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Selected essays of an Epicurean
Reactions to the written word can be extraordinarily diverse and startling. I have been taken aback by replies to e-mails I have sent, for instance. Critical evaluations of literature often tell you more about the critic than the text. Judgements about irony, sarcasm, sentimentality and so forth are quite subjective. I find that one’s reactions to a piece can alter, according to time, place and mood, or, even more intriguing, one can hold two different feelings about a writer simultaneously.
I was interested to note in Anthony Head’s excellent introduction that the poet John Wain judged one of L. Powys’s books to be the ‘corniest’ book he had ever read. I can empathise with that reaction, and had a streak of that judgement as I read some of the essays collected in the book. L. Powys tries hard to tug the heart strings, and waxes eloquent in a florid, almost Euphuistic style at times. One could easily parody and satirise his writing.
However, more strongly, I felt a personal closeness to the experiences of the author and the views he expresses. For one, he lived in Africa for five years, somewhat paralleling my own decade or so living in Zambia in my childhood. He also has an abiding love of the culture and nature of the English countryside, which I share, though bowing to his much greater knowledge and experience. His reverse Pilgrim’s progress away from what he sees as the syrupy delusions of conventional Christianity, has many points of contact with my own philosophical journey. The debilitating and serious disease he suffered from finds a kinship in my heart, given my own medical problems. Lastly, his love of Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’ and of the beauty of the stars are big recommendations for me too.
Head has made a judicious selection, covering many topics and the broad sweep of his life, in Dorset, the USA, East Africa and Switzerland; only one of which I have read before – ‘Bat’s Head’. The first essay ‘A struggle for life’ introduces us to the central tragedy of his life, his contraction of pulmonary tuberculosis, diagnosed when he was only 25 years old. This damaged the rest of his life, eventually killing him, but did not hold him back from enjoying his time on earth to the full. This essay is written in an unsentimental and un-self-pitying way, that is admirable.
The four essays on aspects of his life in Africa are vivid, but reveal a colonial callousness. He shoots leopard and hippo without any compunction, all the more surprising given his otherwise tender nature, and the later essays ‘Christian Fingers’ and ‘Barbarians’, in which he criticises hunting and cruelty to animals.
His time in America seemed to have sparked little creative writing, though he mentions a striking image of him sleeping on the roof of buildings in New York, looking up at the night sky, and waking covered with light snow.
The philosophical essays appealed particularly, though I find his attitude to religion inconsistent and unstable. He often refers to God, admires aspects of Christian culture and expresses sentiments close to conventional religious opinions, yet he professes himself an atheist at other points. In the essay ‘The Epicurean Vision’, he declares his adherence to a joyful, sturdy enjoyment of the simple physical pleasures of life. He criticises ‘Christians at prayer’ as ‘obsequious’, ‘sycophantic’ and ‘craven, unhealthy, neurotic’. Strong words! He dislikes the creed of the church in trying to discredit life upon earth, with all its talk of absurd Trinities, fables about ascensions, dead men rising from the grave and a focus on a mythical heaven. Powys follows the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, wanting us to look at the world we live in now, to make the best of it, with unfaltering loyalty to our senses. He urges us to “enjoy our hour of sunshine”.
Powys’s philosophy of life is expressed even more eloquently in ‘The Aebi Wood’. He stared at this green wood for many hours from the balcony of his sanatorium in Switzerland, and is came to symbolise the immediacy of the physical life and world we inhabit. He writes “Make no doubt of it, it is matter that matters. In all else there is mirage, man himself, for all his vaunts, being but a cheap and accidental phantom of cleaver clay. There may well be other dimensions, but in so far as we allow the suspicion of their existence to dim our worship of what is, we suffer ourselves to be entangled in a cloud-net of folly. Our paradise, our hells, are here and now, we shall see no other.”
His most powerful chapter is ‘Reflections of a Dying Man’. Somebody suffering from worsening Tuberculosis, with no cure in sight, has a right to record such reflections, I don’t find this passage ‘corny’. It is unblinking and objective, rejecting easy solutions, recognising mankind is blessed with self-knowledge “on a rainbow planet that is tumbling through a physical universe of inconceivable dimensions”. He preaches joy in what we have, and an admirable stoicism: “It is by the rarest chance that we have ever lived, and does it then become us to grudge when the hour arrives for us to walk the way of all nature? Surely to look at the sunlight for the last time should rather be an occasion for the trembling of our marrow bones with gratitude.”
