Why bother being nice?

The very different perspectives of the two authors marry happily here. Phillips’s earlier books - pithy and evocative, but often cryptic - explore various ideas not unrelated to the theme of kindness: “On Flirtation,’’ “Monogamy,’’ “On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored,’’ “The Beast in the Nursery: Curiosity and Other Appetites.’’ A lifelong practitioner of the talking cure, Phillips announces in the preface to “On Flirtation’’ his view of psychoanalysis as “of a piece with the various languages of literature - a kind of practical poetry.’’ In his earlier books, Phillips’s own prose style - a unique amalgam of the succinct and the wayward - takes on the teasing rhythm and slippery texture of the very thing he seeks to explain. The result captures but doesn’t necessarily clarify the nature of the human psyche.

“On Kindness,’’ in contrast, harnesses the beguiling energy of Phillips’s prose to Barbara Taylor’s historical perspective. Taylor is the author of “Eve and the New Jerusalem,’’ an award-winning study of 19th-century feminism, as well as a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft. “On Kindness’’ opens with a capsule history of the concept of kindness from Marcus Aurelius to Freud, touching on philosophy, literature, religion, psychology, and biology along the way. Added to this is a capsule history of the practice of kindness, with stops at the early Christian church, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Victorians, Darwin, and Max Weber. The remainder of the book explores the psychology of kindness, drawing on the attachment theory of psychoanalysts like John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott. Without slighting the complexity or ambiguity of their topic, Phillips and Taylor illuminate Western thinking about it. Seen in this light, our contemporary confusion about the issue of kindness - indeed, about the larger issue of good and evil in human nature - makes sense.