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THE DE-MORALIZATION OF SOCIETY

FROM VICTORIAN VIRTUES TO MODERN VALUES

The prominent historian of Victorian ideas here boldly links her scholarly research to contemporary cultural issues. Her not-so- hidden agenda is to provide the intellectual basis for a ``new reformation'' that would restore ``moral and civic virtues'' in an increasingly amoral society. In order to recast the current debate about ``values,'' Himmelfarb (On Looking into the Abyss, 1994) turns attention from this relativistic term and focuses on the Victorian-era notion of ``virtue,'' which was family-oriented and more secular than traditional Christian virtue. In 19th-century England, both the working class and the bourgeoisie aspired to a level of respectability that incorporated beliefs in ``work, thrift, cleanliness, and self-reliance.'' Far from the coercive, absolutist morality posited by most radical historians, Himmelfarb discovers a civil society that democratized virtue: Working men could be ``gentlemen,'' and wives could find satisfaction in managing their homes and families. In short, ordinary people could attain ordinary virtues. Himmelfarb's truly revisionist account lets her Victorian witnesses speak for themselves, and they pay tribute to a time when enlightened self-interest coincided with the public good. Though some historians persist in portraying the era as materialistic, Himmelfarb re-examines Victorian attitudes toward both poverty and reform. Her contemporary subtext becomes clearer in controversial chapters on Victorian Jews as the quintessential Victorians and 19th-century government intervention in social issues as the precursor of present-day failures. One need not accept Himmelfarb's explanation for social and cultural decline—she's rabidly anti-materialist—to agree that the Victorians provide an admirable counter-example to our present malaise. This is first-rate intellectual history, fully attentive to the social and political contexts.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-679-43817-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995

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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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