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GOD AND MAMMON IN AMERICA

An interesting but inconclusive look at the relationship between religion and money in contemporary America. Wuthnow (Social Sciences/Princeton; Sharing the Journey, p. 59, etc.) asks: What is the effect of religious belief on economic choices? Jesus cautioned that a person could not serve two masters- -both God and money. Yet, according to Wuthnow, that is precisely what many American synagogue- and churchgoers and professed believers are attempting to do. In the postindustrial era, people are working more hours than ever before and, under tremendous pressure to perform and gain ever more material goods, enjoying it less. What impact does religion have? Does it affect the careers people choose? Very little, according to the author, who bases his work on a wide variety of sources (including surveys and interviews). What religion might do, however, is make people happier on the job. It also influences workplace ethics, helping to determine whether one will be honest or willing to cut corners. Statistical comparisons of people of various moral stances, and of churchgoers to the population at large, also indicate that religious commitment influences people's attitudes toward money (showing it is as much the province of priest and rabbi as it is of economist and businessman), charitable giving, environmental consciousness, and opinions and actions concerning the economically disadvantaged. In the end, Wuthnow's answers are all mixed bags, demonstrating that Americans are at once deeply spiritual and profoundly secular. He also criticizes current religious leadership for reshaping modern religion so as to not afflict the consciences of their consumerist, capitalist congregants. Appendices on methodology will be helpful to serious students. Straightforwardly written in accessible prose, the book will appeal primarily to students and scholars of religion. There is, however, enough to attract the interested layperson as well.

Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994

ISBN: 0-02-935628-8

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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