DOCUMENTED MIRACLES

Author: Micael Grenholm
Year: 2018
Publisher: Sjöbergs förlag
Language: Swedish

When I was but a tender sapling of a lad, my parents bought two books for me which I read over and over again. One told of phantoms and haunted castles, the other of marvellous beasts and monsters. Though a dim candle of reason flickered within my youthful mind and deep down I knew that the stories were not true, I willingly surrendered to the tingling sensation of marvel and awe. Each chapter, each sighting, each ostensibly irrefutable testimony filled me with joy. I chose to believe so that each time I opened the books I could once more relive the sensation of wonder and amazement.

My sentiments were rather similar when I recently laid hands on Micael Grenholm’s “Dokumenterade mirakler” (not available in English but the title means “Documented Miracles”). I expected nothing more than a charming parade of more or less loosely connected coincidences, imaginative interpretations, far-fetched explanations, misunderstandings, and fabrications, all passed off as indisputable evidence of God’s existence. I was looking forward to an entertaining albeit inconsequential read.

Yet, once I began to peruse the pages, I discovered that the author’s aspirations were of a different order. The author sets forth to not only list miracles as he perceives them, but moreover to prove that they are a thing of the world of senses, and not stopping there, to establish a link to a specified miracle-worker.

Grenholm pays significant attention to defining the boundaries of his field, circumscribing the term ‘miracle’, and introducing concepts such as the Swedish acronyms VOTEB and VOTUB (Scientifically Inexplicable Health Recoveries After Prayer and Without Prayer respectively). With these terms planted into the reader’s mind, he proceeds to parading a succession of anecdotal yet curiously persuasive evidence in which the terminally ill rise from their beds, seemingly without any plausible medical explanation. Grenholm goes through remarkable pains to validate his material and cite his sources, and he manages to demonstrate that full restoration of health contrary to medical expectations indeed occurs and is perhaps less rare than one might think. Thus far, there is no controversy. Neither ancient nor modern medicine ever proclaimed itself infallible. Sometimes patients that are expected to get worse and even die, recover. Other times, patients who were expected to make a full recovery, perish. Medicine, like all sciences, is imperfect. That is why we continue to do research.

Grenholm’s enterprise becomes decidedly more obscure when he departs from the terra firma of facts and ventures forth into the mist-shrouded realm of philosophy. His chapters, to be sure, are nothing if not thorough, even admirably so, yet several of his arguments, upon closer scrutiny, warrant considerable doubt.

As but one example, Grenholm takes up arms against David Hume’s assertion that the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary must be the evidence that sustains it. Grenholm seems to disagree. To illustrate his criticism, he recounts the story of a famous actor who enrols at a high school to immerse himself into the role of a high school-student. When he tries to tell a classmate that he is indeed a Hollywood celebrity, she refuses to believe him. Nothing the actor says, can persuade her. Grenholm argues, that if the student had later wandered into a cinema and seen on the silver screen the very same actor play the part he claimed he would, it should suffice as proof of his claim. And as simple a thing as a movie, he says, can hardly be dignified with the title of “extraordinary evidence”.

In this argument, Grenholm unfortunately makes the mistake of conflating his aggregation levels. Despite having earlier exercised a scrupulous precision in defining his terms, here he treats the word “extraordinary” with a carelessness quite unworthy of his former diligence. “Extraordinary” in the philosophical sense, denotes that which lies outside the boundaries of a given system. In his example, all participants inhabit a world whose fundamental premise they share. They all agree on the existence of actors, movies, high school, and cinemas. They all operate within the same system. Thus, the actor’s confession, while unusual, cannot be called extraordinary in any rigorous sense and consequently requires no extraordinary evidence. Both claim and evidence are of the system.

If we would narrow the system down to the high school only, and create a closed universe of students, classmates, and liars, then both actor and cinema would be outside the system and thus considered an extraordinary piece of evidence in favour of an extraordinary claim.

Translated to miracles, we are transported to a system governed by the laws of nature and the claim of divine intervention is nothing less than a declaration of the supranatural trespassing on the natural I am sure Grenholm would agree with this proposition. If miracles are indeed extraordinary and unnatural, it stands to reason that the evidence to support their existence need also be extraordinary.  

