Critical reading not only for those who want to improve the world, but also for those who think we shouldn’t bother.
This collection of essays, taken from talks given by the author to Ethical Culture audiences over a 35-year span, explores the philosophy and history of ethics.
Chuman (Why the Ethical Movement Is so Small and What We Can Do About It, 1988) has been a pillar of the Ethical Culture movement for nearly five decades. This diverse collection introduces lay readers to what it means to be ethical and humanistic and how this moral stance differs from those based purely on reason or religion. After establishing that an ethical person “recognizes the importance of moral values and intends to act on them,” Chuman’s book breaks into four sections: “Ethics in Private Life,” which discusses subjects pertinent to the individual, such as sin and the pursuit of happiness; “Public Questions,” featuring topics one encounters in public life and how to address them, such as politics and the criticism of religion; “Humanist Heroes,” a survey of freethinkers throughout history, including Spinoza and the Founding Fathers; and “Interpretations of Ethical Culture,” which details the movement’s facets, from its spiritual tolerance to the value of reason. Throughout, Chuman uses his rigorous intellect—and savvy as a lecturer—to challenge dangerous suppositions, never backing away from difficult questions. In “A Humanist Looks at Sin,” he brings startling lucidity to the argument: “The problem of the notion of sin is that it makes a fetish and a celebration out of a particular aspect of human experience,” he says. “It seizes upon and dogmatizes pessimism.” And Chuman succeeds in maintaining a conversational tone; he never rants or condescends, even when covering basic ideas. For example, “The giving of myself in the effort to help another, not simply with transitory assistance, but in a way which leads toward his or her growth and greater actualization, is what I mean by caring.” Further into the collection, he delves into more fine-grained discussions, such as the problem with extreme secularism, which reward readers not only with provocative displays of reasoning, but with electrifying insights: “We are creatures of reason, to be sure….But our humanity extends far more broadly than our reason does.”
Critical reading not only for those who want to improve the world, but also for those who think we shouldn’t bother.Pub Date: March 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492804468
Page Count: 324
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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