A refreshing and sharp theoretical contribution to a politically burdened debate. Weeks (Sociology/South Bank Univ., England) assumes the daunting task of theorizing morality, values, and sexuality. Noting the widespread sense of uncertainty and the lack of shared values and community with which most Western people live, Weeks believes a discussion of morality is more important now than ever. He draws on many important thinkers, among them Susan Sontag and Michel Foucault, to examine the current state of crisis. Weeks sees AIDS as symbolizing a general sense of doom, as well as the complexities of contemporary identities, sexual relationships, and new solidarities between people affected by the virus. He concedes that the modern world is one of contingency, in which choice can be a burden and decisions are not always easy. As for living with diversity, particularly sexual, Weeks makes an important distinction between tolerating diversity (a passive response to difference) and embracing it (welcoming difference). The challenge then becomes to accept diversity without succumbing to absolute relativism, which Weeks believes leads individuals toward isolation once again. Without prescribing a particular morality, and certainly without outlining all the answers to living with diversity, the author proposes an ethics of love based on four principles: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. A responsible love, for example, is based on the recognition that what one does has consequences for others. Safe sex, then, can be seen as the building of respect for self and others, a public and private response to AIDS, and an active way of ``recovering the erotic.'' When based on this ethic of love, many forms of erotic life can be morally valid. Weeks succeeds in suggesting values for a moral society that must live with diversity, and he presents a hopeful vision of a world community based on an ethics of love.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-231-10410-3
Page Count: 205
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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