Skip to main content

Assholes


Three years ago, Aaron James published a book titled Assholes: A Theory according to which “A person counts as an asshole when, and only when, he systematically allows himself to enjoy special advantages in interpersonal relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.”  In simple words, an asshole is a person who takes every advantage, thinks himself superior to all others, and is immune to criticism. 

Most of our politicians belong to that category, in case you are looking for examples. 

Now James has come up with a new book: Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump.

Aaron James is not a popular writer who seeks to entertain the readers with hackneyed humour.  He is a professor of philosophy.  The first book in which he explains his theory of assholes is an erudite work drawing heavily on philosophers such as Plato, Kant, Rousseau and Hobbes.   

Politics creates assholes necessarily.  Politics is about power and no one but an asshole can be interested in imposing himself on others (which is what power means in practical terms).  

Since I haven’t read the book yet, I can’t speak more about it.  But I am amused by the entire concept.

The books are available at Amazon.in.  [Check out in the top right corner of this blog.]



Labels:

Comments

  1. Amit AgarwalMay 14, 2016 at 1:03 PM

    Interesting..!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nima DasMay 14, 2016 at 3:56 PM

    Sounds like a good read,

    ReplyDelete
  3. sunaina sharmaMay 14, 2016 at 5:51 PM

    Trump-holes....!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 14, 2016 at 9:03 PM

      Yes, James cuts Trump into pieces and reveals the hollowness, as I understand.

      Delete
  4. KalpanaMay 14, 2016 at 10:45 PM

    I want to read this book. Particularly the first one. Donald Trump is beyond reading about. Thanks for this :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 15, 2016 at 10:50 AM

      The first one is the real theory. The second is theory applied to Trump. Your choice is better especially since Trump means little to Non-Americans.

      Delete
  5. parwatisingariMay 15, 2016 at 10:32 AM

    lol It was an very un-Tomichan Matheikal title :) author how sounds interesting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 15, 2016 at 10:53 AM

      See how even philosophy is becoming so frustrated that it takes recourse to coarse expressions. How can I, a feeble being, escape the poison in the air? 😑

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more