My reasoning above certainly does not disprove the existence of miracles. I maintain that Grenholm’s case for the existence of miracles is strong. But statistically and scientifically unlikely as they are, there is little evidence that they are external to our system, and the connection between miracles and the Christian God still remains to be demonstrated.

In a way, it is quite impossible to leaf through the pages of “Dokumenterade mirakler” without one’s thoughts irresistibly straying to Dr Bonamy from Emile Zola’s novel “Lourdes” (see review from July 2019). Here we encounter the good doctor, a man of education so confident in his image of the incorruptible scientist, perched loftily upon a pedestal of unimpeachable rationality, meticulously chronicling the supposed miracles unfolding before him, all in the noble name of knowledge. And yet, on closer examination we see how deeply involved he is in the belief system, functioning, with a naïveté bordering on the tragic, as an unwitting instrument for the advancement of superstition.

In my personal view, proving the divine armed with the frail minds and limited equipment of humans, calibrated merely to navigate the dull harmonies of the natural world, is a task fit for fools. The Mount Everest of apologetic history is littered with the remains of those who have tried and succumbed before Micael Grenholm. Anshelm of Canterbury, Averroës, Thomas Aquinas, René Descartes, Kurt Gödel… all had their go, and failed.

And so, it appears to me that using human faculties to understand God is like stacking bricks to build a tower to heaven. In truth, I suspect these grand endeavours reveal far less about the nature of God than they do about the fathomless depths of our own conceit.

 

PÈRE GORIOT

Author: Honoré de Balzac
Year: 1976 (1835)
Publisher: Czytelnik
Language: Polish (translator Tadeusz Zelenski-Boy)

Honoré de Balzac’s “Ojciec Goriot” (“Père Goriot”) is a haunting study of human motives in a society driven by ambition, status, and material gain. Beneath its realist detail lies a profound meditation on the tension between altruism and egoism, a tension that plays out through its central characters and constitutes an important literary contribution to the philosophical scrutiny of the theme by many thinkers before and after. Balzac's Paris is not merely a backdrop but a moral melting pot where love, sacrifice, and ambition merge.

Goriot himself represents an extreme form of altruism: a man who gives his wealth, his dignity, and ultimately his life for the happiness of his two daughters. He expects nothing in return, finding joy in their comfort, even as they abandon and exploit him.

The figure of Eugène de Rastignac provides the moral counterpoint to Goriot’s doomed idealism. A young provincial law student, Rastignac arrives in Paris dazzled by the glamour of the aristocracy and hungry for success, yet not initially corrupted. He is seduced by wealth, elegance, and power, but he does not abandon his principles lightly.

SPOILER ALERT

His relationship with Father Goriot acts as a moral anchor; in the old man’s quiet suffering, Rastignac perceives a kind of nobility absent from the salons and ballrooms he increasingly frequents. He cares for Goriot with genuine compassion, tending to him in his final decline, moved by a mixture of pity, affection, and admiration. For as long as Goriot lives, Rastignac resists the full embrace of ambition. He stands, if uneasily, in the moral space between selflessness and self-advancement.

But with Goriot’s death, that space collapses. The man who represented disinterested love and unwavering devotion is buried without ceremony, abandoned by his daughters, unmourned by the world he gave everything to. At his grave, something in Rastignac shifts. The city’s glittering façade no longer conceals its cruelty. It reveals it. What was once temptation now becomes strategy; what was once aspiration becomes a challenge. It is only after Goriot dies, and with him the last human bond that had tied Rastignac to an ethic of care, that the young man’s heart hardens. His infamous declaration “À nous deux maintenant!”is not simply a cry of ambition; it is a renunciation of sentiment, the moment he steps fully into the logic of Hobbesian egoism. The social world, as Hobbes imagined, is a battleground, and Rastignac, no longer restrained by affection or idealism, enters it with icy resolve.

