Nashville Great Books Discussion Group

BIBLE: Genesis 1 (Creation) 2012

2012-02-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

The Bible is an easy book to read but a hard one to understand. One of the reasons it’s so hard is because it seems so simple. Genesis is a good example. It’s a deceptively “simple” book. The first sentence seems to start off clearly enough: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth… Ok. That makes sense. But let’s pause and consider this statement. The reason it makes sense is because we’ve trained our minds to make sense of the words. We understand the words therefore we think we understand what the words mean. Do we? In the beginning… That means the start of something; in this case the start of the universe. We understand “the beginning” when we say we’ll be there for the beginning of the movie or we’ll be back at the beginning of the next school year. But Genesis is talking about something on an entirely different level. Before the beginning of a movie we may want to have lunch or go shopping. Before next school year we may be spending the summer with Uncle Andy and Aunt Bea in Mayberry. But we’ll be SOMEWHERE before we go to the movie or go back to school. In the case of the universe though in the beginning means… what, exactly? Where was the universe BEFORE the beginning? Apparently nowhere. So where was all the stuff we see today? There was no stuff. So what was there in the beginning? Nothing. There are very few people who can visualize what “nowhere” and “nothing” really mean. Maybe a few highly-trained mathematicians can do it. Maybe a few scattered Zen Buddhist monks can do it. Ordinary people can’t. All our attempts to truly understand the words in the beginning (in the context of the universe) just leave us more confused. And those are just the first three words of the Bible. The next one is a real doozy: God. Who is God? It doesn’t say. Where did he come from? No one knows. How long has God been around? No one knows that either. Obviously God’s older than the universe if he created it. Beyond that, what more can we really say about this God we’ve just met in the opening sentence of Genesis? Actually we can say quite a bit. For one thing, we know that God created the heaven and the earth. Whatever else God may be we have to think in terms of some sort of primary active force. For instance, God’s activity can be seen in the physical universe: the heaven and the earth. Another thing we can say is that the heaven and the earth that we see around us are NOT God. The sheer size of the physical universe may astonish us but this isn’t God. God created it. If there’s a pot there must be a potter. Pots don’t create themselves. Actually potters don’t create pots either. Technically potters make pots by transforming materials that are already there. True creation means making something out of nothing. Only God can make something out of nothing. This is what happened at the beginning of the universe: God said, Let there be light… and light suddenly appeared. Why light? Why not make snowballs first, or diamonds or toads? Here’s another concept we can take away from Genesis: God works in an orderly fashion. Things don’t just happen randomly. They follow one another in what we might call a natural order. First we need light and dark. This is the basic separation of day and night. The sky comes next: God made the firmament. Then God called the dry land Earth, and filled it with lush vegetation. So by this time we have the earth and the sky below the heavens. But God isn’t finished: And God made two great lights, the sun and the moon. Then God created living creatures: great whales…and every winged fowl… until finally God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. This may not seem very orderly at first reading. How can plants be created before the sun? But we’re used to thinking in terms of time, chronologically. God’s order seems to be an order of being. First come things that don’t move: inanimate objects. Then things that are inanimate but do move: like the sun and the moon. Next come creatures that can move of their own accord: whales and birds and so forth. Finally God makes a creature who can read the Bible (even if he can’t fully understand it).

Marx on Alienated Labor: A Response

2012-02-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

You are right to point out the essential disagreement between Kant and Marx when it comes to conscience versus wealth. Kant wants to distinguish moral action from immoral action because in the normal course of things we commonly confuse the two. What makes an action moral or "right" is that it be done as if it were a natural law willed by God, and that it not be self contradictory. Thus, every moral act is evaluated in terms of its general use in society. For example, I am starving. If I don't have any money, is it alright for me to steal food from my neighbor in order to stay alive? Kant would say that you must first imagine the consequences of stealing if it were done by everyone. Clearly, if everyone stole food from their neighbor, then society would break down. Each person cannot decide on their own to steal or not to steal as if they were somehow above the law. For laws to have any meaning, they must be enforced. For a particular law to be just, it must apply to everyone, both wealthy and poor. The moral value of every action, according to Kant, depends on its universality. Thus, the moral law-- "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," is an expression of this universality. It applies to everyone at all times, not just a few people now and then. You do not steal your neighbor's food because you would not want him to steal your food. Therefore, it is immoral.

Marx, however, is talking about morality in a world without God or where natural justice is subverted. He argues that employers and workers are never equal in power and therefore normal rules of morality do not apply. In capitalism, Marx observes that the owner of the factory has all the power because he owns the means of production. He sets the wage of the employee. If the employee is unwilling to work for the wage he is offered, he may go elsewhere. But what happens if the worker is hungry, without money to buy food, and there is nowhere else to go for employment? Then he must accept the owner's wage or starve. According to Marx, it is always in the owner's best interest if wages are kept low and the worker is hungry. On the other hand, the worker desires to obtain the highest wage he can get. Therefore, the owner and the worker are always in conflict. One desires that wages be as low as possible; the other wants wages to be as high as possible. How is the conflict to be resolved?

Normally, the conflict between labor and money (or wages) is resolved in the open market where competition determines price. The wages that a worker earns should, in theory, settle at the point where demand meets supply. If many people are seeking the same job at the same time, the wage for that job will fall because the supply of labor (equivalent to the number of applicants for the job) exceeds the demand. In a free market, other openings for other jobs will exist to sustain a minimum level of wage for the worker. But what happens when the market is not balanced? For example, if the pool of labor exceeds the number of jobs. This often occurs in small towns where there is only one large employer. Of course, people can always move and find jobs in other parts of the world. But what if you move to another city and are unable to find work? Just how free is the "free" market?

It turns out that it's not free at all. Moving one's family is not a simple thing. You have to leave your home and your neighborhood, take your children out of school, leave your friends behind, and take off for a new place. It takes money to relocate. What happens when you get to the new place and there is no job? Now you are stuck in a strange place where you do not know anyone, where you have no family or friends, and no one to help you. When your money runs out, who will feed your family?

This is the plight of the worker in a market where the owner controls all the conditions of employment. If you are a coal miner, then you have to go to a coal mine to find employment. If there is only one coal mine in your area, then you must accept whatever wage is offered to you, or go elsewhere. Prior to the age of collective bargaining, the owner of the factory had all the leverage in labor relations. If there happened to be other factories in the area, then the owners of these different factories simply agreed among themselves not to raise wages. If the workers went out on strike, the owners simply went out and rounded up other poor people and brought them in to replace the striking workers.

When people are starving, they become desperate and often resort to violence. This situation leads to the breakdown of society. It is meaningless to say to a starving man that he is breaking the law when he steals food. But law always yields to nature. Where is the morality of this arrangement? You tell a starving man that he must not steal food, but the owner of a factory can ruin an entire neighborhood when he refuses to pay a higher wage. Marx analyzed this relationship of labor to management and decided that the existing arrangement was not merely unjust but despicable. When an owner builds a factory and hires people to work for him, he assumes a moral obligation to his employees that he will pay them an honest wage and they will give him an honest day's work. Marx felt that people are more than just a commodity. They are not a lump of clay to be molded into a particular job and then thrown away when cheaper clay is available elsewhere. In Marx's time, people were not as mobile. They could not travel all over the world seeking the highest wage for their labor. Even today, when a Ford or GM plant closes down and relocates to Mexico, the employees cannot simply leave their homes and neighborhoods and follow the owner to his new factory in Juarez.

So where do the unemployed go when they lose their jobs? This is a question that Kant does not ask. He is concerned about universal rules of moral behavior, not about the welfare of individuals. The problems of society cannot be solved by invoking a simple moral calculus like the golden rule. Of course, if everyone lived by the golden rule and treated others as they would like to be treated, the world would be a friendlier place. But that is not the world we live in. Marx's criticism of capitalism is based on his observation that the struggle between labor and money is dehumanizing. Under the old feudal system, the peasant worked in the fields which belonged to his master. As long as the work was done, his time was his own. With the collapse of feudalism, the worker had to find other means of employment. Lacking money, he could not buy land of his own or even a house to live in. He could find employment as a migrant worker or go to the city and work in a factory. Although the life of a migrant worker was hard, he was able to feed his family (except in times of drought), and worked only according to the season. With the rise of industrialism, the factory worker becomes a slave to the clock. He works all through the year, rain or shine, and, if necessary, all through the night. He is paid the lowest wage that the owner can give him. There is no time off for sickness and no vacations. The worker is free to quit his job if he chooses. But his options are limited. If he goes to another factory, he will find a similar arrangement.

Marx sees that this relationship between owner and worker is unequal. Unless the worker has a unique skill that is needed by the owner, he will be easily replaced. He is exploited because he has no bargaining power. But this unequal distribution of power will change. In time, the grueling conditions of their labor cause men to join together and confront the owner with a new strategy: the threat of work stoppage.

BIBLE: Genesis and Marx

2012-02-09T12:24:00.000-08:00

Karl Marx went to great lengths to explain the human condition in socio-economic terms. In his view the world contains two kinds of people: workers and capitalists. According to Marx most of the evils of the world can be explained by the constant struggle between the workers (who are desperately trying to survive) and the capitalists (who are exploiting the workers in order to make more money). But the Bible gives a different account of why things are the way they are. Genesis puts a different emphasis on the importance of things. Genesis lays out a worldview where the most important thing is to establish a proper relationship with Yahweh, the creator of the universe. Marx believes the world is a wreck and the reason can be explained in strictly material terms: the struggle between workers and capitalists. But Genesis says there’s a deeper reason that the world is so messed up. It wasn’t created that way. Humanity has “fallen” from its original state of innocence and as a result dragged down the whole world with it. This is the primeval story of Adam and Eve. And that’s one reason Marx is adamantly opposed to religion. He believes workers have been duped by this “Adam and Eve” story about some far-off god punishing some far-off parents in a mythical Garden of Eden. For Marx religion is the spontaneous activity of human fantasy, of the human heart and brain. Religion reacts independently as an alien activity of gods or devils upon the individual. In Genesis religion is not “the spontaneous activity of human fantasy” but is instead the heart of reality: the human relationship with the divine. And developing a relationship with this god (we’ll call him Yahweh) is not an “alien activity” at all but is a natural response of gratitude to a divine creator who has given life and blessed humanity with a world that is essentially good. The message of Genesis actually agrees with Marx in some ways. If the world is messed up then it’s our fault, not God’s. Marx agrees but for a different reason: for Marx there are no gods, much less one big “God” of everything. Genesis claims that there is a god. In fact, there is ONE God and he even has a name: Yahweh. Any worldview must take this fundamental fact into account. It should be noted that some Great Books writers have accepted this interpretation. Kant, for example, says that conscience is the representative within us of the divine judgment. This is a faint echo of the Garden of Eden story still residing within our hearts. Marx flatly rejects this notion: Theology explains the origin of evil by the fall of man; that is, it asserts as a historical fact what it should explain. For Marx the origin of evil is not the fall of man but the rise of the capitalist, the ability of one class of people to exploit another class of people on a large scale. For workers the primary source of the problem lies not in our relationship to the divine but in our relationship to our work. So the proper question for Marx is this one: what is the value of our work? In our reading of Genesis we get an ambiguous answer. On one hand we see God himself working. At the beginning of creation God works for six days to make the heavens and the earth. Then on the seventh day he rests. This view of work implies that work is a divinely-sanctioned activity. Genesis also states that God created man in his own image. So when we work we’re doing one of the primary tasks we were born (created) for. This interpretation is the equivalent of the modern “work ethic” and says that work is a good thing. It develops good habits, produces wealth, and keeps us out of trouble. On the other hand, work can be viewed as the punishment given to Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. This interpretation gives little value to work itself. Marx rejects both of these views. There’s no need for God in Marx’s world, which is focused on the here-and-now of material reality. The author of Genesis probes more deeply into the mystery of existence and finds that the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. For Marx this is pure gibberish. For the author of Genesis it’s the ultimate reality.

MARX: Alienated Labor, Part 2 2012

2012-02-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

True Story. A philosophy professor goes to a major department store and buys a blanket on sale. When he gets home he finds out the blanket has a hole in it. So he takes it back to the store for an exchange. The sales clerk points to the sign: All Sales Final. But this one has a hole in it, says the professor. I just want to exchange it for one that doesn’t have a whole in it. All sales are final, the clerk insists, that means no exchanges. Then let me speak to your supervisor. She’s at lunch right now. Then I’ll go straight to the top; who’s the CEO? I don’t know, the clerk admits, you’ll have to write company headquarters. Ok, where’s the headquarters located? I have no idea. This whole exchange is not unusual. But it’s more than just a case of poor customer service. The sales clerk in this incident is “alienated” from her job. (According to Merriam-Webster’s Learners Dictionary to “alienate” means to cause (someone) to feel that she or he no longer belongs in a particular group, society, etc. For example: alienated young people = young people who do not feel that they have a part in society.) This sales clerk has a case of what Marx calls “alienated labor.” The sales clerk doesn’t feel like she has an important part in society. It’s just a boring job so she can pay her bills. That’s all. It’s not an integral part of who she is or who she wants to be. In the story about Rothschild’s Fiddle Jacob took great pride in the workmanship of the coffins he made. In The Apology Socrates knew exactly who he was; he was a philosopher. In Heart of Darkness Marlow was captain of his own ship. Well, actually it was just a little steamboat on the verge of falling apart. But still, Marlow was a captain. It gave him an identity. The sales clerk from the department store doesn’t want the identity of a sales clerk. There are sales clerks and stock clerks and custodians and cashiers all over the country who don’t feel personal identification with the work that they do. They work because they have to. This is perfectly normal in a modern economy. But according to Marx it’s not normal for human beings to feel so alienated from their work. He says that alienated labor (1) alienates nature from man; and (2) alienates man from himself, from his own active function, his life activity; so it alienates him from the species. In this case the sales clerk is not working outside in the sunshine under an open sky growing her own food or making her own clothing. She’s stuck inside a store all day long working for somebody else. So first of all she’s alienated from nature. And she’s also out on the floor all day selling things she didn’t make; things she isn’t even interested in, like blankets. So secondly she’s alienated from herself, her own preferences. Finally, when the philosophy professor comes in to exchange his blanket the sales clerk is forced to follow store policy that all sales are final. That means no refunds or exchanges. This irritates the customer and alienates the sales clerk from him too. She has become alienated first from nature, then from herself, and finally from her own species, other human beings. Something is wrong with this picture. Marx diagnoses the problem like this: The animal is one with its activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It IS its activity. A cat is a cat. It doesn’t try to become a sales clerk too. But human beings are people PLUS something else. Some people become sales clerks. Others become philosophy professors. Marx puts it in these terms: Conscious life activity distinguishes man from the life activity of animals. Unlike animals most people voluntarily choose what to do with their lives. Jacob made coffins but he also played the fiddle. Socrates chose to be a philosopher. Marlow chose to be a steamboat captain. But Marx complains that this sales clerk had limited options available to her. The owners of a company can choose when and where to open or close a store. They have the money to do it. The sales clerk has to have a job right now. So she will work for low wages in a job she hates. This isn’t fair says Marx. How did the world get this way? Next reading: Genesis.

MARX: Alienated Labor (Wages) 2012

2012-01-27T09:13:00.000-08:00

Immanuel Kant was a strong believer in the power of conscience to affect the way we live. How does that belief work out in real life? Here’s a typical scenario. Suppose I don’t have any money and I’m starving. Is it ok to steal food in order to survive? Kant says conscience is an instinct and my conscience tells me that stealing is wrong. But my instinct to survive is strong too. What would Kant advise? Let’s leave Kant for a moment and turn instead to Karl Marx for clarification. Marx would ask this question: why are you poor and starving in the first place? You don’t have any money. Why not? Either (a) you don’t have a job, or (b) you do have a job but it doesn’t pay enough to put food on the table. How can this happen? Marx’s basic theme is that wages are determined by the bitter struggle between capitalist and worker. The reason people are poor and starving is that they’re losing the struggle with capitalists (the investors and business owners who control the financial means of production). Marx begins with the notion that it’s a STRUGGLE between employers and workers rather than cooperation between them. Marx believes that the normal wage is the lowest which is compatible with common humanity, that is, with a bestial existence. Marx sees the “normal wage” as the lowest wage that an individual employer will pay rather than the highest wage the worker can get from working somewhere else. He does not see employers in a struggle between themselves to hire the best workers. A third point Marx makes is that in work, all the natural, spiritual, and social differences of individual activity appear and are differently remunerated, while dead capital maintains an unvarying performance and is indifferent to real individual activity. This seems to mean that work is a human activity and is therefore subject to human conditions. Marx sees money, on the other hand, as “dead capital” that is “indifferent” to real people. Other economic writers (such as Adam Smith) view money as a morally-neutral tool that can be used for either good or for bad. It merely keeps score on supply and demand for products and services. Our recent readings may help shed further light on the relationship between people and money. In Rothschild’s Fiddle Jacob was not a hired worker. He owned his own business. No one was exploiting him. But he was still greedy. Until near the end of his life all he thought about was how to make more money. His motto was: it’s all such a waste of money… without the hate and malice folks could get a lot of profit out of each other. For Aristotle money is obviously necessary for us to lead a happy life. But we shouldn’t let money overwhelm our primary human function, which is to pursue the good. Aristotle says as for the money-maker, his life is led under some kind of constraint: clearly wealth is not the good which we are trying to find, it is only useful as a means to something else. And in The Apology Socrates is very careful to distance himself from the notion that philosophy can be used to make money. At his trial Socrates said: If you have heard from anyone that I undertake to educate men and make money doing it, that is false… And religion as well as philosophy is often used to keep money in its proper place. In the Gospel of Luke we find this warning: Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. The story Heart of Darkness is a long meditation on the evils that money can do to people and the hardships we’re willing to endure in order to make money. Sometimes we may even go against our conscience in order to get rich. This brings us back to the original question of stealing food in order to survive. Kant seems to be counseling us to follow our conscience. Stealing is wrong, period. We must find some other way to survive. Marx seems to be saying that it’s the capitalists who are actually doing the stealing: they’re stealing money from the working-class in the form of low wages for the worker and high profits for the owner. Conscience is a just ploy to maintain the economic status quo. The subject of money is definitely a subject to which the Great Books speak.

KANT: Conscience 2012

2012-01-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Toward the end of Heart of Darkness Marlow overhears Kurtz saying to himself: I am lying here in the dark waiting for death. Then just before Kurtz dies Marlow hears him say the horror! The horror! What’s the meaning of those final words? Joseph Conrad deliberately left the meaning open to different interpretations. Conrad wrote fiction and part of the power of fiction is to leave stories purposefully vague. If we’re looking for beauty then this kind of writing can open the way to deeper levels of meaning. Philosophy is different. If we’re pursuing truth we want precision. A philosopher needs to be precise in showing us the truth he wants to reveal. Kant is a very precise writer. For instance, in this selection Kant defines conscience in very specific terms: Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with moral laws. That’s a clear definition but not very helpful in understanding how it works and how we can apply it to our own lives. So he goes on to point out in more detail that conscience is not a mere faculty, but an instinct; and its judgment is not logical but judicial. This is a short sentence but it’s hard to really grasp its meaning. For starters, what is a “faculty” anyway? Webster’s dictionary says in general, the faculties may be called the powers or capacities of the mind… Is Kant saying that our conscience isn’t just something we make up in our heads? Right and wrong isn’t just in our minds. Kant calls our conscience an “instinct” to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. Animals have instincts to help them survive. For example, birds fly south in the winter to get away from the cold. Many animals hibernate during the cold months. They don’t seem to think things through and then suddenly say: “oh it’s time for me to get ready for winter.” No. They just do it by instinct. Kant says our judgment is not logical but judicial. What does that mean? If we were entirely logical creatures we wouldn’t need a conscience. Our logical brains would tell us when something was wrong. It would be kind of like checking our car to see if the oil was low. Is it above this line? Yes, no problem. Not above the line? Then it’s low. When it comes to ethical behavior a logical mind would ask: did you do something wrong? Answer: Yes/Verdict: Guilty. Answer: No/Verdict: Not guilty. That would be the simple logical judgment. But conscience goes farther than that. The logical mind can tell us if we did something wrong but it cannot enforce its decision. Once logic forms a judgment it has completed its work. However, a judicial judgment has the power to determine guilt PLUS the power to enforce the judgment it makes. Kant puts it this way: Thus his judgment has force of law and is a sentence. The judge must either condemn or acquit; not merely form a judgment. This is apparently what happened to Kurtz at the end of his life. Kant believes that we find a judge within us who either condemns or acquits. It is impossible to blind his judgment. Kurtz appeared before the judge of his conscience and it condemned him. Marlow put it like this: (Kurtz) had summed up; he had judged, “The horror!” But in Rothschild’s Fiddle we have a case where Jacob appeared before his conscience and was acquitted: Jacob lay down all day, sick at heart. When the priest heard his confession that evening and asked whether he remembered committing any particular sin he exerted his failing memory and once more recalled Martha’s unhappy face and the desperate yell of the Jew bitten by a dog. “Give my fiddle to Rothschild,” he said… “Very well,” the priest answered. Later on Freud will contradict Kant that we all have a binding moral law of personal conscience. Freud says: “conscience” is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other extraneous individuals. Freud thinks conscience comes from social pressure on our egos from the outside. Kant disagrees and says we have an instinct to distinguish right from wrong because it is the moral law, established as the holy and inviolable law of humanity. For Kant this moral law is planted in our hearts and is true for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

CONRAD: Heart of Darkness, 3 (2012)

2012-01-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

There’s somewhat of a letdown when Marlow and the reader finally encounter Kurtz in part three of the story. All that’s left of Kurtz by now is a shell of a man. He’s sick and is, in fact, dying. He’s been out in the wilderness for too long; both his body and his mind have suffered from the strain. Still, Kurtz is a remarkable man. So is Marlow in his own kind of way. Marlow’s commentary on life and death are much more instructive to readers than Kurtz’s strange pronouncements. Contemplating Kurtz’s fate here’s how Marlow sums up his own destiny: My destiny! Droll thing life is; that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself; that comes too late; a crop of unextinguishable regrets. This is not encouraging. Socrates encourages us to know ourselves, to examine our lives and see what we find. The way Socrates tells it we find encouragement through philosophical inquiry. Marlow seems to be responding: that’s bunk. Go ahead, examine yourself. You will not like what you find. That’s why this little story is called “heart of darkness” because what we will come to know is a very unpleasant truth; not only about ourselves but about all human beings. And that’s if we’re lucky. That’s the MOST we can hope for. Kurtz was one of the lucky ones and came to see himself as he really was and the world as it really is: dark and forbidding. The reality is that the end-game is the same for all of us. We all face death, no matter if it’s the desolation of Kurtz’s station or in a fancy home back in the “civilized” world. Death calls on all alike. This world is a hard place to find your footing and death is no different. Marlow explains: I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. Death is our adversary and we will lose that fight. Like Kurtz, we will have our shot at life. Kurtz had big plans and he was a remarkably gifted and talented man. But he failed. How much more will ordinary people fail? What Marlow admires about Kurtz is that Kurtz took a stand. He had something to say and he said it. That’s something. Marlow wonders what he might have to say when he faces death himself and here’s what he found: I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. Great books aren’t always uplifting and death is a theme that can’t be ignored. But Conrad’s conclusion is an unusually pessimistic outlook in the western tradition. Our previous reading may provide a clue why. The Gospel of Luke proclaims that Jesus came to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death... When Marlow is taking Kurtz back downstream to the station he overhears Kurtz saying to himself: I am lying here in the dark waiting for death. The Gospel message provides a way out of this dead-end worldview and has given hope to millions of followers of Jesus who also waited for death. In the reading before Luke, Socrates voluntarily chooses death over exile as his punishment. The reading from Aristotle On Happiness warns us not to call any man happy until after he’s already died. We don’t know what kind of ending anyone will ultimately come to. Kurtz was a man of many talents and had a bright future ahead of him. But his end came on a steamboat in a muddy river in the middle of nowhere and his dying words were The horror! The horror! Perhaps at the very end he could see his whole life in perspective. It doesn’t have to be that way. In Rothschild’s Fiddle the anti-Semitic Jacob also knows he’s dying and sees how mean-spirited he was during his lifetime. But he tries to make amends as best he can by giving his beloved violin to the Jew they called Rothschild. Another excellent story on this theme is Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych. Conrad will not appeal to every reader. But like Kurtz, Conrad was a remarkable writer.

CONRAD: Heart of Darkness, 2 (2012)

2012-01-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

In the second part of Heart of Darkness we begin the journey down river. The mysterious Kurtz waits deep in the interior. As Marlowe and the reader leave the station behind we also leave civilization behind. Giant trees and lush vegetation and the unending river rule this part of the world. On the river you’re more likely to meet a hippopotamus than a human being. Books are out of place here. Philosophy may also be out of place here. It can be enlightening when Socrates stands in the marketplace of bustling Athens and proclaims that the unexamined life is not worth living. But out here among the giant trees and sluggish river there’s not a philosopher to be found. Who would Socrates debate with? A hippopotamus? On the other hand, philosophy may be the only thing that can preserve sanity in the backwaters of this primeval environment. Civilized behavior is an acquired habit, not a natural inclination. What seems perfectly natural out in the bush isn’t normal in civilized society; what’s normal in the city would seem ridiculous out in the bush. Aristotle says human beings are social creatures. We naturally gravitate toward towns and cities because that’s where other people are. But Kurtz is different from most people. Marlowe has already shown that Kurtz is a highly civilized man. No doubt Kurtz was familiar with Socrates and Aristotle. He had been hand-picked by the elite of Europe for this important company station. Kurtz’s future with the company was bright. But something has gone wrong and thrown all these fine plans off course. A large shipment of ivory arrived for the company in good order, but no Kurtz. What happened? Kurtz had apparently intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory. This is a critical part of Marlowe’s story because: I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home perhaps; setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station. Why did Kurtz turn back? Marlowe wants us to mentally see the image of a dugout canoe, four paddling “savages” and Kurtz. It’s almost as if Kurtz made a momentous decision on the long journey up the river with the ivory. He wasn’t just heading back to his station down the river. It wasn’t like he had forgotten something and was going back to pick it up. No. He was literally turning his back on civilization. Why? Why would anyone in his right mind give up all the social advantages to voluntarily live in a place so desolate and empty? Marlowe explains: You can't understand. How could you? With solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you… stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman… How could we possibly understand the motivations of a man like Kurtz? We live safe and sound in a society with grocery stores when we need food and police when we need help. We learn to adapt. In society we learn civil behavior from family, friends and neighbors. What would happen if there were no family, no friends no neighbors to help us? What if we were suddenly thrown out on our own, far away from help? Kurtz had to learn to adapt on his own by the way of silence; utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong; too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. Marlowe seems to be asking: can you hear the power of darkness? Utter silence; no warning voice of a kind neighbor. Can you see it? How could you with solid pavement under your feet? Kurtz heard and saw the darkness.

CONRAD: Heart of Darkness, 1 (2012)

2011-12-31T11:46:00.000-08:00

Aristotle wrote a very convincing and persuasive philosophical treatise on happiness. It’s very common-sense and down to earth. But it’s still philosophy. Here’s a sample: What is the aim of politics? Both the common man and the cultivated man call it happiness. They understand happiness to be the same thing as “living well” and “doing well.” But when it comes to defining what happiness is, they disagree, and the answer given by ordinary people is different from the answer given by philosophers. As long as we’re just reading about happiness this theory sounds good; but how well does philosophy hold up in real life? This is a question Joseph Conrad pondered in his masterpiece Heart of Darkness. A sailor named Marlowe goes out looking not so much for happiness but for… what? Adventure? Money? The meaning of life? Marlowe’s not even sure himself. Aristotle says we’re all looking for happiness, we just don’t agree what it is. But in the real world the search for happiness becomes translated (or diluted) into the much humbler task of just trying to earn a living. Most people are just trying to find a job that will pay the bills. The characters in this story are not philosophers; they’re sailors, businessmen, clerks, managers. Are they “living well” or “doing well” as Aristotle put it? Early in the story Marlowe meets a minor character who embodies this search for happiness Aristotle is speaking of. Here are Marlowe’s words: I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this station… I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years… Thus this man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in apple-pie order. This man wasn’t a philosopher. He was an accountant. And he was very good at what he did. Everything around him was in chaos and falling to pieces. But his books “were in apple-pie order.” Aristotle would certainly have appreciated a man who was good at his job. But Conrad is asking a more probing question: so what? What good are starched shirts and good bookkeeping when the whole operation is in reality a futile flailing about in the darkness? Philosophers tell us that thinking is good and Socrates explicitly says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But sailors like Conrad may have a different philosophy: I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you -- smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.' This is not the noble voice of philosophy calling us. This is an ominous voice luring us into a possible trap or into a dark world from whence we’ll never return. Socrates may have seen the sunny highlands of philosophy but Conrad saw a heart of darkness. It might be best not to go too deeply into that jungle. But Conrad is like Socrates in this way: he wants us to think about what we’re doing before we get in over our heads. Conrad can be as blunt as a steamboat stuck on a river bottom. … I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see, you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? This is not philosophy but the story of a remarkable man named Kurtz. Kurtz has gone far up the dark river to… do what? There are rumors back at the station that something has gone terribly wrong. Kurtz is not “doing well.” He may have gone too far into the darkness. Kurtz may have become darkness. This story sheds light on Luke’s gospel message of Jesus: To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide (their) feet into the way of peace. Luke is asking the same question: do you see the man? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?

BIBLE: The Gospel of Luke

2011-12-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

In the Great Books tradition there are many different roads to happiness. They just don’t all agree on the path to achieve it. Homer stands at the beginning of the tradition and in The Iliad the ideal of happiness is to attain glory in battle and win the spoils of victory. We read in the book of Exodus that the way to happiness isn’t through war; instead it is to follow the law of God as given to Moses. Socrates believed that discussing philosophy was the way to happiness. Aristotle laid out a whole common-sense program of happiness in his work on Ethics. In Jonathan Swift’s story Gulliver finds happiness by living a rational life. The Wife of Bath thinks happiness can be found by being in complete control of her marriage. In a short story by Gogol it only takes a new coat for Akaky to find happiness. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes believes the pursuit of happiness is futile; the best we can hope for is to enjoy the work that we’re given to do in this world. Flaubert tells a story about a woman finding her happiness in a bird. And Nietzsche thinks we can find happiness by forging new values the way Zarathustra did. But The Gospel of Luke lays out an entirely different road to happiness. Let’s look at a couple of our most recent readings to see how this Gospel gives a different definition of happiness. Our latest reading was Plato’s Apology and at his trial Socrates said this: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. This wasn’t much different from the trial of Jesus. Both Jesus and Socrates refused to compromise their principles, even under penalty of death. In another book written by Luke (Acts of the Apostles) we see a similar response given by the followers of Jesus: Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. It would be interesting to listen in on a conversation between Socrates and Jesus. Socrates would start off with a question meant to enhance the search for philosophical truth; Jesus would answer with a parable aiming at spiritual enlightenment. But a more interesting project would be to take the life of Jesus and filter it through Aristotle’s great work on happiness. This would give us a pretty good notion not only about the life of Jesus but also about the limits of philosophy. For instance, Aristotle asks What is the aim of politics? Both the common man and the cultivated man call it happiness. They understand happiness to be the same thing as “living well” and “doing well.” But when it comes to defining what happiness is, they disagree, and the answer given by ordinary people is different from the answer given by philosophers. Was Jesus one of the common men or a cultivated one? Even in a casual reading of the Gospel the answer would have to be: both. In Luke’s little biography did Jesus “live well” and “do well?” Jesus certainly did a lot of good things. He healed people. He taught them. But did he live well by Aristotle’s standards? Jesus wasn’t rich; he never married or had children; he died an excruciating death at a relatively young age. How can anyone honestly say that this man was happy? And yet, that’s exactly what Luke is telling us. The goal of happiness according to Aristotle is to achieve excellence in human terms: to be healthy, enjoy a certain amount of wealth, to have a good family and plenty of friends, to win respect and admiration from your peers. These are the things people should strive for according to Aristotle. Jesus had a different set of goals in mind. They can be summarized in what we know today as “The Lord’s Prayer” Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. These goals might intrigue Socrates; they certainly are not what Aristotle calls happiness. Luke saw things differently. For Luke the life of Jesus was the key to happiness both in this life and the next.

