Book Description
This is Jurgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.
Customer Reviews:
Indispensable for Understanding Contemporary Culture.......2007-08-10
Okay, perhaps I've got the social-theory-geek gene, but when I first read this book some fourteen years ago (during grad school), I was able finally to put together a lot of things that had been swimming around in my brain. I'd already read a good bit of Adorno before a professor (with whom I was doing an independent study on Adorno) recommended that I read this. Habermas's historical analysis was so compelling that I simply couldn't put the book down. Moreover (all this may seem hard to believe), the lucidity of his presentation also helped me put a lot of what was going on in Adorno's writings in a clearer light.
While I don't agree with the directions in which Habermas later went--I strongly resist the notion of recuperating the modern project--this book provides a compelling analysis of how Western society and culture got to where it is now.
Habermas: The Public in History.......2005-09-17
In this monograph, Habermas tracks the origination, the evolution, and the dispersal of an informed "public sphere" among democratic Western nations. He defines public sphere as "private people com[ing] together as a public" (27). Once these individuals, gathered as reading groups or as aficionados of theatre, the arts, and politics, the individuals melded into a public capable of debating the government. Habermas locates these fledgling "publics" primarily in eighteenth-century France, England and to a lesser extent in the areas of Europe designated as German. Tellingly, Habermas strongly links the formation of the public sphere with the rise of capitalism and a continuing bourgeois revolution. Comprised of literate individuals governed by the principals of the Enlightenment, these "publics" eventually challenged the validity and legitimacy of governments, most notably in France during the French Revolution and England during the English Civil War.
Habermas builds a compelling argument based upon his interpretation of Rousseau, Kant, Locke, Hegel, and Marx. He links the works of these philosophers and sociologists in a credible chain stretching back to the eighteenth century. However, he only deals thoroughly with the educated, propertied elite of society. Habermas views the "unpropertied" and illiterate as a separate from and incapable of participating in a true public sphere. To do this he must dismiss a plethora of lower class uprisings found throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Even when the various governments quickly quashed these rebellions, the Ludites in England and the various rebellions of 1848 come to mind, it is difficult to dispute the effect these rebels and rebellions had upon the public discourse. As an early work on the subject, it is almost certain that Habermas had to amend his arguments following E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, published in 1963 a scant year after this work. His exclusion of the great press of society from a functioning public sphere seems arrogant at best and naïve at worst.
One of the most influential studies on the subject.......2004-11-01
Habermas' work, though written more than four decades ago, still retains most of its original relevance for the study of the public sphere. If you are interested in this subject, and if you are into critical thinking, then this book is certainly worth reading. Why? Well, if you take in consideration the fact that no other book has been written so far on the subject that has been able to surpass Habermas' account both in depth and originality, then you begin to get my point. As to a critical reading of the argument put forth by Habermas, one should read "Habermas and the Public Sphere", edited by Craig Calhoun. This book includes an appendix by Habermas where he revises some of his original positions.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.......2002-04-04
When you talk about the public sphere in front of intellectuals, Jürgen Habermas's name is bound to come up. Habermas's 1962 study, "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere," examines the creation, brief flourishing, and demise of a public sphere based in rational-critical debate and discussion. The feasibility of a true public sphere, which is inclusive of anyone who would participate, is for Habermas of utmost importance. Habermas follows a methodology similar to the one Michel Foucault takes in "Discipline and Punish," which analyzes the abolition of public displays of power, and the process by which the structures of power are inculcated in the individual from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Habermas analyzes historical, economic, and political conditions from classical antiquity through his own historical moment, tracing the circumstances in which the public sphere arises, how it functions, and ceases to function over time.
Habermas begins with a delineation of the terms 'public' and 'private,' orienting them philologically from their roots and meanings in classical antiquity. From here, he traces the adoption of the words and their synonyms into the European Middle Ages and the era of feudalism. Habermas says that in this period, the feudal lord and the monarch, for whom `representative publicness' functioned as a display of power before their subjects, dominated the public. Authority figures embodied virtues and powers in a public fashion. Public representation of political and economic power continued, unabated until the Reformation, at which time, the privatization of religious faith signaled a separation between society and the state. Economically, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the spread of trade necessitated the spread of news from various locales. As news outside of the home became relevant to home economy, the private individual begins to take an interest in public events. Consolidation of 'national' financial administration and state-controlled taxation, along with the rise of print culture, facilitated the dissemination of news, initially in the form of governmental decrees, market conditions, and happenings at court. Through this, the actions of the authorities came under the scrutiny of a reading public.
The 18th century is the key moment for Habermas. In this period, the government, along with private individuals, made use of the press, for the first time, in persuasive appeal to a public made up of private people. The press now presented the public with information, with which they were to use reason and discussion to determine what was in the public's interest. Habermas emphasizes the theoretical parity that this brings about - the rise of the coffee houses and salons, in which merchants met with gentility and engaged in rational-critical debate over issues of public import. Stretching this into the realm of the franchise, Habermas is careful to point out the problematics of a situation in which actual decision-making was restricted to those with money and land, but stresses that the opportunity for anyone to acquire these prerequisites was, again, theoretically, open to all.
For a brief time during the 18th century, Habermas sees the flourishing of a public sphere, born out of a reading public, that began to interact with the processes of public policy, legally, and morally. The purpose of this public sphere, according to Habermas, is to eliminate the domination of authoritative power, and establishing a government that is actually representative of the public will and contingent upon public opinion. Unfortunately, in the 19th century, with the stratification of party politics, the proliferating press encouraged less rational-critical discussion. Increasingly, debate moved into parliamentary circles, and the public was asked only to approve of party measures, not participate in the formation of the rules that governed them. In the 20th century, along with the creation of the welfare-state, consolidation of moneyed interests, and the expansion of universal suffrage (ironically), the public sphere disintegrated even further. New media - radio, television, etc. - turned its addresses to the public into mere advertising. Even the illusion of a private people engaged, as a public, in matters of their own governance, was gone, and the public became vessels for mass media.
