The Skeptical Scotsman: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask: Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
The Enquiry is a briefer version of the first half of the Treatise on Human Nature (see this February's Bookpost). It's the Hume I was assigned in Freshman Humanities, and is included as Hume's representative work in both the Great Books and Harvard Classics sets. Hume wrote a lot--and a lot more interestingly--about moral philosophy and about the history of England, but for armchair philosophy purposes, if you read the Enquiry, you'll have read Hume.
The book is typically presented as a continuation/conclusion of the Empiricism of Locke and Berkley, and a reductio absurdum of the idea that we learn by experience as opposed to via innate knowledge. His proof that it is impossible to learn through experience has, according to Bertrand Russell, never been satisfactorily refuted, with the distinction that no sane person truly believes it, including Hume.
Or, at least, Hume gives us a "just kidding" at the end of the book. But then, he does this right after applying the same skepticism to show that we can similarly know nothing about God, and so his disclaimer and conclusion that we must accept empirical "knowledge" on faith may have been his way of avoiding a Christian death sentence.
The basic "unrefutable' argument is that, just because something has always happened in the past, such as daily sunrise or objects falling when dropped, is not 100% proof that next time it won't be any different, nor can we trust the senses 100%...but we act with confidence because we need to trust in order to function (for the same reason we continue to drive, even though there may well be reckless, very unsafe drivers out there who will not abide by traffic rules, and we have no guarantees of not getting killed in a wreck today). Only certain mathematical laws are inherently true, and even those must be experienced by us at least once, in order to understand them.
Hume is hard for me to swallow, in part because I believe in learning by experience as opposed to being born with innate knowledge. Then there's the fact that Hume, as shown in the quoted final paragraph above, is the only non-theological "great author" I've read so far who openly advocates book-burning.
Making Sausage: The Spirit of the Laws, by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
People are more vigorous in cold climates...This superiority of strength must produce various effects: for instance, a greater boldness, more courage, a greater sense of superiority, less desire of revenge, a greater sense of security, more frankness, less suspicion, policy and cunning...I have been at the opera in England and in Italy, where I have seen the same pieces and the same performers, and yet the same music produced such different effects on the two nations; one is so cold and phlegmatic, and the other so lively and enraptured....If we travel toward the north, we meet with people who have few vices, many virtues...If we draw near the south we fancy ourselves entirely removed from the verge of morality; here the strongest passions are productive of all manner of crimes, each man endeavouring, let the means be what they will, to indulge his inordinate desires.
In warm countries the aqueous part of the blood loses itself greatly by perspiration; it must therefore be supplied by a like liquid. Water is there of admirable uses; strong liquors would congeal the globules of the blood which remain after the transcending of the aqueous humour. In cold countries, the aqueous part of the blood is very little evacuated by perspiration. They must therefore make use of spiritous liquors, without which the blood would congeal...The law of Mohammed, which prohibits the drinking of wine, is therefore fitted to the climate of Arabia...The law which forbade the Carthaginians to drink wine was a law of the climate. Such a law would be improper for cold countries, where the climate seems to force them to a kind of national intemperance...Drunkenness predominates in proportion to the coldness and humidity of the climate.
See February's Bookpost of this year for more Montesquieu. Spirit of Laws is up there on the Great Books lists mostly as a harbinger of the United States Constitution than for being a high quality work. it's poorly organized, and montesquieu kept stopping and coming back to it with the result that he wrote a big muddle of a work that is hard to connect the dots with.
His main points involve the concept of the separation of powers into an executive, legislature and judiciary (possibly the first time this has been proposed, with a system of checks and balances, at least according to my own reading plan through history); and the idea that for a Democracy to work, the people must be educated; for an aristocracy to work, they must be virtuous, and for a tyranny to work, they must be afraid. Notice which of the three our political leaders in America are trying to cultivate in us today. It ain't education or virtue.