PLATO: The Apology 2011

2011-12-17T12:16:00.000-08:00

Almost every student of Western philosophy begins his studies by reading Plato’s Apology. There are good reasons for this. It’s easy to read and gives the impression that it’s easy to understand. A wise man has been unjustly accused by a jealous mob. He’s put on trial and unjustly condemned by an ignorant mob. Then he’s offered exile instead of capital punishment by a fickle mob. But to the mob’s surprise this wise man refuses exile and forces them to follow through with their decision. This is high drama. But The Apology is also inspiring. Socrates chose a noble death instead of a safe exile. He defends himself in a way that reflects well on the study of philosophy. In fact, it makes the reader want to learn more about this subject we call “the love of wisdom.” This is all exactly as Plato intended. We have to remember that this is a STORY about Socrates. It’s not a transcript of the trial. We get a view of heroic philosophy at its best and philosophy’s critics at their worst. Here’s a test: read The Apology and then put it aside. Read it again a year later. This time you’re likely to get a different reading than you did the first time. That’s the kind of story this is; many-sided, complex, and worth re-reading for a whole lifetime. That’s why it’s a Great Book. One interpretation is that Socrates is indeed a hero just as Plato portrayed him. And Socrates certainly does appear heroic at first reading. But other interpretations are possible. After years of experience a reader who first encounters Socrates in college may later read it with a different perspective. A mature reader may pause to ask: what’s really going on here? There’s more at stake in this trial than the innocence or guilt of one man. A whole society is on trial. In fact, WE are on trial. The real question put to the jury is this: what are your values? This man is undermining your way of life. He teaches a philosophy that can (and does) corrupt some people, especially young people. What are you going to do about it? Socrates starts his defense by saying: These men, I claim, have said little or nothing true. But from me Gentlemen you will hear the whole truth… Here’s a delicate subject: truth. In another famous trial the judge asked the accused man: what is truth? Now we’re on to something. What is truth? What’s at stake in this trial is not merely establishing the guilt or innocence of Socrates. The important question is: what is truth? Or to put the same question in modern terms: is there such a thing as “truth?” The way we answer that question is literally a matter of life and death. At his trial Socrates asks this question: Callias, if your two sons were colts or calves we could get an overseer for them and hire him and his business would be to make them excellent in their appropriate virtue. He would be either a horse-trainer (for the colts) or a farmer (for the calves). But as it is, since the two of your sons are men, whom do you intend to get as an overseer? Who has knowledge of that virtue which belongs to a man and a citizen? In our previous reading On Happiness Aristotle’s whole philosophy is built on the assumption that we want what is good. For Aristotle that means all lifestyle choices are not the same; some are better than others. Put another way, some are “true” and others “false” in this sense: they’re true if they are an activity of the soul in conformity with virtue. Socrates taught Plato. Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle teaches us. There’s a long tradition in Western literature of searching for the truth. That search begins with The Apology and Socrates is the model Western philosopher. In the Great Books series this reading is wedged in between Aristotle’s On Happiness and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Aristotle says happiness is striving to achieve excellence. Socrates says we should pursue truth. In Heart of Darkness a man named Kurtz tries to do both: achieve excellence and also find the truth. He’s spectacularly successful in business and he does find out the truth, but it doesn’t enlighten him; it destroys his mind. Socrates and his critics were both right: the stakes in philosophy are high. It’s not a game.

ARISTOTLE: On Happiness 2011

2011-12-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

Any discussion of society should begin with simpler components: the people who make it up. Who are these people? What do they want? Aristotle can help us but he starts in a sideways fashion: Every art or applied science and every systematic investigation, and similarly every action and choice, seem to aim at some good… Before we begin we need to take a step back and look at the methods we’re going to use to guide our research. The important point for Aristotle is that everything we do will “aim at some good.” We don’t just wander around aimlessly. We have certain things we want to accomplish. So what is this “good” we all aim for? Since the title of this selection is “On Happiness” we’ve already given away the answer: everyone wants to be happy. That’s really what we’re all after. But what exactly is this goal we call “happiness?” Is it the same for everyone? Again Aristotle can help us. But again we have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Man is a social creature. Therefore happiness must be connected in some way with society. And societies are governed by politics. Therefore (as Aristotle sees it) Politics determines which sciences ought to exist in society, what kind of sciences each group of citizens must learn, and what degree of proficiency each must attain… Thus it follows that the end of politics is the good for man. This sounds like Aristotle is recommending that government should decide what we should learn, who should learn it and which people should go on for graduate degrees. That idea will never fly in America. But maybe Aristotle is merely suggesting that we need to think about the good of the whole community. If everyone goes off doing their own thing then what kind of community will we have left? The whole point of politics is to advance our best interests. Our best interests are served when the whole community thrives. Stated in simple terms, Aristotle asks: What is the aim of politics? His answer: Both the common man and the cultivated man call it happiness. Well, ok. So what is “happiness” in political terms? Aristotle explains that they understand happiness to be the same thing as “living well” and “doing well.” But when it comes to defining what happiness is, they disagree, and the answer given by ordinary people is different from the answer given by philosophers. We all agree that we want to be happy. The disagreement comes when we go about trying to describe what it is that makes us happy. We think what makes us happy should make other people happy too. Not so, says Aristotle. He says there are basically three kinds of lifestyles: (1) a life of enjoyment, (2) the political life, (3) the contemplative life. What makes #1 happy won’t make #2 happy; what makes #3 happy won’t make #1 happy, and so on. That’s because the goal of happiness is different in each of these cases. It should be noted that these are not political parties. They’re just three different approaches to life. We’ll find all three lifestyles mixed in with Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. An interesting side-note is Aristotle’s observation that a young man is not equipped to be a student of politics… This will not be a popular idea with college students. How can Aristotle say such a thing? For Aristotle it’s not prejudice against college students, it’s just common sense. A college student has no experience in the actions which life demands of him, and these actions form the basis and subject matter of the discussion. In other words, the whole point of politics is to answer questions like how do I pay my mortgage? How can I get the best education for my children? Should we get braces to straighten little Sally’s teeth? Is my Senator doing a good job? College students simply don’t have the real-life experience to adequately answer these questions. And these are the kinds of things that ultimately lead to happiness. Aristotle admits happiness is a tough topic. He says Precision cannot be expected in the treatment of all subjects… Politics is not mathematics. It’s harder. There’s not a clear, correct answer. Happiness is kind of like that. Everyone’s not the same but Aristotle has laid out a firm foundation for us to pursue happiness in a logical way.

GREAT BOOKS PREVIEW: Adult First Series, Volume One (Society)

2011-12-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

Does a fish know it’s wet? How could it know? In order to know if it’s wet it would have to also know what “not-wet” (or dry) is. The fish has never known anything but water. The same goes for human beings. We live in society. We’ve never known anything else. Even hermits once had family and friends. So how can we properly evaluate what it would be like to live outside of society? We’d be like a fish trying to determine what it would be like to live on dry land. The Great Books series begins with the simple theme that human beings are social creatures. All Great Books authors agree on that point. But it comes as no surprise that there’s very little else they agree on. They all have a unique perspective about what it means to be a social creature. That’s why they’re in the Great Books set. The first volume contains nine different readings with nine different opinions about society. Here they are, in order: CHEKHOV views society as an economic system that affects all our human relationships. Why are people generally such a nuisance to each other? It’s such a terrible waste of money. Without the hate and malice folks could get a lot of profit out of each other. ARISTOTLE believes human society is the best arrangement for living the good life. The end of politics (society) is the good for man... good seems to be self-sufficient. However, we define self-sufficient not by reference to the “self” alone. We do not mean a man who lives his life in isolation, but a man who also lives with parents, children, a wife, and friends and fellow citizens generally, since man is by nature a social and political being. PLATO (SOCRATES) uses society to explore human wisdom. Perhaps someone may say, “Would it not be possible for you to live in exile, Socrates, if you were silent and kept quiet?”… To do so would be to disobey God… I examine myself and others, the unexamined life is not worth living. CONRAD shows what life would be like if we didn’t live in civilized societies. And (England) also, said Marlow suddenly, has been one of the dark places of the earth… I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago… We live in the flicker… but darkness was here yesterday… Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages; precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in the wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay. Cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death… they must have been dying like flies here… They were men enough to face the darkness. KANT says society helps develop our conscience. Vices bring their own punishments. MARX tries to prove that society is man-made from natural materials and therefore we have complete control over the kind of society we build. The object of labor is the objectification of man’s species-life; for he no longer reproduces himself merely intellectually, as in consciousness, but actively and in a real sense, and he sees his own reflection in a world which he has constructed. GENESIS traces society back to its origins beginning with one family in Adam and Eve and developing further into distinct tribes and nations. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. FREUD examines the impact of civilized society on human psychology. The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization… The development of civilization imposes restrictions on it and justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions… The urge for freedom, therefore, is directed against particular forms and demands of civilization or against civilization altogether. ROUSSEAU thinks society is the problem, not the solution. Man was/is born free and everywhere is in chains. Which one is right? Who knows? That’s why we have Great Books discussions; we have to decide for ourselves.

CHEKHOV: Rothschild’s Fiddle 2011

2011-11-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

The Great Books cover great and enduring ideas: life and death, war and peace, God, government, good and evil. It doesn’t seem like they would cover common and ordinary topics; these would be unworthy subjects for great and noble literature. Not so. The Great Books have a great deal to say about common life: relationships between husbands and wives or friends and neighbors. The Great Books also talk about earning a living, how to spend our leisure time, what hobbies or activities would be useful, why we should have good health care. War and peace are truly great and worthy topics. But most of us don’t command armies and countries. We run small businesses or individual households and get up and go to work every morning. The first selection in the Adult Great Books series deals with running a small business and getting up to go to work every morning. Rothschild’s Fiddle is a good story to begin our readings in the Great Books tradition. Why? In the book of Genesis we read that Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. This is a basic foundation of western society. But in Rothschild’s Fiddle we learn that a coffin-maker named Jacob has not cleaved unto his wife: he had never shown her any affection all his life. Never had he been kind to her; never had thought of buying her a kerchief or brining her sweetmeats from a wedding. All he had done was yell at her and blame her for his losses… Jacob’s relationship to his wife Martha does not follow the pattern established in Genesis for the proper relationship between husbands and wives. And Jacob hasn’t failed only in his relationship to his wife. He’s also mean-spirited to his neighbors, particularly a Jewish musician named Rothschild. Jacob does do some good things. He makes good coffins. But in the next reading selection (On Happiness) Aristotle says good seems to be self-sufficient. However, we define something as self-sufficient not by reference to the “self” alone. We do not mean a man who lives his life in isolation, but a man who also lives with parents, children, a wife, and friends and fellow citizens generally, since man is by nature a social and political being. Jacob doesn’t depend on other people to support him in his business. He makes his own coffins and sells them. But he does depend on other people for social relationships. This is what makes him human. Aristotle points out that when Jacob is being mean-spirited to his wife he’s destroying his own household; when he’s being mean-spirited to Rothschild he’s destroying his community. It’s not that Jacob isn’t a productive worker. He is. He makes good coffins and sells them at an affordable price. But Jacob doesn’t seem to be able to draw a line where his work life ends and his personal life begins. An example from the story: As he said good-bye to Martha for the last time he touched the coffin. “Good workmanship, that,” he thought. His wife has just died and Jacob is admiring the quality of the coffin he made for her. Another Great Books author, Karl Marx, calls this sort of outlook “alienated labor.” That’s when our work isn’t a part of who we really are. As Marx explains: What constitutes the alienation of work? The work is EXTERNAL to the worker, it is not part of his nature; he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself… It is not the satisfaction of a need but only a means for satisfying other needs. Its alien character is clearly shown by the fact that as soon as there is no physical or other compulsion it is avoided like the plague. Some Great Books authors disagree and say that work is an important component of what makes us human. We need to develop our skills and talents in order to improve our human capacities. But Marx’s point is that Jacob was a coffin maker only because he had to earn a living. It’s not something he chose to do because he enjoyed doing it. And that may have been what made him so mean-spirited. God, government, good and evil are a few of the topics that make up the Great Books. But this story also includes simple pleasures: music and food and weddings and dogs. Chekhov shows that Great Books are for ordinary readers.

DELMORE SCHWARTZ: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 2011

2011-11-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Let’s deal with a very basic question first. Does this story belong in an anthology with writers like Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Locke and Sophocles? The answer may depend on the taste of the reader answering the question. This set of readings also includes more modern writers like John Dewey, Mary Lavin, and Virginia Woolf. Readers who dislike modern literature will definitely prefer Plato and Sophocles over John Dewey and Virginia Woolf. But readers who tend to like modern literature will be drawn into this story immediately: I think it is the year 1909… It is Sunday afternoon, June 12th, 1909… It is obviously Sunday. We’re plunged into the middle of a specific time and a specific place. This would be a satisfactory start for a story even according to an ancient classic dramatist like Sophocles. But in this story we’re also plunged right into the middle of a film. Actually the narrator is telling us a STORY about watching a film about his parents. No, he’s actually telling us a story that he’s DREAMING about watching a film about his parents. So we’re twice-removed from the subject itself: the narrator’s parents. Or, is the subject of this story really the narrator himself? This kind of wavering back and forth would make Sophocles frown. The theme about his parents is fine. Sophocles himself once wrote a play called Oedipus the King about parents and children and a dysfunctional family. But the film part would probably make Sophocles uneasy. He would wonder: where does the film end and reality begin? It’s precisely what we should ask ourselves when we read modern fiction. In a nutshell this is the question for modern literature and film: where’s the boundary between the writer’s consciousness and the real world? The narrator in this story says I am anonymous, and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies, it is, as they say, a drug. But the narrator has certainly NOT forgotten himself. In a certain sense this story is ONLY about the narrator. The scenes with the mother and father courting are merely reflections of the writer’s own consciousness. This is the way he perceives the characters. But we have no way of knowing if this is the way the characters perceive themselves. When we see Oedipus on stage we feel as if we understand what Oedipus himself is thinking. We don’t have a third party or narrator interpreting Oedipus for us. Oedipus speaks for himself. But in this story it’s the storyteller describing his family: My father thinks of my mother, of how nice it will be to introduce her to his family. But he is not yet sure that he wants to marry her…. My grandfather is worried; he is afraid that my father will not make a good husband for his oldest daughter… My mother feels satisfied by the interest which she has awakened; she is showing my father how intelligent she is, and how interesting. We want to take him at his word. It’s his family, he should know. And yet we have to remember that he’s only telling us about a dream about watching a film about his family. It might not be true at all. It might not be what he really thinks at all. It’s only a film. It’s only a dream. Or it might be the way things really are. Take your pick. This is the kind of plot that would drive Sophocles crazy. He was a Greek: say what you mean so the audience can understand you. Be a reliable storyteller. In this story the narrator may not be a very reliable storyteller. When he’s not reciting “factual” anecdotes he says things like this: I stare at the terrible sun which breaks up the sight, and the fatal, merciless, passionless ocean, I forget my parents. I stare fascinated and finally, shocked by the indifference of my father and mother, I burst out weeping once more. The old lady next to me pats me on the shoulder and says “There, there, all of this is only a movie, young man, only a movie.” For the old lady and the young man it may be a movie but for the parents it was reality. And for the reader it’s just a story. This is clever literature. But is it great literature? Time will tell. The classics last; cleverness isn’t enough. Sophocles may ask modern writers the same thing this narrator asked about his parents: What are they doing? Don’t they know what they’re doing?

VIRIGINA WOOLF: A Room of One’s Own 2011

2011-11-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

After reading Virginia Woolf’s essay about A Room of One’s Own it’s tempting to think of the battle of the sexes as a relatively modern phenomenon. It is not. Even a casual glance at Great Books readings tells us that the battle of the sexes began early on. In fact, it began at the very beginning with Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. The earliest reading in the Great Books other than the Bible is Homer’s Iliad. It’s a war story but what is the conflict really about? A woman. The Trojans had taken Helen and the Greeks came to take her back. The poem begins with a quarrel between the commanding general, Agamemnon, and the best fighter, Achilles. What were they arguing about? A woman. Shakespeare’s plays are full of the interplay between masculine and feminine powers: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Othello and Desdemona, Romeo and Juliet, the list goes on and on. And one of the most engaging Great Books readings has to be the Wife of Bath’s Tale. She summarizes in great detail the primary interest of most human beings: trying to figure out the opposite sex. So with this background in mind Virginia Woolf is really just carrying on the latest installment of a long conversation in Western literature about relationships between men and women. She asks Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? Back in those days Woolf didn’t have the Internet so she had to go to the library. This seems logical: …If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth? This is a good question. Where can we find the truth? In the library? That’s where Woolf starts. But she is soon overwhelmed by the sheer number of books about women. She does find out something very interesting though: Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Here’s something we might not have guessed: most of the books written about women are written by men. At least it seemed that way to Woolf. Of course, until recently it would be just as true to say that most of the books written are written by men; whether the subject was women or anything else. She goes on to say that …Women do not write books about men… Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women? That’s interesting too. Men write books about women but women don’t write books about men. If that’s true then Woolf may be on to something. If it’s not true then she may be reading and thinking too much. Woolf lived in an age fascinated by Freudian theory and this may have influenced her whole outlook on life, for better or for worse. She writes that it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psychoanalysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Woolf does a simple psychoanalysis of herself and it turns out that deep inside she’s angry. Is there such a thing as “submerged truth” that only comes to the top in idleness and dreams? Maybe; maybe not. But here’s a more practical question: are we better off going to work every day and earning a living like most people, or would we be better off with a fixed income so we would have time to ponder the great questions of life? Woolf says that Society gives me chicken and coffee, bed and lodging, in return for a certain number of pieces of paper… Money buys us the things we need to survive. How do we get money? To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave… was not something Woolf wanted. Do any of us? Who wants to work like a slave at a job they don’t enjoy? In the end she notes that …it is remarkable, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine forever. This was a liberating experience for her, not just materially but psychologically. She could have a room of her own.

TOCQUEVILLE: Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare 2011

2011-10-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

America 2011. This morning a group called “Occupy Wall Street” is protesting at the Tennessee state capitol. A couple of years ago the “Tea Party” did the same thing. Even though their protests may be aimed at different targets, the basic underlying argument is the same: fairness. Americans think things should be fair and both these groups want change, and they want it now. Of all the Great Books reading selections Alexis de Tocqueville probably has the most to say directly about what’s going on in America today. Here’s his short summary of Americans in this selection: They love change, but they dread revolutions. Two questions: first, what does Tocqueville mean by that? And second, is it true? First point: they love change but not revolutions. What Tocqueville means is that Americans are forever varying, altering, and restoring secondary matters; but they carefully abstain from touching what is fundamental. Americans may protest the amount of profits corporations make or the amount of taxes the government collects; all in the name of “fairness.” And different groups have different ideas on how to go about making things fairer. But no group advocates overthrowing the democratically-elected government and replacing it with a monarchy. Why is that? Because, essentially no one in America wants a true revolution. And why is that? Why not? Because, as Tocqueville explains, …in democratic communities the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one. So what do they have to lose by a revolution? The short answer: everything they own. And almost everybody in America owns something: a car, a television set, furniture, a computer, clothes, or any other personal belongings. John Locke claims the basic purpose of government is to protect this private property of its individual citizens. In fact, Locke’s ideal of Life, Liberty and Property is practically embedded in our Constitution (“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”). Once people begin accumulating things they want to hold on to them and enjoy them in peace and safety. Business helps them acquire the things; government provides peace and safety so they can enjoy them. In Tocqueville’s view I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary attitudes than commercial ones. Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity. Business doesn’t like surprises. It likes for things to be stable and predictable. Then people can make reasonable plans on investing or expanding. Business is willing to compromise in order to insure a safe and peaceful society. For that reason Tocqueville believes democracies such as America have a natural aversion to revolutions: Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property; but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property… And this is particularly true of America: In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States; nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws of property. That’s why Tocqueville would probably say that neither “Occupy Wall Street” nor the “Tea Party” will have a deep and lasting influence on American politics. Americans will sympathize with both movements. They will support them too, but only up to a point. Remember what Tocqueville said: They love change, but they dread revolutions. He thinks most Americans don’t mind chipping around the edges to make some minor changes but they don’t want to overhaul the whole system. Too many people have too much invested to take a chance on losing it all. That was Tocqueville’s answer to our first question. Our second question was this: does what he said still hold true for 2011? We’ll see.

LOCKE: Of the Limits of Government 2011

2011-10-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

One of the problems every generation has to face is the basic question: how can we all live together in peace? Different people have different ideas on the best way to go about doing this. So governments are formed to help everyone agree on the basic ground rules society will live by. First this fundamental question must be answered: what is the purpose of government? Again different people will give different answers. The United States Constitution lists life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as legitimate government goals. Locke’s answer is this: the great end of men's entering into society, being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety… The rest is just a matter of filling in the details so people can enjoy in peace and quiet all those things they’ve worked to acquire. Governments are formed to protect us and our property. But Locke poses an interesting question. Who protects us from the government? For example, can the government force me to sell my land in order to build a new football stadium? Interesting question. From Locke’s view we have two competing claims: my claim to enjoy my property versus the claims of my neighbors to enjoy football games at a new stadium. Someone has to decide these things. Who decides? Maybe Locke can help us here. He says (The legislative branch) is not only the supreme power of the common-wealth, but sacred and unalterable… In other words, we will elect people to make laws for us. They are our legislators. But that doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want: First, it is not, nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people: nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another... This makes it seem clear: the legislature can’t take away my land. But Locke goes on to say: Their (legislator’s) power, in the utmost bounds of it, is limited to the public good of the society. This is also clear: a new football field is for the public good of society. Therefore, I’ve got to sell my land to the football team. They’re not “taking” my land; they’re just buying it from me to build a new football field. I can go buy some land somewhere else. Is this fair? Locke is uncomfortable with a government where everything is decided on the spur of the moment. We need some rules that everyone agrees to follow. Locke puts these limits on the legislators: They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favorite at court, and the country man at plough. The laws should be the same for everyone and everywhere; rich or poor, city or country, the same laws apply equally. This is for our own good. Locke elaborates on this need for established laws: the legislative, or supreme authority, cannot assume to its self a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges… The game won’t be fair until everyone knows the rules of the game. And we have to agree what those rules are before the game starts. We can make a law, for example, that says society can’t force someone to sell their property. What Locke says we should not do is then go back and change it to say: society can’t force someone to sell their property EXCEPT to build a new football field. Why does he feel so strongly about changing the rules? Because it’s a slippery slope. If they can take my property for a football field, they can take your property for a shoe store, or any other reason for that matter. Locke’s conclusion is this: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property…nobody hath a right to take their substance or any part of it from them, without their own consent: without this they have no property at all… No football field.

KAFKA: A Hunger Artist 2011

2011-10-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

This story reminds me of the movie Elephant Man, only backward. In the movie we have a deformed man who very much wants to be like everyone else and become a part of the human family. He desperately wants to be normal. But he can’t because his deformity is so severe that he’s not even considered human by people who see him. In Kafka’s story we get the exact opposite: a seemingly normal man who very much wants to be different and apart from the rest of the human race. Kafka’s Hunger Artist voluntarily chooses to set himself apart from humanity. In that way they’re very different from one another. But in this way they’re both very much alike: they both end up working in freak shows in traveling carnivals. And they’re also both aware of their intense aloneness in the world. There’s no one else like either one of them. The Elephant Man had no choice because he was born that way; the Hunger Artist chose his own isolation. Or did he? This story leaves many lingering questions. Do people become artists mainly because they’re different from other people? Or do they become artists because they’re so deeply human that most of us simply can’t understand the creative depths they’re drawing from? Another question: are artists generally misunderstood? That seems to be the explanation in modern theory. For instance, take the song about Vincent Van Gogh (Starry, Starry Night). The lyrics tell us that “they” (that would be us) could not love you, but still your love was true. And when no hope was left in sight on that starry, starry night, you took your life, as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you. In other words, Vincent was too good for this world. How many times have we heard this line of thought whenever artists, writers or musicians die from drug overdose or alcoholism? They were too good for this world. Or, they weren’t meant long for this world. The line goes that artists are generally misunderstood by the masses. The story about the Hunger Artist is proof that the masses don’t appreciate the finer things in life, like Vincent Van Gogh’s art. The fact is Van Gogh is more popular now than he was in his own day. Does that mean that “the masses” have finally come around to appreciating the beauty behind Vincent’s art? Does it mean that he was just ahead of his time? Or does it just mean that times have changed and so have artistic tastes? The story of the Hunger Artist says: We live in a different world now. When the Hunger Artist was a young man the crowds were wowed by feats of professional fasting. But as he grew older times changed and the crowd’s interests were diverted in new directions; kind of like Vincent Van Gogh in reverse. The Hunger Artist started off with a bang but then his popularity gradually went downhill. That’s how he finally wound up in a small cage in a freak show in a traveling carnival. People were no longer interested in watching people slowly becoming skinnier and skinnier. They wanted to see new and more exciting things. It would be interesting to see how many people would still like Vincent Van Gogh if his paintings weren’t in school textbooks and television and magazine advertisements. How much are our artistic tastes are shaped not by what we really like but by what other people say they like? In this story we see how it takes some background knowledge before someone can truly appreciate the art of fasting…the children, still rather uncomprehending, since neither inside nor outside school had they been sufficiently prepared for this lesson--what did they care about fasting?--yet showed by the brightness of their intent eyes that new and better times might be coming. The same thing goes for much of modern art. To the untrained eye much of it looks just plain ugly. But that’s apparently because the untrained eye is unsophisticated. As the Hunger Artist says: Just try to explain to anyone the art of fasting! Anyone who has no feeling for it cannot be made to understand it. The only way to understand fasting is to go hungry for awhile and see how it feels. In the Middle Ages people used to fast regularly for their religion. But as Kafka puts it: We live in a different world now.

LIFE LESSONS: An Interview with Plato, John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant

2011-10-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

First question goes to the oldest, Plato, and my question is this: Should I figure out the best way to live for myself, or listen to what other people tell me about life? PLATO answers: Why should we care what everyone says? Good men are the only ones we should care about. “The people” can’t make us either wise or foolish. Everything they do is just random activity. If we’re going to live well then we need guidance from people who know what they’re doing. Good men lived well before us. And they must have learned a lot. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Just see how they did it. MILL responds: The way you frame the question makes me assume that we’re talking about people who are free to choose. If people are going to be truly free then first of all they have to be free to think for themselves. And they should also be allowed to explore their feelings just as they please. People need to be free to have their own personal tastes and develop their own lifestyles. Otherwise, they’re not truly free. Every single person in every age needs to define for themselves how to live well. KANT responds: The inability to think for myself without guidance from somebody else is intellectual immaturity. You already know how to live well. Have the courage to use your own understanding!

Next question: Mr. Kant, who defines what’s right and wrong, my society or me? KANT answers: Our conscience is like an internal court. We’re guided by Natural Law (the law of reason). There shouldn’t be any conflict between the laws of men and the Natural Law. We judge ourselves. Our conscience has the power to summon us to the judgment seat even when we don’t want to come. Many things in life are confusing. But our conscience will not deceive us. MILL responds: Society and “the people” aren’t necessarily the same things. The government functions because a majority voted certain politicians into office. Then the government sets the laws. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. Even a majority can be wrong. We have to decide for ourselves what’s right and wrong. Following society’s view is just following the herd. PLATO responds: Imagine the law saying: What are you doing Socrates? Are you trying to undo our whole society? How long do you think government will last if law courts can’t enforce the laws? How long would society last if everybody trampled on the law and did whatever they wanted? Who gave you the right to decide what’s right and wrong? Are you smarter than all the rest of us put together? It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to build our society. Don’t tear it down.

The final question goes to Mr. Mill: Let’s say that I’m determined to live a good life; should I listen to my head or to my heart? MILL: A lot of people are driven by their feelings. They just “feel” like they’re right and don’t need reasons; they think they already know what’s right and wrong. They can’t understand why everyone doesn’t agree with them. To these people their goals are self-evident and self-justifying. For example: We hold these truths to be self-evident… that's not an argument, it’s a personal faith. PLATO responds: Your determination to live well is a great thing if you’re right. Doing what’s right takes a lot of courage. But what if I’m wrong? Then my determination just makes things worse. I need to be persuaded by reasons. Can you persuade me that sheer determination will lead me to do the right thing? Convince me then. Otherwise, I’m sticking to rational principles. KANT has the final word: Many people think education is the key to building a better society. But a good education doesn’t necessarily make me a better person. I can be trained to talk the talk. In real life it’s more important that I learn how to walk the walk. Listen to your conscience and follow your heart.

Thank you, gentleman, for sharing your thoughts with us today.

KANT: Conscience 2011

2011-09-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

How should we live? That’s one of the questions philosophy has to answer from one generation to the next. John Stuart Mill thinks each generation needs to decide for itself the best way to live. Not only that, but each individual person in each generation should decide the best way to live. What works for one generation may not work for another generation. And what works for one person may not work for somebody else. Mill puts the emphasis on our freedom to choose. Immanuel Kant agrees with Mill, but only up to a point. Here’s where they agree. Kant says that enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! (dare to know) "Have courage to use your own understanding!" that is the motto of enlightenment. That’s something Mill would have no trouble agreeing with. We need to exercise our freedom to choose for ourselves what we think and how we live. But Kant believes this freedom to choose isn’t quite as free as Mill might have us think. Kant poses this question: what if we choose badly? What if we choose not to live right? For Mill there’s no “right way” to live. We’re the only ones who ultimately can determine what makes us happy. So we keep experimenting until we get it right. But Kant believes differently. He thinks that human lives aren’t just some kind of experimental laboratories so we can explore various modes of living. We weren’t born into a world of our own making. We were born into a certain kind of world with certain kinds of laws governing it. Just as there are laws of physics governing the physical universe, Kant thinks there are moral laws governing the ethical universe. If we break those laws there will be consequences. “Conscience” is the tool that nature has given to us to determine those consequences. When we make choices our consciences act like Geiger counters to let us know when something’s gone wrong. We’ve either made a bad choice or we’re fixing to make a bad choice. Again the question comes up: what if we choose badly? How do we know if we’ve chosen to do good or to do bad? Kant says that We have the faculty to judge ourselves logically…but conscience has the power to summon us against our will before the judgment seat… In other words, we really don’t have a choice in the matter. Our personal freedom to choose isn’t what’s at stake here. What’s at stake here is a question of right and wrong. Many people have a hard time using rigid categories such as “good and evil” or “right and wrong.” Even in Kant’s time he acknowledges that many have argued that conscience is a work of art and education… And Mill was one of those arguing that we’re formed by our upbringing, the neighborhoods we live in, the schools we attend; these are the things that develop our individual consciences. Not so, says Kant. Conscience isn’t a “work of art” developed by human beings. Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with moral laws. These moral laws stand apart from our mental abilities to create them. They’re more like the law of gravity that functions whether or not we fully understand why. That’s how we come to know right from wrong and good from bad. Our little Geiger counters go off and our consciences summon us before the judgment seat. Our first instinct may be to plead ignorance and claim: but I didn’t know. Kant (our conscience) will reply: oh yes, you did. That’s because natural moral laws must be known to all; they are contained in our reason…with positive laws we can have innocent errors…in respect to the natural law there are no innocent errors. Conscience doesn’t make mistakes. This fact is either reassuring, or troubling, depending on the person and on how they’ve been living. How then should we live? Mill says “choose what makes you happy.” Kant adds “but first, check with your conscience.”

