An accessible, enlightening rumination on the nature of truth.
Arand discusses the relative nature of truth in this work of nonfiction.
Though many people think of truth as something that is fixed, objective, and eternal, Arand argues that it is anything but. Rather, he posits that truth is an evolving set of circumstances tied to and affected by the myriad variables of our mercurial human condition as well as biological and cultural evolution. “I propose a view that defines the meaning of a belief as a commitment to behave—to think, feel, or act—in certain ways with respect to certain objects or events,” he writes. “Consequently, meaning cannot be understood as something fixed by metaphysical properties like essences or ends. Rather, meaning is more or less elastic depending on the relative variance or invariance of the environmental backdrop against which this evolution has occurred.” The work is divided into two sections: the descriptive “What Can We Know?” and the prescriptive “How Should We Live?” The former deals with the evolving nature of truth, and the latter, with its implications for human morality, liberty, and responsibility. Central to Arand’s description of truth is the concept of “corrigibility,” which he defines as the capability of an institution—political, economic, academic, professional, etc.—to adapt itself “to the changing demands of the environmental conditions that constitute [its] raison d’être.” Arand coins a few other concepts—e.g., “essentialism,” “telism”—to describe his ideas, but for the most part he eschews jargon, writing in simple, accessible prose that even epistemological novices should be able to follow. He bolsters his argument with examples from the history of religion, philosophy, politics, and art, always explaining these references and sometimes supplementing his points with graphics and reprinted artwork. Though his ideas may not be shattering for the well-read, they are presented in a way that makes them digestible while demonstrating their meaningful application in the real world.
An accessible, enlightening rumination on the nature of truth.Pub Date: April 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5088-8381-4
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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