A British popularizer of philosophy, Magee (coauthor, On Blindness, 1995, etc.), writes an overblown account of his lifelong interest in philosophical ideas. The book's title and subtitle capture its two interrelated aims: to confess the existential traumas that led the author to philosophy and to summarize the key ideas of Western metaphysics and epistemology. Magee, a former academic, wants to show that philosophy comes in answer to acutely felt problems about the nature of reality and human knowing. Magee's own angst over death, meaninglessness, and the limits of human knowledge would be more convincing if he showed less satisfaction in his previously published writings and more restraint in condemning strictly academic (especially British analytic) philosophy. The confessions include tantalizing hints of ``exhilarating love affairs''; but, despite his insistence on the philosophic importance of sex, Magee provides no details about his affectional life. Was philosophy irrelevant to this side of his life, or does he forget that, for the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles, love was itself a metaphysical principle? But Empedocles apparently doesn't belong to the mere ``half a dozen'' philosophers in each century ``whose work is of widespread and lasting interest.'' To this elite group, Kant, Schopenhauer, Bertrand Russell, and Karl Popper do clearly belong, in the author's judgment: Kant, for articulating so persuasively how much conceptions influence perceptions; Schopenhauer for his philosophy of art; Russell for his logic; Popper for his science. Magee is best at presenting the ideas of these, his favorites, but he could have done so in a much shorter book and without the melodramatic portrayals of his own intellectual suffering.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-50028-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This new biography of one of the eminences of American law is interesting yet unsatisfying, for author Polenberg's (History/Cornell Univ.) attempt to demonstrate how Cardozo the man shaped Cardozo the judge lacks necessary depth. Respected for his erudition, admired for his incisive opinions as a judge on New York State's highest court and on the Supreme Court, and beloved for his gentleness, Benjamin N. Cardozo (18701938) was much celebrated during his own lifetime. The acclaim persists six decades after his death, despite the fact that while several principal Cardozo doctrines endure, many of his most important decisions have been rejected as antiquated and inappropriate. For instance, in 1957 the New York Court of Appeals overturned Cardozo's 1914 and 1925 decisions that hospitals can't be held liable for the errors of surgeons and that universities can't be legally responsible for mistakes made by science professors that result in laboratory accidents. Polenberg appropriately and respectfully attempts to deconstruct the Cardozo legend, arguing that he lacked sufficient emotional experience to inform his judicial decisions. For example, in reviewing a rape case, Cardozo's repressed and naive views on sex prompted him to advance the now totally discredited legal assertion that an ``unchaste'' woman would not likely resist sexual advances. Indeed, Polenberg shows that Cardozo sometimes distorted or ignored salient facts to make his judicial decisions conform to his personal sense of morality. The weakness of the book, however, is that Polenberg defends his positions by discussing a handful of admittedly important decisions in excessive detail, at the expense of a thorough analysis and critique of Cardozo's body of work. Not every Cardozo ruling would bear out Polenberg's thesis. It is well acknowledged in modern legal theory that judges are strongly influenced by their emotions and experiences when molding law; thus, the reader might expect more from Polenberg than simply the proposition that Judge Cardozo's stunted emotions affected his rulings. (20 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-674-96051-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
Biographer Randall (Thomas Jefferson, 1993) adds another compelling figure to his portrait gallery of America's early leaders. It was one of the triumphs of Washington's life that, when stymied in one of his ambitions, he found an outlet for it elsewhere. Though frustrated, for instance, in his desire to become a career British army officer because of undistinguished service in the French and Indian War (he was accused of touching off the war by killing a French officer who may have been on a diplomatic mission), he learned how to defeat the British through speed and knowledge of the terrain by witnessing firsthand the defeat of his commander, Gen. Edward Braddock. With almost half of this account devoted to Washington's pre-Revolutionary life, Randall compresses the more consequential war and early Federal years, thus sacrificing some of the drama that galvanized his biography of Benedict Arnold. On the other hand, Randall shrewdly details how Washington's dealings with hostile foes and haughty allies in the French and Indian War and his secret alliances with other patriots made him ``a master of discretion and deception.'' He provides new insight into how Washington's growing awareness of the pitfalls of Virginia's tobacco economy led to disenchantment with the British mercantile system. Most important, he finds a thread between the prewar micromanaging plantation owner and the wartime ringmaster of intelligence units and surprise engagements like Trenton, discovering ``the first modern American corporate executive.'' While displaying a more dry-eyed willingness to countenance unpleasant actions than what one expects (e.g., ordering Arnold's assassination), this Washington is also moving in his renunciations of power at the end of the revolution and at the end of his second term as president. Not the landmark in storytelling and scholarship achieved by previous Washington biographers Douglas Southall Freeman and James Thomas Flexner, but an often penetrating narrative of Washington's formative influences.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-2779-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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