A couple more items in our ongoing ‘coverage’ of David Brooks’ new treatise on human nature, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.

1. The NY Times Book Review gave some thoughtful if ultimately suspect/predictable ‘pushback’ this past week. That is, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the reviewer, Thomas Nagel, is engaging in the exact behavior Brooks is describing, i.e. dressing up an emotional reaction in intellectual language. But his summarizing is helpful, and his conclusions are nevertheless to be taken seriously:

The main problem that Brooks addresses in this book is how to understand the…

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