The Great Books Of The Western World

I have been in self isolation since last week when family members and I developed a fever, hard cough, chills and some tiredness. Not the worst, but obviously we ticked all the boxes. I got it the worst, with a nasty Friday night... but all improving since. Fever returned 1-2 times.

Could be a bad cold or flu but we will never know as under new testing guidelines we are not eligible according to the GP. Not vulnerable or deteriorating, or health workers.

Been doing little reading, mainly child minding.

Finished De Montaigne. Still listening to Pascal (Tonight: “Many of those who are well think themselves ill and many of those who are ill think themselves well ... while the fatal fever approaches and the abscess builds”)

On page one of Spinozas ETHICS. Tedious.

Health and strength to all my thread followers! Remember Socrates’ advice on death in the coming weeks. It is either oblivion - the extinguishing of consciousness and a sleep like we have never known - or it is a continuation on an unknowable adventure...

I notice a distinct lack of progress in my reading...

Despite all the free time others report during this pandemic time, I must confess I'm almost entirely tied up working and minding our children.

I'm reading a page of Locke here and there, but very little. Likewise on my 'casual' reading, the Eric Flint alternate history novel. I'm thinking of binning it, frankly.

Minor progress. Finished Locke's A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION.

I think I'm going to read his bit on the constitution of Carolina, because I think it'll be interesting, and it's very readable... But I don't know that I'm going to read some of his other political writings as, to be honest, the key takeaway seems to be the liberality and notion of religious tolerance best expressed in the LETTER. There is an essay on the same subject but it seems very similar.

Separately, I'll be done listening to Pascal's PENSEES sometime at the end of next week. I remain impressed with him, a heavyweight in terms of making the argument for religious belief, I believe.

Today-

"There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous"

I think, in fairness, the second half of this argument from Pascal is patently false. There are other categories of sinners.. Sinners who know they are sinners (I don't believe in the Socratic notion that no man knowingly does evil i.e that every wrongdoer believes he is, at heart, excused or not a wrongdoer) and sinners who are so nihilistic that they don't believe the concept of sin or righteousness are even real.

Should also say I'm not big into the sinner / righteous concepts but I'm working with his language here

I've consolidated by reading list and have a clearer picture of where I'm going now.

Going to finish the PENSEES and then on to Defoe's ROBINSON CRUSOE.

I've ordered the next four texts, George Berkley's PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, Voltaire's CANDIDE, Henry Fielding's TOM JONES and Samuel Johnson's THE LIVES OF THE POETS.

Going to also try to squeeze in some Alexander Pope and Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu before the books arrive. Online reading.

Reading a little bio of Alexander Pope as a precursor to THE RAPE OF THE LOCK and his ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

I had no idea he was such an unfortunate. Born with a form of tuberculosis and also a hunchback only 4'6". Throughout this life he was assailed by critics talking about how his outward form was "downright ape", and similar. Constant physical pain and respiratory difficulties. It's difficult to be disabled these days, I can only imagine the lot of a man born in the 17th century. Not to mention to be a catholic, banned from schools and universities, and restricted from coming within ten miles of London!

Listening to David Hume's AN ENQUIRY INTO HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

I forgot how accessible Hume is. His ideas of empiricism and scepticism are laid out in English that is not in any way inaccessible to contemporary people.

Stalled a bit on Robinson Crusoe, just been busy with work.

Still listening to Hume's AN ENQUIRY INTO HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

Hume is bringing me back to my undergraduate college days, but I think I have less frustration with the sceptics now than I did then. Back then I was concerned that Hume was 'shutting down' metaphysics and closing the door on questions that I was really enjoying considering. Now I look at what he was trying to do and admire the honesty and simplicity of his thought.

Finished AN ENQUIRY INTO HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

Technically next in line was Rosseau but I am taking a slightly side-step because I want to listen to the BBC productions of the Samuel Pepys dairies. I am surprised that Mortimer Adler didn't include Pepys' diaries in his list, to be honest.

They came to my attention partly as a result of having caught a few episodes on Radio 4 years ago, but also because Pepys' callous attitudes to public and gruesome executions have been referenced in other books I've read about being indicative of how the attitude to violence and suffering has gradually changed over time. The argument is that Pepys was a 'normal bloke' for the era, perhaps even a comparatively enlightened one, and yet by our standards today he comes across as oddly deaf to pain and suffering. Ergo, public attitudes have shifted, goes the argument.

Friends, I have not abandoned ye.

ROBINSON CRUSOE was finished the day before yesterday.