Then we get to the interesting, if ridiculous, part, the juicy bits of which I've summarized in my quote above: the bit where Montesquieu asserts that climate affects the national character. It's stupid, and stereotypical, and not worth serious study today (Montesquieu asserts, fore example, that southern warm climates tend toward Catholicism while cold, dreary northern climates tend toward Protestantism, and when there's an inconvenient counterexample like Catholic Ireland in the north, he just doesn't bother mentioning it). The last third or so is a dull and incomplete history of the evolution of late Roman Empire law into French feudal law, and will only interest serious scholars.
Most people should read the first parts at least once, as amusing climate sociology theory, and as the harbinger of the American constitution. High recommendations.
4 Weddings and 30,000 Funerals: A Feast For Crows, by George R. R. Martin
Outside, a cold wind was rising. They stayed up late into the morning, drinking Arbor gold and telling one another tales. Taena got quite drunk and Cersei pried the name of her secret lover from her. He was a Myrish sea captain, half a pirate, with black hair to the shoulders and a scar that ran across his face from chin to ear. "A hundred times I told him no and he said yes," the other woman told her, "until finally I was saying yes as well. He was not the sort of man to be denied."
"I know the sort," the queen said with a wry smile.
"Has your grace ever known a man like that, I wonder?"
"Robert," she said, thinking of Jamie.
Yet when she closed her eyes, it was her other brother that she dreamt of, and the three wretched fools with whom she had begun her day. In the dream, they had brought her Tyrion's head in their sack. She had it bronzed, and kept it in her chamber pot.
Man, oh man. The Game of Thrones books (actually called the A Song of Ice and Fire series) is so good that I was inclined to savor it some more, waiting until the next volume was out before reading any more. Except that I read the previous one, A Storm of Swords, back in 2013, and the TV series has gone way past that point by now with no sign of Book Six, and I figure I have to read the two "parallel timeline" books before I forget what's come before or get spoiled on what is to come.
I re-read the first three, and was struck by backstory and other details that I'd missed the first time around, and by some crucial differences with the TV show's plot--which has, incidentally, slowed down big time to give GRRM time to catch up. the first two seasons covered the first two books; the next covered most of Storm of Swords, and Season Four stretched itself to cover about 400 pages from the end of Storm of Swords. I figure they'll milk the remaining books into three or four seasons each, and even then, we're likely to first learn how it all ends from the TV version, before the last book comes out. As with Babylon 5, the most epic arc plots get bogged down in the realities of production over multiple seasons.
Then again, Feast for Crows is sort of where the plot of the books slows down a little as well. No Jon Snow. No Daenerys. No Tyrion--the adventures of my three favorite characters during this time are in book five. And while the story within Westeros has hitherto been wall-to-wall (or perhaps, wall-to-Dorne) Starks, Lannisters and Baratheons whaling on one another with the help of Tyrells and Tullys, Feast For Crows adds to an already enormous cast by adding several new subplots featuring entirely new hordes of people marked for early death, in Dorne, the Iron Islands, the Vale, and the free cities of Braavos. The Sand Sisters of Dorne delighted me, while the Greyjoys tempted me to skim over them entirely. Except that you can't skim the dull parts. They all come together eventually.
Fortunately, there is Arya. And chapters from the POV of Brienne of Tarth. I'm mad about Brienne, and find it wonderful to have a warrior woman who for once wears functional armor and is not presented as a sex toy with buttkicking skills. On the other hand, it got a bit tiresome and distracting to be continually reminded how *ugly* her big, capable, powerful body is supposed to be. Maybe if she was presented without constant attention to charisma or lack thereof...also taking center stage is Cersei Lannister, who is possibly the nastiest character left standing outside of the Dreadfort and The Twins.
It has its ups and downs, but the series as a whole is one of the best, most highly recommended works I've read this decade, and Feast for Crows is a necessary component of the whole.
Small Wit: Rameau's Nephew, and Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature, by Denis Diderot
HE: Everything that lives, man included, seeks his well-being at the expense of whoever withholds it. If I let my little savage grow up without my saying a word to him, he would of his own accord want to be rich, loved by women, and draw to himself all the goods of life.