This moral transformation is as disturbing as it is understandable. In the world Balzac depicts, those who cling to ideals are destroyed, while those who embrace calculation and self-interest survive, perhaps even flourish. And yet this flourishing is not without its own pathology. For Friedrich Nietzsche, values like altruism and self-sacrifice are symptoms of weakness, tools of the powerless to bind the strong. Yet the strength Rastignac gains is ambivalent. He wins power, but loses warmth. He becomes shrewd, but perhaps no longer fully human. Balzac neither condemns nor celebrates this metamorphosis; he simply records it, with cold precision.

The moral world of “Ojciec Goriot” becomes truly troubling when viewed through Nietzsche’s critique of altruism. For Nietzsche, values like self-sacrifice and humility are the product of a “slave morality”. Goriot’s relentless self-denial, his total subjugation to the will of his daughters, would appear to Nietzsche not as virtue but as a form of decadence; a renunciation of the will to power and of life itself. His daughters, who manipulate and discard him in pursuit of beauty, status, and influence, are closer to Nietzsche’s “strong” individuals, though without his corresponding ideal of the creative, life-affirming Übermensch. They are not admirable, but they are potent, and in their cold self-interest, they expose the fragility of Goriot’s love. Balzac neither endorses Nietzschean strength nor Goriot’s abjection; instead, he holds them both up to scrutiny, showing the horror of a world where moral weakness is punished and moral strength is dehumanizing.

What emerges from this interplay of philosophical ideas is not a simple moral lesson, but a tragic recognition of the contradictions at the heart of human life. Altruism, in its purest form, may be beautiful, but it is also profoundly vulnerable to exploitation. Egoism, on the other hand, offers power and success, but at the cost of empathy, connection, and moral clarity. Balzac seems to suggest that the moral ideals we inherit, whether from Kantian duty, Hobbesian realism, or Nietzschean egoism, cannot be cleanly applied to the mess of social life. Each contains truth, but none is sufficient. The novel ends not with resolution but with irony: Rastignac ascends, Goriot is buried alone, and the city looms indifferent and vast, its glittering promises secured only by the loss of innocence or the collapse of self.

In this way, “Ojciec Goriot” becomes not only a work of literary realism, but a philosophical drama or a parable of modernity in which love and power, virtue and strategy, collide with tragic inevitability. Balzac does not moralize; he exposes. His characters are not lessons but questions, and the answers they suggest are as disturbing as they are true.

 

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Year: 2021 (1864)
Publisher: Modernista
Language: Swedish (translator Cecilia Borelius-Rohnström)

Some people choose to be unhappy. Not because they are doomed by fate or overwhelmed by circumstance, but because they cannot bear the vulnerability that joy and connection require. For these people, happiness feels like weakness, and love like exposure. The only emotion they feel safe expressing is resentment and their most reliable source of comfort is to distribute that unhappiness outward, like a contagion.

In “Anteckningar från ett källarhål” (“Notes from the Underground”), Fyodor Dostoevsky gives voice to one such man. The Underground Man, bitter, and obsessively self-conscious, lives in voluntary isolation, sharpening his cynicism and building elaborate justifications for his own misery. He is a man who has turned away from the world not because the world has rejected him, but because connection demands surrender, and surrender is unbearable.

He is not simply a man without love. He is a man who cannot tolerate being loved.

While the novel is often read as a philosophical precursor to existentialism, indeed Jean-Paul Sartre cited it as an influence, what makes Dostoevsky’s short but dense work so powerful is its psychological clarity. The Underground Man is not merely a symbol or a theoretical construct; he is a living case study in emotional dysfunction. His life is defined by a profound inability, and ultimately an outright refusal, to love or be loved.

This is not because love is unavailable to him, but because love requires vulnerability, surrender, and an openness to grace, all things he equates with humiliation. What emerges from “Anteckningar från ett källarhål” is a portrait of a deeply damaged personality: a man whose need for control and pride is so consuming that it obliterates his capacity for intimacy. The ultimate incel, if you wish.

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness,”* the Underground Man proclaims early in the novel. This diagnosis of himself is remarkably prescient. The character’s hyperconsciousness, his habit of analysing every motive, overthinking every emotion, and anticipating every possible humiliation, aligns closely with what Søren Kierkegaard would call "the sickness unto death": the despair that comes from being alienated from oneself. In Kierkegaard’s view, despair is not simply suffering, but a state of active self-estrangement, in which the self refuses to be what it truly is. For the Underground Man, selfhood is not a project to be realised, it is a battlefield on which he endlessly defeats himself.