To recuperate a true participatory public sphere, Habermas takes a guarded approach. He indicates that some kind of elite could be formed. These private individuals would undertake the responsibility of rational-critical debate, determining the public interest. The general public, then, would give their approval or disapproval to the measures decided on by this elite. This is kind of a bleak outlook, and one I don't much care for myself. Of course, this is a horribly limited review of Habermas's "Structural Transformation". I haven't even noted the break he takes to outline the historical-philosophical evaluation and critique of the public sphere by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Tocqueville. Nor did I note the extensive use Habermas makes of political and economic changes in his key nations - England, France, and Germany - and the contributions these make to the disintegration of the public sphere. At any rate, "Structural Transformation" is an exhaustive (and exhausting) study, as relevant now to the study of literature, economics, government, history, etc., especially of the last three centuries, as it ever was. Even though it is a pain to read, you'll be glad you finally read it. Think of it as theoretical medicine - it may not taste good, but in the long run, it's good for you.
Habermas puts me to sleep.......2000-07-23
... This is Habermas' dissertation, but his writing is so poor, in English or in German, that it really doesn' matter. The book is a response, in my opinion, to Carl Schmitt, and specifically to Schmitt's argument that the core of liberal democracy is debate in parliament, that liberal democracy is rule by discussion (or, as its called now, "political discourse"), but that that discussion is now more real than painted flames on a radiator. Liberal democracy is in fact the triumph of aliberal, private, hidden powers, who rule from the shadows and through the true organs of power, the media, and through the hidden power of the private vote cast in the illicit privacy of the voting booth, where the bourgeois individual is free to exercise his worst prejudices and basest motives. So argues Schmitt. Habermas gives an interesting historical account of the rise of "Offentlichkeit" (which translates into the all-too-easy abstraction "public sphere," whatever that is), from the letters passed in the mail relating the news from town to town, to French salons, to newspapers, to television and radio. Habermas, like Schmitt, seeks to unmask the illiberal powers lurking behind the good liberal prejudices, but he, like Schmitt, mistakes liberalism for a debating society when in fact it is much more sophisticated than that. Habermas needs to read the Federalist Papers and the debates (!) at the constitutional convention to understand how little the founders of one liberal democracy thought of the power of discussion.
Book Description
This book features full-length essays by feminists and multi-cultural people. It also addresses the international connections between race, gender, sex, AIDS, the environment, and cultural images.
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On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic (Philosophy of History and Culture)
Kuang-Ming Wu
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Book Description
This book uses Western philosophical tradition to make a case for a form of thinking properly associated with ancient China. The book's thesis is that Chinese thinking is concrete rather than formal and abstract, and this is gathered in a variety of ways under the symbol "body thinking". The root of the metaphor is that the human body has a kind of intelligence in its most basic functions. When hungry the body gets food and eats, when tired it sleeps, when amused it laughs. In free people these things happen instinctively but not automatically. The metaphor of body thinking is extended far beyond bodily functions in the ordinary sense to personal and communal life, to social functions and to cultivation of the arts of civilization. As the metaphor is extended, the way to stay concrete in thinking with subtlety becomes a kind of ironic play, a natural adeptness at saying things with silences. Play and indirection are the roads around formalism and abstraction. Western formal thinking, it is argued, can be sharpened by Chinese body thinking to exhibit spontaneity and to produce healthy human thought in a community of cultural variety.
Book Description
The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernist thought
Customer Reviews:
Baudrillard's Great Science Fiction Novel.......2007-04-12
This is Baudrillard's most famous work, and indeed, it is a must-read for those who wish to acquaint themselves with the basics of postmodern thought. It is beautifully written, and comes across like a sort of non-fiction equivalent of William Gibson's Neuromancer with its glittering display of polished, gleaming words patterned into strange, mercurial sentences that are not always easy to follow. But, as with Finnegans Wake, it is not so much the particular thought of the moment that counts, as it is the impression and impact upon the mental sensorium of the total experience. Baudrillard is a dazzling word-smith and it is likely that you will come away from this book with one or two new words to add to your vocabulary.
One of the things, of course, that has made this book so popular is its visual quotation in the science fiction film The Matrix, but I must say that the book does little towards an elucidation of that film. Indeed, Baudrillard himself has stated his dislike of the film (see the book "The Conspiracy of Art" for his comments), and he has stated how it compares less favorably with films built around similar themes such as The Truman Show, Mulholland Drive and others (I think David Cronenberg's Existenz is a much better take on the virtual reality theme. The Matrix seems cliched by comparison, especially since Cronenberg was already there first with his early 80's classic Videodrome). The theme of hyperreality displacing the real is not really what The Matrix is all about (there is too little in it irony for that; and no ambiguity; instead it concerns how technology robs the human soul of its spiritual potentialities) but it is what Simulacra and Simulation is about.
The French philosophers are fond of developing a single metaphysical concept and then exploring its ramifications in numerous books and their sequels: Debord's "Spectacle," for instance, is essentially equivalent to Baudrillard's hyperreality; Foucault's "episteme," though a completely different idea, is nonetheless monolithic in Foucault's thought. And much of Baudrillard's writings are an exploration of his concept of the hyperreal and how it has displaced the real.
The point of the book is that we postmoderns live inside a media-generated dome that seals us off from the "real" world. Indeed, we are so convinced by our own fabrications that we can no longer differentiate reality from its simulacrum. When spending money on gambling in Las Vegas, are we really losing all that money, or is it just a part of the "game"?
The best essay in the book is "The Precession of the Simulacra," and it is also the longest. I saved it for last and began with the shorter essays. Baudrillard's piece on J.G. Ballard's novel Crash is one of the best in the collection, as is his essay on "Hypermarket and Hypercommodity" and "The Beauborg Effect." Each of these pieces feels more like reading a science fiction novel than anything else but, let's face it, we live in a world that is stranger than science fiction. It takes an artist to make the contours of such a world visible to our perception, and Baudrillard does a fine job of this. He is, however, less successful with his pitiful one page ramblings on Apocalypse Now, which is disappointing and sheds almost no light on Coppola's masterpiece. (For this, the reader would do well to consult Ebert's Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons).
I confess that there are paragraphs I did not understand and words that sound as if they are made up, but this is actually true of most authors who have something profound to say (Lewis Mumford, for instance, or Heidegger). But Simulacra and Simulation is an important work and should be read despite its difficulties. Read it just the way you would a poem by Holderlin or Rilke. That is, don't try too hard to understand it, just let the imagery sink into your consciousness and enjoy the alterations that it produces upon you.
--John David Ebert
author, Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society
The Key to Understanding Jean Baudrillard.......2007-01-09
Baudrillard's classic is neither easy to read, nor is it the last word in continental postmodernism. It is also replete with ideas of questionable merit. So, why I have rated it with fives stars? Because buried within its pages, among the dross and the drivel, are enough intellectual gems to make the entire exercise more than worthwhile! Even with its flaws, Simulacra and Simulation reveals Jean Baudrillard to be one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. Any person deeply interested in critically understanding the postmodern, media saturated era in which we live, needs to read this book.
