Leonard Cohen

Leonard Norman Cohen, CC (born September 21, 1934 in Westmount, Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963.
Cohen's earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1968 album Songs of Leonard Cohen) were rooted in European folk music melodies and instrumentation, sung in a high baritone. The 1970s were a musically restless period in which his influences broadened to encompass pop, cabaret, and world music. Since the 1980s he has typically sung in lower registers (bass baritone, sometimes bass), with accompaniment from electronic synthesizers and female backing singers.
His work often explores the themes of religion, isolation, sexuality, and complex interpersonal relationships.
Cohen's songs and poetry have influenced many other singer-songwriters, and more than a thousand renditions of his work have been recorded. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. Cohen will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008 for his status among the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters".

Cohen was born to a middle-class Jewish family of Polish-Lithuanian ancestry in 1934 in Montreal, Quebec. He grew up in Westmount on the Island of Montreal. His father, Nathan Cohen, was the owner of a substantial Montreal clothing store, and died when Leonard was nine years old. Like many other Jews named Cohen, Katz, Kagan, etc., his family made a claim of descent from the Kohanim: "I had a very Messianic childhood," he told Richard Goldstein in 1967. "I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest."[2] As a teenager he learned to play the guitar, subsequently forming a country-folk group called the Buckskin Boys. His father's will provided Leonard with a modest trust income, sufficient to allow him to pursue his literary ambitions.

In 1967, Cohen relocated to the United States to pursue a career as a folk singer-songwriter. His song "Suzanne" became a hit for Judy Collins. After performing at a few folk festivals, he came to the attention of Columbia Records representative John H. Hammond (who signed artists such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Billie Holiday).
The sound of Cohen's first album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) was too dark to be a commercial success, but was widely acclaimed by folk music buffs. He became a cult name in the UK, where the album spent over a year on the album charts. He followed up with Songs from a Room (1969) (featuring the oft-covered "Bird on the Wire"), Songs of Love and Hate (1971), Live Songs (1973), and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974).
In 1971, Cohen's music was used to great effect in the soundtrack to Robert Altman's film 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller'. Though pulled from the existing Cohen catalog, the songs melded so seamlessly with the story that many believed they had been written for the film.
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cohen toured the United States, Canada and Europe. In 1973, Cohen toured Israel and performed at army bases during the Yom Kippur War. Beginning around 1974, his collaboration with pianist/arranger John Lissauer created a live sound praised by the critics, but which was never really captured on record. During this time, Cohen often toured with Jennifer Warnes as a back-up singer. Warnes would become a fixture on Cohen's future albums and she recorded an album of Cohen songs in 1987, Famous Blue Raincoat.
In 1977, Cohen released Death of a Ladies' Man (note the plural possessive case; one year later in 1978, Cohen released a volume of poetry with the coyly revised title, Death of a Lady's Man). The album was produced by Phil Spector, well known as the inventor of the "wall of sound" technique, in which pop music is backed with thick layers of instrumentation, an approach very different from Cohen's usually minimalist instrumentation. The recording of the album was fraught with difficulty; Spector reportedly mixed the album in secret studio sessions and Cohen said Spector once threatened him with a crossbow. Cohen thinks the end result is "grotesque",[3] but also "semi-virtuous".[4]
In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs. Produced by Cohen himself and Henry Lewy (Joni Mitchell's sound engineer) the album included performances by a jazz-fusion band introduced to Cohen by Mitchell and oriental instruments (oud, Gypsy violin and mandolin). In 2001 Cohen released the live version of songs from his 1979 tour, Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979.

Leonard Norman Cohen (Montréal, 1934. szeptember 21.) kanadai költő, regényíró, énekes és dalszövegíró.

Cohen egy lengyel eredetű középosztálybeli zsidó családba született 1934-ben a québeci Montréalban és Westmountban nőtt fel. Apja, Nathan Cohen, aki tehetős üzletember, egy montréali ruházati bolt vállalkozás tulajdonosa volt, meghalt Leonard kilenc éves korában. Családja, mint a legtöbb Cohen, Kohn, Katz, Kagan stb. nevű zsidó család, a kohaniták leszármazottjának tartotta magát: "Nagyon messianisztikus gyerekkorom volt", mondta 1967-ben. "Azt mondták, hogy Áron főpap leszármazottja vagyok."[1] Tizenévesen tanult meg gitározni, majd alapított egy country-folk együttest Buckskin Boys néven. Apja végrendelete értelmében rendszeres szerény jövedelemhez jutott, ami lehetővé tette, hogy irodalmi ambícióinak élhessen.

1951-ben beiratkozott a McGill Egyetemre, ahol a McGilli Szónoki Egyesület elnöke lett. Első verseskötete még egyetemi évei alatt, 1956-ban jelent meg Let Us Compare Mythologies címmel. 1961-ben kiadott második kötete, a The Spice-Box of Earth tette ismertté nevét irodalmi körökben, elsősorban Kanadában.
Cohen szigorú munkafegyelem szerint dolgozott korai szenvedélyes korszakában. A hatvanas években verseket és prózát is írt, és meglehetősen visszavonultan élt. Egy görög szigetre, Idrára költözött, itt írta Flowers for Hitler című verseskötetét (1964), valamint a The Favourite Game (1963) és Beautiful Losers (1966) című regényeit, amelyek azóta magyarul is megjelentek (A kedvenc játék; Szépséges lúzerek).
A kedvenc játék egy önéletrajzi tárgyú bildungsroman, nevelési regény egy fiatalemberről, aki az írásban találja meg önmagát. Ezzel szemben a Szépséges lúzereket ellen-bildungsromannak tekinthetjük, hiszen – korai posztmodern mintára – a szentet a profánnal, a vallást a szexualitással vegyítve vizsgálja a főszereplők önazonosságát gazdag, lírai nyelvezetben. A regényben Cohen québeci gyökerei is megjelennek – bár ez egy zsidó hátterű szerzőtől talán kissé szokatlan – , az egyik mellékszál egy katolikus boldogról, az irokéz indián Kateri Tekakwitháról szól. A Szépséges lúzerek kezdetben megdöbbentette a kanadai kritikusokat szókimondó szexuális tartalma miatt.

