When the writer has an anthropological interest, a display essayistic as suggestive as that of José Antonio Marina is, it takes on a first-rate humanistic dimension. It is not easy to stay with the 3 best works of this author with a point of disseminator of the sociological towards the cultural.
But here we are to offer a selection that will always limp, given the dimension of a work spanning more than 30 years, but which can serve as an introduction to the depths of a very rich thought that goes from the philosophical to the metaliterary. Thought, essay, dissemination and entertainment for minds eager for challenges of all kinds.
In a time given over to the arms of the fleeting, coming across a book by José Antonio Marina is an act of rebellion, a declaration of intent not to succumb to the haste and ease of the immediate without effort or real reward. Readings that make up a reference library for current thinking. Sophisticated ideas that are offered to us with the accessibility of an always fluid narrative, extensive but calm as a great river with wide pools...
Top 3 recommended books by José Antonio Marina
The endless desire: The emotional keys of the story
Ambition and desire in its most diverse manifestations. On the other side of the ring are atavistic fears, the shadow of days, death. In the hard fight we find a whole range of emotions that can be overcome to one side or the other thanks to the most iron will or the most unwavering conviction. The point is that our horizon is unattainable in the trial of life, in the interim granted for our existence...
«The objective of this book is to convince the reader that I am not crazy or, to be more exact, that I am not a victim of hubris.” Thus begins the new book by José Antonio Marina, which arises from the conviction that human history can be understood if we discover the hopes and fears that drove it. From the study of passions according to psychology, and in line with philosophical and anthropological thought, the author creates a new way of approaching who we are: psychohistory.
Desires drive action, but their satisfaction does not exhaust our capacity to yearn: we are an endless desire that could only be satisfied with happiness. Therefore, even the most terrible historical events are part of a long and tortuous search for that feeling. This work reveals to us the role that emotions play when it comes to understanding our origins and the development of societies. An entertaining and revealing trip, a gift for the intellect.
Biography of inhumanity: History of human cruelty, unreason and insensitivity
As the definition of humanity is accepted today, all of the above seems mired in the deepest contradiction. Because every human movement is marked by violence and destruction as the easiest way to access prosperity for the individual or for the community. Fear subdues, wins and convinces (even if only by blocking the will). A very true biography to address what until today, and surely forever, will be of the human species.
biography of inhumanity represents the antithesis of the previous book by José Antonio Marina. While biography of humanity explained the history of cultural evolution (through the development of art, politics, social institutions, religions, feelings, and technology), biography of inhumanity aims to explore the greatest mistakes or cruelties in our history, and why at the time these actions were carried out or accepted as a kind of implacable fate. Using the intellectual tools provided by psychology, the author offers us a historical-cultural journey through the main evils and indolence that we have committed as an "inhuman" species.
Biography of humanity: History of the evolution of cultures
All evolution has a point of optimism and even faith. There are improvements in evolution even though there are moments that point to the involution from the reactionary of ethnocentrism. Perhaps this book should have been the second part of the previous one and not the other way around. To leave that taste of hope despite everything...
The human species is a hybrid of biology and culture, and this surprising and original book gives full prominence not to genetics, but to the history of cultural evolution, through a journey that explores the development of art, politics , social institutions, religions, feelings and technology; an exciting journey through the inexhaustible creative intelligence.
If we are about to enter the "era of transhumanism", according to influential thinkers, remember the set of actions that humanity has been developing to solve its difficulties and meet its expectations —survive, flee from pain, increase well-being, coexist peacefully, reach an ethical model... - today becomes an unavoidable necessity. The main mechanisms of biological evolution are random mutations and natural selection, the same means that intervene in the evolutionary process of culture, in which we find universal realities that each society has resolved in its own way, as well as parallelisms in inventions. —agriculture, writing, life in cities, forms of government…— and a series of precarious achievements, which can collapse if the previous conditions that gave rise to them disappear.
biography of humanity It is a substantial catalog of "cultural genetics", a genealogy of the human being that allows us to understand not only our origins and values, our intelligence and sensitivity, but also our creative and destructive capacity. A biography that demonstrates the colossal dynamism of the human species.
I have to thank you for your interest in my books. It is possible that I also selected the three that you have chosen. Perhaps it included "The Struggle for Dignity", which is at the origin of the others. a cordial greeting
Thank you very much for your comment, José Antonio.
Delighted to bring his work to this space.
Regards!