The Temptation of Innocence - Living in the Age of Entitlement [Paperback]

Pascal Bruckner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2000

Bruckner takes on the culture of copping out in this critique of a recent species of human self-deception: infantilism and victimization, the idea that powerlessness is a virtue without responsibility. This highly insightful essay dissects the culture of dependency and its damaging effects on the moral fiber of society, from corporate welfare to affirmative action.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Prolific essayist and novelist Bruckner (a winner of France's prestigious Medici Prize) offers a gracefully erudite, deliciously mordant critique of a recent species of human self-deception: infantilism and victimization, the idea that powerlessness is a virtue without responsibility. Among those skewered by Bruckner's biting wit are parents who identify with the children they pamper, feminists who bastardize men, and ethnic nationalities (most especially the Serbs) who tout past sufferings as warrant for persecuting others. Bruckner's European education, which he wears lightly; his unpreachy, aphoristic style; and his obvious delight in paradox save this book from the ranks of a tedious diatribe against permissiveness. Citings of Europe's philosophical and literary masters (Rousseau, Hegel, Nietzsche among many others) help Bruckner, who is French (this admirable translation is not, alas, credited), make the case that the modern individual, weakened by responsibilities of freedom too great to bear, finds freedom in weakness itself: the freedom from moral constraint. In consequence, the distinction between genuine weakness, which merits compassion, and self-promoting distortions of it is obscured. Bruckner's paradigmatic antidote to resentment is decidedly French: the inventive lover for whom suffering is less a virtue than an unavoidable risk, made bearable not by self-deception but by acknowledging and tolerating ambiguity. In a final variation on Bruckner's theme of things becoming their opposites (e.g., victims who persecute), a childlike Cupid points individuals, social groups and nations away from childish self-pity into responsible relations with others. Bruckner should find a ready audience among philosophically inclined readers who bring a skeptical eye to contemporary trends and agree that freedom from responsibility is no freedom at all.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Algora Publishing; 1 edition (December 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892941562
• ISBN-13: 978-1892941565
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,715,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning book about modern European malaise, May 12, 2007

By 

Juan Camaney "Book Hunter" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Temptation of Innocence - Living in the Age of Entitlement (Paperback)

Don't miss this book. Pascal Bruckner, along with Alain Finkielkraut and Andre Glucksmann, is one of the foremost French intellectuals. They are controversial in that they are not the typical anti-US, hip multicultural, thinkers. They go deeper than that. They question the post-modern way of living, thinking and behaving.
This book by Bruckner is stunning, and its study of modern man's malaise is fascinating and thought provoking. Many of the ideas which are being discussed right now politically and philosophically, Bruckner addresses in this book, which he wrote a while ago.
If you want to go deep into some of the deepest troubles facing the Western World, pick this up now! You will not regret it.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hurrah for the Blackshirts !!! (only joking), August 12, 2011

By 

Halifax Student Account "a-beautiful-idea" (Liverpool, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Temptation of Innocence - Living in the Age of Entitlement (Paperback)

Crack-heads forever crave the original high. They affect a veneer of hopeless frustration, as the rummaging for the effect that fuelled the original craving governs their ontology; the addict then, is a mono-maniac. The thirst for the original ecstasy will never leave the mono-maniac, even though the body has adapted to the chemical, making the crack stale, the memory remains. There really is no other feeling to compare to the original experience, and this is why the addict will forever crave ecstasy.

Friedrich Nietzsche fans suffer from the same wilderness feeling. When read correctly, Nietzsche is able to crab you by the short and curlies and throw your mind into higher states of awareness; no really! But 10 years later, Nietzschian whining becomes tiresome and so one craves a Nietzsche for our time. Nietzsche is still my God, but these days, reading Nietzsche is like watching my favourite movie, over and over, forever. So, like an addict searching for a better drug, I search for a better philosopher. Pascal Bruckner is a contender. He is a very clever man, and, very importantly, he does not breathe in the academic bubble. However, he is a rich ivory tower man; I've never met one of those before.

Bertrand Russell says somewhere that philosophers who existed only in books are weirdly divorced from the meat of the action. These ivory tower guys are sill debating with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 250 years later; or Thrasymachus' argument for the iron fist is more real than the boxing match last night, or the rioting down the street.

This ongoing dialogue with the immortals is the intellectual mortar of the West, very true, however, to the uninitiated; a dialogue from beyond the tomb sets eyeballs rolling. These books preach to the converted anyway, so this is a good argument as any, to include 'dick jokes' (thanks to Bill Hicks).

I you're a millionaire, then you should be able to spin humour into your axe grinding. If I had the freedom, I would definitely include dick jokes. Who today is so privileged to have the freedom to speak in our world of the production line citizen and their rubbish opinions? Who can tut-tut at the flabby citizens of consumerism, or write about the hopeless automatons stacking shelves in Wall-Mart and not come across as Mr Grumpy? (Mr Grumpy is my 3 year olds favourite Mr Men character, by the way). I know many plebs (proles) and I'm related to many automatons, and I know them better than Pascal Bruckner, though I haven't the freedom to speak; he has ample freedom, but I doubt he's ever met a real prole or had a conversation with a real automaton (yes automatons can talk). By the way, Marxists call the masses the proletariat and Nietzsche's followers call the masses the plebs; the difference is gigantic. Bruckner is in the Nietzschien camp.

Bruckner, following Friedrich Nietzsche, sees the plebs (or proles) as a collectivist gas, rather than millions of individuals trying to bring up kids and pay the bills. Proles are not the same as Karl Marx's proletarians by the way, because they are the guilty zero's, rather than the chosen people of Marxist eschatology.

Karl Marx, you see, saw the proletarians always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because they are utterly conditioned by their circumstances. They are the victims of the meat grinder of ontology (the machine). The Marxist's shout,'let's save'em'!

Nietzschiens also see plebs always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because they are utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Nietzschiens shout, it's their own fukn fault, kill'em all!

The difference in dealing with the proletariat and the plebs is the answer to the question, 'what is to be done'? Nietzsche's followers have now lost their teeth; so instead of gas ovens, they just moan. The best satire after all, is brilliant moaning.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Should have been better..., March 1, 2007

By 

Noone Inparticular - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Temptation of Innocence - Living in the Age of Entitlement (Paperback)

Good thoughts, bad editing (too many errors), uneven writing, clumsy translation (does not even say who did it, my feeling is, the author himself). It is really a collection of essays than a book with a consistent line of thought. On a good side, lots of detailed references and interesting, unorthodox ideas. It is still worth reading but could and should have been better.

The main themes, infantilism and victimization of modern man have been circumscribed but not elaborated.
It feels like Bruckner is broadly painting the surrounding areas and lets us divine the substance of his thoughts.
And despite the title, there is very little word in the book about the entitlement, the malaise from which Europe, even more than US
definitely suffers today.

Had I not expected more, maybe it would have been a 4 star book...