1967-ben Cohen az Egyesült Államokba költözött, hogy megkezdje folk-rock énekesi és dalszerzői pályafutását. Fellépett egy pár fesztiválon, ekkor figyelt fel rá a Columbia Records képviselője, John H. Hammond, aki olyan művészek producere volt, mint Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan és Bruce Springsteen.
Suzanne című dalát először Judy Collins vitte sikerre, majd Cohen maga is elénekelte első albumán, a '67-ben megjelent Songs of Leonard Cohenen. Az album sötét hangvétele miatt nem kelt el túl nagy példányszámban, de a folkrajongók körében nagy sikert aratott. Az Egyesült Királyságban több mint egy évet töltött a lemezeladási listákon. Ezt több hasonló album követte: Songs from a Room (1969) (rajta egyik legtöbbször feldolgozott dala, a Bird on the Wire), Songs of Love and Hate (1971) és New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974).
A 60-as években és a 70-es évek elején Cohen bejárta az Egyesült Államokat, Kanadát és Európát. 1973-ban Izraelben turnézott és katonai állomásokon is fellépett a jom kippuri háború során. 1974-től kezdve együtt koncertezett John Lissauer zongoristával, közös munkájukat a kritika is elismerte, de hangfelvétel sosem készült róla. Ekkoriban Cohen koncertjein már gyakran vokálozott Jennifer Warnes, aki állandó közreműködő lett a későbbi albumokon (ő énekli például a női szólamot a Take This Waltzban). Warnes 1987-ben saját neve alatt is kiadott egy Cohen-feldolgozásokat tartalmazó lemezt Famous Blue Raincoat címmel.
1977-ben jelent meg a Death of a Ladies' Man című lemez, melynek producere Phil Spector volt, akit a "wall of sound" technika feltalálójaként ismernek. A lemezen a popzene gazdag hangszereléssel párosul, ami nagyban eltér Cohen addig megszokott minimalista stílusától. A felvételeket sok nehézség kísérte; Spector állítólag titokban keverte az albumot és egyszer fegyverrel fenyegette meg Cohent. Cohen kezdetben groteszknek minősítette közös munkájukat, [2] később azonban már "félig-meddig művészinek" nevezte azt.[3]
1979-ben Cohen a hagyományosabb hangvételű Recent Songsszal tért vissza. A producerek maga Cohen és Henry Lewy voltak, a lemezen megszólal egy jazz fusion együttes és egzotikus hangszerek is (úd, cigányhegedű, mandolin). A lemezbemutató turnén készült felvételek 2001-ben jelentek meg Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 címmel.

George Gershwin

George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed songs both for Broadway and for the classical concert hall. He also wrote popular songs with success.
Many of his compositions have been used on television and in numerous films, and many became jazz standards. The jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded many of the Gershwins' songs on her 1959 Gershwin Songbook (arranged by Nelson Riddle). Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs, including Louis Armstrong, Al Jolson, Art Tatum, Bing Crosby, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Marni Nixon, Natalie Cole, Nina Simone, Maureen McGovern, John Fahey, and Sting.

Gershwin was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Morris (Moishe) Gershowitz, changed the family name to Gershwin sometime after immigrating from St. Petersburg, Russia. Gershwin's mother, Rosa Bruskin, also immigrated from Russia; she married Gershowitz four years later.
George Gershwin was the second of four children. He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he was intrigued by what he heard at a friend, Max Rosen's, violin recital. The sound and the way his friend played captured him. His parents had bought a piano for his older brother Ira Gershwin, but to his parents' surprise and Ira's relief, it was George who played it. Although his younger sister Frances Gershwin was the first in the family to make money from her musical talents, she married young and became a housewife and mother, giving up her own singing and dance career—settling into painting, a hobby of George Gershwin's.
Gershwin tried various piano teachers for two years, and then was introduced to Charles Hambeetzer by Jack Miller, the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Hambeetzer acted as George's mentor until his death, in 1918. Hambeetzer taught George conventional piano technique, introduced him to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestral concerts. (At home following such concerts, young George would attempt to reproduce at the piano the music he had heard.) He later studied with classical composer Rubin Goldmark and avant-garde composer-theorist Henry Cowell.

