Reviews and Comments

If you are interested in thinking about human nature from the perspective of biology (or sociobiology, as Wilson defends), this is one of the books where you should start. Though a bit dated (understandably, for it was published in 1978), the discussion started with this book (or openly stated with its publication) is still very contemporary, for there is still a huge gap between the so-called Human Sciences (with its many socio studies varieties) and its more mythical (or ideological) premises, and the hard sciences, that fully accept (or to a great extent) the evolutionary theory as the basis for their work and understanding.

What Wilson wants with this book is to make the biological knowledge as the basis for all social sciences, as it is already happening in many fields (evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, etc.). If you are already acquainted with the history of the evolution (almost a pun) of the social sciences at large, probably this book with look a bit quaint, since it misses (again, understandably) many of the subtleties of the contemporary discussions around these problems. However, if you, like me, do not have such a thorough knowledge about these issues, this book comes very handy, as it serves as a good introduction to the historical development, as well as to the scientific basis, to the problematic leading to Wilson's sociobiological proposal.

Are you an asshole? If you are, this book probably won't even show on your radar. If you are not, maybe this is not the kind of thing you want to give too much thought or consideration (who cares about assholes anyway?).

In any case, the author throws a compelling theory on the whole phenomenon of assholery, something many of us readers are familiar with by having been subject to its manifold manifestations (usually us being the victims of someone's intended or unintended assholing).

The question remains: are assholes worth of a theory? Is it worth to devote a whole book to this subject? In a sense, yes, for the book stands as evidence that you can indeed explore and theorize about this troublesome attitude. And the author believes he has compelling evidences that assholes are wreaking havoc on our society, as he tries to reason through the many evidences the world, unfortunately, provides us (are we living the golden age of assholery?). In the end this is a question of ethics. If we accept assholery as a thing, we have to deal with it and try to find solutions to the many problems assholes bring about to our societies.

So, is this your cup of tea? If you're onto societal critique with a sarcastic twist and a philosophical grounding, this book is right for you. If you're not, maybe you won't lose that much by skipping over this title.

It's a translation; that alone is enough to scare. However, William Ellery Leonard did a great job in conveying to text a kind of musicality that, in the lack of knowledge of Latin to read the masterpiece of Lucretius with the original wording, I must assume is coveys much of its poetic sense.

Lucretius magnum opus is like a flashing sign, frenetically pointing out a route for civilization, one that, unfortunately, was missed by many centuries to come. The work, in its structure, is magnificent. The author guides his readers through endless examples of how nature works, from bottom-up and back again. The atoms, endless, with many, but too many, different forms, make the whole of the "Great All", the all that we all around touch and feel. For sense is what determines our perception, and sense shows us that we are nothing other that a part of nature, herself subject to the many swerves of the its smallest constituent atomic elements.

Most striking, still today, are his descriptions of the 'multitudinous' complexity of a very granular world, a world that because of its granularity allows for the whole spectacle of the ineffable Nature; a world where no gods are needed when all you have to do to understand its motives is to look around and read on nature's own examples. And that's the power of his artistry. For Lucretius oeuvre still makes us ponder how things fit so tightly to one another, almost as matching pieces of a puzzle that still strike us today as much wondrous as it is absurd.

Even if outdated, the view is sill compelling. If one is to find any kind of meaning, that meaning will have to bow to Nature's many caprices, for only in Nature any possibility of answer lies. Why read Lucretius? Because it will give you back some sense of wonder, that kind of view that only when you were a child you allowed yourself to have. We, as he himself intuited, are products of our natural environment, and that, in itself, is still a valid basis to come to terms with your own most horrid drama of being a being finite by nature. This treatise is, then, not just a failed attempt to explain the world — rather a way to inhabit it, and accept its conditions, all the while not falling to the trappings of thinking it to be a lasting nightmare. For all things come to pass, even the Great All of the universe. Why, then, bother with what's of no concern of ours? Just as existence is no concern of ours before we were born, so too it will become after we die.