In modern psychological terms, we might recognise this as a narcissistic defence mechanism in which vulnerability is so intolerable that it must be replaced by control. His encounters with others are not opportunities for connection but arenas for psychological warfare. His interactions with former schoolmates are marked by bitterness and a fixation on perceived slights.

Most tragic, however, is his encounter with Liza, a young prostitute who offers him the possibility of tenderness. When she responds to his philosophical speech on degradation with something like empathy, he becomes unhinged. What could have been a moment of shared humanity, becomes an existential threat. Liza threatens to see him, to treat him not as a freak or a failure but as a person. He cannot allow it. He responds by humiliating her, handing her money in a moment that reads like a deliberate reenactment of her life-trauma.

“But this I can say for certain: though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart, but came from my evil brain.”*

What makes this so poignant is that he knows exactly what he is doing. This tension between insight and paralysis lies at the heart of Dostoevsky’s genius. The Underground Man is not delusional. He is painfully self-aware. But rather than using that awareness to change, he uses it as a weapon against both himself and others. His failure to act, to connect, to seek forgiveness is filtered through a philosophical defence of inaction. People with deeply entrenched cognitive distortions will often reject positive experiences because they contradict the internal narratives they have built. Such experiences threaten to shatter the very cornerstone of their identity as outcasts and victims. The Underground Man cannot accept Liza’s compassion because it violates the only truth he believes defines him: that he is fundamentally unlovable.

What makes Dostoevsky’s portrayal so unsettling is that this refusal of love is not presented as a personal flaw to be overcome. It is presented as a choice. The Underground Man chooses his isolation and nurses his misery. He would rather suffer on his own terms than risk happiness on someone else’s. This is not the story of a man who could not find love. It is the story of a man who saw love coming and slammed the door shut. In doing so, he ensured that he would never be humiliated. But also, that he would never be saved.

* English quotes are from the Judith Boss translation at Project Gutenberg.

WINTER IS COMING

Author: Garry Kasparov
Year: 2015
Publisher: Public Affairs
Language: English

In 2010, in the aftermath of the global credit crunch triggered by the American sub-prime crisis and the sudden failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers Inc, the Greek economy had come under particular pressure. Standing at the brink of national bankruptcy that would risk hurling the entire world into a second calamity, the EU launched an aid programme leading to a conservative disbursement of merely 52 billion euros. At that time, I was following the events in Greece in my professional capacity and my verdict was “Not nearly enough. This will hurt more than help.”

In 2014, the makeshift barricades of tyres and sandbags on the Independence Square in central Kyiv were still aflame when the Russian government annexed Crimea and covertly moved troops into Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine responded with whatever military force they were able to muster whereas the Free World chose to impose modest and largely inconsequential sanctions on selected individuals and companies. Again, as a professional observer of the unfolding conflict where people were losing their lives and their freedom, my verdict was “What would happen, if Barack Obama, at the invitation of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, would deploy 50,000 troops to Donbas? I bet not a single shot would be fired, and no one would have to die.”

In the case of Greece, the aid package was interpreted by the market as the ultimate limit of the EU’s willingness to stand by Greece, and speculation against Greek national debt exploded. In the end, the EU had to bail Greece out with a total of 330 billion worth of support programmes.

In the case of Ukraine, faced with such lukewarm and hesitant resistance, Vladimir Putin was emboldened to eight years later launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine leading to the death of close to a million Russian soldiers to this date, and heaven knows how many Ukrainian troops and civilians.

My point is that skimpiness today, may multiply the costs by tomorrow.  

In that light, Garry Kasparov’s “Winter Is Coming”, first published in 2015, i.e. just about the time I was bemoaning the vacuum of decisiveness in the face of danger, reads as a vindication.