Gershwin was influenced very much by French composers of the early twentieth century. Maurice Ravel was quite impressed with the Gershwins' abilities, commenting, "Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing."[17] The orchestrations in Gershwin's symphonic works often seem similar to those of Ravel; likewise, Ravel's two piano concertos evince an influence of Gershwin. He also asked Ravel for lessons. When Ravel heard how much Gershwin earned, Ravel replied "How about you give me some lessons?" (some versions of this story feature Igor Stravinsky rather than Ravel as the composer; however Stravinsky himself confirmed that he originally heard the story from Ravel).[18]
Gershwin's own Concerto in F was criticized as being strongly rooted in the work of Claude Debussy, more so than in the jazz style which was expected. The comparison didn't deter Gershwin from continuing to explore French styles. The title of An American in Paris reflects the very journey that he had consciously taken as a composer: "The opening part will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and the Six, though the tunes are original."[19] Aside from the French influence, Gershwin was intrigued by the works of Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Arnold Schoenberg. He also asked Schoenberg for composition lessons. Schoenberg refused, saying "I would only make you a bad Schoenberg, and you're such a good Gershwin already".[20] (This quote is similar to one credited to Maurice Ravel during Gershwin's 1928 visit to France -- "Why be a second-rate Ravel, when you are a first-rate Gershwin?" See the Wikipedia article for Maurice Ravel.)
Russian Joseph Schillinger's influence as his teacher of composition (1932-1936) was substantial in providing him with a method to his composition. There has been some disagreement about the nature of Schillinger's influence on Gershwin. After the posthumous success of Porgy and Bess, Schillinger claimed he had a large and direct influence in overseeing the creation of the opera; Ira completely denied that his brother had any such assistance for this work. A third account of Gershwin's musical relationship with his teacher was written by Gershwin's close friend and another Schillinger student, Vernon Duke, in an article for the Musical Quarterly in 1947.[21]
What set Gershwin apart was his ability to manipulate forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular songs of his era.
George Gershwin's first published song was "When You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em." It was published in 1916 when Gershwin was only 17 years old and earned him a sum total of $5, although he was promised much more.
In 2007, the Library of Congress named their Prize for Popular Song after George and Ira Gershwin. Recognizing the profound and positive effect of popular music on culture, the prize is given annually to a composer or performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins. On March 1st, 2007, the first Gershwin Prize was awarded to Paul Simon.
George Gershwin (New York, Brooklyn, USA, 1898. szeptember 26. – Beverly Hills, 1937. július 11.) amerikai zeneszerző, zongorista.

Szülei 1891-ben emigráltak Oroszországból (Szentpétervárról) Amerikába.
Érdeklődése a zene iránt véletlenszerűen derült ki. Nagyon komolyan vette a sportot és szinte semmi mással nem foglalkozott. De aztán 1910-ben vásároltak egy zongorát a bátyja, Ira részére. George egész nap a zongora mellett ült és improvizált. Zenei tanulmányokat csak alkalomszerűek végzett. Első komoly zongoratanára Charles Hambitzer volt.
Fiatalon egy zenemű üzletben dolgozott New Yorkban. Első sikere az 1919-ben írt Swanee című dal volt. Első jelentős szimfonikus zenei művét ugyanebben az évben írta, a Bölcsődal című vonósnégyest. A Broadway népszerű zeneszerzőjévé vált hamarosan.
1914-től, mint plugger dolgozott. (A plugger egy üzletben egy-egy aktuális slágerét a vásárló számára eljátszotta, esetleg el is énekelte). Gershwin így megismerte a sláger-gyártás csínja-bínját, a kor teljes repertoárját. Közben jelentős művészek sorával sikerült megismerkednie. Nagy hatással volt rá Irving Berlin és Jerome Kern.
1915-től Kilényi Edétől tanult kottaírást, zeneelméletet és hangszerelést. 1917-ben korrepetitorként helyezkedett el. Egyre többen figyeltek fel a tehetségére. 1919-ben már zenés műsorokhoz írt dalokat.
Rengeteg művét felhasználta a tévé, munkái jórésze elismert dzsessz standard; a legnagyobbak közül rengetegen előadták és előadják dalait, többek között Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Judy Garland, Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong.
1945-ben film készült az életéről (Rhapsody in Blue).

Baruch de Spinoza

Baruch de Spinoza (Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה‎, Portuguese: Bento de Espinosa, Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza) (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. Today, he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists.
Spinoza lived quietly as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honours throughout his life, including prestigious teaching positions, and gave his family inheritance to his sister. Spinoza's moral character and philosophical accomplishments prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "The absolute philosopher" (Deleuze, 1990). Spinoza died in February 1677 of a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis caused by fine glass dust inhaled while tending to his trade.

Spinoza's ancestors were Conversos who fled from Portugal to escape the Portuguese Inquisition and return to Judaism. Some historians argue the Spinoza family had its remote origins in Spain; others claim they were Portuguese Jews who had moved to Spain and then returned to their home country in 1492, only to be forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1498. Spinoza's father was born roughly a century after this forced conversion in the small Portuguese city of Vidigueira, near Beja in Alentejo. When Spinoza's father was still a child, Spinoza's grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza (who was from Lisbon), took his family to Nantes in France. They were expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627. Spinoza's father, Miguel, and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they assumed their Judaism (Manuel even changed his name to Abraão de Spinoza, though his "commercial" name was still the same).