I couldn't understand why my kindle edition was only showing me approximately 50% of the way through when Crusoe had left the island and was conveying his fortune from Brazil and so on. Realised I had an edition that, although it didn't stipulate it clearly, also comprised THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. Long version short, I went some way into this (His return to the island, principally) before realising what was going on and finishing my reading. THE FURTHER ADVENTURES have been of significantly lesser literary impact, probably for good reason, they seem to lack the compelling plot of the original book, and are more likely a series of vignettes.

I have mixed feelings about ROBINSON CRUSOE. It obviously is one of the most published and influential adventure stories in history. But is it dreadful to say that probably some of the later iterations and adaptations of it are actually more enjoyable to read than the original?

What I mainly took from it was the insight into the mentality of the time. Both the spiritual plot which underpins Crusoe's experiences, and the questions the book raises about race and imperialism. For his time there's no doubt Dafoe is an enlightened man, and Crusoe says things about Friday which must have been remarkable for the time... About how he is a Christian like any other and so on. Also interesting is the point where Crusoe questions whether he is justified in killing the cannibals, if their culture does not mean what they are doing is 'wrong'. And yet at the same time Crusoe takes what he wants and the island is definitively 'his' in every respect, including the loyalty of any visitors or occupants, who either row in with him or are killed.

I have 2 hours left in the audiobook version of THE DIARIES OF SAMUEL PEPYS. Still enjoying it, but happy to be on to something new in due course.

In reading terms I have gone on from ROBINSON CRUSOE to George Berkley's PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. I will also read his THREE DIALOGUES, which is closely related.

Finished the DIARIES OF SAMUEL PEPYS and now onto Rosseau's THE SOCIAL CONTRACT.

"Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains."

This might be one of the best opening lines since THE ILIAD.

I am a reasonable amount of the way into Berkley's THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE and I am not going to say it is impenetrable, but I can see why it was considered eccentric in its arguments even in its day.

Berkley is an 'Idealist', a philosophical term I had forgotten. He argues that 'to be' is indistinguishable from 'to be perceived' and it's more or less his position that there is no reality absent the mind and world of ideas and perceptions. To be honest I've never really understood how philosophical Idealism differs from solipsism.... I don't understand how it isn't quite an arrogant point of view.

Nearly finished Rosseau. I would still recommend him, very readable and interesting observations. But I think I'm starting to identify a trend which crept in where Rosseau feels very much like a public intellectual rather that someone who has had skin in the game of public governance and leadership in the way that Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Jesus Christ, St Augusine or even Machiavelli had. I wonder is this a little marker along a historical road which took us from individuals like that to our contemporary intellectual class, who would (in some cases, not all) hesitate to send to the shop to buy milk.

About a quarter of the way through Voltaire's CANDIDE. Pleasant, holds up well as a send-up of philosophical and religious absurdities.

CANDIDE is finito. Very enjoyable, I think worth reading solely to read the passage which is the origin of 'pour encourager les autres'.

I'm about 1/20 of the way through THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. Still enjoying it, but it's going to be a long listen. I'm passed a rather dry discussion of commodities and Smith is speaking now of why 'masters' find it easier to organise than 'workers' to bargain collectively. In some ways its a timeless discussion.

'Masters'
- Fewer of them so inherently easier to organise, Smith says
- Collectively disposed towards cooperation as they are outnumbered
- Can withstand a withdrawal of workers' labour longer than workers can withstand a withdrawal of permission to use resources / land / receive payment

Workers
- The opposite of all of the above
- Smith says there are acts of parliament preventing them from withdrawing their labour

Smith talks about how the 'natural state' is that a worker owns all of the product of his labour, but that this natural state became impossible once the division of labour and invention of private property came into play and go hand in hand. Now, no one can escape a landlord's demand for a cut / rent.

Now, in terms of print reading, I have a confession to make.

I have a copy of Henry Fielding's TOM JONES, HISTORY OF A FOUNDLING and I read about 50 pages. Frankly it's not dreadful, I have read worse, but I am at a point in my reading list where genuinely I am starting to see time spent poured into books that are not doing it for me as probably a bit stupid. This is not THE BIBLE, or THE ILIAD, where I know there is a dividend if I keep pushing. It's an 18th century novel that probably no one reads for pleasure now, and it has a really painful narrative style, if anyone has ever tried it. It was 'racy' for its day, but now I can't help but feel that I'd rather just skip it and when the time comes read Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and bloody enjoy them.

So no Henry Fielding for me.

I'm going to read a few bits of Samuel Johnson's THE LIVES OF THE POETS (Particularly interested in the little life of Milton).