Kasparov, the chess grandmaster-turned-oppositionist, has spent the better part of two decades shouting into the wind. The book is an unflinching indictment of Western complacency, tracing a direct line from the Second Chechen War (see review of “A Small Corner of Hell” from September 2023) and the suppression of independent media to Crimea, Donbas, and beyond. His language is unsparing, his targets broad: Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, George W. Bush—each is rebuked for misreading or enabling the Kremlin. Kasparov is particularly dismissive of the recurring Western delusion that Putin is a pragmatic leader who merely seeks respect and security.

What distinguishes Kasparov’s analysis is less the originality of the insight than the moral urgency with which it is delivered. While many commentators held out hope that Putin’s authoritarianism might be tempered by economic integration or generational change, Kasparov saw a different pattern, one disturbingly familiar to those who study autocracies: consolidation, repression, expansion. His instincts have proved more accurate than many of the softly hedged assessments emanating from think tanks and chancelleries.

This provokes a haunting suspicion. If Kasparov understood … if even I understood … How could Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and Herman van Rompuy not understand? The only conceivable answer is that they did. They simply failed to act.

One thing that Garry Kasparov, in all his unquestionable lucidity, did not foresee is the ongoing demolition of liberal freedoms and democratic institutions in the Free World. He did not predict that the US would turn on its allies and join the ranks of autocratic and oppressive regimes and he did not predict that Europe, instead of exporting its liberal values to Hungary, Serbia, Belarus, and Poland, would instead import their penchant for racism, populism, and nationalism.   

Kasparov writes not as an academic or a diplomat, but as a participant in Russia’s political unraveling. His reflections on the missed opportunities of the Yeltsin years, the rise of the siloviki, and the Kremlin’s mastery of manufactured consent offer more than polemic. There is real analysis here, shaped by direct confrontation with the machinery of the Russian state. That lived experience, alongside his fluency in the West’s ideological blind spots, gives the book a unique and, in hindsight, tortured and furious voice.

What once seemed like Cassandra-like fury now reads, unsettlingly, as reportage from the near future. With Ukraine engulfed in war, and Western democracies scrambling to reset their posture toward Moscow, Kasparov’s book has acquired the gravity of foresight fulfilled. Few will finish “Winter Is Coming” without conceding that the grandmaster saw several moves ahead. The time is come to pay the full price of what could have been managed at a bargain ten years ago. It is far from certain, that the West will prove solvent.

TIPS FOR LIVING WITH A MASSIVE PENIS

Author: Richard M. Downs
Year: 2024
Publisher: Membrum Virile Press
Language: English

Finally made you click the link! 

Have a wonderful April Fools' Day. May the sun shine on your smiling face, today and always.  

 

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD

Author: Olga Tokarczuk
Year: 2016 (2009)
Publisher: Wydawnictwo Literackie
Language: Polish

Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk is one of a handful of writers that I was familiar with before they were awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. I have also previously shared some thoughts on her writing on my blog (see review of “Tales of the Bizarre” from January 2020). One of her most famous titles, and for many Swedes the entry point into her literary output, is “Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych” (“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”). This novel presents a narrative that intertwines themes of justice, accountability, and the nature of existence, enveloped in a murder mystery, all through the perspective of Janina, an eccentric and reclusive woman living in a remote village in the Polish mountains.

At the heart of Janina’s existence is a profound sense of alienation. She is an outsider in the community, not just because of her eccentricities and lifestyle but also because of her unconventional moral beliefs. Her deep empathy for animals and her insistence on treating them as equals to humans, including ascribing them the ability to plan and execute elaborate coordinated acts of passion, create a worldview that sharply contrasts with the dominant human-centric perspective of the other characters in the novel.

This alienation can perhaps be understood as a defence mechanism in the sense that it is a way of protecting herself from the disillusionment of a society that has failed to acknowledge the deeper, more empathetic layers of existence. Her past as a successful architect is only hinted at and when it is, only in the meaning of her falling out of favour and choosing to seclude herself from society.

Janina’s second obsession is with astrology. At first glance, this seems to emphasise her commitment to the idea of a unified universe or natural cohesion, but it also suggests an unconscious desire for control in an unpredictable and threatening world. She believes that the natural world is governed by a higher, mystical order, one that can be understood through astrology and the signs of nature. This belief can be interpreted as a manifestation of the need for certainty in a disappointing and inexplicable Kosmos, as well as an attempt to find meaning in the randomness of life and death, success and humiliation. Through astrology, she constructs an alternate narrative in which the forces of the universe—rather than the arbitrary and ultimately meaningless cruelty of human beings—are in control.