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 January 2011
The bed of Procrustes, by Nassim Taleb
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Philosophical and practical aphorisms
This elegant little hardback is Taleb’s latest publication (2010). It contains thoughts that carry straight on from his arguments in ‘Fooled by randomness’ and ‘The Black Swan’. Instead of a narrative and argument in a full book, he presents us with his private almost-poetry. We are given a series of aphorisms, well spaced out, only four or five to a page. This slows us down and persuades us to pause to think about each cluster of words.
The aphorisms are generally witty and designed to provoke a fresh perspective. They do not have the frivolity of Oscar Wilde, and do not achieve his level of charming, mischievous humour. They are certainly often wise and counter-intuitive, shaking us out of a conventional, shallow view of our modern world. Some structure is given by clustering them in chapters, revealing the preoccupations with which his readers will already be familiar. For instance, there is a chapter called ‘Fooled by Randomness’, one on ‘The scandal of prediction’ and one on ‘Robustness and fragility’.
Taleb is a wise man, and well worth listening to. His erudition and originality are on full display. Here are samples to give you a flavour:
“The calamity of the information age is that the toxicity of data increases much faster than its benefits.”
“Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way round.”
“You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.”
“English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence towards the temporarily powerful) and arrogant down (directed at the small guy).”
“To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it.”
“Suckers think that you can cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists and debt crises with debt spending.”
You may notice that he blends a wide vocabulary with American idioms such as ‘Guy’ and ‘Sucker’, which lends a disconcerting instability to his voice. But he generally achieves the balance of an epigrammatic style, and there is an immediate impact for most of his aphorisms, plus an added sequence of afterthoughts, akin to the sensation of a perfume.
I remain a fan of Mr Taleb, and would urge others to read this book too. However I have a complaint that must be articulated. This may sound like an ‘ad hominem’ attack. I agree that the ‘ad hominem’ riposte of questioning a man’s motives or qualifications for saying something is inadmissible in civilised argument. His book is not an argued case, but much closer to a literary work, hence I believe this complaint is valid.
The author has made a lot of money trading options, and more recently from the sales of his books. Fine, and the best of luck to him. Possibly he is the beneficiary of randomness, as he may admit. Now he sets himself up as a philosopher and part poet. He has valuable things to say, but (and here is my complaint) he adopts a sneering tone against the majority of humanity, believing himself as someone much superior in understanding and heroism. I find it hard to stomach his long stream of aphorisms despising those having to work – which is the majority of us. Hence he shows a lack of respect for the readers.
“Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working.”
“There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.”
“Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave better by convincing him that he is an employee.”
And so on. Mr Taleb has revealed too much of his nasty side, diminishing himself. While he sits on his millions in Treasury Bills, I can do without the sound of him snickering as I trudge off to earn an honest penny. Where is his heroism in this attitude?
Philosophical and practical aphorisms
This elegant little hardback is Taleb’s latest publication (2010). It contains thoughts that carry straight on from his arguments in ‘Fooled by randomness’ and ‘The Black Swan’. Instead of a narrative and argument in a full book, he presents us with his private almost-poetry. We are given a series of aphorisms, well spaced out, only four or five to a page. This slows us down and persuades us to pause to think about each cluster of words.
The aphorisms are generally witty and designed to provoke a fresh perspective. They do not have the frivolity of Oscar Wilde, and do not achieve his level of charming, mischievous humour. They are certainly often wise and counter-intuitive, shaking us out of a conventional, shallow view of our modern world. Some structure is given by clustering them in chapters, revealing the preoccupations with which his readers will already be familiar. For instance, there is a chapter called ‘Fooled by Randomness’, one on ‘The scandal of prediction’ and one on ‘Robustness and fragility’.
Taleb is a wise man, and well worth listening to. His erudition and originality are on full display. Here are samples to give you a flavour:
“The calamity of the information age is that the toxicity of data increases much faster than its benefits.”
“Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way round.”
“You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.”
“English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence towards the temporarily powerful) and arrogant down (directed at the small guy).”
“To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it.”
“Suckers think that you can cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists and debt crises with debt spending.”
You may notice that he blends a wide vocabulary with American idioms such as ‘Guy’ and ‘Sucker’, which lends a disconcerting instability to his voice. But he generally achieves the balance of an epigrammatic style, and there is an immediate impact for most of his aphorisms, plus an added sequence of afterthoughts, akin to the sensation of a perfume.
