smithers is called upon to serve not only as Smith's best friend, his employer, his wifes lover, his business partner and his archrival, but also as his teacher (in a formal classroom setting) and as his valet. The two men, like all two men, are tacitly struggling for the same quantum of virtual space--job, money, status, women, existential authenticity, all of which are in limited supply. And yet, by dint of some sadistically neutral cosmic conspiracy, they're forced to stand around talking to each other all the time. The subject of this book, broadly speaking, is that old-time sideshow favorite formerly known as The Human Condition, in this case construed as an elaboration of what's so bad about ever having to be in the same room with anyone else.

About this title

About the Author

Brook Ziporyn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Northwestern University. His previous books include Evil and/or/as the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (Harvard: 2000), and From Contingent to Necessary Dilemma: The Self-overcoming of Context, Identity and Desire in Neo-Tiantai Perspective (Open Court: Forthcoming).

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595184146
• ISBN 13: 9780595184149
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260