BiblioVault - Books about Enigma

Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment

Martin Blumenthal-Barby

Northwestern University Press, 2023

A nuanced extrapolation of Hannah Arendt’s theory of judgment through her highly provocative reading of Immanuel Kant

More than a half century after it was first published, Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism rose to the top of best-seller lists as readers grappled with the triumph of Trumpism. Arendt, Kant, and the Enigma of Judgment directs our attention to her later thought, the posthumously published and highly provocative Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Martin Blumenthal-Barby puts this work in dialogue with Arendt’s other writings, including her notes on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, to outline her own theory of judgment for the twentieth century. In an era of post-truths and artificial intelligence, the idea that authentic judgment—for example, the ability to distinguish right from wrong—is incommensurable with abstract, automated processes lies at the center of Arendt’s late work and at the fore of our collective reckoning.

Rather than presenting us with a fixed account, Blumenthal-Barby suggests, Arendt’s drawing and redrawing of conceptual distinctions is itself an enactment of judgment, a process that challenges and complicates what she says at every turn. In so doing, Arendt, in thoroughly Kantian fashion, establishes judgment as a performative category that can never be taught but only demonstrated. As sharp as it is timely, this incisive book reminds us why a shared reality matters in a time of intense political polarization and why the democratic project, vulnerable as it may appear today, crucially depends on it.

[more]

Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles

The Enigma of Francis Crawford

Scott Richardson

University of Missouri Press, 2016

Since the first installment of Dunnett’s series was published in 1961, Francis Crawford of Lymond, the swashbuckling protagonist of the stories, has been captivating his fellow characters and readers alike. Instead of approaching the books primarily as historical fiction, Richardson, an enthusiastic admirer of the series, unravels the complexities of the main character by exploring his psychology, positioning the books within the genre of espionage, and examining Dunnett’s strategy of using games in her writing. Richardson’s insight and passion for his subject will inspire fans to revisit Dunnett’s series.

[more]

The Enigma of Automobility

Democratic Politics and Pollution Control

Sudhir Chella Rajan

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996

Rajan investigates air pollution policy as one based on how to make cars less polluting. Putting the onus on auto manufacturers and owners has generated an elaborate scheme of emissions testing and pollution-control devices, and does not look at the technology itself as the heart of the problem. Rajan focuses his study on data collected in Los Angeles, to show how emissions testing burdens the poor, who tend to own older cars that pollute more. Rajan argues for democratic control over technology, steering it away from special interest groups and toward a long-term ethical resolution.

[more]

The Enigma of Diversity

The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice

Ellen Berrey

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Diversity these days is a hallowed American value, widely shared and honored. That’s a remarkable change from the Civil Rights era—but does this public commitment to diversity constitute a civil rights victory? What does diversity mean in contemporary America, and what are the effects of efforts to support it?

Ellen Berrey digs deep into those questions in The Enigma of Diversity. Drawing on six years of fieldwork and historical sources dating back to the 1950s and making extensive use of three case studies from widely varying arenas—housing redevelopment in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, affirmative action in the University of Michigan’s admissions program, and the workings of the human resources department at a Fortune 500 company—Berrey explores the complicated, contradictory, and even troubling meanings and uses of diversity as it is invoked by different groups for different, often symbolic ends. In each case, diversity affirms inclusiveness, especially in the most coveted jobs and colleges, yet it resists fundamental change in the practices and cultures that are the foundation of social inequality. Berrey shows how this has led racial progress itself to be reimagined, transformed from a legal fight for fundamental rights to a celebration of the competitive advantages afforded by cultural differences.

Powerfully argued and surprising in its conclusions, The Enigma of Diversity reveals the true cost of the public embrace of diversity: the taming of demands for racial justice.

[more]

The Enigma of Ethnicity

Another American Dilemma

Wilbur Zelinsky

University of Iowa Press, 2001

In The Enigma of Ethnicity Wilbur Zelinsky draws upon more than half a century of exploring the cultural and social geography of an ever-changing North America to become both biographer and critic of the recent concept of ethnicity. In this ambitious and encyclopedic work, he examines ethnicity's definition, evolution, significance, implications, and entanglements with other phenomena as well as the mysteries of ethnic identity and performance.
Zelinsky begins by examining the ways in which “ethnic groups” and “ethnicity” have been defined; his own definitions then become the basis for the rest of his study. He next focuses on the concepts of heterolocalism—the possibility that an ethnic community can exist without being physically merged—and personal identity—the relatively recent idea that one can concoct one's own identity. In his final chapter, which is also his most provocative, he concentrates on the multifaceted phenomenon of multiculturalism and its relationship to ethnicity. Throughout he includes a close look at African Americans, Hispanics, and Jews as well as such less-studied groups as suburbanized Japanese, Cubans in Washington, Koreans, Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago, Estonians in New Jersey, Danish Americans in Seattle, and Finns.
Reasonable, nonpolemical, and straightforward, Zelinsky's text is invaluable for readers wanting an in-depth overview of the literature on ethnicity in the United States as well as a well-thought-out understanding of the meanings and dynamics of ethnic groups, ethnicity, and multiculturalism.

