A leading social scientist blasts the use of social science in the courtroom, in this provocative but cranky collection of lectures delivered at Harvard. Contrary to the implications of the subtitle, Wilson (Management and Public Policy/UCLA; The Moral Sense, 1993, etc.) does not directly take on Alan Dershowitz's The Abuse Excuse (1994), a well-hyped diatribe against state-of-the-art criminal defenses such as drug addiction, black rage, PMS, and Twinkie-binging. Wilson summarily dismisses the notion that an ``avalanche'' of novel pseudo-excuses regularly results in unfair acquittals in homicide trials; the real problem, he counters, is that the job of juries has been compromised by the introduction of needlessly complicated court-made concepts (e.g., ``imperfect self-defense,'' ``premeditation,'' ``diminished capacity,'') and scientifically dubious expert testimony as to such questionable conditions as ``battered women's syndrome.'' According to Wilson, justice would be better served in homicide trials if juries could merely rely on their collective common sense to answer a short list of ``simple'' questions: Did the killing occur in self-defense? If not, was the killer insane? If the killing was intended, was the killer unreasonably provoked? Along with banishing many legal doctrines and most experts, Wilson advocates judge-run voir dires without peremptory challenges by either prosecution or defense, a more active role for judges during trials, and a ``more constrained'' appellate process. In the wake of the Simpson and Menendez trials, many would agree with such reforms, but what makes Wilson seem extremist is his intolerance for the kind of evidence that the defense customarily introduces to excuse or mitigate guilt. Was the defendant intoxicated when he committed the crime? He should've just said no. Was the homicidal wife a battered woman? ``Most of us object'' to the ``stereotype,'' Wilson weirdly declares; even if it's accurate, jurors shouldn't favor such a defendant merely on grounds of ``likability.'' Wilson's sanctimonious calls for ``individual accountability'' and his impatience with human failings fatally detract from some sensible suggestions for legal reform.
Pub Date: May 7, 1997
ISBN: 0-465-03624-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
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
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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