Rating: 
Summary: Heavy Going But the Deeper Thinking is Worth It
Review:
There is much in this book, depending on one's particular interests, that can be skimmed or skipped. With patience, however, the book in its entirety is a rewarding experience for it calls into question much about how we organize ourselves politically, economically, and socially.
The bottom line, and very consistently with other great books such as "The Manufacture of Evil" on the low end and "Consilience" on the high end, is that Western thinking has been corrupted to the point that the West has become, as the inside flap says, "a vast, incomprehensible directionless machine, run by process-minded experts....whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality."
As my own interests run toward public intelligence and public effectiveness in guiding the polity, I found his several chapters related to secrecy, immorality, and the "hijacking of capitalism" to be especially worthwhile.
He concludes that secrecy is pathological, undermining both public confidence and the public dialog. Intelligence in his view is about disseminated knowledge, not secrets.
Throughout the book the author discusses the contest between those who feel that the people cannot be trusted--the elites who strive to remain in power by making power appear an arcane skill with rites and formulas beyond the ken of the people--and those who feels that the people--and especially the larger consciousness of the people--are more in touch with nature and reality and the needs of the people than these elites.
This is a difficult book to absorb and enjoy, but I recommend because it sets the broad outlines for the real power struggle in the 21st Century--not between terrorism and capitalism, but rather between the government-corporate elites with their own agenda, and the larger body of people now possibly ready to turn every organization into an employee-owned and managed activity.
Rating: 
Summary: Siding with what is human.
Review: For as long as I can remember, pretty well every serious book that I have read, books from many different areas and often by outstanding scholars, has reached the conclusion that the world is headed for catastrophe because it is fundamentally in error about so many things. And now Saul comes along to make matters even worse by offering a mass of evidence that serves to confirm the truth of what all of those other writers were saying.
And he's certainly right about the ideology of the supremacy of Reason having assumed the form of a ruthless and intolerant Dictatorship. The signs of this are everywhere in evidence, and only someone very naive could believe otherwise. One of my favorite writers is Montaigne, and I think that what makes Montaigne so important and valuable, especially to us today, is that he was characterized above all, not merely by reason, which is common enough, but by a REASONABLE, AND NOT EXCESSIVE, USE OF REASON. In other words, he knew that reason had its limits, that it was a tool limited in its applicability and useful only for certain purposes, and he had the good sense to know when we should stop. There is in Montaigne a sanity, a balance, an affability, and a modesty and tolerance that I've found in no other European thinker, and that reminds one more of the Chinese sage. But instead of fastening on the truly civilized pattern established by Montaigne, Europe instead chose Descartes, Apostle of the Excessive Use of Reason, with the massive and depressing consequences Saul so eloquently describes. The Cartesian ideology of Reason fueled and continues to fuel the relentless Juggernaut of Reason now underway that threatens to end up crushing everything beneath its wheels. Montaigne would have been appalled. He stood for something more human, as does Saul.
Rating:
Summary: Exploding Millennium Myopia
Review: For the past four weeks John Ralston Saul's book "Voltaire's Bastards" has been my almost constant companion. When not actually reading, or re-reading, this brilliant dissection of the myths, cant and hypocrisy which underlie present Western society, the carefully presented and scrupulously researched exposes refuse to leave my mind. In the last paragraph of the penultimate Chapter, Saul calls on writers to concentrate on questioning and clarifying while avoiding the specialists' obsession with solutions; he continues... "he is true to himself and to the people when his clarity causes disquiet." This seems this Author's intent and "he" has brilliantly succeeded. READ IT.......I DARE YOU!
Rating:
Summary: Analyzes the total effect of the bastardization of reason
Review: It takes tremendous courage to open a book with such a subtitle. It is human nature to construct an ideology based on our favorite thoughts, and then live cozily inside as master of the realm. For then we can use that ideology as shield and weapon. But then John Ralston Saul comes face to face with you, removes his glove, and with a gentleman's flourish, whips the leather across your face. Saul is the master of gauntlet-throwing, and after one read of this hefty tome, you will be begging for more. "The undoubted sign of a society well under control or in decline is that language has ceased to be a means of communication and has become instead a shield for those who master it." Does this remind you of your country's political process? Or possibly of those ivory-tower publications that you so treasure? How is it that our species has been able to use words to cloak double and triple meanings within the most seemingly innocuous sentences? Is this what we truly want? "The structures of argument have been co-opted so completely by those who work the system that when an individual reaches for the words and phrases which he senses will express his case, he finds that they are already in active use in the service of power. This now amounts to a virtual dictatorship of vocabulary." The Inquisition, Machiavellian belief, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Holocaust can be rationally