Good intentions are not rewarded with good results in this scholarly look at fundamental political values. It seems that the more one thinks about democracy and justice the less compatible they become. In the popular mind they are automatically linked, yet academics point out that justice usually implies a fixed standard and democracy an inescapably contextual majoritarian principle. Rather than dismissing popular opinion as an unreflective association of democracy with all good things, however, Shapiro maintains that “we should rise to the challenge implicit in the popular identification” and produce an account of justice that places democracy at the center of social relations. In doing so, he focuses on the distribution of authority rather than goods, assessing the world in terms of power relationships and decision-making rather than outcomes. Shapiro takes us through the life cycle, considering first the position of children and parents, then relations among adults in marriage and the workplace, and finally responsibilities toward the elderly and euthanasia. The goal is to provide “concrete recommendations” advancing the cause of democratic justice “in contemporary political controversy.” Unfortunately, while the discussion is well grounded within the scholarly literature, as political analysis it illustrates how ambiguity can result from immersion in context no less than philosophical abstraction. For example, it may be true that determining whose interests should be included in questions of governance “varies with time and circumstance” and that in setting decision rules “many choices are dictated by peculiarities of context,” but this level of sensitivity to different conditions makes it difficult to pin down the actual content of any principles that may be present. Shapiro’s recurring vagueness may be unavoidable when trying to reconcile the tensions between justice and democracy, but it nevertheless leaves the reader unsatisfied. Intellectually stimulating but politically disappointing, precisely the opposite of the author’s stated intentions.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-300-07825-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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