Above all of this hovers Janina’s problematic views on justice. Despite her conviction that every action is predetermined by the stars and that people have but limited freedom to determine who they become and what choices they make, she is drawn to the idea of accountability, guilt, and retribution. Above all, this is manifested by the novel’s poetic leitmotif “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” by British 18th-century poet William Blake. These poems explore the tension between the innocence of childhood and the corruption of adulthood, the dualities of good and evil, and the human capacity for both creation and destruction. Janina identifies with Blake’s vision of a world that is not simply governed by societal conventions but is in constant conflict between the opposing forces of innocence and corruption. The opposite of innocence is not guilt; it is experience, society, education, and history. Corruption is thus inevitable. Janina’s quest for justice is not grounded in human legal systems but in her own moral code, one that aligns with Blake’s critique of institutionalised power and the systems that fail not only to protect the vulnerable but moreover to preserve innocence to begin with.

This is where equality between humans and other animals ends. Janina never tries to read the horoscope for an animal. She does not judge them for their instincts the way she judges humans for acting upon theirs. The idea of justice echoes throughout Janina's pursuit of a reckoning for the wrongs committed against animals and the natural world. The divide between the human and animal kingdoms is not based on our intellect, technology, language, culture, or society. To Janina, the only dividing factor is mankind’s deviation from innocence.

 

EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM

Author: Hannah Arendt
Year: 1992 (1963)
Publisher: Daidalos
Language: Swedish (Translator Barbro & Ingemar Lundberg)

Hannah Arendt’s “Den banala ondskan” (“Eichmann in Jerusalem”) remains one of the most provocative and intellectually rigorous studies of totalitarianism, moral responsibility, and the nature of evil in the twentieth century. Emerging from Arendt’s coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker, the book offers both a historical account of the Nazi bureaucrat’s role in the Holocaust and a profound philosophical meditation on the mechanisms of mass murder. With her penetrating analysis and sharp prose, Arendt delivers a work that continues to spark debate among scholars, ethicists, and political theorists to this day.

At the heart of the book lies Arendt’s groundbreaking thesis of the “banality of evil.” Rather than portraying Eichmann as a monstrous figure driven by ideological fanaticism or sadistic cruelty, she presents him as a disturbingly ordinary bureaucrat, a man whose mindless adherence to duty and legalistic rationalisation enabled his participation in genocidal policies. In Arendt’s view, Eichmann’s moral blindness and lack of critical self-examination, rather than inherent malice, made him a key functionary in the Nazi machinery of death. At the heart of the book lies Arendt’s groundbreaking thesis of the “banality of evil.” Rather than portraying Eichmann as a monstrous figure driven by ideological fanaticism or sadistic cruelty, she presents him as a disturbingly ordinary bureaucrat, a man whose mindless adherence to duty and legalistic rationalisation enabled his participation in genocidal policies.

Arendt’s work is methodically structured, meticulously researched, and philosophically astute. She provides a comprehensive account of Eichmann’s career, from his early days as a functionary in the SS to his central role in organising the logistics of deportation and extermination. At the same time, she does not shy away from critiquing the legal and political dimensions of the trial itself, particularly the use of the Israeli court to serve a broader national and symbolic function. While she acknowledges the necessity of justice, she raises concerns about the legal framework under which Eichmann was prosecuted, particularly the retrospective application of laws and the potential for political instrumentalisation.

Despite its intellectual brilliance, “Den banala ondskan” was met with intense controversy, particularly regarding Arendt’s perceived tone and her discussion of Jewish leadership’s role in the Holocaust.

A more confined but no less interesting area of critique, however, was her engagement with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Arendt accuses Eichmann of distorting Kant’s idea, arguing that he misapplied the principle in his defence. A more rigorous reading of Kant, however, complicates Arendt’s conclusion, raising the unsettling possibility that Eichmann’s actions were, at least formally, consistent with Kantian ethics.