Substance, Attribute and Mode
"These are the fundamental concepts with which Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God. They may seem strange at first sight. To the question "What is?" he replies: "Substance, its attributes and modes". Spinoza, Carl Jaspers p.9
Spinoza's system imparted order and unity to the tradition of radical thought, offering powerful weapons for prevailing against "received authority." As a youth he first subscribed to Descartes's dualistic belief that body and mind are two separate substances, but later changed his view and asserted that they were not separate, being a single identity. He contended that everything that exists in Nature/Universe is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part. That humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of their awareness of appetites while being unable to understand the reasons why they want and act as they do. The argument for the single substance runs as follows:
Substance exists and cannot be dependent on anything else for its existence.
No two substances can share the same nature or attribute.
Proof: Two distinct substances can be differentiated either by some difference in their natures or by some difference in one of their alterable states of being. If they have different natures, then the original proposition is granted and the proof is complete. If, however, they are distinguished only by their states of being, then, considering the substances in themselves, there is no difference between the substances and they are identical. "That is, there cannot be several such substances but only one." [3]
A substance can only be caused by something similar to itself (something that shares its attribute).
Substance cannot be caused.
Proof: Something can only be caused by something which is similar to itself, in other words something that shares its attribute. But according to premise 2, no two substances can share an attribute. Therefore substance cannot be caused.
Substance is infinite.
Proof: If substance were not infinite, it would be finite and limited by something. But to be limited by something is to be dependent on it. However, substance cannot be dependent on anything else (premise 1), therefore substance is infinite.
Conclusion: There can only be one substance.
Proof: If there were two infinite substances, they would limit each other. But this would act as a restraint, and they would be dependent on each other. But they cannot be dependent on each other (premise 1), therefore there cannot be two substances.
Spinoza contended that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") was a being of infinitely many attributes, of which extension and thought were two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as one and the same. The universal substance consists of both body and mind, there being no difference between these aspects. This formulation is a historically significant solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism. The consequences of Spinoza's system also envisage a God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, God is the natural world and He has no personality.
In addition to substance, the other two fundamental concepts Spinoza presents, and develops in the Ethics are
Attribute:
By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
and Mode:
By mode, I mean the modifications of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.
Spinoza was a thoroughgoing determinist who held that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For him, even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. So freedom is not the possibility to say "no" to what happens to us but the possibility to say "yes" and fully understand why things should necessarily happen that way. By forming more "adequate" ideas about what we do and our emotions or affections, we become the adequate cause of our effects (internal or external), which entails an increase in activity (versus passivity). This means that we become both more free and more like God, as Spinoza argues in the Scholium to Prop. 49, Part II. However, Spinoza also held that everything must necessarily happen the way that it does. Therefore, there is no free will.
Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism in as much as both philosophies sought to fulfil a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness (or eudaimonia, for the Stoics). However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. For him, the crucial distinction was between active and passive emotions, the former being those that are rationally understood and the latter those that are not. He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it to an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.
Some of Spinoza's philosophical positions are:
The natural world is infinite.
Good and evil are related to human pleasure and pain.
Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine.
All rights are derived from the State.
Animals can be used in any way by people for the benefit of the human race, according to a rational consideration of the benefit as well as the animal's status in nature.[4]
Ethical philosophy
Encapsulated at the start in his Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding (Tractatus de intellectus emendatione) is the core of Spinoza's ethical philosophy, what he held to be the true and final good. Spinoza held a relativist's position, that nothing is intrinsically good or bad, except to the extent that it is subjectively perceived to be by the individual. Things are only good or evil in respect that humanity sees it desirable to apply these conceptions to matters. Instead, Spinoza believes in his deterministic universe that, "All things in nature proceed from certain necessity and with the utmost perfection". Therefore, nothing happens by chance in Spinoza's world, and reason does not work in terms of contingency.
In the universe anything that happens comes from the essential nature of objects, or of God/Nature. According to Spinoza, reality is perfection. If circumstances are seen as unfortunate it is only because of our inadequate conception of reality. While elements of the chain of cause and effect are not beyond the understanding of human reason, our grasp of the infinitely complex whole is limited because of the limits of science to empirically take account of the whole sequence. Spinoza also asserted that sense perception, though practical and useful for rhetoric, is inadequate for discovering universal truth; Spinoza's mathematical and logical approach to metaphysics, and therefore ethics, concluded that emotion is formed from inadequate understanding. His concept of "conatus" states that man's natural inclination is to strive toward preserving an essential being and an assertion that virtue/human power is defined by success in this preservation of being by the guidance of reason as one's central ethical doctrine. According to Spinoza, the highest virtue is the intellectual love or knowledge of God/Nature/Universe.
In the final part of the "Ethics" his concern with the meaning of "true blessedness" and his unique approach to and explanation of how emotions must be detached from external cause in order to master them presages 20th-century psychological techniques. His concept of three types of knowledge - opinion, reason, intuition - and assertion that intuitive knowledge provides the greatest satisfaction of mind, leads to his proposition that the more we are conscious of ourselves and Nature/Universe, the more perfect and blessed we are (in reality) and that only intuitive knowledge is eternal. His unique contribution to understanding the workings of mind is extraordinary, even during this time of radical philosophical developments, in that his views provide a bridge between religions' mystical past and psychology of the present day.
Given Spinoza's insistence on a completely ordered world where "necessity" reigns, Good and Evil have no absolute meaning. Human catastrophes, social injustices, etc. are merely apparent. The world as it exists looks imperfect only because of our limited perception. Thus we see that Spinoza's ethical and natural philosophy were far too limited and narrow for the needs of the social philosphers who became important in the 18th century enlightenment.

Benedictus (Baruch) Spinoza (Amszterdam, 1632. november 24. – Hága, 1677. február 21.) a felvilágosodás korának racionalista filozófusa, a panteizmus képviselőjeként is ismerhetjük.

