Elegantly written essays on elevating standards of behavior in today's world. Wilson (Public Policy/UCLA) is best known as a student of crime (Crime and Human Nature, 1985, with Richard Herrnstein; Thinking About Crime, 1975). His knowledge of why humans misbehave informs this group of speeches, articles, and reflections on character, by which he means good character. Empathy and self- control are major constituents of that virtue, which leads to consideration of one's neighbor without undue restrictions on one's own behavior. Wilson explores how American concepts of character were formed (via the Enlightenment) but not fired in the kiln of strong debate. He looks at government, schools, families, and biology as molders of character, and at crime, failed ethics, and arguments for the legalization of drugs as symptoms of character flaws. How can we be certain that America's youth, especially its young men, will emerge as 20th-century adults with 18th-century polish? Wilson can only guess, and he proposes a broad study of urban male children that could provide some helpful data. Labeled a neoconservative (although he demurs), Wilson pokes at liberals, sometimes with good humor, sometimes with contempt (he holds no brief for ``Palo Alto cocktail parties''). Filled with self- confessed ``gaping intellectual holes,'' the essays also occasionally show an appalling lack of empathy. For instance, in a discussion of democracy, Wilson says that the US ``functioned democratically (except for the denial of the vote to women and blacks)....'' That's quite an exception. A mÇlange of ideas, some provocative, written with grace, civility, and wit. But however appealing to readers, it presents no clear guidelines for forming character or public policy.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8447-3786-0
Page Count: 199
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991
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
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
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