Kindness and the good society : connections of the heart /

Hamrick (Southern Illinois Univ.) uses phenomenology as "a method to reach a concrete understanding of kindness in individual and social life." The topic is developed on three levels: (1) the descriptive, rooting kindness in its appearances in experience; (2) the interpretive, employing "a hermeneutics of suspicion"; and (3) the critical, in which kindness becomes a vehicle for critique of the social world. Kind acts, which are purposeful and voluntary, are done for a certain person, to further that person's interests and to remedy that person's needs. Hamrick's method is very revealing of the intricacies of the topic, and the book is very easy reading. Hamrick displays an encyclopedic knowledge of authors of all sorts, whose works appear in his 385-entry bibliography. This reviewer's favorites are Joseph Conrad exposing colonialism in The Heart of Darkness, Frederick Douglass writing his autobiography, and Philip Hallie describing in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed how the French village of Le Chambon protected Jews during the Nazi occupation. The connections among kindness, justice, and love; unappreciated kindnesses; and the unkindness of much of contemporary American life are well explained. For all levels of readers. J. M. Betz Villanova University