MILL: On Liberty 2011

2011-09-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

Socrates had definite opinions about some things. He believed that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father… For Socrates the survival of the state is more important than the survival of any one individual or family. People come and go but the state goes on for generations. John Stuart Mill thinks almost the exact opposite. The state exists solely for the benefit of the people living in it right now. As long as they’re not hurting anyone else they should be allowed to live however they please. Mill begins by defining Liberty: The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will…but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. Mill confines his essay on liberty to be about people living with other people in a political society. When people live together there have to be rules; no matter if it’s a nation of millions or just two people living in the same house. The principle is the same. Two big questions need to be answered. What are the rules? Who gets to make them up? Mill admits that the answers aren’t easy. The main problem is and always has been the struggle between Liberty and Authority… Living in a house, for example, I may have the freedom to take a shower. But I don’t have the freedom to leave my wet towel lying on the floor. Who decides where wet towels go? Multiply the towels and you get the problem of governing a whole society. There will be lots of wet towels. What should we do with them? Some people want to wash them, fold them up and tuck them away in carefully marked baskets; others want to leave them wherever they darn well please; and still others think we need all new towels. Who decides? Mill says that in old times this contest was between subjects…and the government. Traditionally it was the government which took on the responsibility of deciding what to do about the towels. But “the government” could mean many things. One guy may just emerge one day and start announcing towel policy without any input from the rest of the citizens. Sometimes this works. However, as time went on more people wanted to have a say about towel policy. So democracies were born. Now “the people” themselves decide what to do about the towels. Good. But then a funny thing happens. Mill describes it this way: such phrases as "self-government," and "the power of the people over themselves," do not express the true state of the case. The "people" who exercise the power, are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised, and the "self-government" spoken of, is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means, the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; …and in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. What is Mill driving at? Let’s say you want to use a beach towel after you take a shower. Most people think this is a dumb idea. So they pass a law: no beach towels may be used as bath towels. Majority wins. Is this fair? No, says Mill. This isn’t a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of allowing people to experiment and run their own lives. You may not want to use a beach towel after a shower. But does that mean nobody else should either? Mill summarizes his position this way: This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first…in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; Second…liberty of tastes and pursuits… Third…the liberty of combination among individuals; freedom to unite… These are the ideal goals. Mill believes we should think for ourselves and be free to live our own lives. Obviously self government is hard work. It’s not easy but we can’t just throw in the towel and quit.

PLATO: The Crito 2011

2011-09-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

The tenth anniversary of the attack of 9/11 is a good time to pause and reflect. We start with this question: what good are Great Books today? Can reading the classics help us come to terms with what happened on 9/11/2001? Our reading this week is Plato’s The Crito. There were no airplanes in Plato’s world. There weren’t any skyscrapers. This was long before there were Christians or Muslims. So how can ancient philosophy possibly help us understand 9/11? Let’s take the old lessons that Plato taught and adapt them for today’s world. For starters, Crito comes to Socrates in a good cause. Socrates was wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted, and wrongfully sentenced. Crito sincerely believes that it’s his duty to help Socrates escape. Crito does this with the best of intentions. Socrates is his friend. More than just friendship is at stake for Crito. He also believes it’s his patriotic duty to free Socrates for the good of the Athenian city-state. Socrates doesn’t see it that way. He appreciates Crito’s efforts but tells him bluntly: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger… Here’s our first lesson. What Socrates calls “zeal” we would now call devotion to a cause. And this can be a good thing. Modern Americans are devoted to freedom and civil rights, for example. Socrates wants us to pause and consider: devotion is fine but what if we’re devoted to the wrong cause? Then what? Then our devotion to do something good might actually become an intense fierceness to do evil. Crito was devoted to the fate of Socrates. But so were Socrates’ enemies. Lesson one: Passion that can be used for a good cause can also be misused in a bad cause. Here’s a second lesson we can learn. Consider the following exchange. CRITO: But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion. SOCRATES: I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil; for then they would also be able to do the greatest good; and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance. As modern Americans how does this conversation relate to us? Here’s how. Instead of the term “the many” use the term The People and see how it sounds to modern ears. The People? That would be us. Politicians from both sides claim to speak on behalf of “the American people.” The very foundation of American government is based on the idea that The People represent our greatest source of political wisdom. Not so, says Socrates. The People can’t make us wise or foolish. They can’t make us good or bad. The People only react out of blind instinct. So lesson number two from Socrates is this: The People are not a good source of wisdom. Now take that ancient Greek idea and place it in historical context: United States of America, morning of September 12, 2001. What do we do now? We’re scared. We’re angry. Many Americans want to wage war but others want to “wage peace.” We need wisdom. Fast. What would Socrates advise? Strike back? Turn the other cheek? Socrates says this: Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father… if she lead us to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right; neither may any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any other place, he must do what his city and his country order him; or he must change their view of what is just… Read carefully. Our shared vision as a nation is more important than any single person or family. We should follow our nation AS IS RIGHT. Do the right thing. Pursue justice. Socrates poses a simple question: what is justice? He takes a public event, such as his own trial or our tragic attack, and makes it personal. What is justice in this case? The People can’t tell. So what do YOU think? Philosophy is personal. Ten years after 9/11 and 2500 years after Socrates we still need to talk about justice. Welcome to Great Books.

SHAKESPEARE: Cymbeline

2011-09-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare’s plays have traditionally been classified as either comedies, tragedies, or histories. Under those terms how can we classify Cymbeline? Most people probably shelve it under comedy because it has a happy ending. But it wasn’t a happy ending for Cloten. He wanted to be king but lost his head instead. It wasn’t happy for his mother. She wanted him to be king too. And it wasn’t happy for the Roman general Caius Lucius. He lost the battle to enforce Rome’s rule over Britain. For those folks the play was more of a tragedy than a comedy. It all depends on whose side you’re on. But the play could also be classified (somewhat loosely) as history. Apparently the plot of Cymbeline is based on a story by Geoffrey of Monmouth about a real-life ancient British king named Cunobelinus. As usual, Shakespeare only uses the historical account as a basic plot to take off from. Then he makes it his own dramatic adaptation. He adds a few sub-plots, adds dialog, and then the story becomes an entirely new creation. But this play is no more British history than Julius Caesar is Roman history. It’s based on things that may have really happened but it’s still just a play. It’s not history. Anyway, is it really important how we classify drama? Scholars might think it’s important. But the important questions for amateur readers are simple things like: how does this play stack up as entertainment? Is it a good story? Is it believable? If it’s not believable, is it still entertaining? Does it have lessons about real life that I can take away with me? In short, does this play appeal to me on a personal level? The answer: some people will like this play, others won’t. An evil stepmother plots to put her son (Cloten) on the throne. But the princess (Imogen) already loves, and marries, another man (Posthumus Leonatus). Posthumus is a commoner and this infuriates her father (Cymbeline, the king). So the evil Queen (Imogen’s stepmother) gives what she believes to be poison as a gift. Here’s the deal: if Posthumus takes the poison and dies, then Imogen would have no husband and would have to marry Cloten. So Cloten would become king. If Imogen takes the poison and dies, then Cloten is next in line for the throne anyway. Either way, Cloten would become king once Cymbeline is gone. There are subplots about Posthumus suspecting Imogen of being unfaithful; two long-lost sons of Cymbeline are really alive and eventually save Britain from the Roman invasion; and a couple of curious incidents along the way. One is a dream of Posthumus where Jupiter appears: Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. No more, you petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? This sounds a little like the image of Yahweh in our readings of Genesis and Exodus. God destroys the world by a flood, appears in a burning bush, and parts the sea. Jupiter, like Yahweh, has to establish order amongst rebellious men on earth: Be not with mortal accidents opprest; No care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. This reminds us of the book of Job where God tests Job beyond the powers of human understanding. The reader knows that Job is being tested by Satan, but Job doesn’t know that. The divine message from God is basically: this is my business, not yours. The divine remains inscrutable, unsearchable, by human beings. The other curious incident in this play is an oracle given concerning Posthumus: When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty… Like most oracles, from Greek tragedy onwards, these words don’t make any sense. But then one day everything happens just as the oracle predicted. In hindsight it all makes perfect sense. In Cymbeline everything works out in the end. Order is restored. The good guys win. Love prevails. Shelve as comedy.

On Happiness

2011-09-02T06:41:00.000-07:00

There is something to be said for optimism. We admire people who make the best of their situation and struggle to overcome the hardships which life puts in their path. The truth is no one likes a coward. We expect our leaders to govern wisely, and our soldiers to fight bravely; never show fear and never surrender. But most of us are not heroes. We lack the courage and fortitude to overcome adversity. Life is a series of obstacles, often confusing and sometimes impossibly tragic. So how can happiness even exist in a world filled with turmoil, rage and pain? Since we all desire happiness, why are we unable to rationally comprehend it? Is happiness just a state of mind or a passing mood, or is it to be found in an objective set of conditions?

Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist, once said that “a man cannot be called happy until he has reached the end of his life.” By this, he meant we cannot say whether our life has been well lived until it has run its course. This means that happiness is not simply a passing mood or sensation like joy or hunger. Rather, it is more like a drama which must be concluded before we can evaluate its worth.

Another common mistake is to confuse happiness with a state of mind. Dewey, who was a pragmatist, believed happiness to be something which exists solely in the mind. Therefore, we should be able to obtain happiness by simply willing it into existence. Thus, the action of standing on our own two feet lies within our own power, unless we are paralyzed or bound like Prometheus to a cliff. However, for Aristotle, happiness is something more than a state of mind. It is a synonym for “the good life” that is measured by having things like tasty food, a warm bed, and a healthy body. In other words, things which are not always within our power to obtain. It is a happy conceit of Dewey that the individual is in control of his own emotional state. But Freud, Dostoyevsky and Aeschylus all disagree. Clearly, we are not always in control of our emotions, otherwise we would not go insane, feel guilty, or be enraged or depressed. The notion that a happy man merely wills himself into a pleasant state of mind is far too simplistic, ignoring the basic problem which all men face: that we are not in control of our destiny, nor can we simply will ourselves into a state of bliss. This delusion is a byproduct of an Old Testament mythology which claims that all our problems today are of our own making due to Adam's original sin.

What contributes to this confusion is an inability to define happiness in such a way that it applies to all men in all circumstances. As Aristotle understood, happiness is something more than pleasure. We have physical needs as well as mental states. Mortality is our human condition. Our challenge is to live out our lives knowing we shall die, that our bodies will age and deteriorate, and when we are gone, the memory of our existence will soon fade from the annals of history.

So is happiness ever possible or is it just an illusion? The Stoics say that happiness is knowing how to distinguish the possible from the impossible, to know our limits and live within them. Aristotle called this attitude “sophrosyne" or moderation. Lao Tzu called it living in harmony with nature or having a balanced life. Buddhists say that happiness is contentment or lack of strife. Cato, one of the noblest Romans, believed that happiness was virtue, living with honor and respect for one's country and traditions. These days, we too often succumb to the foolish notion that happiness is “doing whatever we decide.” But this is the attitude of a civilization in decline. When we succumb to the desire for feeling good all the time (paradise?), we lose sight of what is immediately around us, or as Lincoln would say, of the "better angels of our nature." But virtue requires sacrifice and a willingness to endure what we cannot change. The quest for happiness is like the song of the Sirens who lured ancient mariners to their doom. It is entirely possible that happiness and human society are incompatible. Of course, the dream will not die; we persist in hoping that in some distant future, we will discover a formula or technique for making happiness available to everyone. But as Aeschylus said, while we live and breathe we cannot know happiness and we cannot say whether our life was good until we reach the end of our journey. Then, we will only glimpse it momentarily in the rear view mirror, as we pass from the living into the eternal void of sleep.

LAVIN: Happiness 2011

2011-08-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

In our last reading John Dewey presented a theory about habits and their relationship to willpower. He wrote that a man who CAN stand properly does so, and only a man who can does. If we substitute “happiness” for “stand properly” we end up with this theory: people who CAN be happy WILL be happy; those who are never satisfied with anything will never find happiness. This is just a theory. Does it hold true in real life? In a story from Chekhov we read that when everyone else was trying to have a good time, Akaky Akakievich was not even thinking of diverting himself…Having written to his heart’s content he would go to bed smiling in anticipation of tomorrow, of what God would send him to copy. Akaky found happiness without ever looking for it. It just came to him because he had a predisposition to BE happy. In Mary Lavin’s short story we find a similar theme. A woman named Vera has three children and a loving husband. Then her husband dies unexpectedly and Vera’s character is put to the test. But Vera is a strong woman and she has very definite views about life: Her theme was happiness: what it was, what it was not; where we might find it, where not; and how, if found, it must be guarded. Never must we confound it with pleasure. Nor think sorrow its exact opposite. Vera was not a philosopher. She was just a young single mother raising three children and supporting herself by working at the local library. Plus, she had her own aging mother to deal with; and grandmother wasn’t always pleasant to be around: Our grandfather had failed to provide our grandmother with enduring happiness. He had passed that job on to Mother… Father Hugh had given our grandmother up early in the game. “God Almighty couldn’t make that woman happy,” he said one day… But Vera did her best to support herself, her three children, and her elderly mother. This attitude had a strong effect on the three girls. They weren’t philosophers either, but they were introduced to philosophy by having to come to terms with the way that Vera approached life: What was it, we used to ask ourselves; that quality (which mother called happiness)… was it courage? Was it strength, health, or high spirits? Something you could not give or take? A game of catch-as-catch-can? “I know,” cried Bea, “a sham!” Vera has many good qualities: courage, strength, health, high spirits. But does happiness require these things? Or is happiness sheer luck: A game of catch-as-catch-can? The skeptical daughter Bea suspects that happiness may be a sham. Maybe their mother is merely putting on a good front for the girls and is faking it. Maybe she’s not really happy after all. People disagree about what happiness is and the role of happiness in living a good life. Vera and the priest disagree, for example: Mother answered. “Take Father Hugh… he rejects happiness! He casts it from him.” “That is simply not true, Vera,” cried Father Hugh, overhearing her. “It’s just that I don’t place an inordinate value on it like you. I don’t think it’s enough to carry one all the way. To the end, I mean, and after.” Father Hugh doesn’t agree with Aristotle that happiness is the highest good. For him happiness is not enough to carry one all the way. But Vera is persistent in her quest. Even though she works hard and the burden is heavy, Vera is able to carve out a niche of happiness for herself: There was only one place Mother found rest… the garden… So if she did not succeed in defining happiness to our understanding, we could see that whatever it was, she possessed it to the full when she was in her garden. Vera didn’t DEFINE what happiness was (the way Aristotle did); she SHOWED what happiness is by DOING it. Make no mistake. Vera’s life was hard; but on her own terms it was a happy one. So in the end over Bea’s face came the light that had so often blazed over Mother’s… “You don’t HAVE to face it! It’s over!” Then she who had so fiercely forbade Father Hugh to do so blurted out the truth. “You’ve finished with this world, Mother,” confident that her tidings were joyous. Vera had done what she had been born to do and she had done it well. In Vera’s world that’s called happiness.

DEWEY: Habits and Will 2011

2011-08-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

In the book of Genesis we read the story of creation. At first human beings were happy and living in a paradise world. But one thing God told them they must never do was eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of course that’s just what they did. And this one simple act of disobedience led to a deep-seated tendency for us to choose wrong things. That’s why we develop bad habits and don’t live right. So goes the story. Philosophers have offered various opinions about how we can change all that. With this background John Dewey brings his can-do American spirit into the discussion. He says that a bad habit… makes us do things we are ashamed of, things which we tell ourselves we prefer not to do. This observation comes from simple human experience. We’re not ashamed of putting on our right shoe first or eating with our right hand. These things don’t much matter. But some things do matter and we call them “bad.” Dewey gives examples such as foolish idling, gambling, or addiction to liquor and drugs. We believe there are some things we shouldn’t be doing. But we do them anyway. Why? And why do we feel ashamed doing them? Dewey thinks we feel ashamed because we’re not in full control of our lives. We feel shame because a bad habit overrides our formal resolutions, our conscious decisions. When we are honest with ourselves we acknowledge that a habit has this power because it is so intimately a part of ourselves. It has a hold upon us because we are the habit. That’s the part we don’t like and that’s the part that makes us feel ashamed. In the Garden of Eden story Adam and Eve hide themselves from God because they’re afraid (ashamed): And he (Adam) said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. Adam's human weakness has been exposed and his first reaction is to hide. Dewey thinks this is a mistake. What we need to do is confront our problems intelligently. What if God had given Adam a different command: all he needed to do was stand up straight? Adam would have still failed. Why? Because the assumption is that if a man is told to stand up straight, all that is further needed is wish and effort on his part, and the deed is done. It’s not that easy according to Dewey: this belief is on a par with primitive magic in its neglect of attention to the means which are involved in reaching an end. In order for Adam to stand up straight he first has to know HOW to stand straight. Dewey goes even further: in fact a man who can stand properly does so, and only a man who can does. Unless Adam knows how to stand straight (or be obedient) he will ALWAYS fail because the deck is stacked against him. Unless we change the conditions affecting Adam’s posture then he will continue to slouch. According to Dewey what Adam needs to do is form an intelligently controlled habit. And this doesn’t just hold true for Adam. We all have false notions about the control of the body and extending to control of mind and character, and this is the greatest bar to intelligent social progress. This seems to be the key factor in Dewey’s philosophy: intelligent social progress. How can we make things better for everyone? After all, isn’t this the quest of American democracy? For Dewey it all boils down to getting the right kind of education: Only the man whose habits are already good can know what the good is… For, as Aristotle remarked, the untutored moral perceptions of a good man are usually trustworthy, those of a bad character, not. We have to be taught what good and bad is. And it isn’t just a matter of private, personal learning. Dewey wants to improve Aristotle’s philosophy: (But he should have added that the influence of social custom as well as personal habit has to be taken into account…) If we can somehow change the social environment and develop good habits, things will improve. This brings us back to our original Garden story. Things were (almost) perfect in Paradise and yet we failed. That’s how the story goes. So maybe we can’t change the whole world but Dewey says the thing which is closest to us, the means within our power, is habit. Maybe we can at least start with ourselves.

ARISTOTLE: On Happiness, Introduction 2011

2011-08-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Aristotle would have made a good lawyer. He believes that everyone wants to be happy. Who wants to be sad? It’s hard to argue with him on that point. Therefore Aristotle comes to the reasonable conclusion that whatever creates or increases happiness…we ought to do. And the other half of the equation is also reasonable: whatever destroys or hampers happiness…we ought not to do. Simple. But these conclusions only seem simple. They are not. To begin with, what does Aristotle mean by the word “happiness?” He goes on to tell us what most people mean when they talk about happiness: (1) prosperity combined with virtue, (2) independence of life, (3) secure enjoyment of the maximum of pleasure, (4) a good condition of property and body. (5) Happiness is one or more of these things. Fair enough. These all sound suspiciously like the American ideal of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But different people still come to different conclusions about what happiness is. Americans do, in fact, come to different conclusions about what happiness is. Why? Aristotle’s answer: confused and sloppy thinking. As rational people we need to come to logical conclusions about what happiness means. It won’t do to take somebody else’s word for it because happiness is not a personal preference. It’s a rational decision. So what are we talking about when we talk about happiness? Aristotle thinks we must at least have a vague notion. Otherwise, we simply wouldn’t understand one another. But we do understand this much: we both agree that happiness is a good thing. Why do we think that? And what do we really want when we say we want to be happy? Here again Aristotle goes into great detail: 1. good birth 2. plenty of friends 3. good friends 4. wealth 5. good children 6. plenty of children 7. a happy old age 8. body excellence (health, beauty, strength, large stature, athletic powers) 9. fame 10. honor 11. good luck 12. virtue. This is a good list; twelve things that make people happy. And the list seems about right because it sounds so reasonable. Anything can be abused if it’s used in the wrong way or we get too much of it. But Aristotle has given us a list of inherently good things. Who wouldn’t want friends and good health and a happy old age? Modern Americans may quibble over the details: Good birth? I may not be a blue blood but I’ve got common sense and pulled myself up by my own boot strings. Wealth? I don’t need to be rich to be happy. Large stature? Let’s not go there. Americans like their food. Leave it at that. Fame? Who wants paparazzi around all the time anyway? So in some areas ancient Greek aristocrats and modern middle-class Americans simply disagree about what happiness is. We don’t have the same vision of what a happy life consists of. What Aristotle wants to do is find the common ground. So he frames the question this way: what is our ultimate purpose? He answers his own question: The proper function of man is an active life of the rational element. This is a good definition. It’s reasonable. It sounds right. But is it true? Other answers are possible. Marcus Aurelius might say that the proper function of man is to do our duty. St. Augustine might say that the proper function of man is to know, love and serve God. Thomas Jefferson might say that the proper function of man is to become a good neighbor and fellow citizen. We disagree about what happiness is because we ultimately disagree about what’s important in life. Or, to use an age-old question: what’s the meaning of life? Aristotle believes that we can only find the answer if we follow our reason and not our emotions. Emotions can too easily lead us astray. We have to follow the rational element in ourselves if we want to make sense out of life in this world. The brain should be in charge, not the heart. This conclusion may not give us the final answer to the meaning of life; it may not solve all of life’s problems. But Aristotle thinks it’s a good place to start. If our goal in life is to be happy we’re much more likely to get there if we have a road map, a good plan for a good life, and then follow it. Aristotle the attorney presents the evidence and rests his case. The verdict is up to the reader.

SHAKESPEARE: The Tempest 2011

2011-08-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

We live in an age dominated by science and technology. The boundary of knowledge is constantly expanding in fields like astronomy, biology, chemistry, medicine and physics. We’re surrounded by gadgets that were only science fiction just a generation ago: hand-held computers, flat-screen televisions, cell phones, digital displays… the list goes on. And yet today many of the most popular films adopt an age-old theme: magic. Movies like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia all revolve around the concept of magical or supernatural events. Shakespeare’s play about The Tempest falls into this tradition. Prospero is one of our earliest images of the wise old magician/wizard buried in books of arcane knowledge. Prospero is the Elizabethan version of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings or Dumbledore in Harry Potter. The island/paradise of The Tempest is as exotic as Middle-Earth or Hogwarts or Narnia. Early in the play Prospero sets the tone when he says that my library was dukedom large enough. Prospero had in fact been Duke of Milan but spent too much time with his books. So his evil brother Antonio had little trouble cheating Prospero out of the dukedom and gathering power into his own hands. This would have made Machiavelli proud. But in Middle-Earth, Hogwarts and Narnia the battle isn’t just about who will gain power; the real battle is good against evil, right against wrong. Prospero had been wronged. He spent too much time studying when he should have been governing. That doesn’t mean that Antonio should be the rightful ruler. And Antonio subtly acknowledges that it’s wrong to usurp power, especially from an older brother. Antonio ships off Prospero and his infant daughter (Miranda) out to sea where he hopes they’ll both drown and be done with it. Years pass and Prospero is not dead. He’s been biding his time on a deserted island except for him, his daughter, a monster named Caliban, and some spirits. When Antonio’s ship is wrecked off shore of the island the stage is set for a fateful reunion of the two brothers. Antonio has power on his side; Prospero has special knowledge of the black and white arts of magic. Prospero can call spirits into being and then dismiss them whenever he wants: These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air, And, like the baseless fabric of vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with sleep. Prospero inhabits a world midway between heaven and earth, halfway between the spiritual and physical. The lines that are so clearly defined for most of us become blurred by Prospero’s wizardry. Are we really such stuff as dreams are made of? Ariel is a spirit who can see you but you can’t see him. He can sing soft music and ordinary human beings have no idea where the sound is coming from. But real people are solid flesh-and-blood creatures. Miranda and Ferdinand fall in love because they have eyes to see with and lips to kiss with. They don’t fall in love with shadows of themselves. They throw their whole bodies into it; Prospero lives somewhere between the spirit-world of Ariel and the physical world of the two lovers. Ariel wants to return to his own spirit-world. He constantly asks Prospero to set him free. Miranda has grown up without seeing any other human being except for her father. When she finally does encounter other flesh-and-blood human beings she exclaims: O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't! It takes a writer like Shakespeare to remind us how wonderful and beauteous the world really is. Middle-Earth, Hogwarts and Narnia are marvelous places in the old sense of the word: they’re full of marvels. We stand in wonderment at the creatures and events that take place in those fictitious worlds. Miranda reminds us that there is wonder and beauty right here in this world too; just as it is. Science and technology can be useful tools. But magic is more fun.

GOGOL: The Overcoat (2011)

2011-07-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Psychologist William James was aware of the power our habits exert on us. He once wrote that (Habit) alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow… This is a good theory but how well does it work in practice? Gogol’s short story about a poor office clerk and his new overcoat provides us a good way to find out. Reading the story through the prism of James’ theory can give us new insight into the way we live. To start with, let’s look at the office clerk’s name. His name was Akaky Akakievich. Many people start out life with unfortunate names. Take Benny Benson, for example. Benny was the guy who designed the territorial flag for Alaska when he won the flag contest for students in grades 7 through 12. Or consider the guy who defeated General Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn. His name was Crazy Horse. Some men become famous after changing their names. Fred Astaire started out life as Frederick Austerlitz. Louis L'Amour began as Louis Dearborn LaMoore. And Yogi Berra was really Lawrence Peter Berra. Lesson one: names don’t matter as much as character. So the second lesson is this: Benny and Crazy and Fred and Louis and Yogi were industrious men who took advantage of their gifts and talents. Not so with Akaky: When everyone else was trying to have a good time, Akaky Akakievich was not even thinking of diverting himself…Having written to his heart’s content he would go to bed smiling in anticipation of tomorrow, of what God would send him to copy. All Akaky wanted was to be left in peace so he could do his job copying official government documents. He was the lowest-ranking clerk in the office and had no desire to advance up the promotional latter. Why not? He didn’t need a promotion because he didn’t want all the normal things that most people want. He never gave a thought to his clothes… Never did he pay any attention to what was going on around him in the street… He never noticed the taste (of his food)… Akaky lived in a small apartment a few blocks from his office in the city. He had everything he needed. He was content doing what he was doing. So why take on more responsibilities to earn more money to buy more stuff that he didn’t need anyway? Which brings us to a third lesson this story can teach: no man is an island. Akaky lived alone. That’s ok, lots of people live alone. But Akaky rarely went outside his own little world. He would go to work in the morning, work all day, and then return to his tiny apartment in the evening. He never went out at night. It was a habit that he followed day after day, year after year. This is where William James’ habit-theory is helpful. Akaky’s work habits were good. But those same habits rendered him utterly unable to cope with any slight deviation in his life. The simple fact that Akaky needed a new overcoat caused his whole world to come crashing down. When the tailor told him that his old overcoat couldn’t be patched any more this was the reaction: At the word “new” Akaky Akakievich’s vision became foggy and the whole room began to sway. There are similar examples today. Akaky wouldn’t even have a job in modern America. We have copy machines that work faster, better and cheaper than any human copyist can. So where does someone like Akaky fit into a modern American workplace? There are still office clerks all over the country. But Akaky was totally unfit to do things like provide good customer service over the telephone. He couldn’t even speak to people in a normal manner. Akaky was incapable of fulfilling quotas. The mere thought of pressure made him break out in a cold sweat. Imagine a contemporary middle-aged worker with limited technology skills. They’ve just been informed they’re being laid off from a job they’ve been doing for decades. What’s the normal reaction? Akaky Akakievich’s vision became foggy and the whole room began to sway. William James had it right: habits form the person.

WILLIAM JAMES: Habit

2011-07-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

"Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature," the Duke of Wellington is said to have exclaimed. Wellington was a successful military commander who knew how to turn out good soldiers. William James was a psychologist and his job was to turn out good people. James was in full agreement with Wellington on the importance of developing good habits. He says that no one can probably appreciate as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely over again… That’s why military service begins with boot camp. The goal is to take ordinary people and change their “bad” civilian habits and produce good soldiers, sailors or Marines. For better or worse, all of us are creatures of habit. Is that a good thing? On one hand, habit dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. Most of our habits developed in early stages of life and then stick with us for years to come. We aren’t aware of the power habits hold over us. Many times, for example, we think we’re in full control of our desires. We say to ourselves: I can quit drinking whenever I want, or I can quit smoking whenever I want, or I can quit (fill in the blank) whenever I want. So we decide to quit. Then to our astonishment we fail. We find that it isn’t as easy to quit as we thought it would be. Our habits are stronger than our willpower. This is bad. But there’s also a good side that James points out: Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent… It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow… This doesn’t sound inspiring. It sounds like habits are keeping us chained in misery because that’s what we’re used to. For William James this isn’t necessarily bad. He believes that On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again. If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits, the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal habits… We have our jobs to do. We have our station in life. We have our duties to fulfill. Habit helps us to do that. It prepares us to take our place in the adult world. We just need to be educated in the right kind of way. James believes that the great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. Getting up early and going to work every morning is an adult activity. Kids don’t do it naturally. So we have to train them to get used to it. We all have to become habituated to work. It doesn’t come naturally. Most people don’t wake up every morning and ask themselves: should I go on working or should I quit my job and become a homeless nomad? Their minds were made up long ago to get a job and have a home. That’s what people do. It’s a habit of our culture. William James thinks this habit makes life better: There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision… If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. Setting the matter right may be easier said than done. Anyone who’s ever tried to break a bad habit, especially a long-standing bad habit, knows how hard it can be. We get used to living a certain way and changing is hard. James points out that Men grown old in prison have asked to be readmitted after being once set free. They find it easier to go on living in prison rather than adjust to freedom in the outside world. In the same way, sometimes we become imprisoned in our own habits. James’ advice is this: if we have to live in a prison made out of our own habits, better to make them good ones.

TOLSTOY: After the Ball

2011-07-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

There’s a line from Plato’s Phaedrus lifted for the modern novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “What is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” That’s a good question. Do we need someone to tell us what “good” is? Can anyone, in fact, tell us what is good? In Tolstoy’s After the Ball the narrator starts his story this way: you say that a man cannot, by himself, understand what is good and evil… What a way to begin a story. We’re knee-deep in philosophy right out of the gate. Ordinary people don’t normally think about good and evil, much less whether we’re able to know it on our own. We just navigate our way through life picking up a little philosophy here and there along the way. But real philosophers ask questions. Sometimes they even try to answer them too. The novelist’s job isn’t the same as the philosopher’s job. Novelists try to show us new worlds and take us places we’ve never been before. This might include some physical geographical place we’ve never been, such as Russia. Or a story may just take us some place where we’ve never been within our own minds. After the Ball does both. The story is set in nineteenth-century Russia; upper class, militaristic Russia. Except for the details the story could have been set most anywhere. The general theme is about a young man named Ivan and how his boyish innocence becomes infected because of exposure to the darker side of life. The sub-theme is: a man cannot, by himself, understand what is good and evil… But a man might understand what evil is if it’s right in front of his nose. In this case, a soldier is being badly beaten by his comrades because he attempted to desert from the army. The punishment in Russia at that time was to “run the gauntlet” by letting fellow soldiers line up on both sides and then beat the deserter into a bloody pulp. Ivan sees this happening. The question in his mind becomes: isn’t it evil to beat your brother soldier senseless? How can this happen? Ivan wonders if the soldiers all know something that he doesn’t know. It must somehow be ok to punish deserters this way. Why else would the authorities let it happen? On the other hand, brutally beating another human being for any reason seems downright evil. The military commander might say: no, it’s not evil; firm discipline is necessary in a military unit. Tolerating deserters would be a worse evil than the punishment. Corporal punishment preserves the greater good of law and order within the army. So how does a sensitive young man like Ivan come to terms with the competing claims of good and evil? Some people believe that it is all environment, the environment swamps the man. Our cultural environment is our primary teacher and ultimately determines how we classify some things as good and other things as bad. The way to make young people good is to change their social conditions and educate them to appreciate the good, the true and the beautiful. In Ivan’s Russia desertion was bad, very bad. The way to make good soldiers is to enforce military rules with harsh discipline. Ivan understands this viewpoint but still says I believe it is all chance. (Thus spoke our excellent friend, Ivan Vasilievich, after a conversation between us on the impossibility of improving individual character without a change of the conditions under which men live…) Ivan’s whole life wasn’t changed by a government-sponsored program. It was changed because he just happened to witness one incident of harsh military discipline; purely by accident. Is it possible that one little incident can change a man’s whole life? Ivan himself says Yes; such chances arise, and they alter and direct a man's whole life… This attitude sounds a little bit like the ancient Greek concept of Fate, but with a twist: Fate is written in stone and can’t be altered, even by Zeus. Chance is arbitrary; a whole life can be changed in the blink of an eye. For Tolstoy good and evil never change. Ivan found this out when he heard the soldier crying: 'Brothers, have mercy on me! Brothers, have mercy on me!' But the brothers had no mercy… Tolstoy asks the reader: do we really need anyone to tell us that this is not good?

