A casual but considered look into the meaning of a civilized mind.
An impressionistic and heartfelt call for a better understanding of civilization, in a book that encompasses fine art, faith and prostitutes.
Armstrong, the “Philosopher-in-Residence” at the Melbourne Business School, laments how the term “civilization” has recently become attached to elitism or warring ideologies. It is better understood, he argues, on an individual level, as a way of reconciling individual lusts with more high-minded ambitions, deliberately avoiding a specific philosophical line. Discussing the battle between carnal instincts and intellectual edification, for instance, Armstrong confesses a moment from his guilt-struck youth when he told his father he was going to a museum, only to patronize a brothel instead. His contempt for himself at the time, he argues, was misdirected; civilization isn’t a moral code so much as a way to find a personal balance. Not surprisingly, Saint Augustine is an important touchstone for Armstrong, as are Martin Luther, C.P. Snow and various Greek philosophers, all of whom are brought in to support the argument that a civilized life involves an unapologetic embrace of both material and spiritual wealth. As a guidebook for better living, this isn’t especially handy. The author’s tone is genial and ruminative, and he generally avoids providing specific tips for how we might best cultivate our more civilized selves. (His suggestion that businesses work harder to make products that serve our spiritual needs as well as our materialistic impulses seems doomed, if not downright Pollyanna-ish.) Yet if it’s not explicitly prescriptive, the book holds the same appeal as classics like Epictetus’ Manual. For Armstrong, the individual’s efforts to become civilized—to feel the emotional intent behind a work of art, to clear physical and temporal space to contemplate oneself—is a bulwark against the commercialized noises that beset us. We can be wealthy without being materialistic, he insists, and artistic without pretension.
A casual but considered look into the meaning of a civilized mind.Pub Date: March 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55597-580-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
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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