Book Reviews

In the October 28 issue of the New York Review of Books, there is an essay by the excellent South African novelist J. M. Coetzee on Philip Roth's series of four novels, concluding with the brand new one, Nemesis. Coetzee shows how Roth has dealt in these novels with the classical concept of Nemesis…

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about a book by Lewis Hyde entitled The Gift, which had a lot to say, philosophically, about gift-giving and -receiving, an issue of relevance to government ethics. I just finished Hyde's book Common As Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, which just came out last…

This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post on ethics fines. This week, I've been reading Karen Pryor's bible on positive training, Don't Shoot the Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training (Bantam, 1999). I'm reading the book to get ideas for training the puppy I will soon be getting. Positive tr…

This is the eighth and last in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008), which is itself inspired by the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. What’s wonderful about Kant’s approach to ethics is that it not only focu…

This is the seventh in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). Neiman’s discussion of Daniel Ellsberg, the government official who let us know about the Pentagon Papers, shows the effect that access to confident…

In my first blog post relating to Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008), I referred to Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative.” It’s time to say a little more about it. Essentially, this is it: “When you act morally, you act according to a principle th…