TOCQUEVILLE: "Why Americans Are Often So Restless" from Democracy in America

2011-07-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

What kind of people are Americans? One of the most astute observers of American character was actually a French writer named Alexis de Tocqueville. His travels in America took place around 1830 but his comments have held up pretty well throughout the years. Tocqueville starts out this section by saying that in certain remote corners of the Old World you may still stumble upon a small district that seems to have been forgotten amid the general tumult, and to have remained stationary while everything around it was in motion. The Old World was Europe of the early 19th century and time seems to have passed them by. Things have changed in a couple of hundred years. But Tocqueville goes on to observe that the inhabitants, for the most part, are extremely ignorant and poor; they take no part in the business of the country and are frequently oppressed by the government, yet their countenances are generally placid and their spirits light. Here’s the point: these people had nothing. They had few civil rights. And yet they were fairly happy and content. Now Tocqueville shifts the scene: In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures. Those folks in the oppressed backwater were generally content with their lot in life. Americans had more freedoms than any other people in the world and yet they still weren’t happy. Why was this? Tocqueville says the chief reason for this contrast is that the former (the poor peasants) do not think of the ills they endure, while the latter (the freedom-loving Americans) are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. In short, Americans had more freedom and more material possessions than people living in other countries, but that wasn’t enough. They spent a lot of time thinking about the things they didn’t have. Question: have things changed? Do Americans still want more than they have right now? Of course we do. Just watch television or surf the Internet and you’ll see all kinds of ads selling all kinds of things that Americans don’t have. Americans want the good life. And this is what makes us restless. This is what keeps us restless. We’re never satisfied. We’re continually wanting bigger and better. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? On the positive side it could inspire people to achieve excellence. On the down side it could make people resentful because they don’t have as much as they think they deserve. This attitude also tends to make people even more restless. Tocqueville notes that in the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on… Americans tend to go where the grass is greener… He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops… obviously Americans don’t like to plant deep roots. He embraces a profession and gives it up… changing careers is in our DNA. If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics… Are politics any less important to Americans now than they were in 1832? And if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness. Oh yes, Americans love their vacation time. And a lot of times they come back home more tired than they were when they left. Are these observations wrong or are they generally true of Americans, even today? They say that America is the land of opportunity. For a young man an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition and he will readily persuade himself that he is born to no common destiny. But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience. Most young men won’t become rich and famous. But some will. That’s what makes America, America. The possibility is always there. And that’s what keeps Americans restless. Still, Tocqueville liked America. And he liked Americans too.

SHAKESPEARE: The Winter’s Tale

2011-07-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

The Winter’s Tale starts off like a dark tragedy along the lines of Othello. One of the ill-fated characters says it best: A sad tale's best for winter… And it seems as if we’re settling in for a long, sad winter’s tale; something like the tragedy experienced by Othello. But halfway through the play a character named “Time” steps in and sixteen years have magically flown by. Then the play takes a sharp turn into something more along the lines of Much Ado About Nothing. Strange things start to happen: a queen who has been “dead” these past sixteen years has been memorialized in a statue. And the statue looks so real that it seems, well, like a real woman; just like the real queen. Surprise! Because it is real! It is the queen! The queen hadn’t been dead after all! She was just faking it until the king came back to his senses. This comeback is sort of like the plot line in Much Ado About Nothing where a young woman “returns” to life after her fiancé jilted her and then later came to regret it. So how does the combination of Othello and Much Ado work out? It works well for some readers, not so much for others. If we’re willing to suspend disbelief and enter into a theatrical world of wonders such as Shakespeare portrays in A Midsummer Night’s Dream then the play works just fine. But if we prefer plays that stick closer to reality (think Julius Caesar) then this plot seems contrived and unbelievable. However, Shakespeare always has some pearls of wisdom up his sleeve. Even if we don’t like the play there are always little nuggets of philosophy to mull over. Here are a couple of little nuggets from Winter’s Tale: Two lads that thought there was no more behind But such a day to-morrow as to-day, And to be boy eternal… We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i' the sun, And bleat the one at the other: what we changed Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed That any did. When these two lads were young the whole world seemed innocent. They never dreamed of doing anything evil themselves and never dreamed that there were bad people out there who might hurt them. In today’s terms they were sheltered. So what happened to Leontes and Polixenes? They grew up and went on to became kings of Sicily and Bohemia. But we don’t have to become kings or queens to learn that there’s evil in the world. Ordinary people learn soon enough that there are, in fact, bad people out there who are up to no good. They will hurt you. Be wary of them. Here’s another little life lesson from Shakespeare: What's gone and what's past help Should be past grief. We all grow up eventually and have to confront the evils we find around us. Through determination or sheer luck most of us grow up to become adults and take our place in an adult’s world. Not all of us make it. Some fall by the wayside because of disease, accident, war or murder. The rest of us have to keep on going through life as best we know how. We do all we can to help our families and friends along the way. But there comes a point where there’s nothing more that we can do. That’s when we have to let go of the past and move on. Sometimes this is a bitter lesson. Shakespeare captures the human dilemma in a little story: There may be in the cup A spider steeped, and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge Is not infected: but if one present Th' abhorred ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. Does that mean it’s better for us to “drink and see the spider”? Should we acknowledge the dark side of life or are there some things that it’s just better for us not to know? Perhaps the tough-minded want to know and the tender-minded want to let it go. One thing we should keep in mind: Shakespeare isn’t a philosopher, he writes plays. He wants to entertain us, not make us into little philosophers. If Plato writes a dialogue and it doesn’t enlighten us then Plato has failed as a philosopher. If The Winter’s Tale doesn’t entertain then Shakespeare has failed as a dramatist. But this play has another subtle message: spend your time wisely. Reading Plato and Shakespeare is always time well spent.

ISAK DINESEN: Sorrow-Acre

2011-06-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

How much does the place where we live affect our concepts of ideals like justice? Not just the country we happen to be living in: America or England or Russia or China. I’m talking about the physical geography of the land where we’re born and raised; the hills and the fields, the lakes and rivers, the kinds of trees and even the weather. Do physical features affect the way we perceive what’s right and wrong? Or is the notion of justice pulled somewhere out of the sky, a place where no one has ever lived? It’s an interesting question that only comes up after reading a story like Sorrow-Acre. A one-sentence summary of the story is this: a woman is given a chance to save her son’s life if she can harvest a rye field by herself in one day. If you haven’t read the story then it seems like an odd plot. It is. But remember what Isaiah Berlin wrote in his essay about equality: Finally, those must not be forgotten who… object to all rules as such and desire a society, whether this is practicable or not, governed in an unsystematic manner by the will of an inspired leader, or by the unpredictable movement of the Volksgeist, or the “spirit” of a race, a party, or a church. In this story the Volksgeist is the spirit of Denmark. The inspired leader is an old Danish lord of a large estate. He gives a peasant woman named Anne-Marie a chance to save her son if she can do the work of three men in one day. What does all this have to do with physical geography? The story is not just about some random mean old landlord and a heroic peasant woman. It’s about Denmark and its particular space on this earth, both the good and the bad. Lords and peasants are all molded by the same climate. They all have their place within the landscape: Many duties rested on the shoulders of the big landowners; towards God in heaven, towards the King, his neighbor and himself and they were all harmoniously consolidated into the idea of his duties towards his land. This story could not have taken place in America so it’s hard for us to read it without feeling a sense of outrage. But in Denmark A human race had lived on this land for a thousand years, had been formed by its soil and weather, and had marked it with its thoughts, so that now no one could tell where the existence of the one ceased and the other began… it was the fixed materialism of human longing and of the human notion that it is better to be in one place than another. It’s impossible for an American to grasp what it must be like for your family to live on the same estate for a thousand years. To be raised with such a heritage must leave deep and permanent influences on lifestyles and values. Even when you’re away from home the influence must run deep. Here’s the way one young man reacted: In England Adam had come in touch with the great new ideas of the age: of nature, of the right and freedom of man, of justice and beauty. The universe, through them, had become infinitely wider to him; he wanted to find out still more about it and was planning to travel to America, to the new world… But the young man was seized by a strange, deep, aching remorse towards his old home in Denmark… The ties which bound him to this place were of a mystic nature… he had not, like many young travelers in foreign countries, learned to despise his native land. No, said Adam, he had lately in England longed for the fields and woods of his Danish home. In short, he was homesick. Not just for the fields and woods of his old Danish homeland, but also for its old and ancient ways. The old Danish lord knew his land and he knew his people. In his own way he loved them. And he especially loved the peasant woman, Anne-Marie. Plus, Denmark was a Christian country… a plain, square embodiment of the nation’s trust in the justice and mercy of heaven. Americans simply cannot understand this brand of justice and mercy. We’re not Danish landlords.

ISAIAH BERLIN: Equality

2011-06-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

The American Declaration of Independence clearly states: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s certainly inspirational and Thomas Jefferson is to be commended for stating it so eloquently. But apart from its eloquence, what does it mean exactly? What are the practical consequences of believing that all men are created equal? Isaiah Berlin’s essay helps us understand more deeply what equality really means. For one thing, there’s no correct answer. There are several different views of equality. At least five different views are presented in this essay. In no particular order, they are (1.) The natural rights school will not object to inequalities, providing these do not infringe on natural rights. These guys agree with Jefferson that everyone is born with certain rights. But if anyone complains about inequality they would ask: are you being deprived of your life? No. Are you being deprived of your liberty? No. Is anyone depriving your pursuit of happiness? If the answer is still no then you have no complaint. You have all your natural rights intact. Be satisfied. (2.) Appeals to rational thought must protest against any inequality, unless a sufficient reason for it is produced. Under this theory even equality-loving Americans may have to tolerate some inequalities within society. Take a symphony, for example. Without a conductor or someone in charge, what kind of music would result? We can’t all be equal all of the time. In some things someone has to be in charge. We just have to learn to live with it. (3.) The laissez-faire/freedom school of equality: its proponents freely admit (that freedom) may lead to inequalities, but defend (freedom) upon the ground that it gives an equal OPPORTUNITY to all. Under this theory government can make sure that everyone gets an equal chance to succeed. But it can’t guarantee that everyone will in fact succeed. Some will fail. We gave everyone an equal chance; that’s the best goal that government can aim for. (4.) Edmund Burke and the natural social hierarchy: demand full equality of treatment (but only) upon each rung of the ladder, this is the only true equality; but bitterly oppose as being contrary to the natural order any attempt to deny the existence or relevance of such rungs or hierarchies... To say that everyone is equal is just sheer foolishness. Experience teaches us otherwise. To be human means living under certain social traditions. People have not been, are not now, and never will be truly equal. Government should preserve these traditional customs. (5.) Romantic irrationalism: Finally, those must not be forgotten who… object to all rules as such and desire a society, whether this is practicable or not, governed in an unsystematic manner by the will of an inspired leader, or by the unpredictable movement of the Volksgeist, or the “spirit” of a race, a party, or a church. This is the theme of Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and celebrates the visionary members of society. Most of us are equal only in the sense that wey’re like sheep. Once in a while a truly outstanding leader transcends this equality of the dull and the ordinary. Zarathustra was repulsed by the whole notion of equality. He went to the mountaintop. His vision has power to transform our whole society. Isaiah Berlin pointed out all these conflicting views of equality for a reason: I cite this only as a warning against the thesis that the commandment to treat all men alike in like situations needs no independent argument to support it… but are something taken for granted by reasonable men, a form of the working of natural reason, which needs no justification, but is as self-evident as the principle of identity or that red is different from green. Jefferson proceeds on ideas that he believes need no justification. Equality is one of those ideas. But reading about Socrates makes it clear that many of us in fact operate under false assumptions and we really don’t know what we’re talking about. That’s why Berlin’s essay on equality is in the best tradition of the Great Books concept.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (Jefferson and Socrates)

2011-06-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

We are Americans and we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… This idea is so firmly planted in our minds that we can’t possibly imagine how it could be any other way. Of course all men are created equal. It’s just plain common sense. That’s what America is all about. Thomas Jefferson was just expressing the beliefs of American citizens: we’re all in this together. We may not all be on the same level socially or economically, but we’re all equal under the law. Jefferson goes on to state that everyone, regardless of their social status are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights were given to use by the Creator of the world. They are “unalienable” which means they can’t be given away or sold. But since people aren’t angels there are some men who will try to take away our happiness, or our freedom, even our lives. Therefore Jefferson says that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. People band together and form governments to protect these unalienable rights. To repeat, this idea is so firmly planted in our minds that we don’t see how it could be any other way. It sounds almost like a natural law that “the people” should be in charge of their own government. And yet the greatest of philosophers disagrees with this notion. Socrates never trusted “the people” to make wise decisions. He had these words for his student Crito: But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many?... the truth is, that they can do neither good nor evil: they cannot make a man wise or make him foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance. (Plato’s Crito) This is a very different view of “the people” and what they’re capable of accomplishing. And it should be disturbing to American readers who are fans of both Socrates and our American Declaration and Constitution. There’s a tension between these two views and they’re hard to reconcile. Was Jefferson mistaken about all men being equal? Is that a starting point for establishing government or is that the ultimate goal? Was Socrates wrong about “the many” not being able to do anything good? Does he really believe that “the people” act randomly and without political wisdom? What are we to make of these statements? Jefferson admits that we need government. He says prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes… accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Jefferson seems to be saying that even bad government is better than having no government at all. But when bad government becomes so bad that its citizens are being abused then it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Surely Socrates would agree with Jefferson on this point, right? Wrong. Socrates does not agree. Jefferson and Socrates have different visions of what the State is and what a Citizen is. Socrates has this question for Jefferson: Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding? (Plato’s Crito) Look Mr. Jefferson, don’t you think our country is even more important to us than our parents? I do. And when we are punished by her, whether with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured in silence; and if she leads us to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right. Socrates is saying something like this: This is my country, may she always be right. But right or wrong, she’s still my country and I will defend her with my life. So would Jefferson. But Socrates believes that a man must do what his city and his country order him; or he must change their view of what is just. Jefferson on the other hand believes that it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off (bad) Government.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (Introduction)

2011-06-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

Writers of the Great Books ponder great questions. How should we live is one of those great questions. And pondering how we should live makes us consider how we should govern ourselves. In Federalist Paper #51 James Madison asks: what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Since we’re not angels, how should we govern ourselves? In a sense the idea of America is all about finding answers to that question. Other Great Books writers have held various opinions about government. Aristotle’s Politics says all government helps provide the basic necessities of life but good government helps its citizens live the good life. Hobbes in his Leviathan believes government provides safety and security. We need an army and a navy and a police force to protect us from foreign enemies abroad and from murderers and crooks at home. John Locke says the purpose of government is to preserve our life, liberty and property. We need laws and courts to provide ground rules for living peaceably. These three foundations of government rest on certain assumptions about what human beings are like. Human nature needs a responding form of government and our views of human nature don’t always agree. That’s why we have liberals and conservatives and Libertarians and Socialists etc. They all start from a specific view of what human beings are like and what human beings can accomplish through their own efforts. For example, Aristotle believes that human beings are social creatures by nature. Birds of a feather flock together. We want to be with other people because we’re hard-wired that way. Hobbes believes that human nature is aggressive and violent. He agrees with Aristotle that humans want to be with other people. But Hobbes believes it’s because we want to be safe, not because we want to socialize. In nature it’s always the weak and the stragglers who fall prey to predators. So for Hobbes, there’s safety in numbers. And then Locke believes that every human being is born with certain rights that can only be taken away by fraud or force. These basic rights include our lives, our freedoms and our private property. We cannot live fully human lives unless we are guaranteed these basic human rights. This is the background for reading The Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson coined the famous phrase We hold these truths to be self-evident…and then goes on to claim the following “self-evident truths” (1) all men are created equal (2) they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights (among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness) (3) Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and (4) it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off (bad) Government. Armed with the theories of Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke we’re now prepared to ask a couple of crucial questions about these four “self-evident” propositions: (1) Are they true? (2) Are they self-evident? There are at least three distinct possibilities. First, all these propositions really are true and they’re self-evident too. Every reasonable person agrees with them. For example, everyone wants life, freedom and happiness. This is just common sense. The second possibility is this: these propositions may be true but they’re not all self-evident. For example, it’s not clear whether all men really are created equal. That might be true but it might not. It certainly doesn’t seem to be true on the surface. It hardly seems that even two single people are equal, much less a whole population. The third possibility is this: these propositions aren't even true, much less self-evident. For example, why does Jefferson assume that governments are instituted by men? When we read Exodus it seems as if government is instituted by God, not by man. Pharaoh may think he’s in charge but there’s a bigger force than Pharaoh working in the stream of human history. And America was also born in the great stream of human history. American citizens must ponder these great questions about history and human nature. The Declaration of Independence is our primer on civic education.

SHAKESPEARE: Antony and Cleopatra in Love

2011-06-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

There are lots of songs about love: Love Makes the World Go ‘Round, The Theme from Love Story; the list goes on. But our generation wasn’t the first one to discover love. And we weren’t the first generation to proclaim love in music, art and drama. Neither was Shakespeare. But he was exceptionally good at it. And Shakespeare was particularly good at taking universal human themes (such as love) and tying them to specific historic settings (such as medieval England or ancient Rome). This play is about the power struggle in Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. But its primary dramatic focus is the love between a powerful Roman general (Mark Antony) and an equally powerful Egyptian queen (Cleopatra). They weren’t equal in political power. Rome was clearly the ruling force in the world of politics. But Cleopatra was clearly the ruling force in the world of courtesans and lovers. Early on we get this insight into Mark Antony: his captain's heart, Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gipsy's lust. Mark Antony had the heart to win great battles. But now his heart is hard at work in another task: “to cool a gipsy’s lust.” The “gipsy” is Cleopatra. Her lust is not for sex but for having things her own way. This is the same Mark Antony who once said Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears… And this is the same Cleopatra who once seduced the great Julius Caesar. The rest is history, as they say. Antony and Cleopatra are not just two ordinary tourists who happen to hook up on a cruise and fall in love. These are two extraordinary players on the world stage when both are at the top of their game. They’re also two of the most powerful people in the world, so the stakes are high. Kingdoms will rise or fall depending on the decisions made by Antony and Cleopatra. So what do these two spend their time doing? Here’s Shakespeare: ANTONY: Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay… What sport tonight? Forget politics. Let’s have some fun. That’s Antony’s view. Here’s Cleopatra’s: He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden A Roman thought hath struck him. Poor Mark, he’s stuck in that old Roman duty thingy. Why can’t he just relax and enjoy life? It’s not that Antony doesn’t know what’s going on here. He does. He even acknowledges the hold that Cleopatra and the luxurious culture of Egypt have over him. ANTONY: These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage… I must from this enchanting queen break off: Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, My idleness doth hatch. In short, while Antony and Cleopatra are playing around in the love boats of Egypt, back in Rome there’s an anti-Antony coalition forming to put his rival (Octavius Caesar) in power. Antony knows this but can’t break away from the pleasures he finds in Egypt and Cleopatra’s arms. Sometimes he wishes things were different. ANTONY: Would I had never seen her. But his close advisor has seen Cleopatra too. ENOBARBUS: O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel. Why should a man travel the whole wide world if not to meet a woman like Cleopatra? So they pursue their doomed love affair to its tragic end. When Cleopatra’s ships flee in battle, Antony follows. Was it her fault? No. ANTONY: I have fled myself; and have instructed cowards To run and show their shoulders… I have offended reputation, A most unnoble swerving. CLEOPATRA: O my lord, my lord, Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought You would have follow'd. ANTONY: Egypt, thou knew'st too well My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings, And thou shouldst tow me after… Antony was a great man, a man among men. Cleopatra was a wonderful piece of work. In the end he became “her” Antony (CAESAR: She shall be buried by her Antony…) and she became his queen. Antony was right. Kingdoms are only clay. Now Rome is long gone. But the love story of Antony and Cleopatra lives on.

CHEKHOV: In Exile (Introduction)

2011-05-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

Philosophers speak to our minds. John Locke’s essay on civil government is a good example: The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions… Storytellers speak to our hearts. William Faulkner’s story about the Snopes family is a good example: "This case is closed. I can't find against you, Snopes, but I can give you advice. Leave this country and don't come back to it." His father spoke for the first time, his voice cold and harsh, level, without emphasis: "I aim to. I don't figure to stay in a country among people who…" he said something unprintable and vile, addressed to no one. Anton Chekhov is a gifted storyteller. His story takes place in the heart of Siberia. His characters are cold and lonely convicts exiled from Russia, banished from the kind of civil government that Locke talks about. But Chekhov has a question: what good is philosophy when you’re stuck out in a Godforsaken place like Siberia? Clay, water, cold, no vegetables for you, no fruit; uneducated and drunken people all around, no manners at all… Siberians live like the Snopes family. How do people cope under those conditions? Here are two options: (1) accept your condition with stoic resignation and don’t wish for things you’ll never have, or (2) reject your condition and keep hoping for a better life someday. Chekhov lays out both options brilliantly through his two main characters, Semyon and Tartar. Semyon has taken the first option. He accepts his lot in life and has grown used to the harsh Siberian climate: "You (Tartar) will get used to it," said Semyon, and he laughed. "Now you are young and foolish, the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and it seems to you in your foolishness that you are more wretched than anyone; but the time will come when you will say to yourself: 'I wish no one a better life than mine.' You look at me. Within a week the floods will be over and we shall set up the ferry; you will all go wandering off about Siberia while I shall stay and shall begin going from bank to bank. I've been going like that for twenty-two years, day and night. …I want nothing and I am afraid of nobody, and the way I look at it is that there is nobody richer and freer than I am. When they sent me here from Russia from the first day I stuck it out; I want nothing! The devil was at me about my wife and about my home and about freedom, but I told him: 'I want nothing.' I stuck to it, and here you see I live well, and I don't complain… This is Stoicism in action. Stick it out. Don’t let anything disturb your peace of mind. You can’t control what’s going on around you but you can control your own thoughts. That’s what will keep you happy. A good Buddhist would say the same thing. But Tartar isn’t buying that philosophy. He defends a fellow exile named Vasily. Vasily’s wife came out to Siberia for awhile but she despised Siberia and after three years she went back home. She left their daughter behind with Vasily. Now the daughter is very sick and Vasily has spends a lot of time and money looking for a doctor who can heal her. Semyon thinks it’s all a waste of time because the girl will die anyway. Then Tartar offers this judgment of Stoic philosophy: You (Semyon) say, want nothing. But 'nothing' is bad! His wife lived with him (Vasily) three years; that was a gift from God. 'Nothing' is bad, but three years is good. How you not understand?" Even if Vasily is sad now, he still had three good years of happiness while his wife was with him. Three good years is better than nothing. Tartar summarizes the whole thing this way: "He is good . . . good; but you are bad! You are bad! The gentleman is a good soul, excellent, and you are a beast, bad! The gentleman is alive, but you are dead. God created man to be alive and to have joy and grief and sorrow; but you want nothing, so you are not alive, you are stone, clay! A stone wants nothing and you want nothing. You are a stone, and God does not love you, but He loves the gentleman!" Tartar doesn’t like Stoicism. He wouldn’t like Mr. Snopes either.

LOCKE: Of Civil Government (Introduction)

2011-05-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Thomas Jefferson is famous in American history for coining the phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But long before Jefferson was born John Locke had already said that Man... hath by nature a power... to preserve his property (that is, his life, liberty, and estate) against the injuries and attempts of other men. Jefferson’s notion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is firmly planted in our brains. But where did Locke get his notion? This selection says Locke believes there are three faults that inhibit our thinking. First…those who seldom reason at all but do and think according to the example of others… These are people who tend to follow the traditions of the communities they grew up in. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that they’re not normally open to accepting new ideas. They prefer the devil they know to the one they don’t know. For traditionalists change should come slowly, if it comes at all. Second…those who put passion in the place of reason… There will always be people who follow passions instead of using their minds to chart out a rational lifestyle. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Lots of artists and musicians tend to live this way. For passionate folks change should come quickly, like right now. Third…those who readily and sincerely follow reason, but for want of having that which one may call large, sound, round-about sense have not a full view of all that relates to the question… This is your typical absent-minded professor. They’re smart, they may even be brilliant, but they lack common sense or street smarts. The absent-minded citizen says: Change? What change? Here’s Locke’s point: when we live in community we have all kinds of neighbors. Some are traditional, some are passionate, and some don’t have much common sense. But we all have to live together and somehow get along with one another. Political power is the way we set rules how to live together peaceably. How do we do that? Locke believes we have to start at the beginning: To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man. In Locke’s opinion we’re all born free to think and act in ways that we believe will serve our own best interests. But this “state of perfect freedom” doesn’t mean we can do anything we please. There are other people in the community too. And they have the same rights and responsibilities that we do: A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another… This doesn’t mean that some people won’t have more than other people. They will. In the free exchange of goods and services within the community some people will naturally get rich; others will stay poor. But as far as the LAW is concerned, we all have the same rights to life, liberty and our “estates” or material wealth. As one of our basic human rights, Jefferson replaced the concept of crude material wealth with the nobler-sounding goal: the pursuit of happiness. In Locke’s mind the term “estate” includes material wealth but goes much further. We certainly need things like food and clothing and good health. But Nature also provides us with human dignity. Locke says …The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions… For Locke (and for Jefferson) Nature and Reason are the twin teachers that will ultimately lead us to happiness.

FAULKNER: Barn Burning

2011-05-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

There’s a story about an old woman having a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper in a small town in Mississippi. When she finishes reading she slowly puts the newspaper away and says to herself: “I don’t care how many books he writes or how much money he makes; that Faulkner boy’s still just white trash.” That’s probably not good literary criticism but it’s one way to get a handle on Southern literature. William Faulkner’s Barn Burning is an echo of both the glory and the squalor of life in the old South. Literature doesn’t develop in a vacuum and neither does Faulkner’s fiction. This story takes place in a particular environment (Mississippi) with a particular set of people (the Snopes family). Meet Mr. Snopes: the wiry figure walked a little stiffly because a Confederate musket ball had taken him in the heel on a stolen horse thirty years ago. Not that the father of the Snopes clan ever fought on the Union side, or any other side for that matter. Mr. Snopes was just out for Mr. Snopes. During the Civil War he mostly spent four years in the woods hiding from all men, blue or gray, with his strings of horses (captured horses, he called them…) Horse thief is what other men called it, both blue and gray. Nowadays we would say that Mr. Snopes had an “antisocial personality disorder.” The idea of a stable social order has long been the goal of political philosophers. In one of our earlier readings Thomas Hobbes wonders: Bees and ants live sociably with one another… some man may perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do that same. The obvious answer of course is that people aren’t bees or ants, and thank goodness for that. People think and act for themselves. Sometimes this puts them in conflict with their neighbors. But most folks do, in fact, come to terms and learn to live sociably and peaceably with one another. In today’s terms they play well with others. Then there’s Mr. Snopes. He’s the kind of guy who lets his hog get out and ruin the neighbor’s garden; more than once it’s been rumored that if you cross him Mr. Snopes will sneak out at night and burn down your barn. Aristotle said that man, when perfected, is the best of animals. But when separated from law and justice he is the worst of all. Mr. Snopes lives in his own private world without law and justice. Men like Mr. Snopes are the main reason we have police departments and court systems and jails. In the Federalist Papers we read that if men were angels, no government would be necessary. But men aren’t angels. And since there are people like Mr. Snopes the rest of society has to come to terms with criminals living in their midst. One way is to kick them out of the community. Here’s how Faulkner writes about it in his story: "This case is closed. I can't find against you, Snopes, but I can give you advice. Leave this country and don't come back to it." His father (Mr. Snopes) spoke for the first time, his voice cold and harsh, level, without emphasis: "I aim to. I don't figure to stay in a country among people who…" he said something unprintable and vile, addressed to no one. "That'll do," the Justice said. "Take your wagon and get out of this country before dark. Case dismissed.” Or we can establish social norms that discourage antisocial behavior. Here’s a selection from another Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor: “What gets my goat is all those boys from good families stealing automobile tires,” the woman with the protruding teeth said. “I told my boy, I said you may not be rich but you been raised right and if I ever catch you in any such mess, they can send you on to the reformatory. Be exactly where you belong.” Mr. Snopes wasn’t raised right. But we know how he intends on raising his own kids: to be just like him. At one point he tells his son "You're getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you.” For Mr. Snopes “sticking to your own blood” is a badge of honor. The important thing is the preservation of your own tribe, not the best interests of the community. Look out for number one. It took Faulkner a whole story to create a character like Mr. Snopes. It only took the old Southern lady two words: “white trash.”

SHAKESPEARE: Troilus and Cressida

2011-05-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

In many of Shakespeare’s plays we see love triumph over hate. For example, the Montague and Capulet families hated one another but the love between Romeo and Juliet proved stronger than any family feud. In many of Shakespeare’s plays we see good triumph over evil. Macbeth is a good example of this type play. Macbeth hatches a plan to kill King Duncan and become king himself. But it’s a short-lived success and the play winds up with Macbeth’s own death. Troilus and Cressida isn’t a play of triumph. In real life love doesn’t always triumph over hate and good doesn’t always triumph over evil. Shakespeare knows this. King Lear and Othello are perfect examples of how things don’t always turn out so well. And so it is in this play. Things don’t turn out so well. Troilus and Cressida pledge their eternal love to one another. But once they’re separated Cressida doesn’t prove to be as faithful as Juliet was to Romeo, or Cordelia and Kent were to King Lear, or as Desdemona was to Othello. Cressida’s love for Troilus just sort of melts away when she meets the Greek hunk Diomedes. No triumph of love over hate here. It’s just the mundane story of a young girl’s love interests being diverted from one young lover to another. And there’s no triumph of good over evil here either. Hector is clearly one of the good guys in this play. Here’s a short exchange between Pandarus and Cressida: PANDARUS: That's Hector, that, that, look you, that; there's a fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There's a brave man, niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks! there's a countenance! is't not a brave man? CRESSIDA: O, a brave man! PANDARUS: Is a' not? it does a man's heart good. Look you what hacks are on his helmet! look you yonder, do you see? look you there: there's no jesting; there's laying on, take't off who will, as they say: there be hacks! CRESSIDA: Be those with swords? PANDARUS: Swords! anything, he cares not; an the devil come to him, it's all one: by God's lid, it does one's heart good. But Hector is caught up in the Trojan War. The crux of the problem in the Trojan War is Helen. What to do about Helen? The Greeks want her back and the Trojans refuse to give her up. Why? Because of pride on both sides. The Greeks want her back to restore their honor. They don’t want other guys just swooping in and stealing away their womenfolk. The Trojans maintain that Helen came willingly and she loves Paris more than she loves that half-barbaric husband, Menelaus. They feel like they need to protect Helen out of honor. And since neither side will give in, war breaks out. The ancient Greek poet Homer handles this story in the tight straight-forward Greek manner. He tells about these events in poetry and includes battle scenes, campfire dinners, everyday conversation and much more. Shakespeare handles the story like a master Elizabethan dramatist. He actually has three plots going on here: the love story between Troilus and Cressida set against the bigger backdrop of the love story between Paris and Helen set against the even bigger backdrop of the war between Greece and Troy. Good stories always involve tension. In this play there’s a great deal of tension between lovers. Helen wasn’t faithful to Menelaus and Troilus learns the hard way that not all women are as faithful as Andromache is to Hector. There’s also a great deal of tension between the two warring armies and even more tension within the armies themselves. Hector is the pivotal character because he’s the older brother of Troilus and also the cousin of the Greek warrior Ajax. Hector tries hard to protect his Trojan family against the onslaught of the Greek invasion. In the end it’s not enough. Homer portrays the defeat of Hector as a trick by the gods. Shakespeare portrays the defeat of Hector as a sneaky trick by Achilles to kill an unarmed man. So the lovers are not triumphant and the good guys don’t win. What are we to make of all this? Life goes on. Fools always muddle through somehow. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded by Agamemnon… But Shakespeare is nobody’s fool. Only the Bible and Homer stand higher in Western literature and culture.