I remain a fan of Mr Taleb, and would urge others to read this book too. However I have a complaint that must be articulated. This may sound like an ‘ad hominem’ attack. I agree that the ‘ad hominem’ riposte of questioning a man’s motives or qualifications for saying something is inadmissible in civilised argument. His book is not an argued case, but much closer to a literary work, hence I believe this complaint is valid.
The author has made a lot of money trading options, and more recently from the sales of his books. Fine, and the best of luck to him. Possibly he is the beneficiary of randomness, as he may admit. Now he sets himself up as a philosopher and part poet. He has valuable things to say, but (and here is my complaint) he adopts a sneering tone against the majority of humanity, believing himself as someone much superior in understanding and heroism. I find it hard to stomach his long stream of aphorisms despising those having to work – which is the majority of us. Hence he shows a lack of respect for the readers.
“Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working.”
“There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.”
“Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave better by convincing him that he is an employee.”
And so on. Mr Taleb has revealed too much of his nasty side, diminishing himself. While he sits on his millions in Treasury Bills, I can do without the sound of him snickering as I trudge off to earn an honest penny. Where is his heroism in this attitude?
Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Taleb
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The hidden role of chance
There is more chance in the universe than we acknowledge. Mr Taleb has meditated deeply and acted wisely on the implications of chance. In this book he shares with us the fruits of his eloquence and meditations and readings and experiences. A quotation from ‘Fortune’ on the front cover of my Penguin paperback describes this as “one of the smartest books of all time”. I agree – or at least within the limited universe of books I have chanced to read.
I read and reviewed this book in 2008, and the financial crisis was unfolding. Now, over two years later, with the financial crisis still burning in some underground patches and the forest fire of the sovereign debt crisis gathering force, I have felt impelled to read it again, and write on it more extensively. It strikes me a even more smart on a second reading. The author is smart in several senses: a high pure intelligence quotient; a stunningly wide knowledge of literature; the deployment of remorseless logic; creative lateral leaps between seemingly unrelated but truly interconnected topics; an ability to out-fence and de-throne revered figures or ideas; a wonderfully wide vocabulary; elegant writing style; a sharp street-wise roughness; an engaging sense of humour; the deft speed of a card sharp.
This man clearly is lucky enough to be endowed with the right genes of intelligence, as he would admit, and not hide with false modesty. This may strike some people as arrogance, but we need his forthright intelligence in some many dumbed-down fields. I defer to his intelligence and hope to pick up a few scraps of wisdom from his books. He has read widely books of classical civilisation, psychology, medicine, history, mathematics and many other categories of knowledge. Maybe his voracious reading efficiency is partly down to his self-discipline in avoiding the time-wasting ‘noise’ that pours from 24-hour TV ‘News’ and Economics. I plod slowly in his footsteps, and feel that he pats me on the head when I can claim some passing acquaintance with some of his reading, such as Montaigne.
He drops vocabulary for me to pick up. For instance: ‘Péché mignon’ – a guilty pleasure. He mentions this is describing his own and our universal humanity. We are not pure rational calculating machines, as assumed by many economic theories. We all have and need our guilty pleasures, whether they are chocolate or cigarettes or something far worse. He has flashes of wry humour, and more moments of self-depreciation that I had previously noticed. His outspoken attacks on stupid thinking had made a stronger impression when I first read this book. That is what I mean by a street-wise toughness; as well as the fact that he has been through the refining fire of a dealing room, where he succeeded, whereas I failed (though still benefited from the experience in the long run).
When I say he is a ‘card sharp’, I do not mean he is literally dishonest or even intellectually dishonest. He is quick –way ahead of most of us. I would not engage in a trading contest against him, for he would probably take money off most of us – in the long run.
In the short-run, as he explains, many things in life are dominated by chance. What we are seeing is randomness in action, and we are often fooled by it. The daily ticks up or down of the stock market reported on the news constitute pure noise. The variations of daily weather (even seemingly extreme snow or wind) cannot be said to constitute a climate pattern until many many years of data come in. The performance of football teams on a game by game basis has a high variability. Why sack a manager after a run of 10 bad games? The performance of a fund manager cannot be ascribed to any genius over the short run. It is frightening to consider how long that ‘short-run’ really is. Can you be sure that you have a genius fund manager after even 5 years (20 quarters) of performance data? Taleb would be very sceptical.