1/8 of the way through THE WEALTH OF NATIONS this morning... It's still oddly compelling, but I'm not promising I will last the entire thing, depending on whether it descends into the truly arcane.

Smith really does traverse the length and breadth of the notion of profit, wealth and so on. I'm sure that this is (literally) finance and economics 101 for anyone who was educated in the subject, but to me it's relatively new. I'm familiar with some of the concepts, but Smith assumes nothing and lays it out pretty clearly.

Random thoughts:-

He talks about why some jobs pay more than others. It's not just about the difficulty of the work or the skill involved, or the demand... He notes a point that it can also be to do with sheer unpleasantness. It seems that the best example of this that he can come up with is the job of a collier (Coal miner). For reasons that are still obvious to us today, he remarks that they have to be paid quite well just to get them to do their horrendously dangerous job.

Insurance... Smith notes that we don't think about risk in the same way for every subject. No one pays for overland insurance, he says, and yet everyone understands the need for sea insurance (Ships at sea). Smith notes that there are large shipping concerns with 30 plus ships who might choose NOT to insure their ships as the ships nearly insure each other... The cost of adding up all the premiums together outweighs the cost of a loss, so the merchant just accepts the potential risk.

Lotteries... Smith is scathing about the odds of winning, and remarks in particular on those who buy more than one ticket. Not sure about the mathematics of this in an absolute sense, but he says buying more than one ticket in a large lottery effectively only increases the degree to which you are likely to be a loser...

Enjoying THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE - the language is truly amazing.

Also liked this in the Introduction by the editor:-

"Gibbon appears to have been most chary of discussing his history in these years, when he was writing the first volume. [...] His London acquaintances may well have known that he was engaged in some historical project, but they too were literary men, busy on ambitious schemes of their own. Before the event, they had no to assume that the little fat man with the red hair, the high voice, the fancy clothes and the absurd mannerisms was writing the greatest history that has ever been published in any of the languages of mankind."

I'm a 1/4 of the way through THE WEALTH OF NATIONS now. It's easier going than I anticipated, but I must admit I did skip a chunk related to stocks and the circulation of money.

Smith talks about the distinction between productive and unproductive labour. All public servants (He mentions the army, for example), are engaged in unproductive labour. No matter the work they complete this year, it will not buy protection next year. So true.

I have another few weeks left with Adam Smith. I ended up marking out about 30% as material in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS that I decided not to read... Mainly more technical elements that I think might have dated badly (But speculating to an extent, as I didn't read / listen to them).

Still enjoying but not making massive headway into Edward Gibbons.

Adam Smith makes some really interesting observations in the final couple of books of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

He talks about the threat posed by barbarians to civilised peoples. The examples he uses, of nomadic people threatening more civilised societies which have moved from shepherding to husbandry to farming, is oddly exactly what is going on in my reading with THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Gibbon is painting a picture of virile vandals and goths coming south and beating larger armies of roman legions (Sometimes defending excellent fixed positions). Smith and Gibbon agree that the more primitive people, living harder outdoor lives, pose an inherent threat to wealthier, softer societies.

But Smith makes the canny observation that wealth and technology intersected to create a situation in warfare that changed all that. Upon the invention of firearms, skill at personal arms and the various means by which societies cultivated fighting power all changed. Now with the new technology came a buy-in price to equip and keep operating an army armed with firearms. Suddenly, wealthier nations pulled clear off the more primitive societies. The gap that emerged still remains! Top tier western armies have things like night vision technology which enables them to fight at night, while the majority of the developing world's militaries totally lack this capability. And so it continues.

Still working my way through the DECLINE AND FALL and also THE FEDERALIST PAPERS.

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS are just long enough that I can listen to a full one on my way into work each morning. I have to say, the language and polemic is stunning. This is great rhetoric, in my view.

Oddly there are things that Hamilton and Madison have to say which are relevant today, in this era of highly polarised US politics. Although when they wrote they were arguing against the peril of faction deriving from a different set of circumstances than Americans face today, and arguably the States were even more politically and religiously diverse then than they are now, I guess. And maybe their military and economic interests were even more divergent.

Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire. ... Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys; the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.

Epic stuff.

Important to note that the apparatus for ruling the empire, described above, only survived until shortly after Diocletian's abdication. Then there was a slide into civil war when the 'wrong' people started filling the vacuum for Caesar positions.

I'm going over some of the key Federalist Papers, particularly no. 10, and then I think I'm ready to move on.