The most useless book I have ever read........2006-09-19
Hardly being a serious look into the (supposed) simulated world, Simulacra and Simulation unnecessarily confuses, compounds, and over-estimates the reality of simulation, and implies simulation in virtually everything while failing to give any real evidence or examples for this phenomenon. Through and through, Baudrillard fails to adequately define his terms, concerns, and sources for his critiques. While never settling on one particular point, his arbitrary method of critiquing never moves beyond the realm of opinion. Critical analysis of the subject matter (whatever that is) is never applied, instead being sacrificed for ever more obscured superficial observations. Baudrillard gives us no example as to the cause of his concerns (whatever those may be) let alone giving us any real solutions as to how we may pierce through our alleged self created illusions. Nor does he give us any real insight as to how these critiques can be applied in any useful way to our education or our daily life. If this is what is passing for philosophy today, I can only imagine how useless the field will become in fifty years if we continue to look to Baudrillard as the top of his field. Superfluous and meaningless double-talk is all you will get out of this useless excuse for a book. For anyone interested in reading "Simulacra and Simulation", I would sooner recommend Dr. Seuss "Green Eggs and Ham." You will have more fun reading it, and you will probably learn more as well.
Where is real?.......2006-09-08
What is real anymore? Where can I find it at? In our mass-multi-media world, is there really anything "real" anywhere? Or is it all just one large simulation? I do not claim to be on the Postmodern bandwagon, or to 100% agree with their ideas and thoughts, but this was a very interesting read that will possibly make you ask "What is real?"
Jean Baudrillard is a Rockstar.......2006-04-15
Jean Baudrillard is not practical. He discusses the death of the real in an often persuasive way, but offers no conclusions as to how this should affect the practice of cultural theory or human behavior. Nor does he offer suggestions for preventing the death of the real--he just wallows in it.
Still, Baudrillard sure is a hoot. I love reading him the way I love reading J.G. Ballard and watching David Cronenberg movies. He offers a great, cynical rush: highly recommended to masturbatory pessimists and fans of new wave science-fiction.
Book Description
Vulnerability is explored from the prespective of individuals, groups, and communities. The chapters address the many private faces of vulnerability and the implication of that vulnerability for nurses, and nursing care.
Customer Reviews:
It's about time!.......2004-10-31
A book like this should have come out long ago! When I was taking my "Vulnerable Populations" course in my BSN program we did not even have a textbook. Now nursing students can benefit from the experiences and research in this book.
Book Description
Are the "culture wars" over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world's foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave.
"We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban," Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the "native informant" through various cultural practices--philosophy, history, literature--to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant's analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on.
A major critical work, Spivak's book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.
Customer Reviews:
The irony.......2007-06-26
I must admit, I did not read the entire book. But it is not because I didn't try.
Spivak is a close associate of Judith Butler, and this text demonstrates the connect -- no person lacking a very specific culural and feminist education can read it.
This is the irony of such texts. Spivak cleary seeks to empower women and individuals of color oppressed by Western hegemony -- ttself a jargon phrase-- yet no one she seeks to liberate could remotely understand her text. Nor could many scholars like myself, who seek to learn from her infinite wisdom.
At some point, I would hope that scholars like Spivak would take a page from the Lawrence Grossbergs of the world and begin to write in more accessible language
To do so is not anti-intelectual -- it is indeed an attempt to ADVANCE scholarship.
A question?.......2006-08-26
how now? a book written about the marginal, the "strung-out", decentered, in a stile one needs a very very expensive education to comprehend? on what side of the pasture are you on?
isnt the appropriation of time one of the nastiest things the elect have done to us? how much time does one have, can have, if one isn't "allowed" to sit in her classes, to have her hand on one's papers, when one has to work, to commute to work, to spend eight hours or more there six days a week?
how does a radical expect the inert to energize when the centrifuge of "modern academia" has separated all the key components of "interaction"?
i want answers.
A landmark..........2006-04-10
As you can already tell by the comments, there is a "clash of cultures" in the academy. It's between:
* People who think philosophy's job is to expand ideas and challenge, versus those who think it should make the present seem more comfortable and make you nod your head in recognition.
* Those who think that gender is relatively unimportant and that work stands for itself; versus those who believe that "to introduce the question of woman changes everything".
* Those who believe that the canon of Western philosophy is adequate to describe the world, and those who believe it has never described the world because it never took the time to understand those that never lived in "the west"
* Those who believe the work of the intellectual should be to outline a philosophy of life to be taken up by others, versus those who believe that it is sometimes "more productive to sabotage what is inexorably to hand than to outline a novel concept that will never seriously be tested".
You get the idea. If you are in the first category of these tensions then there's no point you reading this book. It will confirm all your prejudices.
If the second half of the statements above sounds more like you, then you probably already know this book. But in case you "haven't quite got to it yet", as I hadn't for a while, I can say that this is a book that will reward many detailed readings. It's breadth and depth is breathtaking in an era where the very real problems of generalisation raised by gender/race/colonial analysis have caused many to back away from theorising world systems. As Spivak carefully shows, these systems ("the financialsiation of the globe" - who among the critics could elaborate with such detail on the distinctive impact of informational capital on the rural?) are very much in operation and urgently need to be thought - but never at the expense of forgetting those whose labour is appropriated by those systems. For all the dense theoretical language in the text, Spivak is obviously in a discussion with, for example, the indigenous activist, unlike many of her critics, who complain about her language yet never demonstrate their engagement with e.g. the rural poor.
Let's talk about the language. Yes, it's intimidating. It's philosophy! She's a professional philosopher, that's her job! If you're going to understand the insights of a physicist you'd have to prepare yourself by doing a lot of reading (and experimenting). If you were going to understand a physicist who was pushing the boundaries of the discipline you are probably going to have to be a physicist yourself or be very, very, very interested in the field. As it should be - if I understood what physicists were really doing I'd be worried, given that they study for so long and get all that research money for labs when maybe I could do this in my garage. Despite 15 years of reading social theory (not all the time - I'm not an academic at the moment) I struggled heavily through the first chapter of this book on Kant and Hegel (I know some Hegel, only a little Kant). I'd read two pages and think "I'm not sure I get that, but I'll read it again tomorrow and move on to the next bit anyway." If you're a feminist philosopher I'm sure you'd be going much easier. But the point is, I didn't take it as a reason not to read it - it was a challenge for me to expand my understanding about stuff I thought I knew (e.g., Marx), that she has obviously thought a lot more about than me.