Arendt asserts that Eichmann invoked Kant’s categorical imperative in bad faith, failing to grasp its fundamental emphasis on moral autonomy. Eichmann claimed that he acted according to duty, submitting to laws that he did not himself create, and he saw his role as implementing the decrees of the Führer rather than exercising independent moral judgment. Arendt dismisses this defence, arguing that Kant’s philosophy demands self-legislation in accordance with universal moral law, rather than blind obedience to external commands. However, this interpretation raises a significant dilemma: Kant’s moral philosophy is famously rigid in its emphasis on duty, and under certain conditions, it may indeed produce the kind of mechanical compliance that Arendt condemns.

In short, Eichmann’s compliance with the categorical imperative was not a matter of genocide, which would hardly be possible to reconcile with Kant’s ideas, but rather of duty and following the law. No single individual can will their own law, but they can will whether to abide by it or not. Willing that the law is universally obeyed seems quite compatible with the categorical imperative.

Many notable thinkers have over the years supported Arendt’s conclusions that a reading of Kant that provides for such heinous acts as the Holocaust is a gross distortion. Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Rasmus Ugilt even go as far as calling it “absurd”. Slavoj Zizek sees it as a circular argument to say that ‘your duty is to do your duty.” Others, like Joshua Halberstam, are less dismissive. For if the act of abiding by the law cannot be elevated to universal law, there seems to be an inherent flaw in our understanding of what law means.

Be it as it will, Arendt’s insights into the bureaucratic nature of modern evil remain profoundly relevant in contemporary discussions of state violence, obedience to authority, and moral responsibility. Her reflections on the dangers of unthinking conformity resonate beyond the historical context of the Holocaust, offering a crucial framework for analysing crimes against humanity in later periods. Including our own era.

MURDER IN THE FAMILY

Author: Cara Hunter
Year: 2023
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Language: English

In an affluent London neighbourhood, a young man is murdered in the garden of a stately townhouse. The Metropolitan Police conduct an investigation, yet despite their efforts, the case yields no arrests. With no clear leads, it is eventually relegated to the archives, another unsolved crime gathering dust in the cold-case cabinet. Decades later, the victim’s stepson approaches a television producer with a proposal that reflects the growing public appetite for true-crime entertainment. His idea is to assemble a panel of experts, criminologists, forensic specialists, psychologists, and lawyers, and task them with solving the decades-old mystery.

The novelty of “Murder in the Family” by Cara Hunter lies neither in its setting nor plot but in its narrative structure. Rather than a conventional story, it unfolds as a script, a transcription of the television show itself. Dialogue lines are interspersed with brief stage directions indicating characters’ movements, expressions, and positioning. The episodes are punctuated by a television critic’s column, as well as text message and email exchanges, adding layers of commentary and context. The investigative process itself remains offstage. The team, assembled before the cameras, reports on their findings and the reader is exposed only to their discussions during filming; never the interrogations, site visits, and forensic analyses that take place between episodes. The result is a story shaped not by direct action, but by the act of performance, blurring the lines between investigation and entertainment.

“Murder in the Family” is the second epistolary or documentary-style book project I have encountered in a short span. The first, “Sleeping Giants” by Sylvain Neuvel (reviewed here in January 2024), struggled to sustain its premise. By contrast, “Murder in the Family” is a more cohesive effort. Its dialogue is largely convincing, and the information conveyed seems relevant not only to the plot but, more importantly, to the characters themselves.

The plot is engaging and immersive, though it spirals out of hand toward the end in pursuit of a bombastic finale. Hunter appears aware of this challenge and makes efforts to maintain a sense of plausibility. She weaves in backstories and character dynamics among the investigative team, designed to introduce both conflict and intrigue. These, too, require explanation, and the author makes a concerted effort to provide it, with varying levels of subtlety.

These challenges may, in part, stem from the book’s intended audience. Written for young adults, who seem to expect heightened drama and neck breaking plot twists, it relies on narrative devices that, while effective in maintaining engagement, ultimately strain credibility. To sustain the attention of less seasoned readers, the author introduces developments that eventually veer from the credible and enter into the forced. Halfway into the novel the central murder mystery has become secondary to the evolving discord between the investigative team members. The book’s cover invites readers to “solve the mystery before they do,” but this challenge is undercut by the steady infusion of new information designed more to generate surprise and suspense than to encourage deduction.

