An impassioned and erudite proposal for vast systemic changes.
A defense of democratic socialism, grounded in religion, philosophy, economics, and literature.
In a densely argued critique of religion and capitalism, philosopher Hägglund (Comparative Literature and Humanities/Yale Univ.; Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov, 2012, etc.) tackles thorny questions of value, freedom, and responsibility. Analyzing a wide range of thinkers—among others, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Marx, Martin Luther King Jr., John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, and Thomas Piketty—Hägglund asserts that only secular faith and democratic socialism can “provide the institutional, political, and material conditions for spiritual freedom.” In the first part of the book, the author examines the social and moral consequences of belief in eternity, which he sees as central to religious faith. Believing that one’s soul transcends time leads to indifference to worldly events, immunity from grief or loss, and lack of care about the fates of others. God, Hägglund writes, “is completely irresponsible because he is not bound to anything other than himself.” Secular faith, on the other hand, is premised on an individual’s sense of moral responsibility and investment “in finite lives.” Personal attachments leave individuals open to suffering, but they offer “a positive chance of having a relation to others” and to developing and acting upon “an existential commitment—to a political transformation, a filial relation, an artistic creation, and so on.” The second part of the book focuses on an intensive examination of capitalism, which the author argues necessarily undermines individuals’ spiritual freedom and generates political and economic inequality. Neither a universal basic income nor redistribution of wealth “can free us from capitalist exploitation,” he asserts, “since only wage labor in the service of profit” supports the accumulation of wealth that fuels “the dynamic of capitalism.” In order “for democracy to be true to its own concept of freedom and equality,” he writes, “capitalism must therefore be overcome.” Freedom to act authentically, to make choices that support the common good, and to enhance the quality of our free time is fundamental to Hägglund’s argument in favor of democratic socialism.
An impassioned and erudite proposal for vast systemic changes.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87040-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