When it got to some things I do know something about (e.g. colonial rhetoric, technology and development), her insights were both revelatory and in accord with my experience at the same time. Anyone with a philosophical bent who has experience in the development field will be troubled by the very convincing case Spivak makes in chapter 4 for development as an instantiation of imperialism. As someone who reads the relevant journals from time to time I have yet to hear anyone with expertise in philosophy and cultural studies outline why Spivak doesn't know what she is talking about, as the Terry Eagleton fan suggets. She does all too well, in a way that intimidates those who made a living pretending they had the answers.
Spivak obviously knows that she's good and the suffer-no-fools tone - some have described it as elitist - might be irritiating for some. I prefer to see it as a persistent frustration with the limitations of language, and an attempt to convey that to the reader. This is not "bad writing". It is very carefully crafted (there are some fantastic, pithy sentences at times) to destabilise the assumptions she knows readers are going to make about the work. If you want to read someone who'll make it all easy, try Andrew Ross (one of my favourite authors, but completely different methodology as befits an American Studies prof).
If you've never read Spivak and aren't completely at home in philosophy and theory, this might not be the place to start. Maybe begin with Landry & Maclean's Spivak Reader and any of her interviews (there's a great one from the journal Signs which is available online). Outside in the Teaching Machinemight be easier after that. But if you are looking for big, challenging ideas that will shift your world-view, this will do it.
As you can tell, I love this book. I think it's a landmark work from someone who is trying to think the world with knowledge and experience of places that previously well-known "world thinkers" never had. It attempts to bring an incredible range of examples and texts into productive conversation. It kind of depresses me because I know I could never write it, yet even by reading it I am no longer as comfortable in subconscious generalisations that Euro-US culture relies on, and that this distances me from some ideas and people. But it has also sharpened my sense of what is important, of where I can make a difference, of what writing can do inside and outside of the academy. It's a great gift if you're prepared to receive it.
This book demands & rewards patience & receptivity to others.......2005-06-08
The indignant and arrogant demands for ease of understanding expressed by so many reviewers here exemplify the passive, anti-intellectual customer service-based epistemology that Spivak educates us against and that drives todays globalizing and enslaving culture. Her book is profound and urgent.
music from under the floorboards.......2002-01-27
Spivak works in the interstices to tease out what has been left out in ideas, in cultures, in histories, in language.
Many people apparently are maddened by her methods because there is no easy "method" to be extracted from her work. Her style is an antithesis to traditional "methods". The only real tool a theorist or critic has is intelligence and that quality is not easily described and perhaps not directly transmittable, especially when the kind of intelligence in question has no precedent and must thus inscribe itself into the language for the first time.
Book Description
Slavoj Zizek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements in Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan through the works of contemporary popular culture, from horror fiction and detective thrillers to popular romances and Hitchcock films.
Slavoj Zizek is a Researcher in the Institute of Sociology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He ran as a proreform candidate for the presidency of the republic of Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, in 1990.
Customer Reviews:
Lacanian heresy inside! Beware of being tainted!.......2004-10-05
I am struck by the negative reviews that caution readers: "Zizek is not an orthodox Lacanian! Read him only if you have already understood Lacan!" This is, of course, the typically cultish--really Catholic--approach to Lacan that treats him as a holy text, pre-supposes a series of high priests who have been properly anoited and through whom one must receive the officially sanctioned interpretation. I don't read Zizek for Lacan--I read him for Zizek, and I encourage others to do likewise. *Looking Awry* and *Enjoy Your Symptom* are prehaps the easiest approaches to Zizek and his brand of cultural criticism, as they rely almost entirely on popular culture, especially film. Zizek's perverse (and often dirty) sense of humor and tendency to read against the grain at all costs are apparent on nearly every page, which makes this a very engaging read, indeed. Intellectually, there are some problems with his approach, of course--but Zizek's voice is such a refreshing change of pace, and his constant turn to a reading that you thought was impossible (but turns out to be preversely appealing) makes them all worthwhile.
Perfect - if that's what you want........2004-05-15
That's what I wanted, at least: An illustration of the key Lacanian concepts. What Zizek'bokk gives you, in fact, is the key to reading Lacan.
Lacan's seminar is an unreadable text - if that's your first/second/third etc. time. Lacan, you see, does not make conclusions. To illustrate that:
- You are writing a paper on, let's say, "Gaze". You would like to know what's Lacan's take on gaze. You open "On Gaze as Object a" chapter from "Four Fundamentals".
- you read a paragraph. You do not quite understand what you have read.
- you read the following paragraph. Now, understanding this one is even more difficult, because Lacan is assuming that you have fully understood the previous one. Ok, third paragragh ... Should I continue?
- You either think that this book is non-sense or that you are stupid. Both conclusions are wrong.
As soon as you get the background - Lacan's non-sense makes perfect sense. Zizek give this background in a highly entertaining manner (his writing is a jewel - keeps you thinking "If only I could write like that!"). I am currently doing a PhD in literature, and I have to go through plenty of academic rubbish - dry and actually, useless critical books, that make use of Lacan, Foucault and others to get published and never be read. Zizec is a breath of fresh air.
Please believe me - do not give up on Lacan, do not call him bad names, (like "idiotic nonsense, nobody ever understood him, they were all pretending to understand him because they were afraid to look stupid in the 60s") - before you read Zizec.
This book is great; those below who don't like it are clowns.......2002-09-22
Jacques Lacan's theories are completely, utterly undecipherable. The only way to begin to understand the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory is to read somebody else writing on Lacan. And thank God Zizek does that for us. To understand Lacan, I've always had to turn to film theory critism--Laura Mulvey--but none of that ever goes beyond theories of the gaze, neglecting to dispell the mystery around some of the most basic concepts of Lacan. Zizek rolls through these various terms and ideas, always providing an exemplification of the idea in popular culture, usually in Hitchcock or within Sci-Fi genres, and then a clear-to-understand definition. So if you're confused as to what desire, drive, lack, objet a, other, Other, the Real, or the Thing are in terms of Lacanian jargon, this might be your book.
