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A review by ederwin
The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat: A Novel of Ideas by Steven Lukes
4.0
Entertaining and instructive!
A professor who studies The Enlightenment finds himself out of favor in his home country of Militaria and goes on a journey to find which country would be best to live or be born in. Each is built upon a different moral principle. The principles sound good at first, but when put into practice they can have surprisingly bad results. (Note that I say 'can'. The author isn't saying this is the only way a society could implement a certain rule. Just that it 'could' turn out this way.)
Utilitaria is based on the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number. Sounds OK, but can lead to very unpleasant outcomes for some. If 'greatest number' is all that matters, then isn't it better to keep innocent people in prison than to destroy the whole country's faith in police and courts by revealing their corruption? The next country is based on Communitarianism which requires maximum respect for all ethnicities and faiths. This turns ugly for individuals who want to reject some of their ethnic customs or find a new faith, as well as those who accidentally give offense. Finally, Libertaria is based on maximum individual freedom. Everyone is free to try to survive based on their own merit, where merit is measured by money. (This one feels very close to home.)
He also briefly visits one society, Proletaria, that really does function perfectly for all of its citizens based on Marxist/Communist ideas. But it turns out to have only been a dream! (As in real life.)
He never finds the perfect society. The closest that he comes to a conclusion is that no society should be based on one single rigid principle, but rather some balancing between competing interests.
The author is a moral philosopher, and we all know how popular they are at parties!
I, at least, enjoyed this! I should award extra points for an entire book about moral philosophy that never once mentions that [b:Forking Trolley|41967089|The Forking Trolley An Ethical Journey to The Good Place|James M Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545490522l/41967089._SY75_.jpg|65491519] problem!
Quibbles: I'm not sure what exactly was extra in the new "expanded" edition. I hope that doesn't refer only to the glitch where, starting on page 205, about 5 pages of text is repeated verbatim. That was an odd flaw, but doesn't change the fact that I enjoyed this very much. Another oddity is the quotation marks, which are sometimes like ‘this’ and sometimes like “this”, but also very often, like ‘THIS‘. It distracted me every time I saw it. Is using an open-quote mark at the end of a quote some common British thing? It was so systematically used for titles of books and businesses that it seems intentional.
A professor who studies The Enlightenment finds himself out of favor in his home country of Militaria and goes on a journey to find which country would be best to live or be born in. Each is built upon a different moral principle. The principles sound good at first, but when put into practice they can have surprisingly bad results. (Note that I say 'can'. The author isn't saying this is the only way a society could implement a certain rule. Just that it 'could' turn out this way.)
Utilitaria is based on the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number. Sounds OK, but can lead to very unpleasant outcomes for some. If 'greatest number' is all that matters, then isn't it better to keep innocent people in prison than to destroy the whole country's faith in police and courts by revealing their corruption? The next country is based on Communitarianism which requires maximum respect for all ethnicities and faiths. This turns ugly for individuals who want to reject some of their ethnic customs or find a new faith, as well as those who accidentally give offense. Finally, Libertaria is based on maximum individual freedom. Everyone is free to try to survive based on their own merit, where merit is measured by money. (This one feels very close to home.)
He also briefly visits one society, Proletaria, that really does function perfectly for all of its citizens based on Marxist/Communist ideas. But it turns out to have only been a dream! (As in real life.)
He never finds the perfect society. The closest that he comes to a conclusion is that no society should be based on one single rigid principle, but rather some balancing between competing interests.
The author is a moral philosopher, and we all know how popular they are at parties!
I, at least, enjoyed this! I should award extra points for an entire book about moral philosophy that never once mentions that [b:Forking Trolley|41967089|The Forking Trolley An Ethical Journey to The Good Place|James M Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545490522l/41967089._SY75_.jpg|65491519] problem!
Quibbles: I'm not sure what exactly was extra in the new "expanded" edition. I hope that doesn't refer only to the glitch where, starting on page 205, about 5 pages of text is repeated verbatim. That was an odd flaw, but doesn't change the fact that I enjoyed this very much. Another oddity is the quotation marks, which are sometimes like ‘this’ and sometimes like “this”, but also very often, like ‘THIS‘. It distracted me every time I saw it. Is using an open-quote mark at the end of a quote some common British thing? It was so systematically used for titles of books and businesses that it seems intentional.