One of the most challenging aspects of the book is what he calls ‘The problem of induction’. Induction is the process of arriving at a general hypothesis from particular data. One can gather as much data as one likes, but it never proves anything with 100% certainty. He gives an amusing absurd example: “I have just completed a thorough statistical examination of the life of President Bush. For fifty eight years, close to 21,000 observations, he did not die once. I can hence pronounce him as immortal, with a high degree of statistical inference.”
We laugh, but we can observe versions of this fallacy all around us. “The market has never gone down 20% in a given three-month period”. We also attach too much importance to the immediate past, and what is in front of us: “It has been snowing for the past five days, so global warming is obviously a fallacy.” Also the opposite: “We have observed 10 of the hottest years in the past 20 of our records, so global warming is a certainty”. And so on.
Taleb explains succinctly the answer propounded by the great philosopher Karl Popper. He expresses it completely baldly as follows:
“There are only two types of theories: 1) Theories that are known to be wrong, as they were tested and adequately rejected; 2) Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong.”
By shifting the burden from verification to falsification, Popper gives us a whole new and adequate solution to the problem of knowledge. It is also deeply uncomfortable, and goes against our natural propensity to write stories about things, or to find causal links between things. Taleb recognises how difficult it is for all of us to keep rational amidst a cacophony of random noise and genetic instincts endowed to us by evolution, which is itself not concerned with rationality but survival of genes.
Having stripped away many of our illusions, one of the best things of the book is that he gives us some practical ‘tricks’ to overcome our human weaknesses, and made randomness work to our advantage. Want to know what those tricks are? Read the book! Actually, I find his prescriptions at the end the weakest part of the book: preaching stoicism in the face of fickle fortune may be wise, but some more practical suggestions might be useful. Maybe I am expecting too much.
Nassim Taleb is exhibit ‘A’ for advocating the virtues of a wide liberal education, fighting back the tide of stupid pseudo-scientists who increasingly dominate our world, unfortunately. I am sure many of you will agree that this is one of the smartest books of our time.
NOTE: THIS IS THE SECOND REVIEW OF THIS BOOK I HAVE PUBLISHED
The hidden role of chance
There is more chance in the universe than we acknowledge. Mr Taleb has meditated deeply and acted wisely on the implications of chance. In this book he shares with us the fruits of his eloquence and meditations and readings and experiences. A quotation from ‘Fortune’ on the front cover of my Penguin paperback describes this as “one of the smartest books of all time”. I agree – or at least within the limited universe of books I have chanced to read.
I read and reviewed this book in 2008, and the financial crisis was unfolding. Now, over two years later, with the financial crisis still burning in some underground patches and the forest fire of the sovereign debt crisis gathering force, I have felt impelled to read it again, and write on it more extensively. It strikes me a even more smart on a second reading. The author is smart in several senses: a high pure intelligence quotient; a stunningly wide knowledge of literature; the deployment of remorseless logic; creative lateral leaps between seemingly unrelated but truly interconnected topics; an ability to out-fence and de-throne revered figures or ideas; a wonderfully wide vocabulary; elegant writing style; a sharp street-wise roughness; an engaging sense of humour; the deft speed of a card sharp.
This man clearly is lucky enough to be endowed with the right genes of intelligence, as he would admit, and not hide with false modesty. This may strike some people as arrogance, but we need his forthright intelligence in some many dumbed-down fields. I defer to his intelligence and hope to pick up a few scraps of wisdom from his books. He has read widely books of classical civilisation, psychology, medicine, history, mathematics and many other categories of knowledge. Maybe his voracious reading efficiency is partly down to his self-discipline in avoiding the time-wasting ‘noise’ that pours from 24-hour TV ‘News’ and Economics. I plod slowly in his footsteps, and feel that he pats me on the head when I can claim some passing acquaintance with some of his reading, such as Montaigne.
He drops vocabulary for me to pick up. For instance: ‘Péché mignon’ – a guilty pleasure. He mentions this is describing his own and our universal humanity. We are not pure rational calculating machines, as assumed by many economic theories. We all have and need our guilty pleasures, whether they are chocolate or cigarettes or something far worse. He has flashes of wry humour, and more moments of self-depreciation that I had previously noticed. His outspoken attacks on stupid thinking had made a stronger impression when I first read this book. That is what I mean by a street-wise toughness; as well as the fact that he has been through the refining fire of a dealing room, where he succeeded, whereas I failed (though still benefited from the experience in the long run).
