A scholarly, persuasive assessment of the significance of achieving mental and social maturity.
Moral philosopher and Einstein Forum director Neiman (Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, 2008) examines the conundrum of juvenescence versus coming of age.
While a select few glide into maturity with a sense of privileged ease, the author surmises, others dread it and opt for years in denial. Throughout her erudite defense of adulthood, Neiman emphasizes that “growing up is more a matter of courage than knowledge” since it takes a certain bravery to eschew the “dogmas of childhood” and, however disillusioned one may become by it, thrive within the world as it truly exists. Tailored for the highly literate reader more than the casual, Neiman’s intuitive assertions reference the lives and works of 18th-century Enlightenment thinker-philosophers Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose opposing viewpoints on coming of age bolster her greater central theme. Kant philosophized that immaturity resulted from a lack of personal fortitude, and for those stuck in the “mire of adolescence,” there’s a resistance to acknowledge the gap between an idealistic and a reality-based worldview. Rousseau claimed that the creation of a well-adjusted adult begins with the re-evaluation of the child-rearing process, as evidenced in his outspoken treatise Emile. Neiman articulates the differing aspects affecting maturity, such as education, travel and employment, while arguing against painting adulthood as the “dimming of sparkle” because “by describing life as a downhill process, we prepare young people to expect—and demand—very little from it.” The author, whose previous books delved into the prospects of both moral nobility and wickedness, juxtaposes these divergent philosophies with dexterity and clarity. Her opening declaration that Peter Pan is “an emblem of our times” remains a resonant—if debatable—statement imploring our culture to act its age regardless of cultural influence or emotional convenience.
A scholarly, persuasive assessment of the significance of achieving mental and social maturity.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-28996-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
