A well-meaning paean to self-affirmation.
Confidence in one’s self requires embracing life’s essential mystery.
French philosopher and novelist Pépin, who has extolled beauty, joy, and failure in previous books of popular philosophy, now offers a slim volume on self-confidence, broadly conceived as “confidence in others, confidence in one’s own capabilities, and confidence in life.” Although providing no evidence, the author is certain that we are all experiencing a crisis of self-confidence, caused by our loss of “direct contact with things” and even with “pinpointing our profession.” In one of many sweeping generalizations, he asserts, “being as super-connected as we are puts us all at a remove from basic doing and leaves us few concrete opportunities for developing confidence.” Pépin cites several individuals who seem to exude confidence—Madonna and Serena Williams, for example—to support his contention that having someone who trusts and encourages us builds confidence; so does honing a skill. “Among great artists,” he writes, echoing Malcolm Gladwell, “confidence comes first and above all from constant, devoted, almost obsessional practice.” Pépin, though, is interested in more than confidence in one’s ability. Through perfecting her skill as a tennis player, Williams discovered “what kind of woman she was. She understood she was the kind of person who becomes her truest self in moments of adversity.” As the author expands on his theme, confidence transcends its connection to mastery to mean “surrender” to “cosmos, God, or life.” This spiritual awakening allows us to respond authentically to nature and to beauty, trusting our feelings, with no need for experts’ validation. “Each time we recognize that something is beautiful without reference to external criteria, we are gaining confidence in ourselves,” Pépin writes. “But beauty gives us more than that: it fills us with life force and helps us find our courage.” Although drawing on many canonical writers and philosophers—Emerson, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Kant, and others—Pépin’s message is common to most self-help books: We must celebrate ourselves, “not relative to the value of others.” We are each “solitaire diamonds.”
A well-meaning paean to self-affirmation.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59051-093-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
