A slim volume that offers as much clarity on the topic as one could expect from the often opaque world of philosophy.
A pragmatic primer on a contentious topic.
A distinguished philosophy professor in both his native England and the United States, Blackburn (Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, 2014, etc.) aims his analysis at general readers, but it requires close attention and willingness to follow the reasoning, which is steeped in centuries of philosophical inquiry. And inquiry is very much the point here, because even if we can never agree on absolute truth, or even the possibility of it, the author maintains that having a process of inquiry by which we can get closer to it, and agree on its utility and social value, is not only possible, but crucial. “Living outside the reality-based community is not actually an option,” writes the author, while acknowledging that the Trump era has some thinkers postulating that we have entered a brave new world of post-truth and alternate facts. He continues, “the basic reason why the concept of truth will never die is that to believe anything at all is itself to take a stand on its truth.” We acknowledge the truth of a speeding train as it hurtles toward our car at the crossing and of the hot stove that might burn us if we touch it. Beyond such basics, are there truths upon which we can agree? Here we turn to process and to consensus and how general agreement on general principles can promote welfare. “Sometimes we have to settle for mere opinion or guesswork, but the god of truth is better served by attendant deities, such as reason, justification and objectivity,” writes Blackburn. “Once we have it, truth radiates benefits such as knowledge and, perhaps most notably, success in coping with the world.” In the second half of the book, the author shows how arts criticism, ethics, and religion might even approach their own kinds of “truth.”
A slim volume that offers as much clarity on the topic as one could expect from the often opaque world of philosophy.Pub Date: July 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-19-086721-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
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