James Morrow's new satirical novel, The Philosopher's Apprentice, is reviewed in the Washington Post. The protagonist, Mason Ambrose, is a doctoral student hired as "private ethics tutor" for a rich teenager...Inevitably (?), when philosophy actually comes into it, the reader's attention wanes:
But the spell of these early chapters is broken by a turgid course in ethics, from Aristotle to Stoicism to Epicureanism and beyond, forced upon Londa, and the reader. Somewhere in Ambrose's lesson on Sartrean existential freedom, rebellious readers may long for the "Philosophers' Drinking Song" belted out by the cast of Monty Python.
Or maybe this tells us more about the reviewer than the book! In any case, the lessons are not in vain; well, not at first:
Londa, armed with the fierce sense of right and wrong instilled in her by Ambrose, founds a utopian community, Themisopolis (City of Justice), where she develops patents for advanced technologies that will aid humankind.
Greek word formation, it appears, was not part of the lessons...
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