Next book

PRACTICAL ETHICS

Singer (like Socrates) takes philosophy and puts it where it belongs—in the market place. In lucid, non-technical prose he tackles disputed moral questions—most notably abortion, euthanasia, civil disobedience, equality, animal rights, and the obligations of the haves to the have-nots—with a compelling blend of intellectual rigor and personal commitment. (An earlier, more limited example: Animal Liberation, 1975.) Singer calls himself a consequentialist, i.e., a utilitarian who measures acts against the norm of "what, on balance, furthers the interests of those affected" rather than with any simple calculus of pleasure and pain. He follows this guideline wherever it leads him—and sometimes winds up out on some pretty controversial limbs. He maintains, for instance, that some animals (chimpanzees, among others) are persons, because they are self-conscious, communicate, and have a notion of the future. Killing an adult, nonhuman primate, then, would be worse than killing a human baby, which is not a person in the strict sense. Singer is not promoting infanticide, but challenging this and other forms of "speciesism," a blind moral prejudice in favor of humanity. In another chapter he proposes with cool but passionate eloquence that withholding help from starving people (e.g., by spending money on luxuries instead of sending it to CARE) is "the moral equivalent of murder." Here and elsewhere Singer stops short of laying down any absolutes, but takes a bold stance that provokes the reader to respond, one way or another. Anti-abortionists will argue—with reason—that he does scant justice to the fetus' status as a potential human being. And ecologists will protest the narrowness of his view that only sentient beings are entitled to ethical consideration (so it's wrong to eat a hamburger, but all right to destroy a redwood forest?). Finally, professional philosophers will complain about the relative flimsiness of Singer's concluding chapter, "Why Act Morally?" on which, logically speaking, his whole case rests. But, whatever the objections, this is a superb performance, rich in substance and immaculately written: critical thinking at its creative best.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0521881412

Page Count: 337

Publisher: Cambridge Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Next book

THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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

Next book

THE ART OF SOLITUDE

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

Close Quickview