HOBBES: Of Commonwealth (Introduction)

2011-04-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks our Great Books discussion group has read about the social effects of money (Shakespeare’s Timon), how primitive society affects the modern mind (Conrad), the importance of studying (Ortega) and how civilizations begin (Aristotle). Now we come to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The threads of the previous four readings come together in his short piece Of Commonwealth. Hobbes wants us to consider the basic human organizational structure we use in order to govern ourselves. Aristotle calls this structure a State. Hobbes calls it a Commonwealth. It doesn’t matter whether we call it a State or a Commonwealth, living in a civilized social order requires a certain set of skills. Shakespeare showed us how money can blind us to the true meaning of friendship. Conrad showed us that living in modern society makes us unfit to return and live in a primitive state of nature. Ortega showed us the importance of handing down our knowledge from one generation to the next. It was Ortega who said that if a whole generation should cease to study, nine-tenths of the human race would die a violent death. Hobbes agrees. And Aristotle made his famous statement that the state comes into existence originating in the bare needs of life and continues in existence for the sake of the good life. Thomas Hobbes partly agrees with all these writers and partly disagrees. Hobbes stakes out his own particular views on the social order by concentrating his attention on the most basic need of all: the need to survive. Without establishing our continued survival first, all this talk about principles and values is just a bunch of wasted words. When your back is to the wall in a struggle for life and death things like money and education become luxuries we can’t afford. But why do we have to become involved in some life-or-death struggle in the first place? Aristotle gave us the short answer: Man, when perfected, is the best of animals. But when separated from law and justice he is the worst of all. Hobbes agrees. You may be a good guy but some people out there are really bad guys. Hobbes goes into a little more detail in this essay. He notes that bees and ants live sociably with one another… some man may perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do that same. Yes, many men (and women too) have asked why can’t people get along like other social creatures in the state of nature? Hobbes is one of the most direct writers in the Great Books. Here are his six reasons:
1. Men are continually in competition for honor and dignity, which these creatures are not.
2. Amongst these creatures the common good differeth not from the private.
3. These creatures having not (as man does) the use of reason, do not see, nor think they see, any fault in the administration of their common business.
4. They want that art of words by which some men can represent to others that which is good in the likeness of evil and evil in the likeness of good.
5. Irrational creatures cannot distinguish between INJURY (intentionally hurtful speech or words) and DAMAGE (actual loss of property or bodily harm).
6. The agreement of these creatures is natural; that of men is by covenant, which is artificial.
We could comment on every one of these reasons in more detail. Each statement is rich in philosophical speculation. But there’s no need to speculate. Hobbes states the most obvious points in the briefest number of words. You may disagree with him. Many people do. But you won’t misunderstand what Hobbes is saying. And he seems to split humanity right down the middle when he asks the reader to decide: which is more important, freedom or safety? Some will always choose freedom. Give me freedom or give me death! The Melians in Thucydides chose freedom and it got them killed. Hobbes says: choose safety.

ARISTOTLE: Politics (Introduction)

2011-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

In his essay On Studying Jose Ortega y Gasset says Generation after generation the frightening mass of human knowledge which the student must assimilate piles up… Underneath this culture, received but not truly assimilated, man will remain intact as he was; that is to say, he will remain uncultured, a barbarian… Culture may be a “frightening mass of human knowledge” but Ortega still sees education as the key for passing civilization on from one generation to the next. Failure to preserve civilization will lead to catastrophe. Ortega goes on to say that if a whole generation should cease to study, nine-tenths of the human race would die a violent death. We saw that happen in Conrad’s short story about An Outpost of Progress. Two men met violent deaths because their education had not prepared them to survive outside the safety net of their own civilization. Aristotle helps make sense of these ideas in his own writing about Politics. Aristotle was multi-talented and a shrewd observer of human nature. He was also thoroughly trained in biology and took careful note of the world around him. For example, in some of his writings Aristotle drew this distinction between old and young men: Elderly men have lived many years; they have often been taken in and often made mistakes; and life on the whole is a bad business… They “think” but they never “know” and because of their hesitation they always add “possibly” or “perhaps”… their experience makes them distrustful and therefore suspicious of evil. Then he goes on to say that Young men (are different). All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently… They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it. These are two very different views of the world and two very different views about how to live life. But it should be noted that the same man can have both of these traits at different periods in his life. The brash young playboy hitting the nightclubs may someday grow up to be a cautious old gentleman nodding off in a rocking chair in front of the fire. So what does all this have to do with politics? Young and old men often disagree about what should be done. When it comes to making changes the younger men usually err on the side of bold change and the older men on the side of proceeding more cautiously. Men may be more willing for a country to go to war than are most of the women. Young families may be more interested in public education policy than young singles. But all of these people have one thing in common: they all want to be safe and prosper. And for that reason people tend to band together and form small communities with shared interests. Then small communities band together to form larger cities and states and nations. Aristotle speculates that the state comes into existence originating in the bare needs of life and continues in existence for the sake of a good life. And if the earlier forms of society are natural so is the (modern) state… We start out needing basic things like food, shelter and warm clothing. Then we develop weapons to protect ourselves from outsiders and rules (laws) for living peaceably amongst our neighbors. Once this is accomplished we start developing things like the arts and history and philosophy. Writers like Rousseau and Thoreau believed that civilization is unnatural and forces us to live up to false standards. Aristotle disagrees and uses his biological instincts to view a human city like Paris or New York to be just as “natural” as a bee hive or an ant hill. An art museum is just as natural to Aristotle as Walden Pond was to Thoreau. Thoreau thought we would be better off to get away from the corrupting influences of town and city ways. Aristotle couldn’t disagree more. For Aristotle the man who is unable to live in society or who has no need of society must be either a beast or a god. It’s important for Aristotle that we try to live more like gods and less like beasts. That’s because man, when perfected, is the best of animals. But when separated from law and justice he is the worst of all. One of the primary benefits of living in civilization is to feel safe and be confident that justice will prevail. Aristotle thinks this is the purpose of politics.

JOSE ORTEGA y GASSET: On Studying

2011-04-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

We are going to study metaphysics… Now there’s an opening sentence that will drive folks toward the exits. But let’s give Ortega a chance. The mere word “metaphysics” is enough to turn most people off. So let’s start with this question: what is metaphysics? Ortega’s simple answer: metaphysics is something that man does or something that man makes… man makes many things, not just metaphysics… he makes his house, he makes politics, industry, verses, science… This helps get us on solid ground. We’re going to study a subject that’s man-made, the same way we live in a house that’s been made by men. But a second question may arise: why study metaphysics? Why shouldn’t we spend our time studying something useful, like carpentry? Then we can learn how to build houses and earn a living. Why bother studying metaphysics? Do we really need it? The short answer from Ortega is: no. But here’s his longer answer: Metaphysics is not metaphysics except for those who need it. For one who does not need it, who does not seek it, metaphysics is just a series of words. For those who don’t really care about metaphysics it’s just a waste of time. They may as well be doing something useful such as learning carpentry. But for those who are curious and still hanging around to see what all the fuss is about Ortega continues: In order to truly understand something, and most of all metaphysics, it is not necessary to have what is called talent or to possess great prior wisdom… what is necessary is to have need of metaphysics. Metaphysics is philosophy. The best students of philosophy are those who WANT to be philosophers. The rest should go be carpenters or do something else. Now Ortega gets down to business: man engages in metaphysics when he seeks a basic orientation in his situation. A good example of being disoriented can be found in Conrad’s short story An Outpost of Progress. Two men find themselves out in the wilderness with no contact or support from their own civilization. They want to get rich and sit around waiting for the proverbial ship to come in. But they should be learning carpentry so they can repair their own buildings and gardening so they can grow their own food. They become extremely “dis-oriented” regarding their circumstances. How can metaphysics help these guys? Actually metaphysics is the very thing they both desperately need. Ortega doesn’t think metaphysics is useless speculation or mere navel-gazing. Metaphysics (and its cousin, philosophy) provide us with a road map to re-orient our path through life. No matter what our situation is, philosophy can help figure out where we are, where we should go and even what we should do to get there. Ortega says that man’s life seems to made up of situations… as long as one lives, one is living in a specific situation. That’s why we need to study a subject like metaphysics, because man’s primary situation is life, is living. Metaphysics consists of the fact that man seeks a basic orientation in his situation. No matter where we are in life, metaphysics can help re-orient us to a new and better situation. This argument will not persuade most people. That’s ok. They should wait until they truly need philosophy in their lives. It won’t come naturally. Very few people call up their buddies and say “hey let’s have some fun. Why don’t you guys come on over so we can study some metaphysics! Whoo-hoo!” But everyone has to BE something. Ortega notes that there are an infinite number of ways of being a man, and all of them are equally genuine. One can be a man of science, or a business man, or a political man, or a religious man… but man by himself would never be a student, just as man by himself would never be a taxpayer. He MUST pay taxes, he HAS to study, but he IS by nature neither a taxpayer nor a student. To be a student or to be a taxpayer is an artificial state in which man finds himself by obligation… in my judgment the reform of education ought to begin with that brutal paradox. Philosophy is a very practical subject. Ortega says we should reform our educational system. Sound familiar? Philosophy can help but that’s a whole different topic.

CONRAD: An Outpost of Progress

2011-04-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

One of the most unpopular selections in the Great Books Adult Series set is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Why? Depending on who you talk to the story is too long, too boring or too depressing. But An Outpost of Progress is different. It’s shorter. Otherwise it’s just as bleak and hopeless as Heart of Darkness. Even the themes are the same: two civilized white men journey into the deepest parts of Africa and confront an alien culture. The result is disturbing to many readers. Still, it’s important to read Conrad for at least three reasons: (1) he’s a master of English prose, (2) he’s out of fashion, and (3) he’s included in the Great Books set. Let’s take them in order. First, Conrad knows how to write. He knows how to weave an enchanting spell around the reader. Many readers claim that he’s boring. And they’re right, but only in this sense: any really long journey is going to be filled with hours and hours of sheer boredom. Conrad knows how to make you FEEL it in just a few short pages. As Conrad explains My task is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel; it is, before all to make you SEE. That, and no more, and it is everything. If Conrad seems boring it’s because he knows what he’s doing. He intends for you to be “bored” for a reason. He’s setting the stage for you to FEEL like the characters in the story. Second, Conrad falls into a class of writers who used to be read a lot but have fallen out of favor in recent times. Rudyard Kipling and Ernest Hemingway also fall into this category. Why? It’s hard to say but probably because the message they bring is not welcomed in modern America. Conrad says Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the hills. A culture in love with iPods and Netflicks isn’t really interested in ideas that are old as the hills. They want the latest upgrade. But there’s also a deeper reason. In many ways Conrad is a subversive writer, only in reverse. He says I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary… (has a) hard, absolute optimism that is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. This is not the kind of language that will motivate a social activist. Many Americans believe deeply in progress. They think we can make things “better” and Joseph Conrad is having none of that. Reading his stories is like reading The Book of Job only without the happy ending. Finally, some of us read Conrad just because he’s included in the Great Books set. Who picks up a book and says “you know I think I’ll read this long, boring, depressing story?” But it’s included in the Great Books for a reason. Conrad believes life is hard and mostly dark. Thomas Hobbes agreed. Gorky’s story about Chelkash is like that too. They’re starkly opposed to Rousseau’s or Thoreau’s notion that life can be rosy if only we shed the inhibitions of civilization and learn to be ourselves. We need to be more like the Noble Savage and live according to nature. To this idea Conrad can only shake his head and say: really? Let me tell you a little story. An Outpost of Progress shows us what life would be like in a state of nature. Here’s your noble savage, a man named Makola, who cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits… He got on very well with his god. Perhaps he had propitiated him by a promise of more white men to play with, by and by… In Conrad’s opinion the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. This is not the message of Rousseau or Henry David Thoreau. In Conrad’s opinion civilization is a blessing, but with a twist. “Progress” is an illusion. We say we believe in it but we actually live by ideas that are as old as the hills. Civilization is only a thin veneer covering up primitive passions. Two very ordinary white station masters found this out the hard way: Progress was calling to Kayerts from the river. Progress and civilization and all the virtues. They signed on to go into dark, primitive Africa for six months and make lots of money. Neither of them ever came back. This is classic Conrad.

SHAKESPEARE: Timon of Athens

2011-04-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

Timon is a rich man. So rich that no one, not even Timon, knows for sure how much money he has. But Timon is not a miserly, stingy man. He gives money away freely; lots of money. But that’s ok. Timon considers it money well spent. His attitude is 'Tis not enough to help the feeble up, But to support him after. At the start of the play this seems like a very noble attitude. Don’t just help people get up off the ground, give them enough money to help them get started again. And Timon is very generous to his friends. He says what need we have any friends, if we should ne'er have need of 'em? …We are born to do benefits: and what better or properer can we call our own than the riches of our friends? O, what a precious comfort 'tis, to have so many, like brothers, commanding one another's fortunes! Wouldn’t you like to have a friend like Timon, who will come to your aid whenever you need to borrow money or get bailed out of jail? But hold on. There’s one man who knows exactly how much money Timon has. Timon’s business manager has a different picture of what Timon’s finances look like. FLAVIUS: What will this come to? He commands us to provide, and give great gifts, And all out of an empty coffer: Nor will he know his purse, or yield me this, To show him what a beggar his heart is, Being of no power to make his wishes good: His promises fly so beyond his state That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes For every word: he is so kind that he now Pays interest for 't; his land's put to their books. Well, would I were gently put out of office Before I were forced out! The fact is, Timon is spending money that he doesn’t have; and he’s promising all his friends that he’ll spend even more on them. Flavius has tried to tell Timon that he’s broke but Timon won’t listen. He just goes on talking about how much fun it is to be generous: I take all and your several visitations So kind to heart, 'tis not enough to give; Methinks, I could deal kingdoms to my friends, And ne'er be weary. Timon is kind-hearted but he’s also financially busted. He can’t even help himself, much less afford to help other people. So he runs his fortune right into the ditch. Flavius can see what’s happening but is powerless to stop it: No care, no stop! so senseless of expense, That he will neither know how to maintain it, Nor cease his flow of riot: takes no account How things go from him, nor resumes no care Of what is to continue: never mind Was to be so unwise, to be so kind. What shall be done? He will not hear, till feel. Timon does eventually feel the pinch of owing money. He has given away tons of money. But when he approaches his so-called “friends” for help, none of them even offers a loan. There’s a lesson to learn here. It’s a hard lesson but Timon learned it well. He should have read what Aristotle had to say about friendship in his book Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle says there are three kinds of friends: friendships of utility or “usefulness” (these would be people like your business partners), friendships of pleasure (these would be people like your drinking buddies), and friendships of the good (these would be the “true friends” who have your best interests in mind). Timon’s problem was thinking that all his acquaintances were friendships of the good. His acquaintances were all thinking that their friendship was one of usefulness or pleasure. When the money and the good times stopped flowing, so did the friendship. This was a hard lesson for Timon. A philosophical question arises: can a person be terrible at money management and still be good and wise? A more practical question would be: should a wise person try to be self-sufficient or develop financial partnerships with friends? To be fully human we all need friends. To be fully human we also need money. Shakespeare has his finger on the pulse where the concept of friendship and money intersect. In the modern world we often have to live most of our lives in that intersection. Friends come and go. People move into town, people move away. Money comes and goes too. The trick to success is simple: have more money coming in than going out; have true friends who care about your well-being. Timon’s tragedy was to fail on both counts.

ROGER FRY: Essay in Aesthetics

2011-03-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

In his famous poem about a Grecian urn John Keats once wrote that 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' Over the years many people have believed this idea deep within their hearts. Beauty and truth are so closely inter-related that they are merged into one. Over the years many other people have believed just as strongly that this is pure nonsense. Beauty and truth are two entirely different things. Who’s right? Roger Fry checks into this fight on shaky ground. He admits that …I have never believed that I knew what the ultimate nature of art was. So why has he decided to write an essay on this very subject? Maybe he wants to clear up his ideas in his own mind. Maybe he wants to persuade us that beauty is just as important as truth. And he does take a strong position. In his opinion …the aesthetic pursuit is as important in the long run for mankind as the search for truth. He realizes that not everyone will agree with him. In fact, some of the heavyweights of philosophy will say that Fry is just plain wrong. Plato may be one of them. Did Plato believe that the search for beauty was as important in the long run for mankind as the search for truth? No. Fry writes that Plato himself put the question: Is art worthwhile? …he decided that it was not worthwhile and proceeded to turn the artists out of his ideal republic. So much for the artists. But maybe they wouldn’t want a philosopher like Plato in their own ideal artistic republic either. An obvious question is: why are these two views so much opposed? Can’t they live peaceably in the same town? Part of the answer is that they want different things out of life. Fry helps put this in perspective by setting the background for us: Man has the peculiar faculty of calling up again in his mind the echo of past experiences, of going over it again “in imagination” as we say. He has, therefore, the possibility of a double life; one we call the actual life, the other we call the imaginative life. Plato puts his emphasis on “the actual life” and the artists put their emphasis on “the imaginative life.” So what? Does it really make any difference? Yes, it does. In fact, it makes a great deal of difference. Fry writes that we get in the imaginative life a different set of values and a different kind of perception. It’s this “different set of values” that apparently bothers Plato. Actual life sometimes requires citizens to be brave instead of cowardly, chaste instead of promiscuous, restrained instead of impulsive. The imaginative life doesn’t require us to be citizens. It doesn’t require us to “be” anything. It doesn’t require us to do anything either. In the imaginative life we can simply sit back and observe our emotions without committing ourselves to any course of action. Fry expresses it this way: Art is an expression and a stimulus of imaginative life, which is separated from actual life by the absence of responsive action. Responsive action implies in actual life moral responsibility. In art we have no such moral responsibility. It presents a life freed from the binding necessities of our actual existence. When we respond in real life we can be brave, chaste and restrained. On the other hand, we can also turn out cowardly, promiscuous and impulsive. In the imaginative life we can walk into an art museum or a movie theater and see explicit representations of life. There we can see various interpretations made by artists. They may be accurate interpretations or wildly misguided; they can be beautiful or they can be bizarre. It doesn’t matter. For those who agree with Fry each work of art is an expression of life seen from a unique perspective. It makes the world a richer and more beautiful place. Our emotional life is enriched by these works of art. And that’s good for art lovers like Fry. But it’s not good according to Plato. Why? Fry believes it’s because morality appreciates emotion by the standard of resultant action. Art appreciates emotion in and for itself. Fry wants us to observe more and learn to appreciate our emotional life, in and for itself. He thinks we can do this by contemplating works of art. Plato wants us to become better citizens. He doesn’t think we can do this by retreating from real life. The debate continues.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR: Everything That Rises Must Converge

2011-03-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

The Great Books introduction tells us that Flannery O’Connor was a native Southerner and a devout Catholic. She was also a great writer who has earned her place in the Great Books series. O’Connor once explained that a story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way… When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The only way to understand this short story is to read it yourself. No explanations will do. So in O’Connor’s own words we can judge how well she fits in with other great writers we’ve been reading. Gorky’s story about Chelkash is one example. Cheklash is an accomplished thief and is very good at what he does. He recruits a young kid to help him steal. How would that kind of thing be viewed through Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Catholic eyes? She has one character say it like this: “What gets my goat is all those boys from good families stealing automobile tires,” the woman with the protruding teeth said. “I told my boy, I said you may not be rich but you been raised right and if I ever catch you in any such mess, they can send you on to the reformatory. Be exactly where you belong.” Gorky would have loved that kind of writing. In just a few well-chosen words O’Connor captures not only the Southern slang language but also the culture that produces the kind of people who talk like that. The Southern aristocracy had obviously left its mark on O’Connor’s Southern viewpoint. Aristocracy? Tocqueville had brilliant insight into the way an aristocracy can be created in an American-style industrial economy. But Flannery O’Connor knows about Southern agrarian aristocracy. This short exchange between mother and son is a good example: “Of course,” she said, “if you know who you are, you can go anywhere.” She said this every time he took her to the reducing class. “Most of them in it are not our kind of people,” she said, “but I can be gracious to anybody. I know who I am.” “They don't give a damn for your graciousness,” Julian said savagely. “Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.” She stopped and allowed her eyes to flash at him. “I most certainly do know who I am,” she said, “and if you don't know who you are, I'm ashamed of you.” Next, Claude Bernard talks about observation and experiment in the laboratory. O’Connor’s laboratory is a small town in Georgia. Another exchange between mother and son goes like this: “True culture is in the mind, the mind,” he said, and tapped his head, “the mind.” “It's in the heart,” she said, “and in how you do things and how you do things is because of who you are.” So who’s right? Is “true culture” in the mind or in the heart? Take Claude Bernard’s advice and observe what happens. Julian’s mother often says things that make him cringe. Her racism is a relic of the past and he’s been to college. Now he’s more open-minded and wants to help improve race relations but he had never been successful in making any Negro friends. His mother, on the other hand, immediately makes friends on the bus with a young black boy. This leads to a physical assault by the boy’s mother. She hits Julian’s mother and causes her to have a stroke. As Julian’s mother tries to focus her failing mind she reverts to what makes her feel most secure: “Tell Grandpa to come get me,” she said. He stared, stricken. “Tell Caroline to come get me,” she said. Julian’s mother is dying. At first she asks for her Grandpa. But as she fades closer to death she calls out for someone who makes her feel even more secure, Caroline. Who is Caroline? "I remember the old darky who was my nurse, Caroline. There was no better person in the world. I've always had a great respect for my colored friends,” she said. “I’d do anything in the world for them and they'd. . .” She referred to Caroline as an “old darky” but also said there was no better person in the world. I’d do anything in the world for them… Julian was different: When he got on a bus by himself, he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother's sins. Who’s the real racist? Read the story and decide for yourself.

BERNARD: Observation and Experiment

2011-03-12T12:04:00.000-08:00

Yogi Berra once said that you can observe a lot just by watching. Yogi was a pretty good baseball player but he wouldn’t have made a good scientist. Claude Bernard explains that observation is only half the goal. You can indeed learn a lot by watching. But in order for it to mean anything you have to put your observations into some sort of logical context. There needs to be a framework so all those observations will make sense and be useful. That’s where experiment comes in. It’s the second half of being scientific. Bernard puts it this way: Men who gather observations are useful only because their observations are later introduced into experimental reasoning; in other words, endless accumulation of observation leads nowhere. So where should observation lead us? In his case Bernard wanted to establish medicine in a logical context. Bernard’s aim was to establish medicine as an exact science, comparable to chemistry and physics... We can’t do that by just looking around. By simply noting facts, we can never succeed in establishing a science… To learn, we must necessarily reason about what we have observed, compare the facts and judge them by other facts… In order to create a foundation for knowledge Bernard has to walk us through the steps it takes to establish an exact science. First of all we have to keep an open mind. Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe a preconceived idea… If we think we already know something then we’ll be blind to facts that don’t confirm what we already think. We’ll unconsciously look for the facts that back us up and discard the facts that are against us. That’s why Bernard is very firm on this point: We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas… one must accept the results of experiments as they come… So our relationship to the world should follow in a strict order. We begin by observing something that happens. Let’s say it’s something simple like seeing a straight pin sticking to a magnet. We come up with a theory that other materials will also stick to magnets. So we devise an experiment to test our theory. Here’s where we can get into trouble. Why? Because we’re already prejudiced. It was our own idea that materials stick to magnets. That’s fine when we try a nail. It works. But when we put a piece of cloth next to a magnet, nothing happens. Does that mean our experiment is a failure? Even worse, does that mean that WE are failures? We’re human beings and human beings have emotions. That’s why Bernard thinks it’s so hard to be both observer and experimenter. He says that Observers must …purely and simply note the phenomena before their eyes…(they) must be photographers of phenomena… But on the other hand an experimenter…is a man inspired…to devise experiments which in the logical order of his anticipations shall bring results serving as controls for his preconceived idea. These are two very different operations. The job of the scientist is to keep these two operations going at the same time. Why is this important? Because the observer does not reason, he notes; the experimenter, on the other hand, reasons… it seems impossible to separate them in practice. We all have a tendency to want to jump in and make something happen. We want to make things happen the way we think they should happen. And we especially want things to turn out in ways that fit our notions of the way the world SHOULD be. This is a noble goal for politics but it is bad science. That’s why we have to keep politics and science separate. The same goes for religion. Politics deals with one set of problems. Religion deals with another set of problems. Science has a different goal: Our experimenter puts questions to nature, but as soon as she speaks he must hold his peace, he must note her answer, hear her out and in every case accept her decision. Politicians don’t want to give up power. Believers don’t want to give up God. This is only human. Science, politics and religion are all human activities, but in very different ways. Bernard was passionate about keeping science pure.

SHAKESPEARE: Coriolanus

2011-03-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

“The American people” is a common phrase in American politics. Both parties claim to speak for the people. This is only natural in a democracy and it’s one of the things we’re proud of as a nation. “We, the people of the United States of America” is a bedrock foundation of our society. But Shakespeare’s play about Coriolanus makes us take a step back and look at democracy from a different angle. What if the people are wrong? What if the people can’t govern themselves? What then? Shakespeare’s portrayal of Roman democracy is not pleasant. He paints an unflattering picture of “the people” not as a romantic theory but as an ugly reality. Here’s the argument FOR democracy: SICINIUS (speaking for the people): What is the city but the people? CITIZENS: True, the people ARE the city. This is the best argument for democracy; the State is formed for the good of the people who live in it. That may be true. But here’s the argument AGAINST democracy: CORIOLANUS: That is the way to lay the city flat; to bring the roof down to the foundation. It may be true that the State is formed for the good of the people, but all people are NOT equal. The leveling tendency of democracy is resented by those who aren’t satisfied with mediocrity. The Roman aristocrat Menenius puts it this way: There is a difference between a grub and a butterfly. Coriolanus is a good example of the difference between man and man. Coriolanus has this advice for the common people: Bid them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean. The people don’t appreciate this kind of attitude. And what makes his attitude rankle even more is the fact that Coriolanus can back it up. He’s a great warrior and a noble spirit. He stands out from the common herd. This is dangerous to the ordinary men who want to be democratic politicians. Nietzsche might have appreciated Coriolanus but ordinary citizens don’t. Here’s their attitude toward the Roman aristocracy: CITIZEN: They ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. That sounds like the generic argument against the wealthy: they’ve gotten rich on the backs of poor working folks. But Menenius points out that the aristocrats aren’t just sitting around idly wasting time. They’re out there working hard for the good of the State: The senators of Rome are this good belly, And you the mutinous members; for examine Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find No public benefit which you receive But it proceeds or comes from them to you And no way from yourselves. What do you think, You, the great toe of this assembly? It is, in fact, the aristocrats who are doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to national security and good governance. It’s the people who are the lazy ones idly wasting their time. CORIOLANUS: …your affections are A sick man's appetite, who desires most that Which would increase his evil… Hang ye! Trust Ye? With every minute you do change a mind… It’s the people who demand more and more from the State. And to make matters even worse the people are fickle and can’t even devise a coherent policy, much less carry it out. BRUTUS (speaking for the people): We do it not alone, sir. MENENIUS (speaking for the aristocrats): I know you can do very little alone; for… your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone… You know neither me, yourselves nor any thing… When you are hearing a matter between party and party… (you) dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves… more of your conversation would infect my brain. Name-calling doesn’t help in politics: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much… Neither does calling the other side stupid: You know neither me, yourselves nor anything. Americans should read more Shakespeare.

TOCQUEVILLE: How an Aristocracy May Be Created by Industry

2011-02-26T07:31:00.000-08:00

Adam Smith once wrote that the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another… is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals. We’re all psychologically geared for conducting business. In his opinion this is a good thing. We live in communities and everyone specializes in their work. That way we’re able to provide ourselves with all the necessities and comforts of life. But Maxim Gorky paints a bleaker picture in his short story “Chelkash” when he writes about the dockworkers: the powerful machines these men had made and which stood radiating well-being in the sunlight; machines which, when all is said and done, had been set in motion not by steam, but by the blood and muscles of those who made them. These men have become slaves of the very machines they’ve created. So which is it? Does business and industry make us better people or does it degrade our humanity?

Well, maybe both. According to Tocqueville there are a few people who get very wealthy but most people don’t. In this selection he points out that democracy favors the development of industry… industry may in turn lead men back to aristocracy. We may start out with a democracy where everyone is relatively equal. But in an industrialized society we soon become fragmented into the haves and the have-nots. This is a direct result from the division of labor. Adam Smith says it increases our wealth. Tocqueville agrees, but notes that the wealth tends to become concentrated into the hands of the owners of the business, while the workers fall further behind intellectually and socially. He writes that As the principle of the division of labor is ever more completely applied, the workman becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent… thus, at the same time that industrial science constantly lowers the standing of the working class, it raises that of the owners… the worker is in a state of constant, narrow, and necessary dependence on the owner and seems to have been born to obey, as the owner was to command. What is this, if not an aristocracy? It may not be called an aristocracy but for all intents and purposes we’ll be living under conditions similar to the feudal arrangement of lords and serfs. Living conditions may be better because we’re able to produce so much more food and clothing and shelter. But the underlying conditions of work and compensation are decided by the owners of the companies, much the way they were decided by the lords of the manors in the Middle Ages. Of course neither the owner nor the workman admit this. It’s just an unspoken agreement between them: The workman is dependent on owners in general, but not on a particular owner. These two men see each other at the workplace, but do not know each other otherwise… The owner only asks the workman for his work, and the workman asks only for his pay. The owner contracts no obligation to protect the workman, nor the workman to defend the owner, and they are not linked in any permanent fashion either by custom or by duty. Thus, the worker is “free” to change jobs and move somewhere else. But wherever he moves there will be another owner who will set his wages and working conditions. Most people would argue that this is still an improvement. At least in modern times we’re given the choice of which “master” we’ll work for. But other folks feel that we’ve lost the sense of a stable community. They long for the days when there was more personal connection between people. In their view the sense of community has been sacrificed for efficiency. Tocqueville says the territorial aristocracy of past ages was obliged by law, or thought itself obliged by custom, to come to the help of its workers and relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy of our day, when it has impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in time of crisis to public charity. Today we face many of those same problems Tocqueville predicted would happen. The hot news topics today revolve around pension costs, unemployment benefits and public health care. Tocqueville was right.

GORKY: Chelkash

2011-02-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

Readers of the Great Books may ask themselves how Maxim Gorky made it on the Great Books list. Does he belong to be given space alongside other intellectual giants we’ve been reading, such as Thucydides, Adam Smith and Freud? Is a short story about thieves a worthy plot for the grand adventure of Great Books? As usual, that’s up to the individual reader to decide. Let’s compare writers and find out for ourselves. Start with Adam Smith’s theory of the division of labor. Adam Smith wrote it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. The way Adam Smith tells it, there’s a clean division of work between people. Some sell meat, others make beer, still others offer bread. Everyone has his work to do. Everything works out. But what about those who don’t have regular “jobs” to do? What happens to them? Gorky starts his story with a description of workers on the docks of an unnamed seaport presumably somewhere around Russia. A poem of bitter irony could be read in the contrast between these ragged seating men, stupefied by the heat, the noise, and the exhausting labor, and the powerful machines these men had made and which stood radiating well-being in the sunlight; machines which, when all is said and done, had been set in motion not by steam, but by the blood and muscles of those who made them. Gorky’s story gives some flesh and blood to Smith’s description of the free market for the laboring class. It works out well for those at the top but what about these poor guys working all day in the hot sun just to earn enough money to eat? They’re barely surviving, not getting ahead or saving money; and for what?