Amszterdamban született, Portugáliából kivándorolt zsidó családban. Anyanyelve portugál volt. A protestáns eszme megismerése után eltávolodik a zsidó közösségtől, akik kimondják rá az ún. "héremet", „nagy átkot”, amely megtiltott mindenfajta érintkezést közte és a zsidóság többi tagja között. Ezt követően 1656 és 1660 között egy kiugrott jezsuita, Franciscus van den Enden iskolájában latint, klasszikus irodalmat, államelméletet és kartéziánus filozófiát tanult. Itt tanulta meg a lencsecsiszolást, mely később pénzkereső foglalkozásává vált.
1661-ben Rijnsburgba költözött, ahol tanítványainak megírja első értekezését Rövid tanulmány Istenről, az emberről és az ő boldogságáról címen. Ezt a művét fogalmazza át ugyanebben az évben a Tanulmány az értelem megjavításáról című művében. E két tanulmány célja a karteziánus filozófia alapjainak (Descartes: Principia philosophiae) megismertetése, és vizsgálata. Majd 1665-ben megírja főművét az Etikát.
Államelméletről is hagyott hátra írásos művet: a Teológiai-politikai tanulmányt (Wittgenstein híres műve ennek a tanulmánynak a címe után lett elnevezve). E tanulmányt 1670-ben névtelenül jelenteti meg, de hamar fény derül kilétére, és ettől a pillanattól a vitairatok üldözésének tárgyává válik. Műveit félreértelmezve kikiáltják ateistának, ami igen nagy hatással van későbbi munkásságára, ugyanis senki nem hajlandó megjelentetni műveit.
Élete vége fele még megírja a Politikai tanulmányt, de nem fejezi be, csak töredékeket ismerünk belőle.
Spinozát nemcsak a filozófia és az államelmélet problémái foglalkoztatták, hanem a matematika és a fizika kérdései is. Írt a valószínűség-számításról és a szivárványról is.
1677. február 21-én halt meg tüdőbetegségben.

Fő műve, az Etika megírásakor Euklidesz axiomatikus tárgyalásmódját használja: minden fejezet definíciókból tételekből és ezek bizonyításaiból áll. Egyrészt azt szeretné ezzel a módszerrel szemléltetni, hogy az egyszerű tételekből levezethetők a bonyolultabb, összetett elméletek, másrészt a korban szokás volt a szubjektivitástól olymódon mentesíteni a politikai témájú írásokat, hogy azokat a matematika tudományához hasonló objektív szigorúsággal fejtik ki. Az Etika öt fejezetből áll: 1. Istenről, 2. A szellem eredetéről és természetéről, 3. A szenvedélyekről, 4. Az emberi szabadságról, 5. Az emberi szabadság és az ész hatalmáról.
Fontos, hogy Istennel kezdjük, mielőtt az emberhez érnénk, mert ha az Istenről alkotott ideánk hamis, akkor az emberről alkotott ideánk sem lehet helyes. Istent Spinoza úgy határozza meg, mint „az, aminek a fogalma nem szorul másik dolog fogalmára, hogy abból alkossuk meg”. Isten abszolút végtelen létező, semmi nem korlátozhatja őt és rajta kívül nem létezhet semmi. Ezek szerint minden, ami a természetben van, Isten attribútuma: „Minden, ami van, Istenben van.” Spinoza szerint ez nem panteizmus, hisz Isten nem azonos a természettel, hanem ő általa lett teremtve, és létében megőrizve. (Panteizmus: a mindenség (pán) nem különbözik Istentől (Theosz).
Az ember, mint véges létező testből és elméből áll. E kettő az Etika érvelése szerint ugyanazon dolog más módon való kifejeződései; ez utóbbi megállapításból pedig Leibniz, némileg megkérdőjelezhető módon, azt a következtetést vonta le, hogy Spinoza egyfajta "paralellizmusként" jellemzi test és lélek viszonyát. Ez a magyarázat arra, hogy ha a testünkkel történik valami, rögtön érzékeljük is.
Spinoza a megismerés három formáját különbözteti meg:
Az imaginatio, amit bár képzeletnek kell fordítsunk, valójában lefedi a tapasztalat körét is. A mindennapi élethez nélkülözhetetlen megismerési mód.
A racionális megismerési mód. E megismerési mód a tudományokra jellemző megismerés módja. Általános tételekből vezetjük le az újabb ismérveket, közös fogalmakból következtetve operál.
Az intuitív megismerési mód. Az ész által feltárt ismeretekről belátja, hogy azok Isten szubsztanciájának kifejeződései.

Arthur Asher Miller

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over 61 years, writing a wide variety of plays, including celebrated plays such as The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, which are still studied[1] and performed[2] worldwide. Miller was often in the public eye, most famously for refusing to give evidence before the House Un-American Activities Committee, being the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama among other awards, and for marrying Marilyn Monroe. At the time of his death, Miller was considered one of the greatest American playwrights.

Arthur Miller was born to Jewish-American parents, Isidore and Augusta Miller,[3] in Manhattan, New York City, in 1915. His father owned a women's clothes/coat-manufacturing business, which failed in the Wall Street Crash of 1929[4] after which his family moved to humbler quarters in Brooklyn.[5]
Because of the effects of the Great Depression on his family, Miller had no money for college after graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School (New York).[5] After securing a place at the University of Michigan, he worked in a number of menial jobs to pay for his tuition.
At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism, where he became the reporter and night editor on the student paper, the Michigan Daily. It was during this time that he wrote his first work, No Villain.[6] After winning the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, Miller switched his major to English, where he met Professor Kenneth Rowe, who aided Miller in his early forays into playwrighting.[7] Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the university's Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000.[8] In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award.[6]
In 1938, Miller received his bachelor's degree in English. After graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He chose the theater project although he had an offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox.[6] However, Congress, worried about possible Communist infiltration, closed the project.[5] Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS.[5][6]
On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman.[9] The couple had two children, Jane and Robert. Robert became a director, writer and producer whose was, among other things, producer of the 1996 movie version of The Crucible[10].
Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high-school football injury to his left kneecap.

