A sometimes touching but ultimately banal discourse by a father to his son, offering advice on how to get along in life. A bestseller in Savater's native Spain, this is a monologue to the author's son (whose name provides the book's title) on the question of ethics, which he defines as the freedom to choose and to realize what one is choosing. Like philosophers through the centuries, he asks how human beings, as moral agents, are to have a good life. The answer, he says, lies in making good decisions: recognizing that which we should truly want (i.e., that which is truly for our good) and then choosing it. The author advises his son on how he should treat others, that is, to put himself in their place—to have ``sympathetic justice'' or compassion for them. Like any good parent, especially one interested in ethics, Savater discusses sexual ethics, stating that much of the fuss made over so-called sexual immorality stems from innate human fear of pleasure. He then turns to political philosophy, writing that in a democracy, all citizens are politicians, directly or indirectly. The answer here, as it is in much of the volume, is to be accountable—but accountable primarily to oneself. In a brief epilogue, he tells the youth not to take the treatise too seriously. He should be interested in how to live the best possible life, but he must also know how to laugh and, above all, to make his own decisions. Savater draws examples from a wide variety of sources, from Aristotle to Citizen Kane. At the end of each chapter he provides a minilibrary of quotations from authors like Spinoza, Shakespeare, and John Stuart Mill. Almost all the ground covered has been better treated by others. The father/son conceit is reminiscent of St. Augustine's familiar ``De Magistro,'' of whose style Savater's will remind the reader.
Pub Date: June 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-3271-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
More eclectic advice on how to release the boundless resources that lie within, from the prolific Dyer. According to Dyer (Real Magic, 1992, etc.), each of us possesses a higher, invisible self in addition to the more familiar (but false) ego. Our essential task is to discover and act from the higher self, which is untouched by the fears, prejudices, and insecurities that normally control our existence and cause us so much unhappiness. Dyer suggests that we can do this in four steps: banishing fears and doubts; observing and distancing ourselves from our body and surroundings; shutting down the inner dialogues of our frenzied thoughts; and consciously following the guidance of our higher self instead of the ego with its illusions of separateness. He goes on to discuss the conflicts that arise as we move into the higher self, and he concludes with a vision of a transformed world as an egoless collective of sacred selves. Dyer draws on many sources, and his favorites include Carlos Castaneda, Emerson, the Course in Miracles, Transcendental Meditation, and Krishnamurti. He blends the Hindu doctrine of non-dualism and the higher self with stock American themes, such as how he has passed from a sinful past to a happy (and prosperous!) present and the need to keep saying to ourselves, ``I know I can do it.'' Dyer has some good things to say on his basic theme of distancing oneself from the ego, but he repeats himself and often lapses into Stoic bromides (``Only the person you imagine yourself to be suffers''). In New Age fashion, Dyer draws on the wisdom of different religions without reference to their unique spiritual and metaphysical assumptions, as if they were all the same or the distinctions irrelevant, and he fails to defend and explain his main assertion that the higher self is somehow God. Practical, though unoriginal, insights for seekers. ($150,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017786-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
Renowned Vatican watcher and journalist Hebblethwaite (Paul VI: The First Modern Pope, 1993, etc.) offers a savvy analysis of how the next pope will come to be chosen and of the challenges he will face. Since John Paul took office in 1978, he has survived an assassination attempt, the removal of a growth, and a hip replacement. It's too early to predict his successor, says Hebblethwaite, but the Catholic Church is now clearly in a pre- conclave period. He describes how popes have been elected since 1179 by the cardinals of the Roman Church and gives us the inside story on the (supposedly secret) elections over the last 150 years. Noting that every conclave has to decide between continuity and discontinuity with the previous pope, Hebblethwaite examines the contributions of John Paul II, such as his role in the fall of communism and his publication of the New Code of Canon Law and the recent Catechism. He offers an incisive critique of the Pope's vision of a renewed Europe and of his position that a democracy without values or a respect for the human person becomes an open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. Hebblethwaite sees John Paul II as ruling the Church from the extreme right and suggests that a future pope will be more centrist, more accepting of a ``loyal opposition'' within the fold and of pluralism in society, will reexamine the possibility of women priests, and will see the world in terms of the North-South, rather than the East-West, divide. Based on his own sources, Hebblethwaite (who died during the preparation of this book) assesses possible future popes, e.g., the forward-looking Italians Carlo Maria Martini and Achille Silvestrini, the African Francis J. Arinze (who has a special understanding of Islam), the charismatic (and Yiddish-speaking) Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, and Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, who is said to want the job. The liberal Catholic position presented intelligently and loyally.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-063752-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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