Man does not live by bread alone. In an earlier reading Freud said: The Bolshevists, too, aspire to do away with human aggressiveness by insuring the satisfaction of material needs and enforcing equality between man and man. To me this hope seems vain. Gorky knew the Bolshevists. Does he agree with Freud that if man’s material needs were met we would still be an aggressive species? Chelkash has few physical needs. He’s a thief. He “earns” his living by stealing what other people have produced. Gorky paints this picture of a talented thief among these tough dock workers: Chelkash was in his element amid this mad welter. He was anticipating a great haul that night, a haul that would cost him little effort but require a great deal of skill. We never find out what he stole but we do know that it was worth a lot of money. Chelkash is satisfied as long as he’s got enough to pay for a bottle of vodka, cabbage soup, roast beef and tea. Chelkash is clearly not motivated by the thought of having more money. What seems to motivate Chelkash is his own notion of freedom and power. He likes being his own boss. He likes being independent. He also likes telling other people what to do. This notion of power as a motivating force is something Freud understood well. But Thucydides understood it some 2500 years before Freud. Thucydides wrote: We (Athenians) believe that Heaven, and we know that men, by a natural law always rule where they are stronger. We did not make that law nor were we the first to act on it; we found it existing and it will exist forever, after we are gone. And we know that you (Melians) and anyone else as strong as we are would do as we do. Gorky understood this universal “natural law” of power too. Men always rule when they’re stronger. In this case Chelkash is stronger than young Gavrilla. It’s not physical strength. Chelkash is mentally tougher. He can survive this harsh environment; Gavrilla can’t. Just like the Athenian-Melian situation. Neither city-state would survive the Peloponnesian War. So whether we consider Adam Smith’s labor theory, or Freud’s psychology, or Thucydides’ idea of political power, Maxim Gorky belongs in this company of distinguished writers of Great Books.

ADAM SMITH: Concerning the Division of Labor

2011-02-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

Back in the old days there weren’t any people called economists. Adam Smith taught moral philosophy, which included economics, but also involved political science, ethics and what we would now call sociology. One of the basic problems of all human societies is how to provide food, shelter and clothing for its members. For Adam Smith, the moral philosopher, this was not only a practical problem but an ethical one as well. In human terms we have two different levels when we consider the material means of living well: The desire of food is limited…but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments seems to have no limit. This is related to the problem Socrates talked about in his republic. Just having enough food to eat is fine if you’re building a city for pigs. But people want delicacies to eat as well as nice things for themselves and their families. They want fancy clothes to wear and comfortable transportation and elegant homes or apartments. The problem is, there’s only so much to go around. How do we decide who gets the best food, the best clothes, the best homes and apartments? How can we most efficiently distribute the goods and services of society? We could turn it over to the politicians. Unfortunately Smith points out that Kings and ministers are themselves always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in society. In short, we can’t trust politicians to stay within the budget. We could let the folks who run the businesses decide. Unfortunately Smith points out that people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. So that pretty much leaves us ordinary folks to work things out for ourselves. This is just what Adam Smith is proposing. He argues that the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another…is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals…Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. But wouldn’t this lead to a dog-eat-dog kind of world with every man for himself? Smith says that, yes, it will be every man for himself but not necessarily a dog-eat-dog society. He asks: who is most qualified to look after your own best interests? The politicians? No. The business owners? No. You are. I am. But we have to provide for our needs in a manner worthy of human beings. Adam Smith believes that in civilized society people stand at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren… Human beings aren’t the only social creatures on the planet. There are bee hives and schools of fish and herds of antelope and colonies of ants. However, human beings have a deep psychological need of one another in order to supply not only our material needs, but our social needs as well. Aristotle correctly points out that human beings are by nature social creatures. Hermits are the exception rather than the rule of human nature. It’s a rare (and often eccentric) individual who will move out to the woods, build his own house, get his own food, and make his own clothes. The rest of us adapt to living in society with other people. And we learn early on that some of us are good at some things, others of us are good at others. Ideally I do what I’m good at and you do what you’re good at. Then we swap what we’ve done: I’ll give you this, if you’ll give me that. Of course we don’t usually do this directly. We use money instead. And Smith is clear that it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. This may seem cold and heartless but it’s the most civilized way to live according to Adam Smith. Each of us pursuing his own interests benefits everyone.

SHAKESPEARE: Pericles, Prince of Tyre

2011-02-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare wrote many great plays during his life. Pericles, Prince of Tyre is not one of them. I’m told that during his lifetime this was one of his favorite plays for theater goers of the day. That may be so. But it still doesn’t change my opinion that this is not one of Shakespeare’s best. Maybe it’s because this play follows two of his truly great tragedies: King Lear and Macbeth. Those two plays rank right up there with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King as possibly the best tragedies ever written. There are also modern tragedies such as Love Story and Old Yeller. But they’re not really in the same league with Shakespeare and Sophocles.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre isn’t a tragedy and it doesn’t include a dog, but it is a love story. In fact, it covers several different types of love: the love between fathers and daughters, the love between husbands and wives, and the love between friends. The play starts with an account of illicit love between fathers and daughters. A poet named Gower is the narrator and tells us that Antiochus the Great Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat: The fairest in all Syria, I tell you what mine authors say: This king unto him took a fere (wife), Who died and left a female heir, So buxom, blithe, and full of face, As heaven had lent her all his grace; With whom the father liking took,And her to incest did provoke: Bad child; worse father! to entice his own To evil should be done by none… Let’s stop right there: bad child, worse father. We don’t know the details. We don’t know how old Antiochus’ daughter was or when the relationship started. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe incest is never the child’s fault, no matter how old the child is and even if the “child” is an adult. It’s the parent’s responsibility to navigate their children through the complexities of life. Sleeping with them doesn’t help and is an abuse of parental power. So even though we don’t know the details of the affair, we do know that they engaged in a relationship that isn’t acceptable in Syria, or anywhere else for that matter. Incest is a taboo which apparently is universal. Fathers don’t have sexual relations with their daughters. It’s an evil should be done by none… Nowhere, no way. This is Shakespeare’s way of showing us from the start that there are relationships that are healthy and those that aren’t. By the end of the play we’ve had quite a romp through scenes that include shipwrecks, jousting tournaments and brothels; even people coming back from the dead. Maybe this is part of the reason the play was so popular during Shakespeare’s day. But it’s unsatisfying in many ways. Gower appears several times throughout the play to narrate events. At the end of the play he shows up to tell us what we’ve just seen: In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard Of monstrous lust the due and just reward: In Pericles, his queen and daughter, seen, Although assail'd with fortune fierce and keen, Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast, Led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last: In Helicanus may you well descry A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty: In reverend Cerimon there well appears The worth that learned charity aye wears: For wicked Cleon and his wife, when fame Had spread their cursed deed, and honour'd name Of Pericles, to rage the city turn, That him and his they in his palace burn; The gods for murder seemed so content To punish them; although not done, but meant. So, on your patience evermore attending, New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending. All this is true. But it’s a moralistic summary of the entire play. It’s also simplistic. The good are rewarded and the wicked are punished. It’s not like Shakespeare to preach so openly. His great dramas such as King Lear and Macbeth don’t tell us what to think. They tell us a story and let us draw our own conclusions. This play not only tells us a story, it tells us what to think too. Maybe this was a popular thing to do in Shakespeare’s time. If that’s the case, then all we can say is: bad play, worse audience.

WILLIAM JAMES: The Social Me

2011-02-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

Who am I? If someone asks who we are, our first response is usually to give our name. If they want to know more then maybe we’ll tell where we come from, or maybe what we do for a living. Telling someone who “I am” seems simple enough. And yet William James points out that the answer isn’t quite as simple as we might think at first. He writes that In its widest possible sense…a man’s Me is the sum total of all he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and his works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank account. That pretty much sums it up. A man’s Me is the sum total of all that he has and is. But there’s also a clear division between some of those things that all add up to equal Me. For instance, there’s a material me: We all have a blind impulse to watch over our body, to deck it with clothing of an ornamental sort, to cherish parents, wife, and babes, and to find ourselves a house of our own which we may live in and improve. This is the “me” that’s plain and obvious to everyone because they can see who I am. But there’s also a spiritual me that isn’t obvious to everyone, maybe not even to myself: When we think of ourselves as thinkers, all the other ingredients of our Me seem relatively external possessions. So we’ve got this external world (the “material me”) and this internal world (the “spiritual me”). But there’s still a third “me” that James wants to concentrate on in this selection. That’s the “social me” and that’s when the internal and external me comes into contact with other people. Our relationships with other people are determined both by the outside world we share: our culture, our families, our friends and neighbors; and by the world inside of us that’s more personal and unique: our feelings, our moral duties, our sense of what’s right and wrong. The dual external/internal nature of this “social me” creates tension concerning how I should act or what I should do. That’s because we have different responsibilities to different people. James points out that We do not show ourselves to our children as to our club companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our own masters and employers as to our intimate friends. From this there results wht practically is a division of the man into several selves. As a practical matter this makes sense. Our job as a parent is to raise healthy children. Our job at the office is to produce a profit. Our job as a citizen is to make informed decisions about who to vote for. All these separate selves are all “me” in one way or another. But James also shows how this “social me” can pull us in different directions at the same time: As a man I pity you, but as an official I must show you no mercy. Or: As a politician I regard him as an ally, but as a moralist I loathe him. The question I would pose to James is this: is it healthy to act out these different “me’s” in isolation from one another, or is it better to integrate them all into one coherent personality? Can the official show mercy and still be a good official? Can the politician dump his ally and still be a successful politician? The way we answer those questions can be very important. The “social me” provides the key to understanding how we answer. For example, consider Thucydides writing the Melian Dialog. The Athenians felt like they absolutely had to make an example out of the Melians. The Melians felt like they absolutely had to preserve their honor. James says that a man’s fame, good or bad, and his honor or dishonor are names for one of his social selves… A soldier’s honor requires him to fight or to die under circumstances where another man can apologize or run away with no stain upon his social self. The heart of the conflict between the Athenians and the Melians were questions of social prestige. When should I stand up and when should I back down? When should I punish and when should I forgive? Who should I fight and who should I defend? These are questions the social me has to answer. No one can do that for you.

THUCYDIDES: The Melian Dialogue

2011-01-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

There's an old saying that might makes right. Is that true? Like many simple questions, there's no simple answer. Of course you could give a quick and simple answer such as: no, might doesn't make right. Having more power doesn't mean your side is right, it only means that your side is stronger. But it doesn't mean your side is necessarily wrong either. What if the stronger side really is right? Or what if there's no "right" and "wrong" but only two different points of view? Then we're right back where we started from. "Might" may not make right, but as long as your side has the power, your side gets to call the shots. And maybe in the real world that's what matters most, having the power. But maybe not. Maybe what matters most is doing the right thing, regardless of the cost. These are two very different world views. Thucydides explores both sides of this issue in real-life terms during a real-life conflict. What makes this reading such a masterpiece is the concise use of language. Both sides use precision in stating their political and moral objectives. The Athenians have the power. They've come to try and get the Melians to surrender without a fight. The Athenians first set the stage by proclaiming: Let us have no long speeches. But the Melians know what this is all about: You have come to be yourselves the judges of the debate, and its natural conclusion for us will be slavery if you convince us, and war if we get the better of the argument. This is a no-win situation for the Melians. The best they can do it try to talk their way out of it. But the Athenians only want to hear one thing. They want the Melians to give up. And they want them to give up without a lot of trouble. So here's the Athenian proposal: Let each of us say what we really think and reach a practical agreement. You know and we know, as practical men, that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength, and that the strong do what they can, and the weak submit... we have come in the interest of our empire... we wish you to become our subjects with least trouble to ourselves. We wish you to become our subjects with least trouble to ourselves. There can be no more honest answer than that. The response by the Melians is also blunt: It may be your interest to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves? For the Athenians this is as simple as solving an arithmetic problem : By submitting you would avoid a terrible fate, and we would gain by not destroying you... This is not a competition in heroism between equals, where your honor is at stake, but a question of self-preservation. We have X number of troops, you have Y number of troops. X is greater than Y. X - Y = you must surrender or die. But the Melians aren't quite convinced that this equation equals their destruction: If we submit at once, our position is desperate; if we fight, there is still hope... The Athenians are having none of that: Hope encourages men to take risks... you are weak, your future hangs on a turn of the scales. So the Melians try a different argument: We trust that Heaven will not allow us to be worsted by Fortune, for in this quarrel we are right and you are wrong. Now the two different world views are emerging more clearly. One side is arguing from the angle of military power, the other side is arguing from moral grounds. To counter this moral argument the Athenians do have to adapt their strategy slightly, and they reply: As for divine favor, we think that we can count on it as much as you... We believe that Heaven, and we know that men, by a natural law always rule where they are stronger. We did not make that law nor were we the first to act on it; we found it existing and it will exist forever, after we are gone. And we know that you and anyone else as strong as we are would do as we do. You would do the same thing if you were in our shoes. It's a weak argument. But who knows? Maybe the Melians really would do the same thing in the Athenian's place. In any case the Melians say they will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has existed for seven hundred years. And the Athenians won't give up their glory and empire. The Athenians have the power so it's checkmate for the Melians. They die with honor.

SHAKESPEARE: Macbeth

2011-01-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

Groucho Marx once said that "Behind every successful man is a woman, and behind her is his wife." Macbeth doesn’t need another woman. Lady Macbeth has enough ambition for both of them. She gives him nerves of steel to do whatever it takes to get to the top. And Lady Macbeth’s ambition is to be Queen of Scotland. She won’t let anything stand in her way of climbing to the top. Whether she likes it when she gets there is a different story. We know from the start of the play that something’s wrong. Three witches meet on an open stage. FIRST WITCH: When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? SECOND WITCH: When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won. No good can come of this. Some people think witchcraft and sorcery is childish. Others take it seriously but avoid it like the plague. Macbeth and his companion Banquo are intrigued by it. What power do these three witches have? Banquo isn’t afraid of them and asks a direct question: If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate… Do they have the power to tell the future? Who among us can look into the seeds of time and know what will happen? Maybe no one. Would we really want to? Even if we knew the future, would it help us? Banquo himself admits that 'tis strange: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray's In deepest consequence. In his opinion spirits tell us “the truth.” But it’s a truth that’s slanted. Macbeth will be king. Good news? Herodotus tells a story about an ancient king consulting an oracle. He’s about to invade another country with his army and wants to know if he’ll succeed. The oracle says that if he invades a great kingdom will fall. The king is pleased that the oracle has given a good omen. So the king invades and a great kingdom does indeed fall. Unfortunately it’s his own kingdom. So much for oracles. Lady Macbeth falls for the same trick. She’s a sharp student of human nature and knows her husband well: yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it… You’ve almost got what it takes. You just don’t quite have the spine to take care of the rough stuff. You've done well becoming a Duke. But I can make you a King. Even Lady Macbeth herself almost shrinks from the task at hand. Not only will they assassinate a king, they’ll also be killing their honored guest. In Scottish culture that’s breaking two strongly-held taboos at once. Nevertheless, she’s determined to go through with it: Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse… Once Lady Macbeth makes up her mind to do something, it will get done. You can count on it. She may be a woman but she can do a man’s job better than any man, if that's what it takes (unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty!). You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Lady Macbeth. She may be the most dangerous woman on stage since Euripides’ Medea. But in the end even Lady Macbeth falters. She doesn’t sleep well. She wanders around in the night sleepwalking and sighing things like Out, damn’d spot! A disturbed conscience may be the most fitting punishment for Macbeth and his Lady. Macbeth says: Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast,-- So the three witches told the truth. Macbeth did become king and Lady Macbeth his queen. But neither of them ever knew another good night’s sleep until they died. That’s the part the witches left out. Banquo was right: oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths. Or half-truths.

FREUD: Why War?

2011-01-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

The oldest selection in the Great Books series is Homer’s Iliad and dates to about 750 B.C. It’s an epic poem about the war. In the opening scene there’s a big argument between two soldiers over war booty, in this case a beautiful young girl. Two boys fighting over a girl. Sound familiar? Homer’s telling us a war story but his underlying theme is about human conflict and its two fundamental causes: aggression and sexuality. Surely Homer must have been one of the top psychologists of his day. Fast forward almost 3000 years. One of the top psychologists of our day (Sigmund Freud) writes a letter responding to the top physicist (Albert Einstein). Einstein has posed this question: What is to be done to rid mankind of the war menace? Here’s what Freud says: I was dumbfounded by the thought of my (I almost wrote, of our) incompetence to answer this question. Aren’t there experts on war? Shouldn’t we be consulting Army Generals? Politicians? Philosophers? To Freud’s credit, one of the first clues of competence is to realize when you’re incompetent. And Freud feely confesses that he’s a psychologist, not a military commander. But it’s interesting to get his psychological perspective into why men fight and kill one another: You are amazed that it is so easy to infect men with the war fever, and you surmise that man has in him an active instinct for hatred and destruction, amenable to such stimulations. I entirely agree with you. I believe in the existence of this instinct and have been recently at pains to study its manifestations. In this connection may I set out a fragment of that knowledge of the instincts, which we psychoanalysts, after so many tentative essays and gropings in the dark, have compassed? We assume that human instincts are of two kinds: those that conserve and unify, which we call "erotic" (in the meaning Plato gives to Eros in his Symposium), or else "sexual" (explicitly extending the popular connotation of "sex"); and, secondly, the instincts to destroy and kill, which we assimilate as the aggressive or destructive instincts. Freud confirms what Homer must have suspected 3000 years ago. Homer was “groping in the dark” but Freud states the same phenomenon in scientific terms. What’s really at stake in war is the aggressive instinct for domination and destruction versus the erotic instinct for peace and preservation. The question now becomes: which instinct is stronger? War depends on the answer we give. This psychological stuff is all well and good but Einstein asked a practical question: Can war ever be permanently eliminated? Freud is not optimistic. He believes there is but one sure way of ending war and that is the establishment, by common consent, of a central control which shall have the last word in every conflict of interests. In short, will one group of people voluntarily relinquish full control over their property, their bodies and their lives to another group of people? Not likely. That’s why we have wars. And it may be too much to overcome the biological instinct for survival in order to follow “reason” and lay down our weapons while hostile enemies are still armed and dangerous. This isn’t reasonable. It’s easy to imagine what happens when two men are pointing guns at each other: you drop your gun and I’ll drop mine. Ok, you go first. Freud doesn’t think either man will drop the gun first. But he comes to an interesting conclusion: Why do we, you and I and many another, protest so vehemently against war, instead of just accepting it as another of life's odious importunities? For it seems a natural thing enough, biologically sound and practically unavoidable. Since wars have always been with us, why shouldn’t we accept them as an unpleasant fact of life and just move on? Freud answers his own question: Because every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will; it ravages material amenities, the fruits of human toil, and much besides. War is hell. And maybe we’ll never stop it. But in Freud’s opinion we should never stop trying.

PLATO: The Republic

2010-12-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

We live in a country built along these lines: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…” This is the beginning sentence in our Constitution. It forms the backbone of our society. But we weren’t the first people to think about creating a perfect society. And we probably won’t be the last. Long after we’re gone people will still be trying to make their lives better by improving their form of government. How should we live? That’s the question that faces each new generation. Plato’s Republic is one of the earliest recorded attempts to put together a “just” society and tell us what it would take to achieve it. Socrates is the architect of this new society and he begins by explaining that a city, as I believe, comes into being because each of us isn’t self-sufficient but is in need of much. Lots of philosophers agree with Socrates’ diagnosis of the problem. It’s the solution that we’re still trying to figure out. Living around lots of other people can be a real hassle sometimes. But living outside of human society would be a disaster for most of us. In an earlier reading Thomas Hobbes says living outside a human community would be short, nasty and brutish. Socrates agrees. We live much better by cooperating with other people and living together in an established community. Living in towns and cities makes it much easier to provide for our basic needs. We can buy the basic things we need, like food and shoes and homes. If we stopped there we shouldn’t have too many problems. But we don’t stop there. Soon we want exotic food and fancy shoes and bigger homes. Then we need new cars and flat-screen TVs and access to the Internet. We also start needing musicians and actors and dancers to keep us entertained. Then we eat too much and exercise too little and have to have doctors to take care of us when we get sick. That’s the problem. Socrates says that if people only work enough to provide for their bare necessities “they will live out their lives in peace with health, as is likely, and at last, dying as old men, they will hand down other similar lives to their offspring.” This is old school philosophy. Glaucon speaks for most of the modern world when he replies “If this were a city for pigs, Socrates, that would be enough… but men who aren’t living wretched lives want to sit in chairs and eat from tables and they want to eat other things besides figs and berries and acorns.” So who’s right? Do we want to be healthy or do we want to have fun? The problem is, how do we keep people from fussing and fighting when too many people want the same things? What if there aren’t enough flat-screen TVs to go around? Who gets the new flat-screens and who has to make do with what they’ve got? We already know what the problem is; not enough to go around. It’s the solution part that we’ve been trying to figure out. Socrates thinks the best solution is to let people follow their natural inclinations. He’s got a simple idea of justice …the money-making, military and ruling classes doing what’s appropriate, each of them minding its own business in a city, that would be justice. You say most people just want their flat-screen TVs and they’ll be satisfied? Fine. Let them work for flat-screen TVs. Other people want travel and adventure and a strenuous physical life? Let them have it. A few people want to spend more time studying and thinking and planning for the future? Well, then let them study and think. Here’s the catch: once you decide what you want from life, stick with it. Don’t go mucking around in other people’s business. Why should you care if a few nerds are off somewhere studying and thinking as long as you’ve got a flat-screen TV? Or someone else may say: let folks stick to making money if that’s what they want. I’d rather be out here humping up this mountain and training for combat. Socrates thinks if everyone sticks to what they’re good at then we all benefit: Meddling among the classes, of which there are three, and exchange with one another is the greatest harm for the city and would most correctly be called extreme evil-doing. This doesn’t sound American. That isn’t what the founding fathers had in mind when they wanted to create a more perfect Union.

ARISTOTLE: On Tragedy

2010-12-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

One question that never seems to get resolved is this: what’s beautiful and what’s not? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, as we’ve often heard? Or is beauty somehow in the object itself? The “eye of the beholder” may help us determine what’s beautiful in the visual arts but what about music? How can we tell if something we hear is beautiful? By the emotional impact it has on us? If that’s the case, were the Beach Boys better than the Beatles? Was Bach better than Beethoven? There’s a strong current of thought in contemporary society that all beauty is merely subjective: I know what I like, and that ain’t it. Aristotle doesn’t agree. He thinks that art, like any other subject, can be clarified by rational analysis. Aristotle’s general method is to take a complex subject and break it down into simpler parts that are easier to understand. In this selection he takes drama as his example. There are two types of drama: Comedy and Tragedy. Let’s deal with Tragedy. As Aristotle sees it every tragedy must contain six (and ONLY six) parts which determine its quality. They are (1) spectacle, (2) melody, (3) diction, (4) character, (5) thought, and (6) plot. That’s an impressive start. But is it true? Are there ONLY six parts to a tragic play? Can you come up with any others? Off the top of my head I can’t. Not only does Aristotle think there are these six parts but he even ranks them in order of importance: Plot is the first essential; the very soul of Tragedy. Character comes second… Third comes Thought… (Thought is quite distinct from Character… Character in a tragedy is that which reveals the WILL of the agents (the kind of things they choose or reject… Thought on the other hand is shown in all that is said)… Fourth among the literary elements is Diction, the expression of thoughts in words… Melody (is Fifth and)… Spectacle is the least artistic of all the parts and has least connection with the art of poetry. Here there may be room for legitimate disagreement. Is Plot really more important than Character? Some authors may think it’s more important to concentrate on Character. Can there be tragedy when nothing much happens? Aristotle states his opinion firmly: Plot is the very soul of Tragedy. It can’t get any clearer than that. He would probably not be impressed with many of today’s films. Spectacle is at the bottom of the list as the least artistic of all the parts and has least connection with the art of poetry. Using special effects cheats the audience of its own imagination. On the other hand, this essay deals strictly with the art of Tragedy. It’s not the purpose of tragedy to wow us with flaming car chases or galactic firefights. Aristotle says that one must not expect every kind of pleasure from a tragedy but only its own distinctive pleasure. Car chases and space ships don’t move us. They thrill us but they don’t make us feel sorry for the actors. We have to be deeply moved by the action because for Aristotle Tragedy is a form of poetry. And in his opinion the poet’s function is to describe not what HAS happened, but the kind of thing that MIGHT happen… Why is this important? What difference does it make? For starters, it means that poetry is more important than history. Why? Where the historian differs from the poet is in his describing what has happened, while the poet describes the kind of thing that might have happened. Poetry therefore is more philosophic and of greater significance that history, for its statements are the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are particulars. A movie about an historical event will show us what happened to specific people at a particular place in a particular time. The writer or director can’t change the outcome of a historic film about Queen Elizabeth. But the writer or director CAN change what happens long ago and far away to a king named Lear. So in Aristotle’s view Tragedy by its very nature is a “philosophic” endeavor. Its whole purpose is to give us deeper insight into life. Is this beauty? Or is it wisdom? Good tragic drama seems to be both. For Aristotle, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but resides in the content of the play itself. Good tragedy is a kind of wisdom expressed beautifully; bad tragedy is just plain ugly.

SHAKESPEARE: King Lear and the Great Books

2010-12-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

The Great Books concept is centered around the idea that all the readings focus on one great conversation. King Lear is a play that demonstrates the wisdom of this concept. David Hume, for example, in his essay Of Personal Identity raises the question about how much we really know; even about ourselves. In this play we can ask the same question. Does King Lear ever know who he really is? Does anybody? At the start of the play Lear has all the power of a king and isn’t afraid to use it. By the end of the play he’s just a weak old man and can’t even rule his own family. The ending may make some of us question how stern a stuff we’re made of. Does it take some sort of big life test to learn what we’re really made of? How would we react when the chips are down? Lear’s evil daughters know him better than he knows himself. They know he’s getting old and weak and say so: 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself. And once he’s lost his power Lear becomes like the emperor with no clothes. Without his power he’s lost. Even Lear himself asks Who is it that can tell me who I am? So Hume was well within the Great Books tradition when asking questions like: who am I?

Dante’s vision of power is quite different from that envisioned in the world of King Lear. For Dante all power comes from a divine source. And in the end all punishment will be in God’s hands. King Lear protests that I am a man More sinned against than sinning. That may be true but it’s not up to Lear to decide the point. People can’t be objective judges of their own cases. God will judge and determine who has sinned and to what extent. In one view King Lear seriously disrupted the natural order of things when he abdicated his responsibilities. Is this a sin or just poor judgment? Or take another case. Edmund and Gloucester both used deceit. What was the difference? Edmund deceived his brother because he wanted to take away his estate and title. Gloucester deceived his guests because they were corrupt and he wanted to remain loyal to the rightful king. But was King Lear still the rightful ruler? He had already abdicated his throne and power. Why should Gloucester remain loyal? Also, at the end Edmund seemed to repent of his evil. Does this result in a Get Out Of Hell Free card? Maybe. Dante had definite views on these things and participated in the great conversation.

Edmund Burke was a citizen of the British Empire, just like Shakespeare. So he also had a unique English perspective. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France showed that he was generally no friend to revolutionary ideas. But put yourself in Gloucester’s place (or Kent’s). King Lear has handed over all authority to his daughters. The daughters and Lear then have a quarrel. Now who should you follow? Who is doing the revolting and who is remaining loyal to legitimate authority? This question of legitimate political authority has a long tradition in the Great Books, going all the way back to the start with Homer. At the very dawn of Western civilization the question was: who has the right to rule? And how much right does the ruler have to make other people obey? Agamemnon and Achilles had a showdown over this very question. Burke is in the Western tradition when he asks why (and who) we should obey.

The Education of Henry Adams is part of the Western tradition too. Adams wasn’t happy about the education he received as a young man because it didn’t equip him to deal with life in the twentieth century. Here’s a question for King Lear: What kind of education would be best if we lived in Lear’s kingdom? In broad terms, should we be educated on how to be good people or how to succeed in a cut-throat environment? Besides, is it even possible to teach people like Goneril, Regan and Edmund how to be good? That’s what the great conversation is all about.

ADAMS: The Education of Henry Adams

2010-11-27T11:07:00.000-08:00

One of the hottest topics in America right now is education. Are our children learning enough? Why are we falling behind other countries? What values should children learn at school? Should we cut back on arts programs? Eliminate sports? Are our graduates ready to participate in a new global workforce environment? These questions aren’t just for parents of school-aged children. All Americans are affected by the answers we give. In this regard Henry Adams was well ahead of his time. He could foresee the tensions in his own education and he was concerned about the future of America. So he wrote a book about the progress of his own education. Adams is clear about his intentions: American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond (Rousseau), to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This volume attempts to discuss it. What’s useful and what’s not? What kind of education is the best? Is real-life experience more useful than what we learn in the classroom? Adams thought so. He hated school: If school helped, it was only by reaction. The dislike of school was so strong as to be a positive gain. The passionate hatred of school methods was almost a method in itself… He hated it because he was here with a crowd of other boys and compelled to learn by memory a quantity of things that did not amuse him. This isn’t an unusual reaction. Lots of boys hate school. But Adams was writing as a sixty year old man. He had plenty of time to reflect on his life and concluded that his school-days, from ten to sixteen years old, as time thrown away… had his father kept the boy at home, and given him half an hour's direction every day, he would have done more for him than school ever could do for them… the man of sixty can generally see what he needed in life, and in Henry Adams's opinion it was not school. This statement comes from a man who received one of the best educations his age could provide. He went to one of the finest schools in Boston, had access to his grandfather’s extensive library, and graduated from Harvard. So maybe Adams simply expected too much from education. Life can be difficult and there’s only so much preparation any education can provide. For example, Adams thought being exposed to violence is a critical part of education. It would be difficult to include this in the local school curriculum and bullying is still a big concern in schools these days. But the real world is a tough place and young people have to grow up and live in the real world. Adams says Blackguard Boston was only too educational, and to most boys much the more interesting. A successful blackguard must enjoy great physical advantages besides a true vocation… Now and then it asserted itself as education more roughly than school ever did. One of the commonest boy-games of winter, inherited directly from the eighteenth-century, was a game of war (snow ball fights) on Boston Common. This may sound like harmless child’s play but Adams goes on to point out that …ten or twelve years afterwards when these same boys were fighting and falling on all the battle-fields of Virginia and Maryland, he wondered whether their education on Boston Common had taught Savage and Marvin how to die. If violence were a part of complete education, Boston was not incomplete. One of the problems (as Adams sees it) is how to expose young folks to these harsh lessons and show them how to live a good life in a bad world. How to live well has been a primary question about the role of education from Plato on up until today. It’s an old problem. Adams was aware of this and he wasn’t sure the old ways would work anymore: The generation that lived from 1840 to 1870 could do very well with the old forms of education; that which had its work to do between 1870 and 1900 needed something quite new. Kids going to school in 2010 may need something new too; but what? Henry Adams didn’t have all the answers but at least he knew how to ask the right questions.