When I say he is a ‘card sharp’, I do not mean he is literally dishonest or even intellectually dishonest. He is quick –way ahead of most of us. I would not engage in a trading contest against him, for he would probably take money off most of us – in the long run.
In the short-run, as he explains, many things in life are dominated by chance. What we are seeing is randomness in action, and we are often fooled by it. The daily ticks up or down of the stock market reported on the news constitute pure noise. The variations of daily weather (even seemingly extreme snow or wind) cannot be said to constitute a climate pattern until many many years of data come in. The performance of football teams on a game by game basis has a high variability. Why sack a manager after a run of 10 bad games? The performance of a fund manager cannot be ascribed to any genius over the short run. It is frightening to consider how long that ‘short-run’ really is. Can you be sure that you have a genius fund manager after even 5 years (20 quarters) of performance data? Taleb would be very sceptical.
One of the most challenging aspects of the book is what he calls ‘The problem of induction’. Induction is the process of arriving at a general hypothesis from particular data. One can gather as much data as one likes, but it never proves anything with 100% certainty. He gives an amusing absurd example: “I have just completed a thorough statistical examination of the life of President Bush. For fifty eight years, close to 21,000 observations, he did not die once. I can hence pronounce him as immortal, with a high degree of statistical inference.”
We laugh, but we can observe versions of this fallacy all around us. “The market has never gone down 20% in a given three-month period”. We also attach too much importance to the immediate past, and what is in front of us: “It has been snowing for the past five days, so global warming is obviously a fallacy.” Also the opposite: “We have observed 10 of the hottest years in the past 20 of our records, so global warming is a certainty”. And so on.
Taleb explains succinctly the answer propounded by the great philosopher Karl Popper. He expresses it completely baldly as follows:
“There are only two types of theories: 1) Theories that are known to be wrong, as they were tested and adequately rejected; 2) Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong.”
By shifting the burden from verification to falsification, Popper gives us a whole new and adequate solution to the problem of knowledge. It is also deeply uncomfortable, and goes against our natural propensity to write stories about things, or to find causal links between things. Taleb recognises how difficult it is for all of us to keep rational amidst a cacophony of random noise and genetic instincts endowed to us by evolution, which is itself not concerned with rationality but survival of genes.
Having stripped away many of our illusions, one of the best things of the book is that he gives us some practical ‘tricks’ to overcome our human weaknesses, and made randomness work to our advantage. Want to know what those tricks are? Read the book! Actually, I find his prescriptions at the end the weakest part of the book: preaching stoicism in the face of fickle fortune may be wise, but some more practical suggestions might be useful. Maybe I am expecting too much.
Nassim Taleb is exhibit ‘A’ for advocating the virtues of a wide liberal education, fighting back the tide of stupid pseudo-scientists who increasingly dominate our world, unfortunately. I am sure many of you will agree that this is one of the smartest books of our time.
NOTE: THIS IS THE SECOND REVIEW OF THIS BOOK I HAVE PUBLISHED
Shakespeare's Philosophy, by Colin McGinn
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More meaning behind the plays
Colin McGinn is a professor of philosophy. He has turned his hand to interpreting Shakespeare’s greatest plays, using his philosophical tools. The result is not deeply original, but I found it provided valuable insights into the world’s greatest writer. Shakespeare’s text are a mine of endless wealth. McGinn emerges into the sunlight clutching some new nuggets.
By reading this book, one can learn more about Shakespeare’s plays, and can enjoy gentle instruction in philosophy. For instance, it tightened up my understanding of words such as ‘Epistemology’ and ‘Teleology’, and quoted a good deal of Montaigne’s works. None of this is ‘hard’ philosophy, so do not be put off. Much can be described as existentialist philosophy, an angle which I personally found quite useful in writing some of my own essays of literary criticism at Oxford many years ago.
