Reason, Almost
Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 499 pp., $30) Humans are rational animals. In addition to the rich perceptual, cognitive, and motivational systems that they share with other creatures, they have a unique way of forming beliefs and preferences that is not instinctive but deliberate.
The Facts Fetish
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values By Sam Harris (Free Press, 291 pp., $26.99) Sam Harris’s first two books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation, attacked religious faith. His new book, interestingly enough, attacks not faith but a form of skepticism—moral skepticism. Harris’s aim is to show that there is moral truth, and that it does not depend on the word of God.
The Need for Nations
Law Without Nations?: Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States By Jeremy A. Rabkin (Princeton University Press, 350 pp., $29.95) Jeremy A. Rabkin's book is a forceful defense of the virtues of national sovereignty, and of the claim that American constitutional government places strict limits on the reach and authority of international law. In part, Rabkin is responding to critics of the unilateralism of the Bush administration--its rejection of the Kyoto Treaty, its refusal to join the International Criminal Court, its invasion of Iraq without explicit U.N.
