Cunning

[Dave Monroe]

Herzog, Don.  Cunning.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2006

Want to be cunning? You might wish you were more clever, more
flexible, able to cut a few corners without getting caught, to dive
now and again into iniquity and surface clutching a prize. You might
want to roll your eyes at those slaves of duty who play by the rules.
Or you might think there's something sleazy about that stance, even if
it does seem to pay off. Does that make you a chump?

With pointedly mischievous prose, Don Herzog explores what's alluring
and what's revolting in cunning. He draws on a colorful range of
sources: tales of Odysseus; texts from Machiavelli; pamphlets from
early modern England; salesmen's newsletters; Christian apologetics;
plays; sermons; philosophical treatises; detective novels; famous,
infamous, and obscure historical cases; and more.

The book is in three parts, bookended by two murderous churchmen.
"Dilemmas" explores some canonical moments of cunning and introduces
the distinction between knaves and fools as a "time-honored but
radically deficient scheme." "Appearances" assails conventional
approaches to unmasking. Surveying ignorance and self-deception,
"Despair?" deepens the case that we ought to be cunning--and then sees
what we might say in response.

Throughout this beguiling book, Herzog refines our sense of what's
troubling in this terrain. He shows that rationality, social roles,
and morality are tangled together--and trickier than we thought.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8153.html

Introduction

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8153.pdf
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8153.html

Detienne, Marcel and Jean-Pierre Vernant.
   Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society.
   Trans. Janet Lloyd.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.

http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/MNGT5590/dv.htm