Aaron James. (2012). Assholes: A Theory. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Aaron James. 2012. Assholes: A Theory. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Aaron James, Assholes: A Theory. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012.

Aaron James. Assholes: A Theory. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012.

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     AARON JAMES holds a PhD from Harvard and is associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy, and was awarded the Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, spending the 2009–10 academic year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He’s an avid surfer (the experience of which has directly inspired this book) . . . and he’s not an asshole.
     www.doubleday.com

   • name: Aaron James

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title

Assholes

fullDescription

In the spirit of the mega-selling On Bullshit, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary.
What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. Try as we might to avoid them, assholes are found everywhere—at work, at home, on the road, and in the public sphere. Encountering one causes great difficulty and personal strain, especially because we often cannot understand why exactly someone should be acting like that.

Asshole management begins with asshole understanding. Much as Machiavelli illuminated political strategy for princes, this book finally gives us the concepts to think or say why assholes disturb us so, and explains why such people seem part of the human social condition, especially in an age of raging narcissism and unbridled capitalism. These concepts are also practically useful, as understanding the asshole we are stuck with helps us think constructively about how to handle problems he (and they are mostly all men) presents. We get a better sense of when the asshole is best resisted, and when he is best ignored—a better sense of what is, and what is not, worth fighting for.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Jane Smiley, Harper's Magazine
   • content: Praise for Assholes: A Theory:
     
     A New York Times bestseller!
     
     "James neatly does what philosophers must do: he defines his terms, organizes and codifies, declares his own loyalties; he locates himself on the spectrum of assholery and suggest origins both psychological and sociological. The result is a delightful combination of the demotic and the technical."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content:
     "James' research is both thorough and imaginative; his impressive source list ranges from obscure philosophy books to popular websites to Rudyard Kipling to Kanye West, hip-hop's greatest asshole. The author's enthusiasm for the subject makes it possible to get through the book quickly.... [T]here are moments of great insight and outright hilarity."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Joe Keohane, New York Magazine
   • content:
     "James's volume is equal parts philosophical meditation and historical survey, but its true value lies in his attempt to precisely define the term."
4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     July 23, 2012
     Like Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit, this is a serious and sometimes whimsical treatment of a common epithet. UC-Irvine philosopher James (Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for the Global Economy) defines an “asshole” as someone who “allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.” He provides a typology and names names, including the “smug asshole” (Bernard-Henri Lévy) and the “self-aggrandizing asshole” (John Edwards). A chapter entitled “Gender, Nature, Blame” includes an overly long disquisition on whether the asshole is responsible for being who he is and whether he has free will (the short answers are: largely no and yes). James is disappointing on “asshole management”; his basic advice is to selectively fight the asshole to maintain your public status, but don’t think you can change him. Unfortunately, he becomes derailed in a chapter on “asshole capitalism,” characterized by “expansive entitlement” of the financial elite, in which he provides a host of unsupported hypotheses and speculations on why American and other forms of capitalism may be reaching a point of irreversible “degradation.” His work raises the question of whether the subject of assholes is worthy of book-length treatment—probably not.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 15, 2012
     Great title, clever concept, average execution. If you know anything about James, you wouldn't expect him to concoct a book with such a profane, in-your-face title. He has a doctorate from Harvard and teaches philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, and his first book had the desert-dry title of Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy. And yet here he is, delivering a treatise about assholes throughout time, everybody from Machiavelli to Dick Cheney. Granted, the book is not just a quick-hit reference on everything asshole-related, but rather a more philosophical, existential approach to the subject. James tells us about the different types of assholes, a "taxonomy of the different species of asshole," if you will, and he offers suggestions of professions that attract assholes (two good examples: conservative cable-news pundit and investment banker). James' writing style leans toward the academic (unsurprising, considering his background) and doesn't always feel like a logical match with his thesis. Readers picking up the book and anticipating a lot of snarky finger-pointing will be alternately pleased and frustrated. But James' research is both thorough and imaginative; his impressive source list ranges from obscure philosophy books to popular websites to Rudyard Kipling to Kanye West, hip-hop's greatest asshole. The author's enthusiasm for the subject makes it possible to get through the book quickly, but it may lack staying power. While there are moments of great insight and outright hilarity, the book feels more like a sharp magazine article or clever website than a full-length book.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2012
     Hot on the heels of Geoffrey Nunberg's Ascent of the A-Word (2012) comes another discussion of assholes and what to do about them. Actually, that's a bit too glib: James, a philosophy professor, takes a slightly different approach than Nunberg. Where Nunberg focused on the history of assholism (with side trips into such subjects as the difficulties in writing about assholes without censorship), James proposes a theory of assholes (a person is an asshole when his sense of entitlement makes him immune to complaints from other people) that explains not only why assholes are a vital part of human society, but also how to recognize them and coexist with them. The author addresses some fundamental questionssuch as whether assholes are born or made, a sort of nature-versus-nurture debate for the asshole crowdand rigorously avoids what must have been a strong temptation to go for the cheap laugh (although it must be pointed out that this is definitely a lighter book than Nunberg's more academic study).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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In the spirit of the mega-selling On Bullshit, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary.
What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. Try as we might to avoid them, assholes are found everywhere—at work, at home, on the road, and in the public sphere. Encountering one causes great difficulty and personal strain, especially because we often cannot understand why exactly someone should be acting like that.

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