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From Publishers Weekly
Scholar and author Lear (Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony) decodes the courage and wisdom of the last great chief of the Crow peoples, Plenty Coups (1848-1932), in this "philosophical anthropology" which seeks to pin down the way societies-and the individuals who lead them-carry on in the face of "cultural catastrophe." As a jumping-off point, Lear uses a quote from Plenty Coups's oral history, given to Frank B. Linderman shortly before the chief's death: "But when the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground... After this nothing happened." The first part of the book explores the meaning of "nothing happened," explicating the idea that history itself comes to an end when the concepts a culture uses to define its world-in this case, concepts tied to hunting, battle, and honor-become obsolete. The second part tackles "Ethics at the Horizon," the possibilities for "radical hope" in the face of inconceivable cultural change through courage, wisdom and flexibility, on both a personal and cultural level. The third part discusses the ramifications of "radical hope," both practically and philosophically. Lear's study is probably too rigorous rhetorically to appeal to a wide audience, and his insistence that "we live at a time of a heightened sense that civilizations are themselves vulnerable" could have been supported with some explicit contemporary parallels, but for those interested in the final years of the Crow nation or the ethical challenges faced by victims of cultural destruction, this book will prove enlightening.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Lear, a psychoanalyst and professor of philosophy, delves into what he calls the "blind spot" of any culture: the inability to conceive of its own devastation. He molds his thoughts around a poignant historical model, the decimated nation of Crow Indians in the early decades of the twentieth century. The last Crow chief, Plenty Coups, told his white friend and biographer, Frank B. Linderman, about what happened to his people "when the buffalo went away." They were despondent, and in Plenty Coups' words, "After this nothing happened." Lear dissects this phenomenon, and the Crows' struggle for continued survival, in a highly esoteric discussion drawing on the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and other philosophers. What makes this discussion relevant to mainstream readers is his application of the blind-spot hypothesis to the present, in which the twenty-first century was ushered in by terrorist attacks, social upheavals, and natural catastrophes, leaving us with "an uncanny sense of menace" and a heightened perception of how vulnerable our civilizations are to destruction, as was the Crow's. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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