In June of 1956 Miller divorced Mary Slattery, and on June 29, he married Marilyn Monroe.[9] Miller and Monroe had first met in 1951, when they had a brief affair,[9] and had remained in contact since then.[5]
Taking advantage of the publicity of Miller's marriage, HUAC subpoenaed him to appear before the committee shortly before the nuptials. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed.[21] When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career,[9] he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee asked him to reveal to the names of friends and colleagues who had partaken in similar activities.[21] Miller refused to comply with the request, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him."[21] As a result a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957. Miller was fined $500, sentenced to thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a U.S. passport.[3] In 1958 his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of HUAC.[3]
After his conviction was overturned, Miller began work on The Misfits, which starred his wife. Miller said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life,[9] and shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, the pair divorced.[6] A year later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose.
Miller married photographer Inge Morath on February 17, 1962, and the first of their two children, Rebecca, was born that September. Their son Daniel was born with Down Syndrome in November, 1966, and was consequently institutionalized and excluded from the Miller's personal life at Miller's insistence[22]. The couple remained together until Inge's death in 2002. Arthur Miller's son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis is said to have visited Daniel frequently, and to have persuaded Arthur Miller to reunite with his adult son.

In 1964 Miller's next play was produced. After the Fall is a deeply personal view of Miller's own experiences during his marriage to Monroe. The play reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan: they collaborated on both the script and the direction. After the Fall opened on January 23, 1964 at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park amid a flurry of publicity and outrage at putting a Monroe-like character, called Maggie, on stage.[9] Also in the same year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy. In 1965, Miller was elected the first American president of International PEN, a position which he held for four years.[24] During this period Miller wrote the penetrating family drama, The Price, produced in 1968.[9] It was Miller's most successful play since Death of a Salesman.[25]
In 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers.[6] Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In The Country and Chinese Encounters with her. Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise, were critical and commercial failures.[citation needed]
In 1983, Miller traveled to the People's Republic of China to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing. The play was a success in China[25] and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experience in Beijing, was published. Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was made into a TV movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman. Shown on CBS, it attracted 25 million viewers.[6][26] In late 1987, Miller's autobiography, Timebends was published. Before his autobiography was published, it was well known that that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; in Timebends Miller talks about his experiences with Monroe in detail.[9] During the early 1990s Miller wrote three new plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1992), and Broken Glass (1994). In 1996, a film of The Crucible starring Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder opened. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film.[6] Mr. Peters' Connections was staged off-Broadway in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play.[27] On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama." Previous winners include Doris Lessing, Günter Grass and Carlos Fuentes. Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of Lymphatic cancer[28][29] at the age of 78. The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.[6] In December 2004, the 89-year-old Miller announced that he has been living with a 34-year-old artist Agnes Barley at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry. Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture, opened at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in the fall of 2004. He stated that the work was based on the experience of filming The Misfits.
Miller died at his home in Roxbury of congestive heart failure[30] on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman) at the age of 89, surrounded by his family.

Miller's career as a writer spanned over seven decades, and at the time of his death in 2005, Miller was considered to be one of the greatest dramatists of the twentieth century, among the likes of Harold Pinter, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertolt Brecht, and Tennessee Williams.[14] After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to Miller,[31] some calling him the last great practitioner of the American stage,[32] and Broadway theaters darkened their lights in a show of respect.[33] Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March, 2007. Per his express wish, it is the only theater in the world that bears Miller's name.

Arthur Miller amerikai drámairó (teljes nevén Arthur Asher Miller) New York-ban (New York állam) született 1915 októberében. 2005, február 10-én halt meg vidéki farmján (Roxbury, Connecticut). Műveiben a realista irodalmi irányzatot követte, írói céljaként az amerikai munkásosztály helyzetének bemutatását tűzte maga elé. Leginkább Az ügynök halála és a Salemi boszorkányok című színdarabjai, és Marilyn Monroe-val kötött házassága (1956) tette ismertté.

Miller szülei lengyel zsidó bevándorlók voltak. A család New York város Manhattan kerületében telepedett le. Apja ruhagyára az amerikai gazdasági válság éveiben (Depresszió, 1929–1930) tönkrement.
1936-ban megjelent Miller első, irodalmi díjat nyert drámája, Honors at Dawn. 1940-ben újságírói diplomát szerzett a Michigan-i Egyetemen. Ebben az évben vette feleségül a katolikus Mary Slatteryt, akitől két gyermeke született. A II. világháború idején felmentették a katonai szolgálat alól egy régebbi, futball közben szerzett sérülése miatt.
1947-ben Édes fiaim (All My Sons) című darabja azonnali sikert aratott a New York-i Broadway-n. 1949-ben Az ügynök halála (Death of a Salesman) megnyerte a Pulitzer-díjat, három Tony-díjat, és a New York-i Drámakritikusok Körének díját. A színdarabot lefordították több mint egy tucat nyelvre. Következő művét, a Salemi Boszorkányokat (The Crucible) (1953) januárjában kezdték szintén nagy sikerrel játszani a Broadwayen. 1956 júniusában Miller elvált első feleségétől, és június végén összeházasodott Marilyn Monroe színészővel, aki a kedvéért áttért a zsidó vallásra. A politikai üldözések idején (McCarthy korszak, 1950-es évek) meg kellett jelennie az Amerikaellenes tevékenységet vizsgáló bizottság előtt Elia Kazan amerikai író és filmrendező feljelentése miatt, mely szerint Miller kommunista gyűlésekre járt. Az árulás korszakában Miller megtagadta a McCarthy-féle bizottság követeléseit: nem volt hajlandó liberálisan gondolkó kortársait beárulni. 1957május 31-én Millert bűnösnek találták törvénysértés címén („Contempt of Congress”), azonban 1958 augusztusában felmentették a vád alól. Ugyanebben az évben kiadta összegyűjtött műveit.
1961 januárjában elvált Monroe-tól, és egy évvel később feleségül vett egy Inge Morath nevezetű, osztrák származású fotográfust. Két gyermekük közül a fiú, Daniel Down-kórral született. Egy intézetben helyezték el, ahol apja sosem látogatta meg. Miller 1987-es emlékirataiban sem említi beteg fiát. Lányuk Rebecca Miller filmrendező.
1985-ben Miller Harold Pinter angol író társaságában Törökországba utazott, hogy átvegye az amerikai nagykövetség kitüntetését. Miután útitársát kiutasították az országból, mert felemelte szavát a politikai kínzások ellen, Miller is elhagyta Törökországot.
2002 januárjában Inge Morath meghalt. Május elsején Miller megkapta a spanyol "Principe de Asturias" irodalmi díjat, „a modern dráma vitathatatlan nagymestere” címén.
2004 decemberében a 89 éves Miller együtt élt a 34 éves Agnes Barley-vel, azzal a szándékkal, hogy összeházasodnak. Erre azonban már nem került sor. Arthur Miller 2005. február 10-én szívbénulás következtében elhunyt.

