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In the space of 24 hours, Caritat is arrested by the police, then liberated by the guerrillas of the Visible Hand. They give him the code name Pangloss and send him on a mission which only a philosopher could undertake: to find the best of all possible worlds. This book is a whirlwind journey through a series of imagined political landscapes where 18th-century ideas confront late-20th-century concerns. Caritat, a middle-aged Candide, walks naively through worlds of ideological extremes, equipped with only a small travelling bag and a knowledge of such thinkers as Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Hume. As he investigates the neighbouring countries of Utilitaria, Communitaria and Libertaria, Caritat encounters afresh questions he had long since considered settled: what are the rights of the individual when, in the calculator-ruled Benthamite world, the concept has been ruled obsolete; what is the fate of free speech in a militantly multicultural society; and where does civil responsibility figure in a state ruled by the free market? Cut loose from the confines of the ivory tower, this wandering professor is made to confront the perplexed state of modern thinking, the value of history, and, above all, the continuing need for a just and humane social order. This book presents a near-comprehensive survey of Western political philosophy in a comedy of ideas. Steven Lukes is the author of “Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work”, “Power: A Radical View” and “What is Left?”.
- Sales Rank: #2764665 in Books
- Published on: 1995-10-17
- Released on: 1995-10-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .88" h x .10" w x .57" l, 1.08 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 261 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Lukes, a professor of sociology, pays ample homage to the Enlightenment, modeling this light and lovely satire on Candide. Not many pages into the book, its hero, Professor Nicholas Caritat, a prominent scholar of the Enlightenment, is given the nickname Dr. Pangloss. Having been arrested by the military junta of Militaria on the grounds that his work foments ``optimism,'' Caritat has just been sprung from jail by members of the Visible Hand, a guerrilla group. The Hand gives him a mission: he must find ``grounds for Optimism'' and ``the best possible world.'' Caritat visits a string of countries--not to be found in our atlases--that are founded on (and warped by) various political philosophies. A citizen of Utilitaria informs him that ``a high suicide rate, provided the suicides are appropriately distributed, can make a real contribution to the overall sum of happiness.'' Wherever he goes, the good Professor trips all over the cherished beliefs of the citizenry, landing himself, and those around him, in hot water. In Communitaria, where political correctness has been carried to an absurd logical conclusion, Caritat finds himself facing charges of sexual harassment in front of the country's ``Body of Gender.'' In the laissez-faire paradise of Libertaria, it isn't long before Caritat finds himself on the street with the homeless. Lukes is more than generous with the breadcrumbs of political philosophy, but the tale never becomes dull or bookish. He writes with great humor and confidence as the insouciant Caritat is buffeted from one false Utopia to the next. Toward the end, Caritat gets the point and expresses his distrust of Utopias in a moving letter to his children, part of which reads: ``Another thing I have noticed is that everyone I have met so far seems to have stopped learning. They seem as if trapped in their language and their world and quite closed to one another's.'' Though not the best of all possible philosophical satires, Lukes's imaginative intellect and playful tone make this one as good as we are likely to see for quite a while.
Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Nicholas Caritat, a modern-day professor and scholar of the Enlightenment who converses mentally with Voltaire and Condorcet, wants to avoid the political struggle in Militaria, the police state where he lives. Though arrested by the police, he is liberated by guerrillas who dub him Pangloss because they want him to find the best of all possible worlds. He travels to Utilitaria, Libertaria, Communitaria, and Egalitaria, finding through misadventures that none of them is ideal because alone, each lacks some of the good qualities of the others. Lukes (political and social theory, European Univ. Inst., Florence) is a reputable scholar, and Voltaire's Candide is obviously the model for his examination of the merits of social theories. Put this on the shelf next to Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World (LJ 9/1/94) and enjoy learning something when you read. Recommended for larger public libraries.
Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L.s., Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“A counterpart to Jonstein Gaarder’s bestseller, Sophie’s World, for those who might be seeking an introduction to political theory.”—Prospect
“A delightfully edifying comedy.”—Guardian
“Charming and refreshing.”—Radical Philosophy
“Knock-out satirical humour.”—Times Literary Supplement
“Lukes achieves both lightness and weight in a way many novelists might envy.”—Independent
“This book is a box of delights, often wonderfully funny and always deliciously clever, a contemporary political satire to set among the best.”—New Statesman and Society
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A fluently written and enjoyable satire
By Ralph Blumenau
Professor Caritat (named after the surname of the Optimistic philosopher better known to us as the Marquis de Condorcet), a specialist on the thinkers of the Enlightenment, is a cross between a sophisticated Candide and a Gulliver. He is a citizen of Militaria, a repressive state run by a military dictatorship. He has to flee from that and embarks on a mission to find a state in which the ideas of 18th century philosophers have been applied and to see how these ideas have turned out in practice. He is looking for the best of all possible states. But in each of these countries he gets into trouble, wittily described, and has to move on.
The first country he visits is Utilitaria, which is governed by the ideas of Jeremy Bentham; and a soulless place it is, where there is no place for anything that cannot be proved to be `useful' to its society.
The next country is Communitaria. Its government is committed to total respect and equal treatment for every ethnic and every religious community, but it interprets respect in such a way that any comment which might suggest that one way of living or one set of ideas is superior to another, and every criticism of any group, is severely punished, so it is in effect an extremely intolerant state.
From there Caritat escapes to Proletaria - named, he is told, after the class that had brought it into being, although that class, like all others, has since withered away, as indeed has the state itself.
This turns out to be a phantasmagoria, from which he awakes to find himself in yet another country, Libertaria. Here free enterprise is rampant, every public service is in the process of being privatized, financial extortion is the name of the game, and woe betide those who can't play it. The country seems to be an ally of Militaria: though Libertarian `freedom' is missing there, Militaria's maintenance of `order' is something the Libertarians admire.
Finally, on his way out of that country, the Professor makes it to Minerva, a border town in the North of Libertaria. There he comes to the wise conclusion that what was the matter with all the dystopian states he had visited was that the single-minded pursuit of just one desirable aim (Order, Welfare, Respect, Equality, Freedom of Action) leads to the suppression of all the others. Condorcet had observed that all human ideals are linked together in an indissoluble chain. More practically, Isaiah Berlin (whom Lukes does not name in the text, though he does mention him in the bibliography) has taught that there needs to be a trade-off between all these desirable aims. How to strike this balance must be a never-ending quest, requiring much Wisdom.
One of his interlocutors in Libertaria had told him that people once believed that there was a state called Egalitaria north of their country, but that they had found that it did not exist and was in fact a utopia. Perhaps that is the reason why the book ends in Minerva, with Caritat seeing that just beyond the border is a crossroads from which several roads extended.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Moderately Clever
By R. Albin
A moderately interesting modern version of Voltaire's Candide. Lukes' hero, Professor Caritat (a reference to the philosophe Condorcet) is a scholar specializing in the Enlightenment, and is taken through of a tour of several societies. Each of these societies exemplifies an idea about how to construct a society. Authoritarianism, Utilitarianism, Communitarianism, and Libertarianism are all featured. There is a dream sequence with a Marxian utopia. All of these societies are shown to be inhumane in different ways, primarily because of a single-minded focus on one idea for constructing a society. The book ends essentially with an endorsement of moral pluralism and Rawlsian liberalism. The quality of writing is average with a fair number of perhaps excessively cute intellectual jokes. Moderately entertaining.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
funny, moving and thoughtful, worth rereading umpteen times
By A Customer
It's a fictional critical comments on major schoold of political philosophies in the West at the end of the second millennium AD from the stand point of good, old Enlightenment. I fell in love with it with my first reading, have translated and published it in Thai last year, and used it to teach my political philosophy courses with great success and general enjoyment of the students. I learn more with each time that I reread it for my classes. Strongly recommended for anyone bored with theory and philosophy. It will change your intellectual life !
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