This philosophical treatise on luck offers good sense but little in the way of unpredictable insights. Early on, Rescher (Philosophy/Univ. of Pittsburgh) asserts that ``like it or not, luck is an ineliminable part of the human condition,'' and he concludes with the contention that we depend on luck to give interest and variety to our lives, that indeed life itself exists only through a series of lucky chances. While accurate enough, such observations can seem overly abstract and somewhat pedestrian. Happily, the scenarios that Rescher treats in the course of isolating his idea of luck lend life to his book. A host of illustrative anecdotes find luck manipulated, embraced, or denied as different people see fit. On nearly every page, Rescher provides either a historical vignette (like the ancient Roman worship of the goddess Fortuna, or the randomness of death in the Black Plague) or a modern example of how we encounter luck today (rushing to catch trains, hoping to win lotteries). Rescher's adroit analysis of the intellectual history of luckincluding a section on the history and theory of gamblingand of the relationship between luck and morality show the value of philosophically considering how luck works in practice. Meanwhile, he offers advice on how to ``manage'' one's luck with careful planning. Rescher has fairly little to say about luck and psychology, although his subtitle raises such expectations by echoing Freud's famous title The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Had Rescher devoted more effort to explaining from a philosophical perspective the relationship between luck, wishes, and desireswhat psychoanalysis explains through the unconscioushe might have been able to tell us something striking not just about luck, but about the human condition in general. Is it not, after all, the emotional energy that we stake on its determinations that makes luck's randomness seem brilliant? Accomplished enough, although one wishes that Rescher had taken more chances, pushing the frontier of philosophy's domain.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-19428-9
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 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.
