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Product Description
Product Description
What is kindness? Does it make us happier? And does it have a place in a selfish world?
Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor present an elegant, thoughtful and concise analysis of kindness in history, in life and in the modern world. Suggesting that acts of kindness occur when we are at our most open and honest, they ask why it is that our faith in kindness has been shaken - and why we are all too ready to believe that antagonism has taken its place.
About the Author
Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of twelve previous books, all widely acclaimed, including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, Going Sane and most recently Side Effects.
Barbara Taylor is a historian who has published several well-known books on the history of feminism, including an award-winning study of nineteenth-century socialist feminism, Eve and the New Jerusalem, and an intellectual biography of the pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The authors see kindness as an essential part of what makes us human, what unites us with others; and as one of humanity's greatest pleasures, essential for our health, relationships and society. But, they detect, we have become afraid of strangers, of showing kindness and seeing kindness in others, in those close to us too.
The book explores how we are let down by the ways we think about kindness and uncovers an enlightening, hopeful and deeply resonant way for us to understand and imagine kindness.
This small book moved me to tears, stirred me to listen closer to my instincts, and made me want to give it to as many people I can.
The book explores how we are let down by the ways we think about kindness and uncovers an enlightening, hopeful and deeply resonant way for us to understand and imagine kindness.
This small book moved me to tears, stirred me to listen closer to my instincts, and made me want to give it to as many people I can.
34 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Since I'd not checked, I expected this book to be more substantial than it actually is. At only 117 pages that's nearly 8p a page. However the book does have a sturdy hardback binding and a narrow silky bookmark sewn into the spine.
I bought this as an antidote to the modern dawkinsian view that we're all selfish and the gainful end always justifies the means, nomatter how machievellean.
It was featured in the Guardian's Review supplement, and I was rather attracted to all the allusions to great philosophers. As such I was expecting something slightly more academic and deeper. Instead it skims gently across the surface like a swallow skimming a millpond in summer.
In other words this book is not a philosophy or psychology textbook, in spite of the authors' qualifications and background, but ought to suit most readers, especially those who remember more courteous times. And, perhaps, it would provide some food for ethical thought for those who don't.
But then, I suppose, the latter type will probably just nick a copy from the library.
I bought this as an antidote to the modern dawkinsian view that we're all selfish and the gainful end always justifies the means, nomatter how machievellean.
It was featured in the Guardian's Review supplement, and I was rather attracted to all the allusions to great philosophers. As such I was expecting something slightly more academic and deeper. Instead it skims gently across the surface like a swallow skimming a millpond in summer.
In other words this book is not a philosophy or psychology textbook, in spite of the authors' qualifications and background, but ought to suit most readers, especially those who remember more courteous times. And, perhaps, it would provide some food for ethical thought for those who don't.
But then, I suppose, the latter type will probably just nick a copy from the library.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What a waste of a Sunday afternoon.
This book is not an interesting set of facts, nor an argument in favour of anything.
It is simply a lot of dubious points slung together rather poorly. We get a laughable Freudian argument that we fear kindness because we wanted to sleep with our mothers!
A short left wing political tantrum without justification or purpose and a rather poor historical overview with facts twisted painfully to support it.
Neither philosophical, political, sociological, nor pedagogical, in a word pointless!
Save your money.
This book is not an interesting set of facts, nor an argument in favour of anything.
It is simply a lot of dubious points slung together rather poorly. We get a laughable Freudian argument that we fear kindness because we wanted to sleep with our mothers!
A short left wing political tantrum without justification or purpose and a rather poor historical overview with facts twisted painfully to support it.
Neither philosophical, political, sociological, nor pedagogical, in a word pointless!
Save your money.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Unimpressed
As a previous reviewer mentioned this is an extremely slim offering. It seems to seek to display the reading lists of the authors rather than clearly define or properly evaluate... Read more
Published on 10 July 2009 by Jim
elegant manifesto
A beautifully written manifesto in favor of the lost art - and pleasure - of kindness.
Published on 10 Jan 2009 by Sarah Knott
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