Nationalism or internationalism? That is the question debated in this provocative collection of essays by some of today's most subtle minds. In a 1994 Boston Review essay, ``Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,'' Nussbaum (Poetic Justice, 1995, etc.) powerfully argued against patriotism as well as its darker incarnations (such as ethnocentrism), in favor of a universalist allegiance ``to the worldwide community of human beings.'' While not particularly new in its philosophical underpinnings, this essay created an enormous controversy in academia. Now, in a work featuring such notable scholars and thinkers as Nathan Glazer, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Walzer, Nussbaum and editor Cohen (who is the editor of the Boston Review) have brought together 15 of the most notable and considered responses. As Europe and North America seem to be moving slowly toward confederation—and much of the Third World toward disintegration—the issues these essays raise are of vital importance. Philosophically, the conflict between patriotism and cosmopolitanism goes straight to the heart of what it means to be human. Are we political animals, forged by the particularities of our lives? Or do we share a larger commonality, some irreducible essence that is true everywhere and always? Predictably, most of the authors in this collection seem to come down somewhere near the middle, emphasizing, with only slightly different weightings, the importance of both the national and the cosmopolitan. Almost without exception, their critiques are thoughtful, revealing, and perfectly nuanced. Nussbaum concludes the book by answering and critiquing the previous pieces. Retreating a little from her previous position, she does acknowledge that cosmopolitanism is an ethical ideal that can only be aspired to through the ``local.'' Rarely does one come across a forum where all the facets of an important idea are so thoroughly debated. This is the give-and-take of intellectual debate at its finest.
Pub Date: Aug. 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-8070-4313-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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