the careful use of compliments by alexander mccall smith

Revenge was sweet, but it was wrong, and she should not repay them in the coin they had used on her. One of Plato's most famous metaphors has a particular significance for Isabel: 'There were two horses in the soul, she thought, as Socrates had said in the Phaedrus - the one, unruly, governed by passions, pulling in the direction of self-indulgence the other, restrained, dutiful, governed by a sense of shame.' Torn between seeking petty satisfaction and being high-minded in her dealings with those who had tried to oust her as editor of the Review, she thinks: 'Plato's white horse and dark horse. She is therefore shocked when a philosopher she dislikes dismisses Hume with the remark that 'there's so much more to be learnt about our emotions' from magnetic resonance imaging. He was, she recalls, known as 'the good Davey'.

Isabel clearly likes Hume, both as a philosopher and as a person. Reflecting on philosophy and infancy, she muses that Immanuel Kant, 'although he would have acknowledged, of course, that each baby should be treated as an end in its own right, and not as a means to an end,' would most likely have found babies 'too irrational, too messy,' whereas her fellow Scot David Hume 'would have found babies good company because they were full of emotions, unexpressed perhaps, or made known only in the crudest manners, but emotions nonetheless.' Her investigations into a possible art fraud unearth something quite unexpected.Īt the beginning of the novel, Isabel's baby is three months old. Travelling with her fiancé, Jamie, and Charlie to the place of his loss she discovers new information about a more recent painter who was painting similar scenes. Meanwhile, she becomes interested in the life and recent death of Andrew McInnes, an artist most of whose paintings feature the island of Jura and who was lost in a boating accident there some years previously. To her distress, she learns that the editorial board of the Review of Applied Ethics, which she edits, has decided to replace her, an action that she effectively reverses although not without her usual philosophical qualms and musings. She is a little disappointed when he agrees with her, but accepts that they have made the correct decision.

Jamie proposes but Isabel says that she thinks they should wait, half-hoping that Jamie will press his case.

Deciding that she may bid for a painting at auction, she visits the showroom, where she has arranged to meet Jamie (her son's father). The Careful Use of Compliments is the fourth book in The Sunday Philosophy Club Series by Alexander McCall Smith.Īfter her son, Charlie's, birth Isabel feels that her life has hit a happy (or happier) patch.

The careful use of compliments by alexander mccall smith