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American literary theorist, novelist, filmmaker, and political activist.

Sontag, originally named Susan Rosenblatt, was born in New York City to Jack Rosenblatt and Mildred Jacobsen, both Jewish Americans. Her father ran a fur trading business in China, where he died of tuberculosis when Susan was five years old. Seven years later, her mother married Nathan Sontag. Susan and her sister Judith were given their stepfather's surname although he never formally adopted them.
Sontag grew up in Tucson, Arizona and, later, in Los Angeles, where she graduated from North Hollywood High School at the age of 15. She began her undergraduate studies at Berkeley but transferred to the University of Chicago, where she graduated with a B.A. She did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard, St Anne's College, Oxford and the Sorbonne.
At 17, while at Chicago, Sontag married Philip Rieff after a ten-day courtship. Sontag and Rieff were married for eight years and divorced in 1958. The couple had a son David Rieff, who later became his mother's editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has also become a writer.
The publication of Against Interpretation (1966), accompanied by a striking dust-jacket photo taken by the photographer Harry Hess, helped establish Sontag's reputation as "the Dark Lady of American Letters." No account of her hold on her generation can omit the power of her physical presence in a room. Movie stars like Woody Allen, philosophers like Arthur Danto, and politicians like Mayor John Lindsay vied to know her. In the movie Bull Durham, her work was used as a touchstone of sexual savoir-faire. (See below.)
In her prime, Sontag avoided all pigeon holes. Like Jane Fonda, she went to Hanoi, and wrote of the North Vietnamese society with much sympathy and appreciation (see Trip to Hanoi in Styles of Radical Will). She maintained a clear distinction, however, between North Vietnam and Maoist China, as well as East European communism, which she later famously rebuked as "fascism with a human face."
Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004, aged 71, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome. It had evolved into acute myelogenous leukemia. The MDS was likely a result of the chemotherapy and radiation treatment she received three decades earlier for advanced breast cancer and, later, a rare form of uterine cancer. Sontag is buried in Montparnasse cemetery, in Paris, France.[1] Her final illness has been chronicled by her son, David Rieff.