BURKE: Reflections on the Revolution in France

2010-11-19T15:29:00.000-08:00

The French Revolution is one of the pivotal events in the history of Western civilization. Some folks were elated when the old established order fell; some folks were horrified when the old established order fell. Edmund Burke was horrified. In this selection he explains why the change brought about by the Revolution was personally revolting to him. Those who were elated by the French Revolution felt that “the people” had finally obtained the political power they deserved. But in Burke’s view the whole revolution was an illegitimate exercise in massive criminal activity. He feels that no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever can make the men of whom any system of authority is composed other than God, and nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities beyond these the people have not to give. For Burke the only legitimate authority for political power is the authority given by God, nature, education and individual talent. “The people” as a group aren’t qualified to distinguish who is and who is not ready to take on the awesome task of governing society. The reason they can’t distinguish is partly because of inexperience but also because they tend to be ruled by their passions. This was certainly the case in the French Revolution. Passions got out of hand. Burke believes that society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected…the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. Most people aren’t capable of controlling their passions. Plato said the same thing when he laid out his famous Republic. Burke agrees with Plato that controlling people’s passions can only be done by a power outside of themselves… In the political sense the power outside of themselves is the law. Burke thinks the purpose of civil law is to restrain our unruly passions and desires. Most of us think of civil rights as freedom to do some things and from coercion into doing others. But Burke says that the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. In a certain sense we have a contract with other members of society that we’ll all follow the same set of restraints. But civil society isn’t an ordinary business deal. Burke points out that Society is indeed a contract… but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee… In Burke’s view those who perpetrated the French Revolution were guilty of breaking a sacred contract by unlawful means. Of course those who “perpetrated” the revolution believed they were doing good. They believed they were overthrowing the shackles of tyranny. For them, change was good. Burke counters that they were too hasty and undermined the foundations of their French traditions. This is not good in Burke’s eyes. He feels like the French people were disrespectful, even contemptuous, of their own heritage. The way Burke sees it, a spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. The only reason Frenchmen were capable of rebelling in the first place is because they had a certain amount of freedom to do so. But liberty doesn’t just spring up out of the ground. Instead, Burke says that Liberties… are an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers and to be transmitted to our posterity. We inherit freedom from our parents and pass it on to our children. This is what Burke calls tradition. That’s what the French rejected when they took to the streets and started a long spree of killing and terror. Burke thinks rejecting your own traditions is a fatal flaw in any social order. That’s because without tradition No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of summer. For some folks, that’s ok. They would rather shed the burdens of tradition. For Burke, tradition links individuals with history, and that’s what gives meaning to our lives. Rebellious types were elated by the French Revolution; Burke was horrified by it.

DANTE: The Inferno

2010-11-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

What is justice? Most people believe justice is when bad people are punished and good people are rewarded. That obviously doesn’t always happen in the real world. A lot of times bad people end up being surrounded by wealth and luxury. And a lot of good people wind up with nothing. A few good people even get killed for being good. So why should I try to be “just” or, in modern terms, why should I do the right thing? Dante is one of those who believe justice is when bad people are punished for doing bad things and good people are rewarded for doing good things. The problem as Dante sees it is that we don’t know the whole story. We see bad people being successful and dying a peaceful death in old age in a mansion. We don’t see what happens after that. Dante’s poem about The Inferno tells us what happens to bad people after they die. The tale begins when Dante tells us that Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. Many people experience a mid-life crisis and some of us go a little wacko during that spell. During his own mid-life crisis Dante wrote a long poem about taking a journey through Hell. This isn’t something everybody can do. And it’s not a task Dante took on lightly. It’s not child’s play to descend into Hell and come back to write about it. Dante trembles a little at the task set before him: Why am I to go? Who allows me to? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul. But Dante has been chosen precisely because he’s lost in a dark wood. His life isn’t going the way he had planned and he’s wandered off the straight path. He needs help. A benefactor named Beatrice sees his plight from Heaven. She gets Virgil (the long-dead Roman poet) to come back to earth and serve as Dante’s guide. Virgil leads Dante to the very edge of Hell. Over the gate there’s a sign posted: I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY…ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER. This is the entrance for all the souls who didn’t make it to Purgatory or Heaven. For these souls, there is no exit. Entering this world is a one-way street. It’s not like anything we’ve ever experienced before. Dante is often at a loss for words on how to explain the sights he sees, the smells and the sounds, because everything about this underworld is utterly alien to creatures used to living in a world of sunshine. He does his best to describe what it’s like. But we have to strain our imaginations to catch his true meaning. Dante warns us that this won’t be easy: …all of you whose intellects are sound, look now and see the meaning that is hidden beneath the veil that covers my strange verses… During this journey we meet some souls we’ve seen before and some that we haven’t. But they all have one thing in common: they deserve to be in Hell. Why are some souls in Hell while others aren’t? Virgil tries to explain to Dante (and Dante to us) as best he can. In the vestibule (something like a waiting room) there eternally dwell wretches, who had never truly lived… because they had never made a decision to be either truly good or truly bad. Pontius Pilate is an example of this type. Then there’s a circle called Limbo. They’re not quite in Hell either but they’re more at peace with themselves. They just won’t ever make it to Heaven. Here live The virtuous pagans… they have not sinned. But their great worth alone was not enough, for they did not know Baptism, which is the gateway to the faith you follow, and if they came before the birth of Christ, they did not worship God the way one should; I myself (Virgil) am a member of this group. For this defect, and for no other guilt, we here are lost… (Along with)… Homer, the sovereign poet…(and) Hector, Aeneas, Caesar, Socrates, and Plato. Plato? In Hell? Can this be true? Yes, it can. Why? Wasn’t Plato a good man? Probably so. Just being good isn’t enough to get you to Heaven because they did not know Baptism… For this defect, and for no other guilt, we here are lost… Is this justice? Many of us won’t think this is fair. Many dwellers down here don’t think it’s fair either. Maybe it’s not “fair” but nevertheless there they are. And here we are. And we’re just getting started. Welcome to Hell…

SHAKESPEARE: Measure for Measure

2010-11-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

What is justice? That’s one of the oldest and most-discussed questions in the Great Books tradition. Measure for Measure is one of the best pieces I know that explores the meaning of justice. Socrates asked the question 2500 years ago and Shakespeare takes up the same theme in this play. It begins when the Duke of Venice puts a little test on his cousin Angelo. The Duke tells everyone that he’s going to leave Venice and put Angelo in charge for awhile. Angelo is still young and untested so the Duke wants someone older and wiser to keep an eye on things too. The older and wiser counselor is a man named Escalus. The Duke trusts Escalus and tells him that The nature of our people, Our city's institutions, and the terms For common justice, you're as pregnant in As art and practise hath enriched any That we remember. There is our commission, From which we would not have you warp… Escalus knows the Venetians well and is familiar with their laws. And the Venetians are a pretty bawdy bunch. There are bars and brothels all over Venice and its surrounding suburbs. There are laws on the books against public drunkenness, adultery and prostitution but these laws haven’t been enforced for a whole generation; nearly twenty years. The Duke’s problem is this: how can he rein in a rowdy bunch of people like the Venetians. He’s the one who has been lax enforcing the laws. He also knows that Angelo has a reputation for being severe and hopes somehow that Angelo’s severity will bring the Venetians to their senses. Then the Duke can take over again. Is this justice? With this background we’re ready to explore the theme of justice. For starters, is it a good idea for the Duke to put young Angelo through such a stringent test? Wouldn’t it be better to let him work his way up through the political ranks before bearing such heavy responsibilities? This question is still valid in America today. Every few years Americans decide we want to throw the bums out. Fair enough. But do we really want to put people into office who have no experience in governing? Is this justice? Even Angelo himself protests and says Now, good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure Be stamp'd upon it. And Angelo does, in fact, fail. His failure, as the Duke predicted, results from enforcing the laws too severely. He condemns Claudio to death for getting a girl pregnant. The girl is really his fiancé and they were already married in all but a strictly technical sense. But that’s all it takes for Angelo to prosecute. The irony is that Angelo ends up falling in love with Claudio’s sister, Isabella. Isabella is all set to become a nun and she comes to Angelo to plead for mercy. Before long the straight-laced Angelo is propositioning her: ANGELO: Which had you rather, that the most just law Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him, Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness As she that he hath stain'd? Like any good novice nun, Isabella refuses. ISABELLA: Sir, believe this, I had rather give my body than my soul… Claudio is her brother and he’s important to Isabella. But her chastity is even more important. When push comes to shove, chastity wins out: ANGELO: Then must your brother die. ISABELLA: And 'twere the cheaper way: Better it were a brother died at once, Than that a sister, by redeeming him, Should die for ever…Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity. This is noble of Isabel but the idea of justice is still left hanging at the end of the play. Claudio is set free but Angelo is punished by having to marry a former girlfriend. (Why would she want a guy like that anyway?) Is this justice? Meanwhile, a guy named Lucio is punished by having to marry a prostitute he’s gotten pregnant. Is this justice? Mistress Overdone (the madam of a brothel) is thrown in jail even though most local folks like her business. Is this justice? Isabella refuses to give her body in order to save her brother but she might do it in order to become a Duchess. Are all these justice? Yes, they are. At least they’re a type of justice. Everyone may not be happy and everyone may not think it’s fair. But this is the Duke’s brand of justice.

Nietzsche and the New Morality

2010-11-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

It amuses me that Nietzsche provokes such a negative reaction among contemporary Americans. His views on the "herd" and the superior virtues of the "ubermensch" are derived from the same moral calculus held by early English settlers towards the native american inhabitants living in the New World, and toward African slaves imported to work the southern plantations of white Anglo-Saxon farmers. The European Enlightenment idea that all people are created equal was never intended to apply to such foreign cultures as Africa, Asia, India or the North American tribes. The belief in natural rights was reserved for members of European descent, primarily the Anglo-Saxen and Nordic races. Christians have never had any trouble in finding scriptural passages to justify a refusal to include "inferior races" as their brothers in Christ. So why are so many Christians offended when Nietzsche (or Zarathustra) comes down from the mountain to announce that "God is dead?" Unlike Moses, who came down from the mountain bearing stone tablets engraved with God's law to the Israelites, Zarathustra comes to liberate humanity. Zarathustra doesn't kill God. He merely looks around and observes how people behave, then comes to the perfectly rational conclusion that God must not exist, otherwise he would never tolerate mankind's treatment of his fellow man. Nietzsche was no apostle for brotherly love. He despised most of humanity, regarding them as members of a herd, as an assortment of crude, boorish, uncivilized creatures who masquerade as people of higher intelligence, but are, in fact, no more civilized than the wild animals living in the jungle. For Nietzsche, God is a fable invented by the herd to justify a belief in their own superiority. Yet the true virtuous man, the ubermensch, does not make excuses nor lower himself to the herd, who is incapable of understanding him. If God is dead, then what need is there of morality or compassion? The Ubermensch makes his own morality. He is Achilles who answers to no one and bows to no king. Should a great man bow to a peasant? Of course not. Nietzsche observes that most men hide behind the opinions of their neighbor, their priest, their councilman, or mayor. But the great man keeps his own company. His conscience is clear. He is beyond shame. He is a force of nature and will not be humbled by the petty bourgeois values of ordinary men. In a sense, he is a god of his own making. Another Caesar, Napoleon, or Alexander. How can the little people, the herd, even dare to look upon him? Yet the little people, the herd, have their own scale of values. They look down on all people of technologically backward cultures. So behold the new morality that Zarathustra brings: the freedom to despise all people lower than yourself. In Nietzsche's view, we are all monkeys in this jungle. But some monkeys are smarter than the rest. And so in the Darwinian model of evolution, it is we, the smart monkeys from Europe carrying a Bible in one hand and a musket in the other, who deserve to rule over the backward monkeys of other races. This is called our "manifest destiny." Or in Judeo-Christian terms, "God's will."

NIETZSCHE: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

2010-10-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and went into the mountains. Here he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, for ten years. This is the way Nietzsche’s story begins. Or it could be his own philosophy, take your pick. Zarathustra, now forty years old, comes back down from the mountains and proclaims: I am weary of my wisdom…I must descend to the depths…I must go under. Whatever that means. Zarathustra speaks as if he’s the first one who’s ever felt that way. But the Preacher in Ecclesiastes was weary of his wisdom three thousand years ago: As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. Sometimes I get tired of my wisdom too. It’s hard being wise. But Zarathustra was not one to suffer in silence. He wanted to tell the whole world about it. His years of solitude had given him a new vision of life. But Aristotle’s Politics says he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he isn’t a part of society. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature… After ten years alone in the mountains has Zarathustra become a beast or has he become a god? The answer probably depends on the reader. Some folks will think Zarathustra has become a sociopath (Definition: one who is affected with a personality disorder marked by antisocial behavior). Other readers will think Zarathustra has transcended human boundaries and become almost god-like. In this selection the term god-like has been translated as “overman.” Zarathustra says Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! … Other translations may use the word “superman” but superman evokes an image of a guy in a cape wearing tights. Nietzsche would be highly offended by that popular image. Nietzsche’s superman is a super-human tough guy who says What matters my happiness? My reason? My virtue? My justice? My pity? What matters most to this superman is to break the bonds that are holding us back from achieving our full human potential. A big part of our redemption as fully conscious human beings is to free ourselves from the bondage of religion. Zarathustra preaches that it is Not your sin but your dullness that cries to heaven… God isn’t worried that we’re sinning too much but that we’re too timid to break even minor rules, much less sin. Besides, there’s no such thing as sin because God is dead! There’s also no need to be afraid of what happens after we die: Behold, I teach you the overman. …there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further. To walk through life bravely and calmly, without fear, creating new values without regret, this is the goal of the new superman. This is what Zarathustra preaches. It’s a powerful message; especially when we consider what Zarathustra sees as the alternative: Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. We can either remain “normal” and dull or we can follow the path of Neitzsche: companions I need, living ones, not dead companions and corpses whom I carry with myself wherever I want to. Living companions I need, who follow me because they want to follow themselves, wherever I want. Nietzsche calls out to those who feel alienated from this world: there’s a reason why you feel that way. You despise the herd. The reason Zarathustra has come is To lure many away from the herd, that’s why I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: Zarathustra wants to be called a robber by the shepherds. Aristotle is apparently one of those shepherds. Aristotle says man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all… Nietzsche wants us to go beyond law and justice and become Superhuman. For Aristotle just being a normal human being is hard enough. Living in “a herd” makes is more human, not less. As for the herd Zarathustra has this to say: They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for their ears. He’s right on both counts.

HUME: Of Personal Identity

2010-10-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes philosophers say outrageous things. For example, David Hume points out that There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our “self”…no proof can be derived from any fact of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there anything of which we can be certain if we doubt this. Well, duh. That’s just common sense. We all know our own selves better than we know anything else in the world. But then Hume turns outrageous and throws us a curve ball when he says For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call “myself” I always stumble on some particular perception or other…I never can catch “myself” at any time without a perception and never can observe anything but the perception. Say what? Hume is saying he never sees “himself” but only some image from his past or something he’s done; but there’s nothing he can point to and say definitively, that’s me right there. All he can find are a bunch of different memories. There’s just a bunch of different stuff going on in his mind and they’re all distinct and different experiences. There’s no separate“self” that he can call “me”. Is Hume serious? Yes, he is. And it’s not just his own personal mind that’s like that. Yours is too. And so is mine. In Hume’s opinion Mankind is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions. How can this be? Well, Hume explains, we confuse Identity with Relation. Here we go, it’s philosophy time. This will get a little bumpy so hang on. Hume defines Identity as an object that remains invariable and uninterrupted through time. That’s what our “self” is supposed to be when we claim to have a personal identity: stay the same. When that object is “me” I need to ask the question: does “me” stay the same for any considerable time? If I’m honest I would have to say, sort of. Think about it. Well, maybe “me” doesn’t stay totally the same all the time. Think about it some more. Well, actually my mind does change a lot; not only daily but almost from moment to moment. Now you can see what Hume is driving at. We’ve been confusing Identity with Relation. A Relation is several different objects existing in succession and connected together… Our thoughts aren’t what give us an Identity (an object that remains invariable or stays the same). Our thoughts are only Relations (several different objects existing together). Relation isn’t the same thing as Identity, although they seem like the same thing. That’s because we’re fooling ourselves. Hume points out that Relation facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continued object. …Our propensity to confuse identity with relation is so great that we are apt to imagine something unknown and mysterious (a “self”) connecting the parts… We see the Relations between our thoughts and actions and think they all belong to one complete Identity, but they don’t. I call my Identity “me” or my “self.” In reality, there’s no such thing. There are only distinct thoughts coexisting in my mind. And Hume says that Every distinct perception which enters into the composition of the mind is a distinct existence…but we suppose the whole train of perceptions to be united by identity. Therefore, Hume concludes, The identity which we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious one… This conclusion is logically sound but still doesn’t seem right. It just feels wrong somehow. For one thing, even Hume assumes he has a personal identity when he says that when “I” try to enter into myself “I” can never observe anything but impressions. Who is this “I” if it’s not the Personal Identity of David Hume? Maybe I’m misunderstanding his philosophy. And even Hume admits that All the nice and subtle questions concerning “personal identity” can never possibly be decided and are to be regarded as grammatical rather than philosophical difficulties…All the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal… Merely verbal? Is this just a game? No, it’s philosophy. Philosophy isn’t a game. Philosophy makes us think. Socrates said the same thing a long time ago. Hume agrees.

FLAUBERT: A Simple Heart

2010-10-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Reading philosophy can get complicated. Our last reading by Kant included totally new terms he invented himself, such as a “hypothetical imperative” (which is different from his “categorical imperative”). In Flaubert’s short story A Simple Heart we meet a woman who’s not a deep thinker. The question Flaubert poses is this: can a simple person have just as good a life as someone with a gifted mind who has studied deeply? That’s a good question. In A Simple Heart the woman’s name is Felicite. She’s very different from Kant. Kant’s a professor of philosophy and well-versed in almost every branch of human learning. Felicite is just an ordinary housekeeper in an ordinary household. She can’t read and write. She doesn’t know how maps work. But she can clean and cook and knows how to do all the practical things that are necessary to make life comfortable and pleasant. In short, her life is simple. Kant had a very well-defined philosophy. He spends several pages explaining why just “being good” isn’t good enough. You have to be good for the right reasons. Otherwise, you’re just acting out of your own self interests. Felicite, on the other hand, didn’t have a well-defined philosophy of life. She couldn’t write down her own philosophy even if she had one. And she didn’t spend much time thinking about right and wrong, much less good and evil. But in Flaubert’s world Felicite is “good” because her native goodness unfolded in her heart. She didn’t have to think about it. She just lived it day by day. Her whole world was a small village in southern France. Her daily life wasn’t very complicated: She got up at the crack of dawn so as to be in time for Mass, and worked till nightfall without stopping; then, when dinner was over, the dishes put away, and the door firmly shut, she would bury the fireplace log under the ashes and doze off in front of the hearth, holding onto her rosary. A fair question might be: what kind of life is that? Getting up early every day, going to church, working all day, then falling asleep in front of the fire? Not even any Internet or cable TV. Most people would probably prefer Paris but Felicite found that she was happy in these gentle surroundings. It was enough for Felicite. She couldn’t read but she knew the biblical stories: Felicite saw the Garden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, cities all in flames, dying nations, idols overthrown; and these stunning visions left her awed by the Almighty and fearful of His wrath. She wept when she heard the story of the Passion. How could they have crucified him like that? Didn’t He love little children, feed the hungry multitudes, heal the blind? Even simple people have problems and Felicite was no exception. She recalled …her wretched childhood, the disillusionment of her first love, her nephew’s going away, and Virginie’s death… Felicite had her share of tragedy. But she persevered. Even when her body started falling apart: …she was deaf…Though her sins might have been broadcast throughout the diocese without dishonoring her or offending anyone else, the priest decided it would be best not to confess her from then on anywhere but in the sacristy. … She also began to lose her sight. The shutters stopped opening. Many years passed. There wasn’t a lot to keep Felicite going except for one thing: her beloved pet parrot, Loulou. As the world started slipping away from Felicite she still had Loulou to comfort her. And when Loulou passed away she had him stuffed. Then Flaubert paints a comical but touching picture of Felicite and her stuffed pet bird: A shelf was put up for Loulou…without sorrow, rather brimming over with peace, she would remember how things used to be… she was forever scrutinizing the Holy Ghost, and it struck her that he looked a little like the parrot…he was the very image of Loulou… It would not have been a dove that Our Heavenly Father had picked to be the bearer of His Word; nobody ever heard a dove talk; it must have been an ancestor of Loulou’s. Is this love or just plain blasphemy? Felicite couldn’t tell you because of dogma she understood nothing; did not even try to understand. Kant and Flaubert had two very different visions about what a good life is and how it should be lived.

KANT: First Principles of Morals

2010-10-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

Cartoons use to portray ethical dilemmas something like this: on one shoulder there’s a little angel whispering in one ear “don’t do it!” and on the other shoulder there’s a little devil whispering “go ahead, do it!” in the other ear. In the cartoons I’ve seen the little devil usually boots off the little angel and gets his way; which is probably what the cartoon character really wanted to do anyway. Real life isn’t a cartoon but the dilemma is much the same. What if we have competing voices inside our heads telling us what to do? How do we determine which one is the voice of the little angel and which one is the little devil? First Principles of Morals is apparently Kant’s attempt to answer this question. Whether he’s successful or not probably depends on the reader. It’s hard for me to tell if Kant’s ideas are extremely complex and I’m too dumb to understand them or if Kant’s just a bad writer who can’t express his ideas clearly. My understanding of Kant’s principles of morals boils down to this: all our actions are centered in the WILL. If we want to determine if something is good or bad we first have to start by considering our WILL. Is it good or bad? Kant says A good WILL is good not because of its effects or the attainment of some purpose but simply by virtue of the volition (the power of choosing or determining = will). I think this means that it doesn’t matter whether what we did turns out good or bad. The main thing is we meant to do good. We were trying to do good. Even if the results turned out bad, the intention was good. This is a very different concept from the ancient Greek notion of what’s right and wrong. For example, in Oedipus the King we read about Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother. He certainly didn’t intend to. He even did everything in his power to prevent it. But for the Greek writer (Sophocles) facts are facts. It doesn’t matter what Oedipus intended, what matters is what he actually did; and Oedipus is punished severely by the gods. This seems grossly unfair in Kant’s ethical system and most modern readers would agree. But the ancient Greeks weren’t as much interested in what you thought as in what you actually did. Which is more important, what we THINK or what we DO? Kant does give some guidelines on how to determine right from wrong. First of all he says that to have moral worth an action must be done from DUTY. If you help people because you feel sorry for them or because you’ll get an award then it really doesn’t count. You’re doing good but you’re doing it for the wrong reason. You’re just being selfish (even though in a socially good way). Again, just as above Kant says an action done from DUTY derives its moral worth not from the action itself…but merely on the principle of volition (the power of choosing or determining = will)… by which the action has taken place. This is a clunky way of saying: did you do good for the right reason (out of “duty”)? But this just raises another question: how do we know what our “duty” is? Kant believes DUTY is the necessity of acting out of respect for the LAW. That helps. A little bit. But what if the law itself is bad? This was exactly Thoreau’s complaint in our reading on Civil Disobedience. He thought taxes helped pay for a war (the Mexican War) that was wrong by its very nature. So he refused to pay and went to jail for it. Laws are made by men and men sometimes get it wrong. But there’s a higher power that won’t ever get it wrong. That’s because some laws are universal and are right at all times and in all places. This universal law should direct our moral choices. How can we know what this universal law is? We know it by using our minds; by exercising our reasoning power. Only the rational mind can be objective enough to not lead us astray. A perfectly GOOD WILL would obey OBJECTIVE laws… So Kant believes rational thinking leads us on the right path and to make the right decisions. This sounds fine if you’re a philosopher. But what about ordinary folks who don’t have all day to think about these things? Can we learn what’s good by listening to our hearts instead? Flaubert shows us how in his short story about A Simple Heart.

SHAKESPEARE: Othello

2010-10-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Lots of stories end “and they lived happily ever after.” Othello isn’t that kind of story. By the end of Othello most of the good guys are dead. The play starts out on a bad note: a senator of Venice is upset because his daughter (Desdemona) has been sleeping with a foreign mercenary, Othello. But Desdemona is a good girl and she thinks it’s ok because they’ve secretly gotten married first. So it’s ok, right? Wrong. It’s not ok with Desdemona’s father. Since Othello is a highly successful general in the Venetian army there’s not much her father can do about it. But he warns Othello about Desdemona: Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may (deceive) thee. Here lies the key to the whole play. Modern American readers tend to note first that Desdemona is white and Othello is black. That’s because we’re a race-conscious society. But in the context of the play race isn’t the important distinction. Othello is an outsider: not because he’s black but because he’s a Moor. That doesn’t mean Othello isn’t a good man. He is. But he’s not “one of us” (a Venetian). And Desdemona is a good woman. Of all Shakespeare’s women characters Desdemona is truly the Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes type. But mixing two good people like Desdemona and Othello together can lead to a lethal combination. How? All it takes is some evil person to come along and exploit the insecurity and fear a man like Othello inherits when he marries a wealthy and cultured Venetian lady. It takes an evil person to exploit the innocence and naivety of a woman like Desdemona. But it can happen. That evil person in this play is named Iago. If Iago hadn’t come along Desdemona and Othello might have lived happily ever after. But the warning at the start of the play echoes ominously in the back of Othello’s mind: Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may (deceive) thee.

In philosophy the word “evil” might be defined merely as the absence of good. Or it might be that evil is just our subjective response to something we don’t like. But in literature “evil” has a face and a name. Evil has to be a creature with knowledge of both evil and good. Only a person or an angel can be evil. A tornado may be bad news but it’s not evil. Cancer is a scourge of mankind but it’s not evil either. Mephistopheles in Faust is evil. The devil in Job is evil. In this play the name for evil is Iago. We find out immediately what kind of man Iago is and what kind of man he isn’t. Iago tells the audience bluntly that I am not what I am. Then what is he? He’s consumed with a rage to lash out and not just destroy other people but make them suffer. Othello is his main target: I do hate him as I do hell-pains. Yet, for necessity of present life, I must show out a flag and sign of love, Which is indeed but sign. In other words, Iago presents himself as if he’s one of Othello’s most devoted friends. In reality he’s his deadliest enemy. Iago wants to destroy Othello and make hum suffer. The best and easiest way to do that is through an unlikely source: Desdemona’s virtue. Iago thrills at the mere thought of it: So will I turn her (Desdemona’s) virtue into pitch; And out of her own goodness make the net That shall enmesh them all. Desdemona is so innocent and naïve that she’ll never know what hit her. Neither will Othello. Iago wants Othello to suffer and jealousy of Desdemona is the best (most devious) way to do that. Iago delights in the thought that Othello will never know peace and quiet ever again: Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday. Iago knows that once Othello suspects Desdemona of adultery then he’ll never get another good night’s sleep. And Iago’s scheme works. This is evil. Two good people (and more) are destroyed by Iago. At the end Desdemona says I have not deserved this… She’s right. Othello says Here is my journey's end… He’s right too. And Iago says Men should be what they seem. Even Iago is right sometimes.

GOETHE: Faust, Part One

2010-09-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

Someone once said the three great themes in life are God, Great Books and Golf. Goethe hits two out of three in his masterpiece Faust. Golf doesn’t play a part in this drama but there’s plenty about God and Great Books. At the start of the play we’re introduced to a situation that’s amazingly similar to The Book of Job. The scene is set in Heaven and the angels are praising the Lord and his creation, all except for Satan. In this play Satan goes by the name Mephistopheles and he doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. What’s so great about life on the planet earth? When he surveys the world he says All I see is how men torment themselves. The little god of the world (man) is still the same, as odd as on the first day. He’d live a little better without his glimmering of heavenly light. He calls it Reason but he uses it to be beastlier than any beast. The Lord approaches Mephistopheles and asks if he knows Faust? The Lord is proud of his servant Faust: He serves me, these days, in bewilderment. But soon I shall lead him into the light… A good man, struggling in his darkness, still knows the one true way. This is too much for Mephistopheles. So they make a wager, just like in The Book of Job. Satan tempts Faust just as he had tempted Job. Only instead of causing Faust to suffer, as he did with Job, Satan will tempt Faust with pleasures. The stage is set for wild and boisterous adventures in places like public taverns and witch’s lairs. There’s plenty of entertainment but entertainment isn’t the primary goal of this play. Goethe has a message to deliver. And he does that well.

Faust is one of the great characters of Western literature. He’s like Shakespeare’s Hamlet in this way: Faust thinks about things and he thinks about them a lot. Faust is a scholar but he’s deeply unhappy. Why? In the opening scene in his study Faust complains: Law, medicine, philosophy and even (worse luck) theology! I’ve studied them all with passionate resolution, and I’ve learned them from top to bottom; now I stand here, poor fool that I am, no wiser than I was before. I am called Master, Doctor even; for ten years, up and down and back and forth, I’ve led my students by the nose. And I see there’s nothing we can know! That’s what eats my heart out. This reminds readers of The Preacher in Ecclesiasates. The Preacher had learned everything, tried everything, and still wasn’t happy. Faust has devoted his whole life to studying the Great Books. He’s learned all there is to learn from the masters. But he hasn’t found what he’s looking for. And what is that? Faust himself isn’t sure and that’s because he’s a complicated man. Lots of guys don’t have that problem. One student sums up his life goals like this: Good strong beer, tobacco with a bite, and a dolled-up housemaid. That’s my style. The simple pleasures in life are fulfillment enough for most people. And Faust wishes he could be satisfied with the simple pleasures but he laments that Two souls, alas, dwell within my breast; each struggling to get free of the other. One, gross and passionate desire, clutches at the world with greedy limbs; the other soars from the dust into the realms of our first lofty fathers. Can two souls dwell within one person? Not peacefully. The student is satisfied with his passionate desires. Faust’s friend Wagner prefers to leave passion behind and let his spirit soar with the help of great books: …One soon sees one’s fill of field and forest. I envy no bird its feathers. How different are the pleasures of the spirit! They bear us from book to book, from page to page! Then winter nights grow bright and beautiful, a blissful light warms every limb, and as you open some wonderful book the heavens themselves descend upon you. Faust is torn between these two approaches. Should he leave his passions behind and follow his intellect? Or should he abandon reason and follow his desires? This isn’t just Faust’s problem. It’s the common human dilemma: how should we live? Faust concludes that Here (in the village) is the people’s real Heaven. Young and old shout their contentment. Here I am, here I dare to be, human.

KAFKA: The Metamorphosis

2010-09-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

In many ways Gregor Samsa was just an average guy. He was what we nowadays call a traveling salesman. He lived in a modest but neatly kept apartment with his parents and his sister. Such a life may seem dull to many readers but it was pleasant enough to Gregor. Everything seemed to be going along just fine and the whole family assumed that everything would continue going along just fine into the future. Then all of a sudden Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams and found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. That’s not something that happens every day. In fact I don’t know of anyone who’s suddenly been turned into a giant bug. People might have sudden earth-shattering tragedies in their lives. They may get cancer or some incurable disease. Their spouses may leave them. They may lose their jobs or their life savings. But people don’t just turn into bugs for no reason.
So what’s going on here? What are we supposed to make of this story? None of us have ever known (or have even heard of) someone being turned into a bug. There must be some other explanation. One explanation might be that Gregor hasn’t really turned into a bug. The pressures of life just got to be too much of a burden for him and he retreated into the “shell” of his own mind. In other words, maybe Gregor just went crazy. The story is told mostly from Gregor’s own mind. If the people around him were telling the story it may have been quite different: Gregor wasn’t really a bug; he just stopped talking and kept to his room. Then he slowly degenerated and finally died. That would be one interpretation. But I like to take a writer at his word. It’s Kafka’s story. Let him tell it. So let’s assume it happened the way Kafka said.

Where does that leave us? With some interesting problems. First of all Kafka seems to be asking: what is it that makes us human? Is it work? Gregor’s Mom points out her son’s strong work ethic when she tells his boss: Gregor’s not well, sir, believe me. What else would make him miss a train! The boy thinks about nothing but his work. It makes me almost cross the way he never goes out in the evenings; he’s been here the last eight days and has stayed at home every single evening. He just sits there quietly at the table reading a newspaper or looking through railway timetables. To have honorable and fulfilling work is one of the things that make us human. But that may also be Gregor’s primary weakness: he’s a workaholic. Shouldn’t a young man also have some hobbies or other interests outside his routine work life? Besides, our jobs can often make us just another cog in a machine. Gregor’s boss is irritated when he doesn’t show up for work one morning: I thought you were a quiet dependable person and now all at once you seem bent on making a disgraceful exhibition of yourself. The fact is Gregor has turned into a bug. He’s supposed to be a traveling salesman. Who’s going to buy anything from a giant bug? One lesson modern Americans may draw is this: when people lose their jobs how much of their identities do they also lose? Surely work isn’t the only thing that identifies us as members of the human race. Most of us have families and personal interests too. The books we read, the friends we have, the places we live; all of these go into making up our common humanity. Gregor was no different. At one point he starts losing all the personal possessions that make him “Gregor”: He could not account for the fact that he had quite earnestly looked forward to having his room emptied of furnishing. Did he really want his warm room, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be turned into a naked den in which he would certainly be able to crawl unhampered in all directions but at the price of shedding simultaneously all recollection of his human background?... They were clearing his room out; taking away everything he loved… His last glance fell on his mother… Cold hard facts can give us an objective scientific view of life. But stories may be better for showing us human reality. Kafka knew how to tell a good story.