[more]

The Enigma of Reason

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber

Harvard University Press, 2017

“Brilliant…Timely and necessary.” —Financial Times

“Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.”
—Darren Frey, Science

If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn’t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs.

“Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant…Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?…Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems…[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker

“Turns reason’s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.”
—Financial Times

“The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.”
—Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

[more]

The Enigma of the Aerofoil

Rival Theories in Aerodynamics, 1909-1930

David Bloor

University of Chicago Press, 2011

Why do aircraft fly? How do their wings support them? In the early years of aviation, there was an intense dispute between British and German experts over the question of why and how an aircraft wing provides lift. The British, under the leadership of the great Cambridge mathematical physicist Lord Rayleigh, produced highly elaborate investigations of the nature of discontinuous flow, while the Germans, following Ludwig Prandtl in Göttingen, relied on the tradition called “technical mechanics” to explain the flow of air around a wing. Much of the basis of modern aerodynamics emerged from this remarkable episode, yet it has never been subject to a detailed historical and sociological analysis.

In The Enigma of the Aerofoil, David Bloor probes a neglected aspect of this important period in the history of aviation. Bloor draws upon papers by the participants—their restricted technical reports, meeting minutes, and personal correspondence, much of which has never before been published—and reveals the impact that the divergent mathematical traditions of Cambridge and Göttingen had on this great debate. Bloor also addresses why the British, even after discovering the failings of their own theory, remained resistant to the German circulation theory for more than a decade. The result is essential reading for anyone studying the history, philosophy, or sociology of science or technology—and for all those intrigued by flight.

[more]

The Enigma of the Gift

Maurice Godelier

University of Chicago Press, 1998

When we think of giving gifts, we think of exchanging objects that carry with them economic or symbolic value. But is every valuable thing a potentially exchangeable item, whose value can be transferred? In The Enigma of the Gift, the distinguished French anthropologist Maurice Godelier reassesses the significance of gifts in social life by focusing on sacred objects, which are never exchanged despite the value they possess.

Beginning with an analysis of the seminal work of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strass, and drawing on his own fieldwork in Melanesia, Godelier argues that traditional theories are flawed because they consider only exchangeable gifts. By explaining gift-giving in terms of sacred objects and the authoritative conferral of power associated with them, Godelier challenges both recent and traditional theories of gift-giving, provocatively refreshing a traditional debate.

Elegantly translated by Nora Scott, The Enigma of the Gift is at once a major theoretical contribution and an essential guide to the history of the theory of the gift.

[more]

The Golden Cage

The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa

Hilde Bruch

Harvard University Press, 1978

The Golden Cage

The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa, With a New Foreword by Catherine Steiner-Adair, Ed.D.

Hilde Bruch, M.D.

Harvard University Press, 2001

First published more than twenty years ago, with almost 150,000 copies sold, The Golden Cage is still the classic book on anorexia nervosa, for patients, parents, mental health trainees, and senior therapists alike. Writing in direct, jargon-free style, often quoting her patients’ descriptions of their own experience of illness and recovery, Bruch describes the relentless pursuit of thinness and the search for superiority in self-denial that characterizes anorexia nervosa. She emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis and offers guidance on danger signs. Little-known when this groundbreaking book was first published, eating disorders have become all too familiar. Sympathetic and astute, The Golden Cage now speaks to a new generation.

[more]

Nikolai Zabolotsky

Enigma and Cultural Paradigm

Sarah Pratt

Northwestern University Press, 2000

Sarah Pratt traces interwoven questions in the work of Nikolai Zabolotsky, a figure ranking just behind Pasternak, Mandelstram and Akhmatova in modern Russian poetry and the first major poet to come to light in the Soviet period.

[more]

Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma

Two Hundred Years of British–Russian Relations

David Owen

Haus Publishing, 2022

A history of relations between Britain and Russia from the nineteenth century to the present.

With Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma, statesman and author David Owen tells the story of Britain’s relationship with Russia, which has been surprisingly underexplored. Through his characteristic insight and expertise, he depicts a relationship governed by principle as often as by suspicion, expediency, and necessity.

When the two nations formed a pragmatic alliance and fought together at the Battle of Navarino in Greece in 1827, it was overwhelmingly the work of the British prime minister, George Canning. His death brought about a drastic shift that would see the countries fighting on opposite sides in the Crimean War and jostling for power during the Great Game. It was not until the Russian Revolution of 1917 that another statesman had a defining impact on relations between Britain and Russia: Winston Churchill, who opposed Bolshevism yet never stopped advocating for diplomatic and military engagement with Russia. In the Second World War, he recognized early on the necessity of allying with the Soviets against the menace of Nazi Germany. Bringing us into the twenty-first century, Owen chronicles how both countries have responded to their geopolitical decline. Drawing on both imperial and Soviet history, he explains the unique nature of Putin’s autocracy and addresses Britain’s return to “blue water” diplomacy. Newly revised, this paperback edition features extended chapters on Putin’s Russia and the future of British–Russian relations after the Russo-Ukrainian War.

[more]