An incisive, at times controversial, consideration of moral action in the face of dehumanization, and its implications for everyday life. Hardly a memoirist or historian of the Holocaust and the gulag has failed to grapple with the issues of moral behavior in the Nazi and Soviet concentration camps. Did the suffering of the inmates bring out the best or the beast in them? And what of the victimizers—can they be viewed as less than human? Todorov (The Conquest of America, 1984), having considered scores of testimonies from survivors, rejects either extreme. ``The most optimistic conclusion we can draw from life in (and outside) the camps is that evil is not inevitable,'' he writes. But Todorov, a Bulgarian-born literary and cultural critic with the Centre National de Recherches in Paris, seeks to make fine distinctions among various types of moral behavior. This is not merely a historical quest; Todorov believes that, extreme as the situation of the camps was, it can shed light for us on morality in everyday life. Indeed, one of the distinctions he makes is between heroic virtues (loyalty, courage), which are most relevant in wartime, and ordinary virtues (caring, sharing), which apply at all times and which he considers superior to heroic virtues. Todorov offers a detailed consideration of inmates, oppressors, and onlookers. For instance, he notes that totalitarian governments aim to deprive their subjects of independent will and judgment; this implies that any of us, under totalitarian control, could commit atrocious acts; it doesn't, however, relieve individuals of guilt for their crimes. The impersonal tone of Todorov's analysis is relieved by occasional asides in which he follows his own rule that those making moral judgments must look first at themselves: He honestly and movingly considers his own naive complicity with Communist terror as a youth in Bulgaria. Todorov has original and surprising insights into the moral condition of those in the camps; but most important are his reflections on how the fragmentation and depersonalization of modern life contributed to that evil. His lessons for us today are compelling and ineluctable. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-4263-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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