FREUD: On Dreams

2010-09-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

This was Freud’s dream: Company at table or table d’hote…spinach was being eaten…Frau E.L. was sitting beside me; she was turning her whole attention to me and laid her hand on my knee in an intimate manner. I removed her hand unresponsively. She then said: “But you’ve always had such beautiful eyes.”…I then had an indistinct picture of two eyes, as though it were a drawing or like the outline of a pair of spectacles. Ok, that’s the dream. The dream itself is what Freud calls the manifest content. But there’s also a deeper meaning which Freud calls the latent content. Freud assures us that by critically pursuing the associations arising from any dream I can arrive at a similar train of thoughts…which are interconnected in a rational and intelligible manner. These interconnected thoughts will disclose the “latent content” of our dreams. Freud’s analysis of his own dream shows that Frau E.L. is the daughter of a man to whom I was once in debt… and Freud concludes that I have always paid dearly for whatever advantage I have had from other people. That’s an interesting interpretation of his dream. But let’s try this method out for ourselves. Let’s see what we can come up with by using Freud’s own method to analyze the same dream. Side note: Freud was Jewish and married the daughter of the chief rabbi in Hamburg. Freud insists that details matter.

So let’s start with the table. What does the table represent in the dream? In Jewish tradition a table is a lot like an altar where sacrifices of food are offered to God. And this isn’t just any old table, it’s a table d’hote. That’s the literal French term for “host’s table.” So Freud is dreaming about dining at a table where someone else is providing the food. Who could the host possibly be? In Jewish tradition Wisdom is sometimes personified in feminine terms. Proverbs 9:2, for example, says She (Wisdom) has prepared a great banquet, mixed the wines, and set the table. Coincidence? Freud says these things are important in analyzing our dreams. Let’s keep going.

A concept that often goes along with table d’hote is the prix fixe menu or “set menu.” Jewish law in Leviticus has very strict regulations about how the altar is to be set up and the food is to be prepared and eaten. Exodus 25:30 states: Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times. But Leviticus speaks mostly about animals or grain being offered. In his dream Freud is very specific that it was spinach being eaten. What possible meaning can spinach have? It just so happens that spinach originated in ancient Persia. So? This is close to the ancient city of Ur. So? Abram, the spiritual father of all Jews, was from Ur. Coincidence? Maybe. Spinach is a leafy vegetable and leafy vegetables come from gardens. What’s the most famous garden of all, especially for a Jew? The Garden of Eden. Another coincidence? Maybe. But Freud insists we should pursue the thought associations arising from our dreams. No matter how trivial or coincidental they seem. So let’s go on a little further in our pursuit.

Next let’s consider the significance of Frau E.L. “Frau” is a German word that means woman. In Jewish tradition who’s the first woman? Eve. But the word “Frau” can also mean one’s wife. In Jewish tradition who’s the first wife? That was also Eve. Interesting. But so what? Well this isn’t just any old “Frau.” It’s Frau E.L. So? “El” just happens to be the ancient near Eastern word signifying “God.” For example in Genesis 35:7 we read that Jacob built an altar there and named the place El-bethel (which means "God of Bethel"), because God had appeared to him there. Remember, Freud’s wife is the daughter of a prominent rabbi. Surely Freud would have been familiar with the story in Genesis 3:8: They heard the voice of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. Why were they hiding from God? They were ashamed because they had EATEN from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In his dream Freud was sitting beside Frau E.L. and says she was turning her whole attention to me and laid her hand on my knee in an intimate manner. She had her whole attention turned to Freud. But why would she put her hand on his knee (especially in an intimate manner)? In Jewish tradition the wisest man who ever lived was King Solomon. In the first Book of Kings we find that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication to Yahweh, he arose from before the altar of Yahweh, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread forth toward heaven. Did Freud ever get down on his knees and pray to God as Solomon did? At the beginning of his essay Freud talks about “pre-scientific men” who believed dreams were a manifestation by higher powers, demonic and divine. But Freud’s goal was to bring the psychology of dreams up to the scientific standards of the modern world. To believe in higher powers would undermine his whole program. So when Frau E.L. put her hand on his knee in an intimate manner what was Freud’s response? He says I removed her hand unresponsively. Unresponsive. Interesting. Does that mean Freud was subconsciously rejecting his wife? If so was it because she was a rabbi’s daughter? Or was he rejecting all aggressive women because they’re sexually threatening? Adam wasn’t able to resist Eve in the Garden of Eden. They both ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Was Freud rejecting his Jewish heritage? Was he rejecting God? What would Freud’s father-in-law think about all this? Remember the psychoanalytic method: analysis of dreams isn’t easy and we have to follow the train of thoughts wherever they may lead. Freud’s dream doesn’t end there.

She then said: “But you’ve always had such beautiful eyes.” Why would Frau E.L. pick Freud’s eyes? Why not his hands? Or why not “you’ve always had such a logical mind”? No, it was his eyes that affected her. Why? We see with our eyes; they give us our “vision” of life. If we’re blind we can’t see; like Oedipus the King. But sometimes we can’t see even if we have eyes to see with. Let’s follow this train of thought. In Deuteronomy 9:17 Moses tells his fellow Jews:
I took the stone tablets and threw them to the ground, smashing them before your eyes. God had given Moses two stone tablets to take back to the Jewish people. They contained the Ten Commandments and were supposed to help lift the Jews out of slavery and darkness. Freud’s eyes were beautiful but had he lost that Jewish vision? Had he traded the ancient Hebrew vision for a modern theory of his own: psychoanalysis? If so, his Jewish heritage would no longer sustain Freud. In Job 32:1 we read that these three men gave no more answers to Job, because he seemed to be right in his own eyes. Was Freud so convinced of his own theory that he rejected three thousand years of cumulated Jewish experience? The Jewish holy books seem to have no more answers for Freud. Why? Because Freud seemed to himself to be right in his own eyes. Ironically, the heritage that Freud rejects had confronted the interpretation of dreams over a thousand years ago. It’s nothing new: Daniel 2:6 says if you tell me the dream and its meaning, I will give you gifts, awards, and high honors. Now tell me the dream and its meaning.

Finally, Freud says I then had an indistinct picture of two eyes, as though it were a drawing or like the outline of a pair of spectacles. Maybe “spectacles” form our vision of life. Were the spectacles of psychoanalysis Freud’s best friend or his worst enemy? Psalm 23 paints a beautiful picture and this complicated analysis brings us right back where we started: at the table. It’s almost like a dream: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Coincidence?

SHAKESPEARE: All’s Well That Ends Well

2010-09-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Yogi Berra’s philosophy of baseball is “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Shakespeare’s philosophy of comedy is “all’s well that ends well.” In Oedipus the King everything seems to be going well but turns out badly. In All’s Well That Ends Well everything seems to be going badly but turns out well. Here’s how it happened. Helena wants to marry Bertram but he desperately doesn’t want to marry Helena. So Helena cures the King of France from a near-fatal illness and the king promises to give Helena whatever she wants as a reward. She wants Bertram for her husband. Bertram protests: I know her (Helena) well; she had her breeding at my father’s charge; a poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain rather corrupt me ever… However, the king has given his word and here’s his response to Bertram: It is in us to plant thine honour where we please to have it grow. In other words, I’m the king and you’re not, so you WILL marry Helena. The king may be able to force him to marry Helena but Bertram says I will not bed her… Not only does Bertram not love Helena, he almost seems to loathe her: Here comes my clog (Helena).

This marriage is not off to a good start. To make matters worse, before Helena has a chance to sleep with him Bertram takes off to Florence to get away from her. But once in Florence a young Italian lady does catch Bertram’s eye: Diana Capulet. He may not want to sleep with Helena but he sure does want to sleep with Diana. What’s up with this guy? Answer: he’s young. Bertram’s mother (a wise Countess) makes this observation: Even so it was with me when I was young: if ever we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; our blood to us, this to our blood is born: it is the show and seal of nature’s truth, where love’s strong passion is impressed in youth…

A dilemma faced by all young folks is who to partner up with. Diana doesn’t want to give up her virginity to Bertram. Helena does. What difference does it make? It makes a lot of difference to the ladies. Not so much to the guys. Bertram’s “friend” Parolles has this little exchange with Helena: PAROLLES: Are you (Helena) meditating on virginity? ... HELENA: Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men? … PAROLLES: Virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love; which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not… Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion…your old virginity is like of our French withered pears. Of course this is what many men would say. They have a vested interest in sex. The Clown puts it this way: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives. It’s not love that drives Bertram on with Diana, it’s lust. He doesn’t want to marry her; he just wants to bed her.

Is this the hand of fate or just plain old biology at work? Oedipus was driven by fate in a world brooding with the will of the gods. Helena and Bertram inhabit a world where it’s every man for himself; and every woman too. Helena figures it this way: Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky gives us free scope; only doth backward pull our slow designs when we ourselves are dull… The king’s disease, my project may deceive me, but my intents are fixed, and will not leave me. Helena is determined to get Bertram but that’s not the same thing as fate. Success depends almost entirely on her personal efforts, not the will of the gods. With a little help from her friends Helena gets her way. It wasn’t easy and it took a trick or two but when all is said and done Helena has the last word: All’s well that ends well.

SOPHOCLES: Oedipus the King

2010-08-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

W. H. Auden begins one of his poems with this observation: About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood its human position; how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along… The Preacher in Ecclesiastes was an Old Master and he knew a thing or two about human suffering. He said To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose… There’s a time to be happy and a time to suffer. He also assured us that The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…but time and chance happeneth to them all. Nobody gets through life without pain.

Sophocles was an Old Master too. Auden was English, The Preacher was Jewish and Sophocles was Greek. But when it comes to human suffering these guys all say essentially the same thing. It doesn’t matter where they come from: time and chance happeneth to them all. If you’re a human being, and you’re alive, you’re going to suffer. It may not be right now, it may not be next week, but until you’ve safely left this life behind you can never be sure that tragedy won’t strike. Sophocles ends his play with these words: Count no man happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain. Oedipus the King is proof of that. When the play begins Oedipus seemingly has it all. A beautiful wife, healthy children and he’s king of Thebes. The only problem is a stubborn plague that haunts the city. It turns out that a murder was committed and has never been solved. The gods are angry and demand that the murderer be found and driven away from the city as punishment. Then the plague will be lifted. What does this have to do with Oedipus? First of all, he’s the king. People are looking for him to do something. Second, he himself is the murderer. Oedipus just doesn’t know it at first. And it gets worse. The man Oedipus killed was really his father. He just didn’t know it. The woman Oedipus married was really his mother. He just didn’t know it. When Oedipus finds out the truth his whole world is crushed. Oedipus didn’t know a lot about things in his life. The things he held most dearest to him were not what they seemed to be. His lovely wife was also his mother. His beloved children were also his brothers and sisters. When his wife/mother finds out the truth she hangs herself. When Oedipus finds out the truth he blinds himself.

In some ways Sophocles agrees with the Preacher from Ecclesiastes. Sophocles writes: What man on earth wins more of happiness than a seeming and after that turning away? This was the same experience the Preacher had. We try all kinds of things we think will make us happy. The Preacher built gardens and houses and read books and played music and drank wine and loved women. But after awhile everything seemed to lose its glitter and the Preacher would move on to something else. The Preacher finally decided that There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. At the beginning of Oedipus the King we hear him bragging about I Oedipus whom all men call the Great. Maybe Oedipus should have taken the Preacher’s advice and let well enough alone. His wife/mother (Jocasta) begged him to do just that: Do not concern yourself about this matter; listen to me and learn that human beings have no part in the craft of prophecy… As far as prophecy goes henceforward I shall not look to the right hand or the left…Best to live lightly, as one can, unthinkingly… I beg you, do not hunt this out, I beg you… Was she right? Is it better sometimes NOT to know the truth and just move on? There’s an old country song by Vern Gosdin called If You’re Gonna Do Me Wrong. The singer has his suspicions that his wife is being unfaithful and says I don’t want to know the truth. Human suffering is the same no matter whether it’s ancient Israel, ancient Greece or a modern honky-tonk bar in Nashville.

BIBLE: Ecclesiastes

2010-08-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

Americans love self-help books. We read tons of books about how to be healthier, how to have better relationships at home or at work, how to succeed in business or parenting or sports. In short, we want to be happy. Before picking up yet another self-help book, most people would be better off to pick up the book of Ecclesiastes. Here are the answers you’ve been looking for. It won’t tell you whether to eat more fiber or change careers or anything like that. But whatever you’re REALLY looking for (deep down inside), you can find it in the pages of this book. Ecclesiastes is like a mirror that reflects back your true self. Here are three possibilities:
(1) Some people think life is just one long struggle: Life’s a bitch, then you die. The Preacher agrees with you: The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. “Vanity” is a word we don’t use much anymore; we would say “meaningless” instead of vanity. So the message here is that life is basically meaningless. Why? There are several reasons but the most important reason is because we’ll end up dying some day, no matter what we do. The Preacher puts it this way: how dieth the wise man? as the fool… that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. According to the Preacher, no matter how rich we are, or how good-looking, or how wise, we’re all gonna die. So put away your self-help books, they won’t do you any good in the end.
(2) This message is too bleak for some people. You may be one of those who point out that there are many bad things in life, but there are a lot of good things too. Life’s a mixture of good and bad. We just take them as they come. The Preacher agrees with you. He writes a famous poem about it: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die… There you have it. We may die some day but in the meantime there’s a life to be lived. So accept it for what it is. Sometimes you’ll be sad, sometimes you’ll be happy. The Preacher goes on to say that there’s A time to weep, and a time to laugh;… a time to mourn, and a time to dance;… A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace…A time to kill, and a time to heal… The thing about life is not so much HOW to do something, but WHEN to do it. You won’t find those answers in self-help books.
(3) Finally there are people who think both of those views are wrong. You may believe that as long as you’re alive there’s hope and if nothing else you should at least be happy in that fact. The Preacher agrees with you too: For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything… Things may not be going too well right now but at least I’m not dead. That’s a start. This is a very simple approach to life: There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. The simple things in life are best. Enjoy good food, do your work well, praise God. Let everything else be. No self-help book is necessary.

So where does that leave us? Do you think life is pointless? Well, you’re right, it is. Do you think life is really more of a mixture of good and bad things all jumbled up together? Well, you’re right too. Do you think there really is a purpose to life and that it’s always a treasure and a blessing? Guess what, you’re also right. Don’t like these answers or think they can’t all be right? Too bad for you. The Preacher says If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. If you don’t like where the tree fell, then too bad for you. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. He was a wise man.

GOGOL: The Overcoat

2010-08-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Akaky didn’t ask much out of life: a small apartment, a job copying documents, and for supper maybe some cabbage soup followed by beef and onions. Was that too much to ask? There was just one thing missing. Akaky’s old coat was almost literally worn out. It was hanging by a thread, which let the cold wind blow through. And it gets cold in Russia, very cold. He would have been perfectly satisfied to have his old coat repaired. But the tailor said no way, the old coat was beyond repair. Akaky would definitely need a new overcoat. Here’s the problem: it took nearly all of Akaky’s money just to pay his bills. He didn’t have enough left over at the end of the month to buy a new coat. But by scrimping and saving and going without food and light and heat for weeks and weeks, Akaky finally came up with the money and had an elegant new overcoat custom made for him. The day his new overcoat was delivered was the biggest day of Akaky’s life. He was so proud of it that his co-workers invited him over for a celebration party that very night. Akaky attended the party and got a little drunk. On the way home two thugs beat him up and stole his overcoat. He reported it to the police but nothing came of it. Akaky never recovered. Not long after the robbery he got sick and died.

What kind of story is this? I mean, it’s sad and all that, but what’s it got to do with me? I live in modern America and I have an overcoat, two or three of them in fact. So why should I care? I should care because good literature is universal. We don’t have copyists in modern America. We have copy machines and computer printers to do that sort of thing. But we do still have plenty of low-paid people slaving away at menial jobs in cubicles all across the country. And many of them go home at night alone to their small apartments. Their dinners may not be cabbage soup with beef and onions. More likely it’s a frozen dinner from the microwave. And they may not spend their leisure hours copying text, as Akaky did after supper at home. The modern American version would be watching TV or reading a book or surfing the Internet. What makes these modern American types any different from Akaky? Some minor details may have changed but the basic human type has changed very little. There are still plenty of people like Akaky around. You may know one or two of them yourself. You may even BE one of them yourself. I may take a good look at my own life and say to myself: I’m actually kind of lazy, just like Akaky. And I’m getting kind of dull, just like Akaky. But I like my life the way it is and I really don’t want to change, just like Akaky. Of course in modern America it’s drilled into us that “Change Is Good” and we believe it. Few people ever stop to ask: why is change good? Things aren’t perfect, but why aren’t they good enough the way they are? Why not leave well enough alone? In this story we find that Akaky worked with love. There, in his copying, he found an interesting, pleasant world for himself. It may have been a dull job for most people, but not for Akaky. One of his supervisors once tried to give Akaky higher-paying and more interesting work, but Akaky hated it. All he wanted to do was copy simple text. He didn’t want to give it a new heading and change some of the verbs. Copying plain text was an interesting, pleasant world for Akaky to live in. Besides, when everyone else was trying to have a good time, Akaky Akakievich was not even thinking of diverting himself…Having written to his heart’s content he would go to bed smiling in anticipation of tomorrow, of what God would send him to copy. Is this what Aristotle calls arête (excellence)? No. Is this the kind of citizen The Federalist has in mind for America? No. There’s a fundamental classical Greek and American belief that people can change and improve their lives. But if we try to forcibly change a man like Akaky, he protests: Let me be. Why do you do this to me? Is it possible in the modern world to say: I prefer not to change, just let me be? To find out, read Herman Melville’s Bartleby.

SHAKESPEARE: Twelfth Night

2010-08-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

Twelfth Night has a simple plot in a very complex sort of way. A pair of twins (one brother, one sister) get shipwrecked off the coast of Illyrium. (Pop quiz: where is Illyrium? Pop answer: Illyrium is the name of the coastal area of what is now called Croatia.) Both tiwns believe the other one has drowned but in reality they both survived. To protect herself from marauding sailors and soldiers the twin sister (Viola) disguises herself as a young soldier. Strange as it may seem she looks exactly like her twin brother (Sebastian) when she dresses up like a man. Meanwhile Illyrium’s ruler, Duke Orsino, has been trying to woo a local Duchess named Olivia. Olivia doesn’t want anything to do with Orsino and insults him almost daily. So Orsino gets a young soldier named Cesario (who is actually Viola dressed up in men’s clothes) to go woo Olivia for him. Strange as it may seem Olivia falls in love with Cesario/Viola. Are you following this so far? There’s a subplot where a prudish butler named Malvolio is undone by Olivia’s maid named Maria, and Maria’s lover named Sir Toby Belch. Long story short: by the end of the play Olivia hooks up with Sebastian, Viola hooks up with Duke Orsino, Malvolio is made out to be a fool and Maria runs off with Sir Toby. End of play. Neat plot, huh?

What are we supposed to make of all this? Easy analysis: this was just a weird case of mistaken identity. Shakespeare gave a subtitle to this play called “Or, What you will.” That doesn’t help much. This is a play that appeals to modern audiences for a number of reasons. There’s a certain amount of gender-bending going on throughout the play. Olivia has fallen in love with another woman (Viola) but thinks she’s fallen in love with a man (Cesario). Duke Orsino thinks he’s just being good buddies with a young soldier (Cesario) but really it’s a romantic relationship with a woman. Viola doesn’t want to be Duke Orsino’s good buddy; she wants to be his wife. By the end of the play everything works out. Olivia marries Sebastian and Viola marries Duke Orsino. But here’s a question: does Olivia really love Sebastian, or does she love “Cesario”? Is the Duke really in love with Viola, or was he happy just being good buddies with “Cesario”?

Another theme that appeals to modern viewers is the undoing of Malvolio. Malvolio is the prude in this play and modern folks love to expose “hypocrisy”. Malvolio’s constantly trying to get Sir Toby to straighten up and fly right. To be fair, Sir Toby could use some straightening up. He’s a loud, obnoxious drunkard. Even Maria tells him …you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order. But Sir Toby likes to get drunk and act like a teenager. And he likes to get his buddies Sir Andrew and Fabian and the Clown to go along with his juvenile antics: Thou art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Malvolio tries to get Sir Toby to act more like a gentleman but Sir Toby is having none of that and replies to Malvolio: Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale? To be fair, Malvolio is an unbearable snob himself. He tells Sir Toby and his bunch: Go hang yourselves all! You are idle shallow things: I am not of your element. If pride goeth before the fall, then here’s a man who is ripe for a fall. So Maria uses a trick love letter to make Malvolio out to be a fool. And it works. Malvolio falsely believes Olivia loves him and so makes a fool of himself. Socrates defined justice as every man getting what he deserves. Is justice served in this play? Do people get what they deserve? Olivia taunts Duke Orsino but ends up with Sebastian anyway. Viola tricks Duke Orsino but ends up marrying him anyway. Maria tricks Malvolio with a fake love letter and Sir Toby sticks to his alcoholic ways; they end up running off together anyway. Is this what Socrates meant by justice? What would he have to say about these characters? Ironically, only the foolish Malvolio would give two hoots what Socrates thinks. The others could care less.

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS

2010-07-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

In his great essay on Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau makes the famous statement that I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least.” He goes on to make a more extreme statement when he says... "That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Think about that for a moment. The best government, for Thoreau, doesn’t govern at all. To most of the writers in the Great Books tradition that’s just plain nonsense. It’s like saying that the best ballplayer is one who never plays ball. Furthermore, when will men EVER be prepared to live with no government at all? Rousseau might have been intrigued by that possibility; but not serious political writers such as Aristotle, Hobbes and Tocqueville. Still, Thoreau poses some good questions: why do we have government? What purpose does it serve? What is it supposed to do? How much government is necessary? These are questions that James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay take up in The Federalist Papers. To say they do a good job is an understatement. The fact is they give the best explanation of democratic political theory ever given by anyone, anywhere, at any time in history.

Here are some sample excerpts from their deliberations: …you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. (#1) To “deliberate” is to follow a rational method of examining a question. These writers don’t base their political ideas on sentimental notions like Thoreau’s dream of a world in which government wouldn’t be necessary. They accept the world the way it is and proceed accordingly. This new Constitution won’t be written for some utopian people living on some faraway island. It will be written for ordinary men and women. What the Federalist writers want to determine is whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. (#1) The great question America poses to the rest of the world is this: can ordinary people govern themselves? One of the great problems of democracy (“rule by the many” or ordinary people) is that democracies tend to fall apart into special interest groups. Madison called these little separate interest groups “factions.” He defines the term this way: A faction is a number of citizens who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens. (#10) This is the problem facing a democratic form of government: how can small groups of private citizens with diverse interests cooperate for the common good? Will they set aside self interests for the good of the whole body of citizens? The answer is no. Madison believes that As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed…The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man (#10) Madison, Hamilton and Jay ask some of the same questions as Thoreau but the Federalists give better answers. Q: why do men have government? Madison: Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. (#15) Q: what purpose does government serve? Madison: what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. (#51) Q: what is government supposed to do? Madison: Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. (#51) Q: how much government is necessary? A: Enough to get the job done. Hamilton: A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government. (#70) Q: Are modern-day Americans more like Thoreau, or more like Madison, Hamilton and Jay? A: Both.

SHAKESPEARE: The Tempest

2010-07-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

At some point in their lives most people get fed up with “the rat race” and daydream about getting away from it all, somewhere far away; maybe a simple island, where they can live happily ever after. This happens (sort of) in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Miranda is fifteen years old. She was taken to an island by her father when she was three years old and has been brought up far away from the corrupting influence of cities and cell phones. So Miranda is no ordinary teenager; which is good because Prospero is no ordinary father. He’s a magician or a wizard of sorts and is also the undisputed king of the island. But Prospero’s not an ordinary king. He once ruled Milan. Now his only subjects are island “spirits” such as the fairy-like being called Ariel and a half-man, half-monster/creature named Caliban. So how do they all get along? Not as well as you might imagine in your daydreams. Ariel is kept in servitude only because Prospero threatens to pin him/her (do spirits have genders?) inside an oak tree for twelve long winters. Ariel would gladly run away at the first opportunity. And Caliban once tried to rape Miranda, so Prospero has had to keep on the lookout ever since. Caliban still has plans to people the island with little Calibans by using Miranda’s body, if he ever gets a chance.

When the play opens there’s a terrible storm. A ship has been sunk and the crew washed ashore, along with lots of booze. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, there’s always something going on; life’s just one darn thing after another. Obviously this little faraway island isn’t much better than the rat race back home. Still, it’s a wondrous island, full of music and magic and love. When Miranda first sees the stranded sailors from Naples she exclaims How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! Of course not all these “goodly creatures” are “beauteous” at all. There are also drunkards, thieves, assassins, rapists, cowards and fools included in the bunch. Miranda is totally innocent of knowing about these kinds of men. What kind of Queen would she make back in Milan or Naples? What kind of education could she have received on a deserted island to prepare her for life in the big city, much less all the intrigues involved in courtly life?

And what good did education do Caliban? He says You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, For learning me your language. Caliban doesn’t want to be educated. He only wants to be in charge of the island and left to do what he wants to do; including having sex with Miranda. But to be fair, how much different is Caliban from the “civilized” sailors from Naples? Caliban (half-man, half-beast) is really only doing what his nature requires. He’s up front about his desires and doesn’t try to hide them. The sailors are crafty and devious. Which is worse? And there’s a softer side to Caliban we rarely see. He tells the shipwrecked sailors from Naples to Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again. Caliban isn’t sophisticated but he knows what pleasure is, and he knows what pain is. He’s almost child-like in his attempt to fall back asleep and pick up where he left off in a good dream. Caliban retires into his dreams because his reality is so dismal. His mother was a witch, literally. We can only guess what kind of childhood Caliban had. In short, he’s lonely. He probably daydreams about getting away from it all; maybe someplace where there are lots of Miranda’s to choose from. Someplace far away, maybe a big city like Naples or Milan. Faraway islands have their problems too.

DIDEROT: Rameau’s Nephew

2010-07-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

Socrates is a hero to every generation of college students. They normally sign up for Philosophy 101 to get credit for a course in the humanities so they can graduate from college. Then they can go out into the world and look for a job with a bachelor’s degree tucked neatly into their resume. Socrates himself would probably have been amused at this state of affairs. Diderot’s character Rameau would have understood perfectly. In 18th century French society Rameau was adept at leeching off rich cultivated Parisians. That way he didn’t have to do any real work. In modern-day America he would likely have tried to make a living off university stipends, government programs and grants from private foundations. That way he wouldn’t have to do any real work.
Come to think of it, neither did Socrates; unless talking about philosophy is considered an occupation. Does that count as real work?

The narrator in Diderot’s short story introduces us to a unique character, Rameau, who is a philosopher in his own kind of way. He only thinks about himself. He doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world. Come to think of it, one of Socrates’ favorite quotes was “know thyself” and he also taught that living in our everyday world was like living in a dark cave. He wanted his students to turn their backs on the “real” world and follow him into the sunlit splendors of philosophy. But Rameau was having none of that. He liked this world just fine, thank you very much. In fact, he was against most of the things that Socrates was for; philosophy, for example. Rameau says Lord, may I never meet anyone more pigheaded than a philosopher…Virtue and philosophy aren’t for everybody. For the few who can, let them have it. Socrates exhorted his students to seek a higher level of existence than we find in the workaday world. Rameau was having none of that either: The important point is that we exist and that we exist as you and I. Let everything else go. The best order of things, in my view, is one in which I exist here in this world. Who cares about life in a perfect world if I'm not in it? … So let's just accept things the way they are. Rameau accepted the world the way it is, imperfect as it is. That’s good enough for ordinary people. It’s the smarty-pants of the world that screw things up: We must have men, but not men of genius. No, my goodness, we don't need them. They're the ones who are constantly trying to change things … evil has always come from some genius. All this talk about philosophy gives folks unrealistic expectations about life. And therefore about how life should actually be lived: Virtue is praised, but really it’s hated. People avoid it when they can, because it’s ice-cold and in this world we have to keep our feet warm. A lot of times devout people are harsh, touchy and unsociable. That’s because they’ve forced themselves to do something that’s unnatural. They’re in pain, and people in pain make other people suffer too. This certainly gives a different spin on the Socratic method of trying to instill virtue into his students.

College wouldn’t have done a man like Rameau much good. He wouldn’t have followed the course guidelines anyway: You’d be surprised how little I care about methods and rules. The man who needs a textbook won’t get very far in life. Geniuses don’t read much, but they experiment a lot. Rameau has a simple philosophy developed on his own: I want a good bed, good food, warm clothes in winter, cool in summer, plenty of rest, money, and other things that I would rather have given to me than to earn them by working. This may be a bit blunt but at least it’s a coherent philosophy of life. And he may have given Socrates a run for his money in a fair and open debate. Not everyone will agree with Rameau’s outlook. College students will more likely gravitate (intellectually) to the message of Socrates. But many of them will actually live daily lives more like Rameau than Socrates. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

MONTAIGNE: Of Experience

2010-07-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all ways that can lead us to it; where reason fails us, we use experience… That’s the way Montaigne’s essay “Of Experience” begins. Here we go again, you might think; another dry academic treatise; another boring philosopher. Ho hum. But Montaigne isn’t a philosopher. He’s a flesh-and-blood man. He understands the way ordinary people think and he knows how they feel about studying philosophy: Philosophy is very childish, to my mind, when she gets up on her hind legs and preaches to us… Montaigne doesn’t preach. He just tells us what he thinks because that’s the subject he knows best: I study myself more than any other subject. No matter our station in life we would be wise to do the same. Montaigne believes that the life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor’s or an ordinary man’s, it is still a life subject to all human accidents. Let us only listen: we tell ourselves what we most need. My own life should interest me more than reading about Julius Caesar. If my life seems dull in comparison to Caesar’s, that’s because I’m not paying attention. Of course we can learn a lot by reading. We can learn even more when we discuss what we read with other people. Montaigne asks: When do we agree and say, “There has been enough about this book; henceforth there is nothing more to say about it?” In a group discussion we always come away with more than we walked in with: new insights or ideas we hadn’t thought of while reading on our own. Still, when all is said and done we have to make up our own minds about what we think. No one can do it for us. We can read commentaries but Montaigne points out that it is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other. The world is swarming with commentaries; of authors there is a great scarcity. In other words, reading commentaries will help us gain more knowledge. But commentaries will not make us wise. Wisdom is something we can only get through the experience of living and thinking for ourselves.

So then the obvious question is: how should we live and think? This is a question every mature person must consider. Montaigne has given the question a lot of thought. His advice is surprisingly simple: The most usual and common way of living is the best… All that deep thinking, and that’s the best he can come up with? Actually, “the most usual and common way of living” is both more difficult and yet easier than it sounds. It’s difficult because over the years Montaigne learned that There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally… And he gives us fair warning that we can’t learn about life from reading about it in books. We have another mission: To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win not battles and provinces but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. Life will come naturally and gracefully to those who “live appropriately.” Montaigne has comforting words for modern-day slackers: We are great fools. “He has spent his life in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing today.” What, have you not lived? That is the only fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations…Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all. To be socially and financially successful is a worthy goal, but to live well is enough for most of us. We may not ever be rich or famous or beautiful but Montaigne says the most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity. Montaigne believes just being an average person is a worthy goal. The modern world could use more philosophers who think like Montaigne.