Titling awry.......2001-07-08
This book is very interesting but I think it would have been better to call it "An Introduction to Popular Culture trhough Jaques Lacan". This would be a proper title because Zizek dedicates more space to tell us what some products of popular culture are about (i.e. Stephen King's novel "Pet Sematary"; Robert Sheckley's short story "The Store of the Worlds") than to explain, or even outline, the theories of Jaques Lacan. This in itself is not a critique, I just want to say that the title can be misleading. You will not find here an explanation or an introduction to Lacan, but rather a Lacanian reading or interpretation of some products of popular culture (novels, short stories and films.) If you are looking for an easy or brief rendering of Lacan, this book will not be of much help. Moreover, I would say that the readers who will profit the most are those who are already familiar with, or at least know something about, Lacanian thought. This said, I think that Zizek's Lacanian reading of popular works is very good in some cases, and somewhat poor in others. For example, he recalls the novel "Pet Sematary" but he explains almost nothing about it. The good cases, however, make it worth the effort to read the book (Zizek's writing is complicated, but so is Lacan's), and even if you do not agree with some of his points, they are still useful to encourage thought and discussion. If you are interested in the study of popular culture, the interpretation of film and literature, or in the application of Lacanian theory to social analysis, this book will certainly be of use.
Looking Awry This Book.......2000-06-01
This book consists of three parts each of which treats so wide range of topics that there seems to be no logical consistency except Lacanian theory. In the first part, Zizek applys Lacanian theory on reality to various topics such as Zenofs paradox, Shakespearefs gHamleth, Stephen Kingfs gPet Semataryh, and Steven Spielbergfs gEmpire of the Sunh. Then, the second part focuses on Hitchcockfs works and the third part discusses gFantasy, Bureaucracy, Democracyh, however, both parts treat various works in popular culture, too. Actually, Zizek treats Lacanian theory on reality in the first part, on psychoanalysis in the second part, and on gthe Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Realh in the third part, and the third part arranges the preceding parts. But I feel that this book is about how to analyze popular culture rather than about Lacan. As an introduction to Jacques Lacan, I think this book is too difficult. However, this bookfs style which does not have a logical consistency like an ordinary thesis might be more easy to know Lacanian theory than compactly explaining book with many diagrams.
Customer Reviews:
Juicy.......2007-06-18
I bought this book in 1997, 10 years ago, and it was already 5 years old. It was enjoyable but a slog to get through and not all was retained in my head at the end of the read. I was left tired and I moved on. The true value of the book, however, became apparent as the years passed - every re-read of portions gave pleasure through forgotten information freshly revealed, or insights put forth in the book that have finally sunk in, or new color/nuance to previously remembered arguments. I also bought one other, more recent, book of his, "On Equilibrium", and it complements "Voltaire's Bastards" nicely. The intervening years continue to demonstrate the validity of many arguments in the book, thus getting closer to the definition of a 'classic'. One of my best book purchases.
Not quite as dense as some might insist..........2007-04-17
Few books that are truly worth reading make for an easy read, and this is certainly the case with Voltaire's Bastards. Other reviewers have complained of Saul's density and have even accused him of dull, poor writing. Don't be fooled by such baseless nonsense. Saul is actually an excellent writer. He beautifully elucidates the finer, invariably ignored philosophical points of our modern political culture (which seeps through into every stratum of our lives) with grace and ease. The "density" arises when he undertakes historical narratives which lend credence to the points he makes. I'll agree that this can often make for slow, dry reading. However, his astute commentary on the modern "theology" of reason, power, secrecy, language and bureacracy more than compensate for such shortcomings. If you've ever felt inexplicably frustrated by what seems to be an amputated, purely rationalist, beady-eyed approach to politics, culture and knowledge in general, then the ideas presented within this book will likely excite you as much as they excited me.
Mixed feelings.......2006-12-31
Much has been said amongst the other reviews about the seemingly incoherent, diatribal and drawn-out nature of Saul's book. And I agree. It's far from being a masterpiece in the larger sense of the world. What's brilliant about this book is not how right the author is but how wrong (often infuratingly so!) he is. Because I found that I've learnt more from this book, including the wrong parts than I have from many books that were more coherent or right. Unfortunately this does not seem to be Saul's aim.
He begins with section 1 called "Argument". However it read like a bunch of generalisations and sweeping statements without much argument. What he seems to be saying is this: that the concept of reason has been hijacked in the last century of public life in the west. That it has come to mean a bureaucratic, elitist, undemocratic, secretive, closed approach that also refuses to take into account the realities of life. That this style of reason is fanatical in that insisting that it is always right as a dogma. And finally, that it has been the result of untold amounts of suffering because it proclaims itself as a moral system, whereas it's only a system of management. Because of this, it can and is used to inhuman ends because it is itself devoid of any values.
All this I largely agree with. Especially in terms of the last point about reason being amoral you only need to read some Hume. However this exposition of his argument comes only from his second section, where he actually gives some concrete examples. The second section is largely a diatribe that attempts to apply these arguments to concrete historical examples. I think this is the strongest section of the book in that it is actually about something. The third section is some musings on art, individualism etc. much of which was entirely disagreeable.
What then are the strengths of the book? It is a hodge-podge that speaks of everything under the sun and often misses as a result. But by speaking about everything Saul successfully expresses the extent to which things are a problem. If he were more methodical one could claim that such-and-such and such-and-such institution is broken. However this book has convinced me that the world is much more broken than even I previously thought. He just could have done it in a third of the word count. I would definitely recommend the book but not as some incredible analysis but rather as something that will provoke and engage almost every reader. It seems paradoxical but in the chaos that is criticised by so many, Saul makes some surprising observations that would have been missed if he was more careful.
My new bible.......2006-09-24
Some books are to be read once. Others, like this one are to be read many times.
I could have given it 4 stars, because there are places that are dry and repetetive. In those places, I would turn the pages.
Places like the evolution of the purpose of art, beginning with religious motivation and moving into art, for art's sake. I didn't care though.
The fact is, the details JRS includes are things I have never heard before and they are what makes this book a MUST HAVE.
"Jefferson, founder and patron of the University of Virginia, never allowed his university to give degrees. He considered them pretentious, irrelevant to learning and unconnected to the preparation for responsiblity. This wasn't idealism. It was the opinion of the most successful practitioner of reason. The purpose of universities has now been inverted. Learning has become a goal-oriented process aimed at winning a degree."