Sontag's literary career began and ended with works of fiction. At age 30, she published an experimental novel called The Benefactor (1963), following it four years later with Death Kit (1967). Despite a relatively small output in the genre, Sontag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writer of fiction. Her short story "The Way We Live Now" was published to great acclaim on November 26, 1986 in The New Yorker. Written in an experimental narrative style, it remains a key text on the AIDS epidemic. She achieved late popular success as a best selling novelist with The Volcano Lover (1992). At age 67, Sontag published her final novel In America (2000). The last two novels were set in the past, which Sontag said gave her greater freedom to write in the polyphonic voice.
It was as an essayist, however, that Sontag gained early and enduring fame and notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art. Her celebrated 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'" examined an alternative sensibility to seriousness and comedy. It gestured to the "so bad it's good" concept in popular culture for the first time. Sontag also contributed the essay, On Photography in 1977. This gave media students and scholars an entirely different perspective of the camera in the modern world. The essay is an exploration of photographs as a collection of the world, primarily by travelers or tourists, and the way we therefore experience it. She outlines the concept of her theory of taking pictures as you travel:
The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic – Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
Sontag suggested we use this photographic ‘evidence’ as a presumption that ‘something exists, or did exist’, regardless of distortion. Sontag saw the art of photography, ‘as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are’, as cameras are produced rapidly as a ‘mass art form’ and are available to all of those with the means to attain them. Focusing also on the effect of the camera and photograph on the wedding and modern family life, Sontag reflects that these are a ‘rite of family life’ in industrialized areas such as Europe and America.
To Sontag ‘picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights - to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on’. She considers the camera a phallus, comparable to a ray gun or a car which are ‘fantasy-machines whose use is addictive’. For Sontag the camera can be linked to murder and a promotion of nostalgia whilst evoking ‘the sense of the unattainable’ in the industrialized world. The photograph familiarizes the wealthy with ‘the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred’ but removes the shock of these images because they are available widely and have ceased to be novel. Sontag saw the photograph as valued because it gives information but acknowledges that it is incapable of giving a moral stand point although it can reinforce an existing one. This point of view is relatively lost in the western world consumed by pictures.
Sontag championed European writers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, and W. G. Sebald, along with some Americans such as María Irene Fornés. Over several decades she would turn her attention to novels, film and photography. In more than one book, Sontag wrote about cultural attitudes toward illness. Her final nonfiction work, Regarding the Pain of Others, re-examined art and photography from a moral standpoint. It spoke of how the media affects culture's views of conflict.
A New Visual Code
In her Essay “On Photography” Sontag says that the evolution of modern technology has changed the viewer in three key ways. She calls this the emergence of a new visual code. Firstly, Sontag suggests that modern photography, with its convenience and ease, has created an over abundance of visual material. As photographing is now a practice of the masses, due to a drastic decrease in camera size and increase of ease in developing photographs, we are left in a position where “just about everything has been photographed”(Sontag, Susan (1977) On Photography, Penguin, London pp 3). We now have so many images available to us of: things, places, events and people from all over the world, and of not immediate relevance to our own existence, that our expectations of what we have the right to view, want to view or should view has been drastically affected. Arguably, gone are the days that we felt entitled of view only those things in our immediate presence or that affected out micro world; we now seem to feel entitled to gain access to any existing images. “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe” (Sontag, Susan (1977) On Photography, Penguin, London pp 3) This is what Sontag calls a change in “viewing ethics” (Susan Sontag(1977) On Photography, Penguin, London p 3'').
Secondly, Sontag comments on the effect of modern photography on our education, claiming that photographs “now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the future”( Sontag, Susan (1977) On Photography, Penguin, London p 4). Without photography only those few people who had been there would know what the Egyptian pyramids or the Parthenon look like, yet most of us have a good idea of the appearance of these places. Photography teaches us about those parts of the world that are beyond our touch in ways that literature can not.
Sontag also talks about the way in which photography desensitizes its audience. Sontag introduces this discussion by telling her own story of the first time she saw images of horrific human experience. At twelve years old, Sontag stumbled upon images of holocaust camps and was so distressed by them she says “When I looked at those photographs something broke… something went dead something is still crying” (Sontag, Susan (1977) On Photography, Penguin, London p 20). Sontag argues that there was no good to come from her seeing these images as a young girl, before she fully understood what the holocaust was. For Sontag the viewing of these images has left her a degree more numb to any following horrific image she viewed, as she had been desensitized. According to this argument, “Images anesthetize” and the open accessibility to them is a negative result of photography (Sontag, Susan (1977) On Photography, Penguin, London p 20).

In the early 1970s, Sontag was romantically involved with Nicole Stéphane (1923-2007), a Rothschild banking heiress turned movie actress.[6] Sontag later had committed relationships with photographer Annie Leibovitz, with whom she was close during her last years; choreographer Lucinda Childs, writer Maria Irene Fornes, and other women.[7]
In an interview in The Guardian in 2000, Sontag was quite open about her bisexuality:[8]
"Shall I tell you about getting older?", she says, and she is laughing. "When you get older, 45 plus, men stop fancying you. Or put it another way, the men I fancy don't fancy me. I want a young man. I love beauty. So what's new?" She says she has been in love seven times in her life, which seems quite a lot. "No, hang on," she says. "Actually, it's nine. Five women, four men."
Many of Sontag's obituaries failed to mention her significant same-sex relationships, most notably that with photographer Annie Leibovitz. In response to this criticism, The New York Times' Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, defended the newspaper's obituary, stating that at the time of Sontag's death, a reporter could make no independent verification of her romantic relationship with Leibovitz (despite attempts to do so). After Sontag's death, Newsweek published an article about Leibovitz that made clear reference to her decade-plus relationship with Sontag, stating: "The two first met in the late '80s, when Leibovitz photographed her for a book jacket. They never lived together, though they each had an apartment within view of the other's."[9]
Sontag was quoted by Editor-in-Chief Brendan Lemon of Out magazine as saying "I grew up in a time when the modus operandi was the 'open secret'. I'm used to that, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why I haven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonder if I haven't repressed something there to my detriment. Maybe I could have given comfort to some people if I had dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more, but it's never been my prime mission to give comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure, or shake things up."
Annie Leibovitz's recent exhibit of work in Washington, D.C. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art included numerous personal photos, in addition to the celebrity portraits for which the artist is best known. These personal photos chronicled Leibovitz's long relationship with Sontag. They featured many pictures of the author, including some showing her battle with cancer, her treatment, and ultimately her death and burial.

Sontag Susan Rosenblatt néven született New Yorkban, 1933. január 16-án, zsidó családban. Apja kereskedő volt, aki 1938-ban egy kínai útja során tüdőbajban meghalt. Hét évvel később anyja hozzáment Nathan Sontaghoz; Susan és húga Judith felvette mostohaapjuk nevét. Sontag az Arizona állambeli Tucsonban, majd Los Angelesben nevelkedett. Egyetemi tanulmányait a Berkley Egyetemen kezdte, de menet közben átiratkozott a University of Chicagora. Később filozófiát, irodalomtudományt és teológiát tanult a Harvardon, Oxfordban és a Sorbonne-on.
17 évesen tíz napos udvarlás után hozzáment Philip Rieffhez. Nyolc éves házasságuk alatt született egy fiuk, David. Élete során mind nőkkel, mind férfiakkal élt szerelmi viszonyban. Egy 2000-es beszélgetésben[1] azt állította, kilencszer volt életében szerelmes, ebből négy esetben nőbe és öt esetben férfiba. Élete utolsó 15 évében Annie Leibovitz fotóművésszel élt szerelmi kapcsolatban.[2]
71 évesen, 2004. december 28-án leukémiában halt meg. A párizsi Montparnasse temetőben helyezték végső nyugalomra.