justified, says Saul. The tools of rationality provide the means to any desired end. Men participated in these events of their own free will, and even added their input to make said processes more `efficient'. "The Inquisitors were the first to formalize the idea that to every question there is a right answer. The answer is known, but the question must be asked and correctly answered. Relativism, humanism, common sense, and moral beliefs were all irrelevant to this process because they assume doubt. Since the Inquisitors knew the answer, doubt was impossible. Process, however, was essential, for efficient governance and process required that questions be asked in order to produce the correct answer." Is it worth having the tools of reason if they can be manipulated to cause the deaths of 200 million human beings? We all know the answer, as gut-wrenching as it may be... regardless, we can't disassociate our minds from reason any more than we can live without lungs. So how do we move forward? How do we evolve with such a legacy behind and such uncertainty ahead? First, says Saul, we must remember: "Memory is always the enemy of structure. The latter flourishes upon method and is frustrated by content. Our need to deny the amorality of reason ensured that memory would be the first victim of the new structures." Secondly, we open our eyes. Who is it that truly controls our society and its governance? Saul has correctly identified the "men behind the men", the counselors and courtiers whom our leaders turn to for advice, and the bureaucrats, none of whom are elected or held to accountability by our constitution. These puppeteers, say Saul, are the "technocrats" who co-opt reason for limited ends: "In the context of the technocratic mind, truth, like history and events, is what suits the interests of the system or the game plan of the man in charge." Thirdly, we do not allow rationality to freeze our minds and our humanity in the cement of process. We employ skepticism (not cynicism) to constantly keep our eyes fresh. When skepticism reveals doubt, we employ common sense and morality, neither of which can or should be defined by, you guessed it, rationality. Saul is not an enemy of reason. Quite the opposite, his purpose here is to rescue reason from those who fly its banner upon high while secretly using it to shine their shoes. And how does Saul go about making his argument without using... argument? His method is brilliant. He has constructed a book that reads like a great speech, an enthralling lecture. Saul is discursive... he introduces literally dozens of seemingly unrelated subjects, draws truth from each, and makes his points without needing to build upon the pages before. Saul doesn't lead you from point A to point Q, as his enemies would; he simply enlightens you on many topics and allows your mind to form the connections... a truly satisfying experience. This book is a fine wine, with the strong tang of truth. These pages are filled with aphorism and information on the widest variety of topics: national defense, economics, television, the Supreme Court, warfare, Congress, science, and celebrity; all of these cloths are woven with the same fundamental threads. Saul unmasks many clandestine operations, most of which are still being played out today. Your hunger for knowledge will be greatly satisfied (almost satiated) here. Page one will be distinguished as an important point in your life, and we all know how precious such eye-opening works are.
Rating: 
Summary: Jumbled mess
Review: John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards" proposes to tell one about the dictatorship of reason in the west starting with the Jesuits, The Enlightenment and on-ward to the Harvard Business School and Robert McNamara. Nevertheless, Saul never really quite defines what reason is. From reading the book, I assume his definition consists of reason as cold, utilitarian logic. Unfortunately, I believe this is a myopic view of "reason" as well as the accomplishment of reason in the west. Saul also doesn't really follow his thesis. The book is a jumbled mess of reflections: sometimes relating back to the thesis of the dictatorship of "reason" and other times going off on seemingly left-wing tagents. He attacks all the usual culprits including corporations, Henry Kissinger, Nixon, etc., etc while trying to pull his targets into his underlying thesis. Overall, "Voltaire's Bastards" desperately needs an editor in order to sequence the book in order to make it readable. Saul also needs to define "reason" from the start. For a better critique of the enlightenment, go read Foucalt or the post-structuralists.
Rating: 
Summary: long and meandering but worth it
Review: Some of you may remember these lines spat by the great Jack Nicholson in the climactic scene of the movie A FEW GOOD MEN, since satirised by The Simpsons, Seinfeld et al. Of course the "truth" his character was referring to was that he and those like him, were all that kept the " barbarians" from the door, barbarians such as the poor of South America, communists, or anyone else wanting a slice of the fat American Pie. John Ralston Saul is writing of another truth - that we in the West have been complicit in creating a bizarre world where,for example,the manufacture of arms has become a major industry for many many countries and that we have been intent, not in constructing wealth, but in creating the means of our own destruction. Every day 1000 soldiers around the world die. Over a ten year period Australia lost 400 soldiers in battle in the Vietnam War. We have parades, build remembrances and agonise over the loss of 400. So we should. But what of these 1000? Something is terribly, terribly wrong in our world and Saul
gives, I believe, some convincing reasons why. Fed as we are by the propaganda of those who profit from the world as it is, Saul's book is a refreshing and sobering reminder that we must act to change the path we are on.
Rating:
Summary: Is the author ruled by the dictatorship of anger?