"Modern wine tends to be filled with sulfur, chemical stabilizers, fungicides, beet sugar and alcohol additives. These elements, not grape alcohol, are the cause of most hangovers. Contemporary wine doesn't taste anything like Henry IV's Nuit St. Georges. It is forced, matures quicker and dies faster. Like nuclear reactors, modern wine is part of the secretive promise of our society.
truly "a hand grenade disguised as a book"!.......2006-05-02
If you want to understand the world we live, then read this book. It's message is liberating. It is totally on the mark. It was published in 1992, but it fully explains everything that has happened since then. The author is brilliant. It's a citizen's survival guide to the 21st century. The book is very dense so don't expect a lazy, breezy read.
Book Description
In The End of History, Francis Fukuyama showed that the human historical process had culminated in a universal capitalist and democratic order. The end of the Cold War thus marked the end of ideological politics and the beginning of a struggle for position in the rapidly emerging order of 21st century capitalism. Yet despite the historic convergence of economic and political institutions throughout the world, we still see a great deal of social and cultural turbulence, not only in the West but in the emerging liberal states of Asia and Latin America. Now that Marxist economics and social engineering both have been discredited, Fukuyama asks, what principles should guide us in making our own society more productive and secure?
In Trust, a sweeping assessment of the emerging global economic order "after History," Fukuyama examines a wide range of national cultures in order to divine the hidden principles that make a good and prosperous society, and his findings strongly challenge the orthodoxies of both left and right. Conservative economists believe that only free markets can liberate individual initiative and thereby foster greater prosperity, an assumption that dovetails with the popular myth that America was built by rugged individualists making unfettered "rational" choices. If Marxist economics undervalued the role of individual choice in a market economy, neoclassical goes too far in the other direction, promoting a radical individualism that neglects the moral basis of community and ignores the many "irrational" factors that influence economic behavior.
In fact, economic life is pervaded by culture and depends, Fukuyama maintains, on moral bonds of social trust. This is the unspoken, unwritten bond between fellow citizens that facilitates transactions, empowers individual creativity, and justifies collective action. In the global struggle for economic predominance that is now upon us -- a struggle in which cultural differences will become the chief determinant of national success -- the social capital represented by trust will be as important as physical capital.
But trust varies greatly from one society to another, and a map of how social capital is distributed around the world yields many surprises. For instance, contrary to the assumptions of the "competitiveness" school, the United States has historically been quite similar to Japan in levels of social trust; and both differ greatly from low-trust Chinese Confucian societies on the one hand, or Latin Catholic societies like France and Italy on the other. Fukuyama argues that only those societies with a high degree of social trust will be able to create the kind of flexible, large-scale business organizations that are needed for successful competition in the emerging global economy.
The greatness of this country, he maintains, was built not on its imagined ethos of individualism but on the cohesiveness of its civil associations and the strength of its communities. But Fukuyama warns that our drift into a more and more extreme rights-centered individualism -- a radical departure from our past communitarian tradition -- holds more peril for the future of America than any competition from abroad.
Customer Reviews:
I thought this was dazzlingly brilliant..........2006-01-07
Fukuyama outlines how the "intermediate social organizations" of society, under the Protestant ethic, permitted the development of modern capitalist structures; whereas in low-trust societies (where you cannot depend on the corresponding person to trust you, or you to trust him), only family oriented businesses could grow, and inevitably collapsed after the second or third generation. He links the development of these intermediate organizations--guilds, PTAs, unions, volunteer activities--to the social fabric that engendered trust. He comments that a country can "spend" this hard-to-develop social capital and eventually become a rigid, non-trusting, and economically backward state. Furthermore, Fukuyama points out that the United States probably is doing just that, in nearly all intermediate social organizations, which are now surrounded by litigious critics--the educational system, Boy Scouts, union-management conflicts, the Catholic Church (which has never trusted its parishioners to have other than the standard orthodoxy, and now has suffered enormous scandal), and so forth. The lack of trust in our country is seen as pointing to our economic future, whether for good or bad.
Fukuyama is a genuinely interesting and informative writer. In his sense of fairness, he also points to examples where trust is generated, and cites them as necessary for a country to make both social and economic progress. I really enjoyed the multiple perspectives that the author brings to his task of explaining how some countries are prosperous, and some are not. He is truly an innovative thinker.
Before you read the reviews look at the section above called "Customers who viewed this book also viewed" you will gain insigh .......2005-08-14
This book was written ( I bet)by unpaid graduate assistants. I borrowed it from the library to read before mr Fukuyama's arrival to speak at a university.
The book was "written to order" to appeal to American conservatives. If Mr Fukuyama had really wanted to write about the construction/maintenance/increasing/decreasing of TRUST he could not have pointedly ignored the European Union. Nations and peoples with a thousand or more years of organised warfare are now at peace and trying to work together now that's an exercise in TRUST BUILDING.
I asked Mr Fukuyama why, as the book doesn't have America in the title, did he only mention distrust in medieval Italy and not the phenominal TRUST required to bring Germans, Brits and the French together. His reply "Oh .. people always want me to talk about their country. Next question." well!....
I feel that this book is a dis service to Americans because as with so many political/cultural and economic books from the USA what is left out of the book adds to the hurly burly spiral of disinformation accepted as the truth about the world by many Americans and esp. uncrital conservatives. I am, of course by my own reckoning, a conservative - a mixed economy democratic christian from the U.K.(OK OK New Labour) So I am not hostile to the US, but this type of book and the supportive reviews sadden me. Good luck America and PLEASE read wider and TRAVEL!
Racism and religious bigotry masquerading as science.......2005-03-15
Fukuyama trots out stereotypes that he must have picked up at his Japanese-Protestant father's knee, under a thick veneer of impenetrable sociological jargon that can fool the occasional reader into believing that this is an impartial scientist at work. Like all stereotypes, Fukuyama's are a blend of breathtaking overgeneralizations, and huge blind spots. And, like all stereotypes, they are utter nonsense.
The book attempts to update Max Weber's "Protestant ethic" story to include some non-Christian societies. The basic argument of the book is that Catholics are unable to trust people outside their immediate family, and so unable to form associations that are not based on family ties. The same is true of the Chinese, claims Fukuyama. These are the Catholics of the Orient.
The Japanese and Protestants are able to transcend family ties and therefore form a vast range of associations that do not have a genetic basis, especially large professionally managed corporations.
The feckless Catholics and Chinese however are doomed to form business enterprises that can never be more than over-grown Mom and Pop operations. Fukuyama therefore has a gloomy prognosis for the economic miracles of China or Taiwan or Singapore--however brilliant a businessman Pop or Mom may be, sooner or later Paris Hilton will be minding the store.