I always feel uncomfortable about books that tell us what Shakespeare thought. We can never know what Shakespeare thought, since all his written works are explicitly works of fiction. One cannot ever ascribe a particular phrase in a play to Shakespeare’s point of view. Everything is spoken by a character in a play, put in the mouth of an actor to portray that character. Very little is known about Shakespeare’s life, and almost nothing certain is known of what he read, beyond the texts from which he derived his plots (such as Holinshed). I am not aware of any unequivocal evidence that Shakespeare read Montaigne’s works, even when some of the phrases have much in common. However, McGinn’s frequent parallels drawn between the two authors are striking. There is often a zeitgeist that affects various creative people who may never know each other’s works directly.
To give an example of how my understanding has been advanced by this book, I would cite his chapter on ‘Macbeth’. He demonstrates how this play is much more than an action-packed bloodthirsty thriller, spiced with the supernatural. He draws out the philosophical themes about 1) the relationship between character and action, 2) the power of imagination, 3) the ambiguity of appearance and reality, 4) the nature of time. I had not consciously noted how the play is packed with references to time, even from the very first line “WHEN shall we three meet again?”. The chapter moved me to quickly re-read ‘Macbeth’, and I was thrilled to gain new perspectives on this familiar work, thanks to McGinn.
He also gave me insights into other major plays. For instance, I had previously thought of ‘A Midsummer night’s dream’ as a charming but flimsy work. McGinn has helped me see more of how the play is about the difficulty of distinguishing dreaming from wakefulness, illusion from reality, what is merely imagined from what is veridically perceived. (‘Veridical’ means ‘coinciding with reality’; another little lesson from Professor McGinn.)
In the latter part of the book, he explores themes, such as Gender and Psychology. Sometimes he is knocking down theories that I don’t think anyone seriously believes in (at least anymore). For instance he ridicules the idea that Shakespeare is exploring notions such as Freud’s ‘Oedipus complex’ in the play Hamlet.
More meaning behind the plays
Colin McGinn is a professor of philosophy. He has turned his hand to interpreting Shakespeare’s greatest plays, using his philosophical tools. The result is not deeply original, but I found it provided valuable insights into the world’s greatest writer. Shakespeare’s text are a mine of endless wealth. McGinn emerges into the sunlight clutching some new nuggets.
By reading this book, one can learn more about Shakespeare’s plays, and can enjoy gentle instruction in philosophy. For instance, it tightened up my understanding of words such as ‘Epistemology’ and ‘Teleology’, and quoted a good deal of Montaigne’s works. None of this is ‘hard’ philosophy, so do not be put off. Much can be described as existentialist philosophy, an angle which I personally found quite useful in writing some of my own essays of literary criticism at Oxford many years ago.
I always feel uncomfortable about books that tell us what Shakespeare thought. We can never know what Shakespeare thought, since all his written works are explicitly works of fiction. One cannot ever ascribe a particular phrase in a play to Shakespeare’s point of view. Everything is spoken by a character in a play, put in the mouth of an actor to portray that character. Very little is known about Shakespeare’s life, and almost nothing certain is known of what he read, beyond the texts from which he derived his plots (such as Holinshed). I am not aware of any unequivocal evidence that Shakespeare read Montaigne’s works, even when some of the phrases have much in common. However, McGinn’s frequent parallels drawn between the two authors are striking. There is often a zeitgeist that affects various creative people who may never know each other’s works directly.
To give an example of how my understanding has been advanced by this book, I would cite his chapter on ‘Macbeth’. He demonstrates how this play is much more than an action-packed bloodthirsty thriller, spiced with the supernatural. He draws out the philosophical themes about 1) the relationship between character and action, 2) the power of imagination, 3) the ambiguity of appearance and reality, 4) the nature of time. I had not consciously noted how the play is packed with references to time, even from the very first line “WHEN shall we three meet again?”. The chapter moved me to quickly re-read ‘Macbeth’, and I was thrilled to gain new perspectives on this familiar work, thanks to McGinn.
He also gave me insights into other major plays. For instance, I had previously thought of ‘A Midsummer night’s dream’ as a charming but flimsy work. McGinn has helped me see more of how the play is about the difficulty of distinguishing dreaming from wakefulness, illusion from reality, what is merely imagined from what is veridically perceived. (‘Veridical’ means ‘coinciding with reality’; another little lesson from Professor McGinn.)
In the latter part of the book, he explores themes, such as Gender and Psychology. Sometimes he is knocking down theories that I don’t think anyone seriously believes in (at least anymore). For instance he ridicules the idea that Shakespeare is exploring notions such as Freud’s ‘Oedipus complex’ in the play Hamlet.