Review: The author clearly has an axe to grind, and his anger against the bureaucracies is only matched by today's libertarians. One could argue maybe that his anger is somewhat justified, as the policies of some bureaucracies has led to more unintended pain than perhaps any other group of individuals. The bureaucracies though of the author are ones that he says are following the dictates of "reason", which he claims "is a narrow system swollen into an ideology", and "presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created". He asserts that the philosophers of Europe, England, and America "threw themselves into the arms of reason" with the conviction that it would result, thanks to the "rational elites" that control it, to a new civilization. The philosopher Voltaire was the one who began this path to perdition, says the author, and his followers, "the bastards of Voltaire", have, unwittingly perhaps, created a complex array of coercive social structures, divorced from ethical considerations, and possessing no redeeming virtue. The academy, the military, the educational system, and the government bureaucracies have all played a part in this negation of common sense and morality, and society has become a "self-justifying system which generates its own logic". The author therefore advises the reader of the "virtue of doubt", and to eschew the disease called "the desire to answer", which he says "runs through our veins like rats scurrying for truth in the endless corridors of expertise". The goal should be to unify the individual through questions, and not divide him through answers, he says. Well, the author's thesis is an interesting one, but also somewhat troubling, since if a reader were to believe it in its entirety, then it follows that there are two people who have escaped the "rigidity of reason" and its sterile and sometimes dangerous consequences: the reader and the author. If a reader is open enough to understand the author's complaints, then certainly such a reader has been spared the cruelty and dogmatism of the "dictatorship of reason". The author too, by his very act of writing things differently than the controlling bureaucracies, has found safe haven outside of their influence. What existing institutions educated the author? If there were none, and he discovered his ideas on his own, that is even more proof that the soul can be saved from the "tyranny of reason". Of course, if there is no such reader, then the author is alone, comfortable maybe to immerse himself in apodictic certainty. The late Allan Bloom said that anger requires an unshakable conviction that one is right in order to sustain itself. The author's own dogmatism is to be compared maybe with the agencies he speaks out against. Reason is not a force of nature though, nor an abstract Hegelian menacing principle that forces itself upon the scene, taking no prisoners. It begins with the mind of the individual and is always the result of free choice. Intelligence is time dependent, and does not necessarily have a correlation with the past. Wisdom and folly can proceed from the same person(s), and its consequences are sometimes unpredictable at short time scales. Errors, false leads, irrational beliefs, unethical conduct, and blind allegiance to ideology are perhaps some of the downsides of being human. These can always be corrected, but again only by choice. But if the author is correct, then he himself is the best example maybe of someone who was not been swayed by the idols of the bureaucracies. He should therefore be guided by the person he observes daily in the mirror, take up the (very light) sword called optimism, and remember the words of Melville, that "hope prove a man deathless".
Rating:
Summary: long and meandering but worth it
Review: This book sat on my shelf for a couple of years but I'm glad to finally finish it. Even though it was written over ten years ago, Saul's observations and witty insights are still very relevant. Saul helped me better articulate my abstract thoughts and feelings on our so-called civilization, e.g., how our technology has evolved faster than our ability to use it responsibly with a long-term view; how governments rationalize dark deeds in the name of national security; and how people come to feel powerless and indifferent. I think the book is too long, somewhat repetitive, and contradicts his own argument of keeping cultural criticism inviting and easily understandable to the majority. While I don't agree with everything, there is much truth in these pages and it was worth seeing it through. Those critics who got hung up on the subtitle and tried to defend/define/debate reason missed the point. It's too much truth for many, and to seriously ponder the issues raised in this book risks an identity crisis they are not ready to endure. While it may appear to some that Saul is utterly condemning govt, business and education institutions and management, I think he does a great service by shocking folks out of their inertia to reflect on how they've been groomed, become aware of their blind spots and question their assumptions.
One of the lessons that can be derived from this book is the greatest threat to America's dream of "liberty and justice for all" is not from outside terrorists, but from within - those in positions of power or influence who are not enlightened but are enabled by the apathetic ignorant who blindly trust them to know what's best, or share in their fear-based selfish and myopic motives. I can see this book prompting people to become more aware and politically active and that can only be good for democracy. Well-off Americans need to get off of the materialistic merry-go-round and focus on what really matters instead of self-indulgence. Only when the quest for global domination and corporate profits become subordinate to the long-term well being of the planet and future generations, can humans truly be called civilized.
Rating:
Summary: The printed word speaks the strongest message
Review: Throughout our high school years, sadly when we are at our weakest analytically, we inquired as to why we had to read books like the Handmaid's Tale or the yawning Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Ralston Saul finally answers the question. His argument, that the printing press and the novel are the driving forces behind much of the postive social change and negative propaganda, reteaches the much needed lesson, that even in the age of the perceived electronic media domination, the printed word, wrapped by a hardboard or paper cover, still contains the eloquent voice and raw power to evoke the most devastating and critical analyses of our societies. With his printed word, Ralston Saul has shown us that the true definition of the freedom of speech is not the ability to say what we want, but to question those people and institutions in power. Voltaire's Bastards does just that; it questions the rhetoric and consequences of corporatism, management schools, military dogma, false capitalism, vaucuous and inconsistent ideology, contempt of public eduction, and, in the end, our own (and his own I'm sure) participation in any or all of these areas. Too bad, I am unable, now in my role as a high school teacher, to convince so few of my students of the sheer rebelliousness of reading a novel or book such as Voltaire's Bastards. Hopefully, they will when they are ready.
Rating:
Summary: Postmodernist deception
Review: Unbelievable. I am dismayed that this work is taken seriously. If you think that the idea of reason and rationality is constructed as a tool for political purposes you are frankly insane. Reason stands above any side's political purposes. This book itself is a failed attempt at reason. This book's value is as a humorous testament to what extreme lengths people can take fundamentally absurd ideas and how people can believe it is profound. This book sets out to argue against reason? Did the other reviewers miss this astounding contradiction?
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