Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Cunning
ISBN: 9781400827060
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Deception;

What is cunning, and how did it develop a pejorative connotation? Herzog, a professor of law and political philosophy at the University of Michigan and author of, most recently, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders, applies his erudite style and barbed humor to this examination of the idea of ?cunning? and how it connects to our concepts of rationality and morality, gleefully gamboling across the literature and pop culture of a few millennia and invoking Hume as convincingly as Tammy Faye Bakker. Herzog writes engaging prose without sacrificing the intellectual rigor of his exploration (the book winds down, for example, with a vexing question about Greek mythology: ?[T]hey don?t cast cunning as wisdom?s bitch daughter. They cast wisdom as cunning?s bitch daughter. What then??) and contextualizes his ideas by ?going local? to provide real-world examples (Internet and telemarketing scams, plastic surgery) rather than relying on ?off-the-shelf abstractions.? The book is organized into three parts?Dilemmas, Appearances, and Despair?but Herzog jumps from topic to topic and century to century, referencing and cross-referencing so quickly that structure is moot. Some readers may find his approach disorienting, but those ready for a scholarly escapade will find it innovative and invigorating. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.