Monday, 15 February 2010
'The pig that wants to be eaten' by Julian Baggini
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A book of a 100 ‘thought experiments’ to provoke us into thinking – thinking about moral and philosophical issues. Each chapter presents a story, often developed from the ideas of a famous philosopher such as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Rawls or from more populist authors such as Philip Dick and Douglas Adams. Baggini then discussed the issue raised in a few paragraphs, so that each chapter is exactly 3 pages long and the book 300 pages long.
I first met Julian Baginni at a ‘Sea of Faith’ conference – or rather I heard a talk of his on ‘Selfhood’, without talking to him personally. His lecture was entertaining and approachable, yet touched on profound issues. So I was inclined to buy one of his (several) books when browsing in a bookshop a few months ago.
The format of the book encourages you to pick it up and put it down at short intervals, while one digests the individual chapters. At first I thought it slightly lightweight. Some of the thought experiments did not quite work for me – maybe I chafed against the necessary restrictions and unreality of artificial, fanciful ‘thought experiment’ situations. I could see that some raised important and tricky issues, but then felt unsatisfied by the mere few paragraphs that Baggini used to cover the issue, leaving many things unresolved. I even put the book down for a few weeks (though that is a common thing I do, since I often read 10- 15 books in parallel).
When I picked it up again, and ploughed along through the second half, I found familiar issues returning with a fresh perspective, and further commentary. I started to follow the connections to other chapters he suggests, and re-read earlier ones. I started to make notes on the book. Themes started to emerge from the mist. Baggini deliberately jumbles up the themes – but ultimately you realise that they are all related. So the book gained depth and weight, as I read backwards and forwards. I became more and more interested, and appreciated his self-restraint in limiting his commentary in each chapter. Instead a more resonant meta-commentary was emerging. I realised the author is an eternal questioner and is forever prising apart our ‘rationality’ our ‘morality’ our ‘common sense’. He does not propose evangelical solutions, but leaves a huge, sparkling scepticism hanging in the air, like stars in the night sky.
As an example, thought experiment #89 is titled ‘Kill and let die’. Here a man at a junction box knows a runaway train is going to kill 20 men in a tunnel, but he can divert the train to another track where he knows for certain it will kill only 5 men. What should he do? The Benthamite philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number would dictate he flicks the switch to kill only the 5 men, rather than let the 20 men die. Doing nothing causes the greater harm, but flicking the switch requires an act on his part which is tantamount to choosing to kill the 5 men on the other track.
The thought experiment rules require that we introduce no excuses about uncertainty or a third way; by remorselessly focusing on this dilemma it forces us to decide and clarify our fuzzy, contradictory thoughts. So Baggini is charmingly slamming us up against a brick wall with a loaded gun to our heads, and forcing us to think, to work things out for ourselves.
John Vernon
A book of a 100 ‘thought experiments’ to provoke us into thinking – thinking about moral and philosophical issues. Each chapter presents a story, often developed from the ideas of a famous philosopher such as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Rawls or from more populist authors such as Philip Dick and Douglas Adams. Baggini then discussed the issue raised in a few paragraphs, so that each chapter is exactly 3 pages long and the book 300 pages long.
I first met Julian Baginni at a ‘Sea of Faith’ conference – or rather I heard a talk of his on ‘Selfhood’, without talking to him personally. His lecture was entertaining and approachable, yet touched on profound issues. So I was inclined to buy one of his (several) books when browsing in a bookshop a few months ago.
The format of the book encourages you to pick it up and put it down at short intervals, while one digests the individual chapters. At first I thought it slightly lightweight. Some of the thought experiments did not quite work for me – maybe I chafed against the necessary restrictions and unreality of artificial, fanciful ‘thought experiment’ situations. I could see that some raised important and tricky issues, but then felt unsatisfied by the mere few paragraphs that Baggini used to cover the issue, leaving many things unresolved. I even put the book down for a few weeks (though that is a common thing I do, since I often read 10- 15 books in parallel).