In THE DECLINE AND FALL I'm at around the halfway mark. Constantine was just trounced the Praetorian Guard in Italy. Gibbon has a neat turn of phrase in describing the bravery with which the Praetorians went down, however. Recognising the desperate nature of their last stand, in that they had no chance of survival under Constantine's regime anyway, their bodies lay on the position which they occupied in battle. That is, they did not retreat, but died where they stood.

I am waiting to finish Gibbon before I try and make some headway through Bentham. I can't get a decent audiobook for Bentham so I will give a written copy a crack and then decide if it's worth wading through.

In the meantime I am pushing on to Coleridge and Wordsworth, the Romantic English poets.

So far I've been at Wordsworth for a couple of days and I have to say, it's been refreshing and contrary to my expectations.

Wordsworth was, in my mind, a sort of pastoral painter with words, talking about fields of daffodils and wandering lonely as a cloud and so on.

However, if you read the likes of LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY it's hard to disagree with the critics that he is as much a poet reflecting on memory as nature. He constantly describes his natural surroundings in terms of his present self, his former self, and notes the change and evolution between them.

And in respect of nature, it's not so much that he is content to describe but rather he is engaged in very deep self-reflexive consideration of nature and its relation to his memory, his mood and indeed his perception of the divine behind nature.

In ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY he seems to me to also talk about youth versus age, and he captures himself what must have been the almost supernatural ability he had to perceive nature in such a powerful, almost psychedelic way. And then he says, no more.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

The last line almost Tolkienesque!

I don't mean to be negative about Coleridge by the way, I particularly like FROST AT MIDNIGHT:-

Some great lines any father would identify with.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams!

...

I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee

Enjoying PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, but I just can't get the movie from a few years out of my head... "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"...

Wallytonto wrote: »

Great book and a lot of fun to read. Check the BBC series with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Well made and very faithful to the book.

Ehle uploaded her reading the whole thing on YouTube too...

I agree, it’s a great book. A true page-turner.

Completed PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Austen certainly knows how to give a satisfying and appropriately detailed round-up and resolution of plot lines.

I have turned the corner on THE DECLINE AND FALL. On now to Constantine's rule and I think I will finish up around Christmas time. In terms of physical texts I will read next I have Von Clausewitz's ON WAR and I have THE SCARLET LETTER, and some essays by Ralph Walso Emerson.

In listing terms I have begun a couple of shortish books by Artur Schopenhauer in the area of happiness. I studied Schopenhauer extensively in University and he is one of the more readily intelligible philosophers of that period. From him onwards (and probably before) it became increasingly arcane and technical. Philosophy vanished into language and maths games, like many disciplines did, detaching themselves from interactions with public discourse in any meaningful way.

Schopenhauer was a notorious pessimist (Although he's oddly upbeat in his description of the irredeemable state of human existence in the world). His "science of happiness" is, as one might expect, not ultimately very positive. Where I am so far Schopenhauer has made a distinction between what a person is of themselves, and what they have and do in the world.

Schopenhauer argues that what we have and what we do - for example, the state of being a wealthy monarch - are contingent things that do not ultimately satisfy us. He notes the boredom of nobles and great men. Or their avaricious fear of losing what they have. Then, perhaps moreso than now, he notes that to have property was also to have an ongoing battle to safeguard its retention in dangerous times. Schopenhaeur therefore says that to be even the most powerful of men in the world is a less meaningful thing in terms of happiness than it first appears. He suggests that being a king is really more like being an actor playing being a king on a stage, in absolute terms of what it means for your happiness.

He, as many people still do today, risks being a bit glib, I think, when he talks of 'happy faced peasants' as compared to the dour, angry faces of nobility. I don't get this romanticisation of poverty. I accept that there are all kinds of surveys and studies that suggest that people in poorer societies claim remarkable levels of happiness as compared to ourselves in the first world. I'm incredible doubtful, however, that people living at subsistence level and seeing their children die before them are happy, maybe the more accurate term is they are sanguine about the realities of their lives.

Schopenhauer talks at length about what a person is referring to what nature has ordained them to have. He is principally interested in whether or not they have an intellect of note. If they have a great mind, believes Schopenhauer, then they have a vehicle to achieve happiness even in utter solitude (Like Cervantes writing DON QUIXOTE while in prison). He's an utter misanthrope, of course. He basically sees the society of people as being a choice to be awash in vulgarity. Isolation is the other option, and his preferred one. An intellect, Schopenhauer believes, is the platform which allows a person to achieve what happiness is to be found in the world, and he leaves us in know down that it is to do with a life of the mind.

He recounts a wonderful anecdote about this and its anti-materialist implications. He talks of the riches of Ancient Greece being laid out in front of Socrates, who remarked "I never realised how much there is in the world which I do not desire."