An engrossing, nuanced reflection on what it means to be human.
A psychologist explores the intersection of faith and material life in this nonfiction philosophical rumination.
“To overcome the challenges of past, present, and future,” writes Tapu in this book’s opening lines, “we need new stories, new guides, new ways.” While careful not to judge the spiritual beliefs of readers (“Your beliefs are important”), the volume urges them to consider the author’s version of a “new faith” that embraces diversity of thought beyond mere tolerance, arguing that “the love of the different will make the world reborn.” Central to the book’s framework is striking a middle ground between spiritual- and material-based belief systems, as it takes a moderate position that condemns fanaticism. For religious readers, for instance, the volume cautions that “a lot of faith can mean a lot of evil” while suggesting to skeptics that “little faith can mean little good. Although metaphysical reflections on the nature and meaning of life are the work’s bread and butter, it occasionally includes personal vignettes on topics such as grief, which is explored through the death of the author’s mother. A final chapter on practicing a “lifestyle for eternity” offers practical advice on ways to obtain “mind wholeness” in the chaos of modernity. A physician and professor of psychology at Romania’s University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Bucharest, Tapu is the author of multiple peer-reviewed textbooks. Occasional references to contemporary science notwithstanding, this volume eschews a research-based scholarly approach for a more esoteric pondering of the fundamental questions of human life (“How can we improve ourselves as humans?”; “Is it worth it to be human?”; “How does life last when it is so hard to entertain and death so easy to occur?”). At just 80 pages, the book will engage readers with an accessible, jargon-free writing style. It also strikes a fine balance between both respecting and challenging the core beliefs of readers, from atheists to the religiously devout, encouraging the entire spectrum to “believe in doubt” because “the strongest convictions are the most vulnerable.”
An engrossing, nuanced reflection on what it means to be human.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 61
Publisher: Lulu Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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