A minor but noticeable detail lies in the portrayal of the novel’s transatlantic cast. Given that the team members hail from various backgrounds and countries, the recurring references to distinctions between British and American English suggest an awareness of cultural and linguistic nuance. Yet, the author forfeits the opportunity to manifest this in the orthography. Therefore, the American character, a former member of New York’s finest speaks of “colours” and “neighbours”. It is easily explained by pointing out that the transcript of a British television show will be in British English, but nonetheless a missed opportunity.

“Murder in the Family” is an entertaining and easily digestible book which, had it been more geared toward the mystery and less he-said-she-said-high-school-drama, could have been a truly engaging reading experience.       

 

THE JEEVES COLLECTION

Author: Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
Year: 1992 (1923, 1925, 1963)
Publisher: Chancellor Press
Language: English

If one has yet to make the acquaintance of Reginald Jeeves, gentleman’s personal gentleman, and his occasionally woolly-headed employer, Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, then one has the good fortune of standing on the precipice of a rare delight. A world inundated by country house antics, aunts of a most fearsome disposition, and engagements formed and dissolved at the drop of a hat awaits.

"The Jeeves Collection" by P. G. Wodehouse is, in short, a smorgasbord of delightful prose, absurd entanglements, and a valet who would have the whole world running smoother than a well-buttered crumpet if given half a chance. The form of the whole bally thing is best characterised as a conglomeration of three short story collections originally titled “Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves”, “The Inimitable Jeeves”, and “Carry On, Jeeves” published between 1923 and 1963. The plots revolve around Bertram’s gallant but misguided attempts to navigate society, friendships, and the occasional perilous romance, all while Jeeves hovers in the background, dispensing wisdom like a brainy, and often quite smug, but always impeccable oracle in a black tie.

The universe of Jeeves and Wooster abound with memorable characters, all of whom regularly put good old Bertie in the soup; be it the constantly lovesick Bingo Little, the irredeemably over-confident Tuppy Glossop, the tyrannical aunt Agatha, the choleric Roderick Spode, or any other family member, friend, acquaintance, and antagonist. Watching over it all is Jeeves, who, with the quiet confidence of a man who has long since mastered the art of crisis management, extracts his employer from every mess.

Jeeves’ solutions, however, are not always as seamless as one might have preferred, and particularly in situations where one of Bertie’s friends needs to be rescued in one way or other, Jeeves seems to find an almost sadistic pleasure in humiliating his Master. It all turns out well for all parties in the end, but for the most part, it is Bertie who picks up the bill. The happy-go-lucky chum that he is, he seems quite content doing so.

One cannot, of course, read Wodehouse without tripping over the troublesome relics of the British class system. The world of Jeeves and Wooster is one where gentlemen of leisure drift from club to country house, their primary duties involving luncheon, light banter, and avoiding employment (and in Wooster’s case marriage) at all costs. Meanwhile, the true machinery of civilization hums efficiently beneath them, powered by the clerks and workers of the world; some of whom, like Jeeves, while technically in service, are in fact the real puppet masters of the social order.

For all its rowdy escapades, Wodehouse’s world is one in which class boundaries remain firmly intact, though observed with a knowing wink. Bertie, good egg that he is, relies entirely on Jeeves to navigate the deceiving waters of life, never questioning the latter’s superior intellect. Indeed, the Jeeves-Wooster dynamic is less that of employer and servant, and more of an amiable lord-and-vassal arrangement, where the vassal is unquestionably in charge but allows the lord the comforting illusion of authority.

Wodehouse’s language, at last, is a pleasure to behold. Sentences are assembled with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker who has also, in his spare time, mastered the art of comedy. One finds oneself guffawing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, and if one is not careful, alarming nearby creatures with bursts of unexpected amusement.

In conclusion, life is short and one can never have too much of a good thing. Especially when that good thing involves a valet of Jeeves’s calibre, a cast of characters whose primary purpose seems to be hurling themselves into disaster, and an author whose wit is as keen as Jeeves’ powers of observation and as fiery as Bingo Little’s heart.