When I picked it up again, and ploughed along through the second half, I found familiar issues returning with a fresh perspective, and further commentary. I started to follow the connections to other chapters he suggests, and re-read earlier ones. I started to make notes on the book. Themes started to emerge from the mist. Baggini deliberately jumbles up the themes – but ultimately you realise that they are all related. So the book gained depth and weight, as I read backwards and forwards. I became more and more interested, and appreciated his self-restraint in limiting his commentary in each chapter. Instead a more resonant meta-commentary was emerging. I realised the author is an eternal questioner and is forever prising apart our ‘rationality’ our ‘morality’ our ‘common sense’. He does not propose evangelical solutions, but leaves a huge, sparkling scepticism hanging in the air, like stars in the night sky.
As an example, thought experiment #89 is titled ‘Kill and let die’. Here a man at a junction box knows a runaway train is going to kill 20 men in a tunnel, but he can divert the train to another track where he knows for certain it will kill only 5 men. What should he do? The Benthamite philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number would dictate he flicks the switch to kill only the 5 men, rather than let the 20 men die. Doing nothing causes the greater harm, but flicking the switch requires an act on his part which is tantamount to choosing to kill the 5 men on the other track.
The thought experiment rules require that we introduce no excuses about uncertainty or a third way; by remorselessly focusing on this dilemma it forces us to decide and clarify our fuzzy, contradictory thoughts. So Baggini is charmingly slamming us up against a brick wall with a loaded gun to our heads, and forcing us to think, to work things out for ourselves.
John Vernon
'The Consolations of philosophy' by Alain de Botton
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I enjoy de Botton’s books for their breadth of reading and thinking, in which he applies philosophy to everyday life. I have also read his ‘Status anxiety’, which is somewhat more original.
This book is a commentary and summary of the thoughts of six great philosophers, with a pleasantly quirky individualism from the author intruding. In addition to giving us the essence of their philosophies, he outlines what is known of their lives. The heavy sprinkling of illustrations is entertaining, and relevant to the text. The six are:
Socrates - Consolation for unpopularity
Epicurus - Consolation for not having enough money
Seneca - Consolation for frustration
Montaigne - Consolation for inadequacy
Schopenhauer - Consolation for a broken heart
Nietzsche - Consolation for difficulties
This is not high-falutin’ exegesis of difficult philosophy, but neither it is condescending or simplistic. The author strikes the right note (to my mind), with humour and sagacity. If you want a quick “bluffers guide” to these philosophers, I would recommend this book. De Botton himself has clearly done a deal of research to write these essays. He quotes extensively from the works, annotating the source of every single quotation from an astonishing wide range of books. He has done a lot of digesting for us. He has also travelled to several relevant sites, such as Montaigne’s famous circular library.
I learned much from this book. For instance, I knew virtually nothing of Schopenhauer, but now I can place him in the history of thought. I read some Nietzsche at university, but could not grasp the overall point of what he was trying to say – now I think I have grasped the theme. It also inspired me to pick up another book which I have had on my shelves for 30 years – a Penguin edition selection of Montaigne’s essays. He is probably the most worthwhile of this six to pursue further.
John Vernon
I enjoy de Botton’s books for their breadth of reading and thinking, in which he applies philosophy to everyday life. I have also read his ‘Status anxiety’, which is somewhat more original.
This book is a commentary and summary of the thoughts of six great philosophers, with a pleasantly quirky individualism from the author intruding. In addition to giving us the essence of their philosophies, he outlines what is known of their lives. The heavy sprinkling of illustrations is entertaining, and relevant to the text. The six are:
Socrates - Consolation for unpopularity
Epicurus - Consolation for not having enough money
Seneca - Consolation for frustration
Montaigne - Consolation for inadequacy
Schopenhauer - Consolation for a broken heart
Nietzsche - Consolation for difficulties
This is not high-falutin’ exegesis of difficult philosophy, but neither it is condescending or simplistic. The author strikes the right note (to my mind), with humour and sagacity. If you want a quick “bluffers guide” to these philosophers, I would recommend this book. De Botton himself has clearly done a deal of research to write these essays. He quotes extensively from the works, annotating the source of every single quotation from an astonishing wide range of books. He has done a lot of digesting for us. He has also travelled to several relevant sites, such as Montaigne’s famous circular library.
I learned much from this book. For instance, I knew virtually nothing of Schopenhauer, but now I can place him in the history of thought. I read some Nietzsche at university, but could not grasp the overall point of what he was trying to say – now I think I have grasped the theme. It also inspired me to pick up another book which I have had on my shelves for 30 years – a Penguin edition selection of Montaigne’s essays. He is probably the most worthwhile of this six to pursue further.
John Vernon
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