Aaron
James
Aaron
James is a political philosopher at UC-Irvine, and despite its eye-catching
title and mass appeal, Assholes: A Theory
is indeed a piece of philosophy. I expected this going into the book, but I
still thought I would find James’s tongue planted firmly (or at least gently)
in cheek. But this is sincere work, and contains some genuinely valuable
philosophy. It does lack some of the rigour associated with contemporary
analytic philosophy, and in the acknowledgements James admits to having
“relaxed” his standards to some extent. But James also shares, like me, the
skepticism most professional philosophers feel about “pop philosophy,” and I
must say that his book fares extremely well in this regard, compared with some
of the lay philosophy churned out over the last decade or so.
James’s
subject is the asshole, the person who (wrongly) believes himself—assholes are almost
invariably male—to be worthy of special treatment due to an entrenched sense of
entitlement. Entire chapters are spent discussing this definition itself, and
there are also chapters on how assholes differ from mere “jerks” or “pricks,”
assholes and gender, and how assholes can negatively impact capitalism, including
a game-theoretic appendix on the subject. What we are not given is much useful
advice about what to do about assholes. This is partly because James is a bit
despairing on the matter, but I can’t help but think that more productive work
on “asshole management” is indeed possible, at least on a philosophical level.
- Bill
Cameron
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