A brief though well-considered guide to a wide range of the many schools of thought regarding contentment, joy and happiness.
A philosopher’s exploration of all the angles of happiness.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those are the unalienable rights of all Americans, but we don’t have a monopoly on the elusive hunt for happiness. Thinkers have long found the subject to be a difficult one to consider, French philosopher Lenoir (The Oracle of the Moon, 2014, etc.) notes in the prologue, and while many modern books proclaim to bequeath the recipe for happiness, it’s rarely that simple. Cynics may raise their eyebrows at the author’s slim entry into the canon, but as a guide to various approaches taken by philosophical and religious figures, it serves ably. Lenoir considers Voltaire, Socrates, Schopenhauer and others alongside their (often contradictory) views on happiness, which leads into further questioning and reflection: Do all people wish to be happy? Is there truth for anybody except the wealthy that money cannot buy happiness? As social creatures, is it possible to attain happiness without other people in our lives or despite those other people? What can be done, Lenoir asserts, to increase our capacity for happiness is to sharpen our attention toward the happiness we experience in day-to-day life. One can also keep various sociological studies in mind, with research indicating that our aptitude for happiness is 50 percent genetics, 40 percent from our personal efforts toward increasing our happiness, and a mere 10 percent from our surroundings and other external factors. Lenoir also explores disciplines beyond philosophy and religion, taking into account the benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy, the essays of Michel de Montaigne and the fiction of Michel Houellebecq. Throughout the book, Lenoir writes economically, devoting only enough words to particular thoughts and approaches as are necessary to stir questions in the minds of readers.
A brief though well-considered guide to a wide range of the many schools of thought regarding contentment, joy and happiness.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61219-439-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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