A study, part academic and part popular, of the differences in moral conceptual systems that underlie the conservative-liberal debate. If your baby cries at night, do you pick him up? The answer to that question, suggests cognitive scientist Lakoff (Univ. of Calif., Berkeley), is the single best indicator of liberal or conservative values. Driven by curiosity about how liberals and conservatives can ``seem to be talking about the same things and yet reach opposite conclusions'' and why conservatives ``like to talk about discipline and toughness, while liberals like to talk about need and help,'' Lakoff sets out to discover where the difference lies in the two moral visions. He finds it in models of the family and of family-based values: Conservatives favor the ``Strict Father'' model, while liberals conceive of the family as a ``Nurturant Parent.'' That difference, Lakoff argues, yields systems of logic so disparate that liberals and conservatives cannot even begin to understand their opponents' reasoning on issues like abortion, welfare, capital punishment, and gay rights. That much is, on the surface, reasonable enough. Lakoff's argument steers onto more controversial ground, however, when he suggests that ``conservatives have a deeper insight into their worldview than liberals have into theirs,'' inasmuch as conservatives talk constantly of family values whereas liberals shy from discussions of hearth-and-home morality. The ``new understanding of American politics'' that he proposes, not surprisingly, favors conservative values. Lakoff concludes with the observation that ``public political discourse is so impoverished at present that it cannot accommodate'' discussions of matters like family-based moralities- -unless, that is, liberals and conservatives begin to develop a ``meta-language'' that will enable them to speak of such things. That conservatives and liberals see the world differently comes as no news to most, but Lakoff's look into just why that should be so makes for interesting reading.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-226-46796-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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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