There is an interesting chapter on Korea, where Fukuyama is at pains to show that however like wannabe Japanese/Protestants Korean business organizations may seem, they are really Chinese/Catholic at heart.
The book's thesis is obvious nonsense. Dramatic counter-examples exist, such as the Chinese Communist Party or the Jesuits. Also, the broad idea that Catholicism or Chinese-ness contributes to poverty lacks a statistical basis.
I saw a recent article about thousands of Japanese orphans in China who were taken in and looked after by Chinese families after Japan's World War II defeat. Rather surprising behavior in this "low-trust" society! Perhaps these Chinese had been somewhat civilized by the high-trust ways of the occupying Japanese.
underrated despite being an oversimplification.......2004-11-12
I live in Europe close to the fault line between (in Fukuyama-speak) low-trust-land and high-trust-land and I have rarely read such an interesting book. In some ways the book is the successor to Max Weber's magnum opus, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (published in 1905) about the impact of protestant religion and culture on economical success in Germany.
Rather than compare Protestantism with Catholicism and their economical impact on German citizens, Fukuyama divides the world into high and low trust societies. Within Europe low trust societies largely coincide with Catholic countries and high trust societies coincide largely with Protestant countries, hence some of Fukuyama's work will sound familiar at times to a reader of Max Weber. Still, Fukuyama's categorisation is not based per se on religious affiliation. Fukuyama is at pains to attribute the low trust of Italians or French to historical events or situations. At times it seems he goes out of his way to avoid attributing any causal role to religion. But the advantage of his approach is that his methodology in theory works in any culture outside the European Christian context. Fukuyama also applies his trust criterion on societies such as the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. The Middle East and Africa are conspicuous in their absence, possibly because there are few if any examples of so-called high-trust cultures in these parts of the world.
There are a few shortcomings to the book :
Fukuyama only draws economical consequences from the presence or absence of trust, for instance, he claims high trust cultures such as Japan and Germany find it easier to form very large companies, whilst low trust cultures such as Taiwan or Italy feel more at home in family companies. It is a pity he does not extend the field of study of consequences into areas such as corruption (low trust countries generally score higher on corruption), the law (for instance perjury is not regarded as a big deal in low trust countries), demographics (intermarriage, such as consanguineous marriages, is much more common in low trust cultures such as in the Middle East), etc...
The division of the world by Fukuyama into low and high trust cultures is very binary. Some studies by others into trust have first segmented the environment of individuals in concentric layers, starting with the immediate family, then friends, then the extended family, then the local community, then the country and then his or her civilisation. In such a scenario trust typically decreases with each layer which is further removed from the individual (although there are exceptions, such as in failed Islamic states where more trust is put by individuals in the Umma - all Muslims - than in the nation.), but the slope of the curve differs between low and high trust cultures. Still, as a simplification, the division into two extremes of trust is an interesting start.
Like all human phenomena, economic organisation can never be explained by one variable. But even if trust turns out to be only one of the variables which have a high correlation with economic structure, it remains a valid subject for a book like this.
Finally, some reviewers have accused Fukuyama of explicitly arguing that economic development is hampered by low trust, whilst I think he actually argues economic structures are merely different in both categories. Nobody will argue Belgium, a typical low-trust culture, is poorer in GDP per capita terms than - say - the neighboring Netherlands, a typical high trust culture that even shares its language with the majority of Belgians. But it is true that Belgian multinational companies are even rarer than famous Belgians.
Despite the simplifications this is still a very interesting book for those interested in the compatibilities or incompatibilities of cultures in the workplace. One of Fukuyama's underrated books.
Trust!.......2003-06-14
Summary:
The author claims in his chapter, Friction-Free Economies, that it is necessary to turn to a cultural characteristic like spontaneous sociability to explain the existence of large-scale corporations in an economy, or prosperity more generally. The question of spontaneous sociability is particularly important because we cannot take the older ethical habits for granted. A rich and complex civil society does not arise inevitably out of the logic of the advance of industrialization. On the contrary, Japan, Germany, and the United States became the world¡¯s leading industrial leaders in large part because they had healthy endowments of social capital and spontaneous sociability, and not vice versa. Also, the author emphasizes on the economic function of trust and spontaneous sociability. If we presume that if legal institutions exist, the presence of a high degree of trust as an additional condition of economic relations can increase economic efficiency by reducing what economists call transaction costs, incurred by activities like finding the appropriate buyer or seller, negotiating a contract, complying with government regulations and enforcing contracts.
In conclusion, traditional sociability can be said to be loyalty to older, long-established social groups. By contrast, spontaneous sociability is the ability to come together and cohere in new groups, and to thrive in innovative organizational settings. Spontaneous sociability is likely to be helpful from an economic standpoint only if it is used to build wealth-creating economic organization. Traditional sociability, on the other hand, can frequently be an obstacle to growth.
Critique 1:
In the article, the writer talks about the free rider problem. It is said that when a country which has communal solidarity, people will get resources without contributing to society as much as others. The solution, suggested by the writer, is to designate the work in unit base. And, the writer cited a successful example of Mao¡¯s policy, a famous Chinese leader, towards peasants. However, nowadays, it seems that it is more difficult to prevent such problems as the relationship between people become more and more indispensable. It is difficult to delimit the job by unit clearly as what was done in agricultural society in the past.
Moreover, there is no perfect government policy in the world as it is impossible to balance all the interests equally among people. For example, the free rider phenomenon is serious in some countries. In some cases in Hong Kong, the free riders are getting the government¡¯s subsidy without contributing to the society. Especially, during the economic depression, people are in hard time and the government tries to help them by providing subsidy to the public. However, in some cases, the subsidy fund for a family provided by the government is similar to the salary during an economic depression. Therefore, many people select not to work which can be said to be a kind of free rider. Even through it is known by the government, it is unpreventable. Therefore, nowadays, the free rider problem is not easy to combat with.
Critique 2:
In this article, author mentions about the economic function of trust and spontaneous sociability. It is right that a high degree of trust can increase economic efficiency and reduce transaction costs comparatively. But, in my point of view, it doesn¡¯t mean the companies can get great benefit and guarantee from the high degree of trust, their gains are very limited. In economic activities, we should take a minimal level of trust and honesty for every economic partner, even the companies which have good relation and cooperative experience with us. Business is business. When you choose high trust in appearance, actually, you are also taking high risk in disappearance stealthily. Because all the economic activities only focus on one goal-benefits.
As the author mentions, societies manifesting a high degree of communal solidarity and shared moral value should be more economically efficient than their more individualistic counterparts. This is due to the ¡°free riders¡± problem. This kind of problems cannot be avoided. The greater organizations become, the greater the tendency of ¡°free rider¡± is. Why it happens? One reason is those organizations¡¯ benefits or efforts are most influence or control, and in the organizations, his or her individual benefits or efforts are ignored. We can see, in a small group, because the group members are highly dependent on one another, and, also when a single partner slack off, which will be noticed immediately by colleagues. So, I think, it needs kinds of high degree of trust and solidarity in a group. Moreover, it would be helpful to put the organization and an individual interest together, create member¡¯s self-motive, and enact proper roles are also good methods to limit free rider in the group.
Book Description
The Lucifer Principle is a revolutionary work that explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture to put forth the thesis that "evil" is a by-product of nature's strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric. "An act of astonishing intellectual courage." -- Leon Uris; "Destined to be the Future Shock of our time." -- Spin; "A revolutionary vision of the relationship between psychology and history, The Lucifer Principle will have a profound impact on our concepts of human nature. It is astonishing that a book of such importance could be such a pleasure to read." -- Elizabeth F. Loftus, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington, and author of Memory and Eyewitness Testimony.
Customer Reviews:
I can't help but be a fan.......2007-06-10
This book will always have a spot next to my heart since it was the book that got me interested in things like evolutionary biology, sociology and ethology. Even if some of his theories are hackneyed the book still achieved the goal of changing the way I think about the world around me and opened up new areas of study that have truly enriched my life. It's hard for me not to be generous with this book.
Also the book is a great reference for finding other books on many topics that should be read which has been a great help for me. Mr. Bloom's book is probably not for the professional sector or the semi-pros, but for amateurs like me the book can be an eye opener. Plus the book is so well written that it is a very good read in its own right. I found myself engrossed throughout and unable to put the book down in some places.
Don't come to this book looking for the definitive work to define your philosophy about the subjects of this book, but more to get a taste of the ideas that are out there and I think you won't be disappointed.
I think in my case the book was a huge success and if you're an amateur like me I think the book can really be a paradigm shift in your life.
Eye opener....Don't let the name fool you!!.......2007-05-20
I have to say, as a person who has always had a hard time understanding man's "methods of maddness", this book shed a interesting light on human behavior. I've read this book about 5 times (just to keep the concepts fresh in my mind) and have recomended this book to anyone looking for a little more information on the nature of man. To any scared of the title: Lucifer's name is simply used as a way to describe the kind of behavior examined in this book. Bloom confronts more of man's darker traits in this book and what better a name (or diety's name) to affix to these tendencies. I call this a must read for anyone looking for another angle from which to examine life.
The Lucifer Principle is eye opening 5 stars plus.......2007-04-05
This book is one of the most revealing in how the masses get suckered into believing lies, much like the stupidity of mormonism.
Howard Bloom is a genius in making the principals of thinking for yourself a revelation in simple terms.
Get it and never be suckered into BS lies again, unless your a mormon and your all ready screwed up bad.
OK for thinking but not believing.......2007-03-01
It is important when reading this book to keep in mind the book's foreword by David Sloan Wilson - he gives sound advice to 'not read it and believe but read it and think'. Sloan Wilson also rightly describes Bloom as having the 'brashness of a mass media denizen'. Sloan Wilson's support is essentially for the group selection argument which Bloom presents in his personal, passionate and largely flawed way.
Bloom takes the reader through a galloping overview of human group violence. His descriptions of group identification, group pecking-orders, group loyalty, imperialism etc are pretty much obvious and undeniable. Also the fact that nature is profligate and that much of what nature produces is expendable is largely true but Bloom's argument that this proves that the social unit comes first is flawed.
Bloom compares the social unit to the body - just as body cells die in order for the body itself to live, so individuals are sacrificed for the life of the group. This, of course, is a false analogy because body cells share identical DNA and the reproduction of the body's DNA is left to the germ cells. No other body cells could ever reproduce (naturally) into the next generation and therefore are sacrificing absolutely nothing.
Bloom confuses an apparent greater importance of the group with what is in reality the dependence of individuals on other group members for individual reproductive success/fitness. He also confuses individual survival with the survival of genes through time and seems not to understand inclusive fitness. His idea that people who commit suicide are altruistically ridding their group of a burden should mean that the sick, elderly, homeless, unemployed etc should be killing themselves by the thousand. It is far more likely that it is more to do, ultimately, with reproductive defeat where they are no longer able to compete or compare well with peers and are no longer attractive to the opposite sex and/or are a failure as a parent. If the group is being relieved of a burden it is incidental. They would, after all, not be a burden to the group if they took on some undesirable though necessary low status work rather than kill themselves.
If the social unit comes first there should be no dissent, no anti-social behavior, no interest groups etc. The fact that these exist in all societies shows that individuals whose self-interest is not being satisfied by the group will attempt to cause trouble for the group. Bloom is only right in pointing out the obvious fact that members of a group, like members of a family, will tend to pull together if attacked from outside but this is also mutual self-interest.
Another aspect of Bloom's book that is flawed is his weak treatment of the differences between the sexes. He uses a few bits of evidence to supposedly prove the violence of females and then resumes the main theme of the book - ie male violence - as if the matter has been properly dealt with. Bloom uses the usual argument about females having selected male traits through mate choice yet he also writes of how women have been kidnapped and raped throughout history by the violent men he depicts. There is an unresolved contradiction here between the idea that females choose their mates and the fact that most girls throughout history and in much of the world today are simply resigned to the fact that they will have the father of their children chosen for them by their own father or brothers. Female sexuality has clearly been under the control of men for a very long time and it should at least be given some consideration that male traits have been selected for by males themselves which could have created a feedback loop of male violence etc.
'The Lucifer Principle' is an entertaining read in its description of male-male competitive behavior. Violence between groups of humans is as grotesque as Bloom describes but it is a mistake to believe that this proves group selection and to lose sight of the individual's self-interest - and especially the gene's self-interest - in what shapes human behavior. This book is worth reading only as an aid to thinking - not to any great understanding or belief.
Changed the way I deal with people.......2007-01-09
This book is so startling in the way that Bloom looks at people it is almost a new paradigm for sociology. After reading the book it changed the way that I looked at every aspect of my personal and business relationships with friends, colleagues, everybody.
Well researched and argued.
A must for anybody who deals with other people, which means everybody.
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