MYSELF: If your little savage were left to himself, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.
I'm having the same problem with Diderot that I have with Voltaire, only more so. He is considered a giant in the century's thought more for the volume of his work than for the value of any particular piece, and much of what he wrote was innovative at the time but of little value today. His greatest work was as organizer and principal contributor to one of the first encyclopedias, which is about as useful in the 21st century as the 1978 World Book encyclopedia that used to be in my parents' house when I was in grade school learning to use reference books. Probably better written and with considerably more emphasis on editorial opinion, but I'm not reading it. Not now.
Diderot's other works are shorter and less notable (see Jacques the Fatalist from last month's Bookpost). Rameau's Nephew, a character study and dialogue between an unnamed narrator and the nephew of Rameau the composer, is included in the revised Great Books set and described as "Diderot's masterpiece" by the Durants. I'm jaded.
If you went to a liberal arts college, you have encountered the modern equivalent of Rameaus' Nephew. He was brought up in comfort and rejects modern society, especially the morals and manners, as "phony". He thinks he's more of a genius than he really is, and manages to erase the line between impressing people with his clever imagination and pissing them off. Not having a practical skill set, he is reduced to dependency on patrons to pay him for meeting their entertainment whims, and yet because he is too proud to grovel, he doesn't succeed at that either. The more worldly-wise narrator alternates between admiration, pity, and just throwing up his hands and giving up on the wretch.
The dialogue made me uncomfortable because, of course, I was that guy in my sophomoric days, and recognizing my own past mistakes makes me cringe somewhat. The man is a diamond in the rough who may have real talent, and his personality has a charismatic exuberance, but his focus on pointing out what's wrong with everyone but himself makes him unable to have any friends. I take comfort; maybe this is the year Rameau's nephew gets his life together.
I also read a short philosophical essay called Thoughts on the Interrpretation of Nature, mostly demonstrating the value of observation and experimental reasoning. It was apparently included to show off Diderot as a well-rounded "Enlightenment Man" with an interest in science, or perhaps to shame the mid-18th Century by reminding us that we still needed to argue that experimental research was even an good idea worth allowing people to practice, much less the basis of most or all knowledge. I remember in 2004 Teresa Heinz Kerry made a speech in my area that depressed the living shit out of me by anxiously urging people to give science and learning a chance and demonstrating ways in which being smart might benefit one's life. I walked away disgusted at the need for such a speech; a whole lot of people probably felt condescended to, and the ones who needed to hear the speech shook with rage and longed for the days when smart women could be burned as witches. Considering that her husband's opponent was maybe the most stupid and proud of it President my country has ever had so far, and that he was declared the winner of that election and allowed to continue tampering with the Federal government, I guess we still do need Diderot's essay, even now.
The 18th Century Murders: Man's Illegal Life; Man's Storm, by Keith Heller; Drums of Autumn, by Diana Gabaldon
In the first half of the eighteenth century, London was probably the most dangerous city on earth. Gangs of thieves and beggars, prostitutes and bullies, lunatics and murderers made a battleground of the streets for nobleman and commoner alike. Of London, Samuel Johnson wrote: "Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home." Corruption and negligence were the order of the day, and the legal system was more notorious for its brutality than for its effectiveness. In the midst of this chaos, one astounding fact stands clear: there were no police.
--from Man's Illegal Life
The citizens of Westminster could not sleep. They walked their floors fully dressed, stopping every few minutes to listen with straining ears. It was the chimneys that frightened them most. They feared lying in bed, deep asleep, and then waking at the last instant to see a sudden shower of bricks come crashing through the splintering ceiling directly at their faces. Some had already dreamt it. they had started up to find shattered stones mixed with dust and paint descending like a pall over their eyes, the awful massive weight flattening the chest and crushing the breath, the fall bearing them downward through bed and floor into the downstairs room and into a circle of shocked faces, and still further down into the quiet stone foundation itself. Then they had woken a second time to a darkened room and a moaning house, their bodies clammy with sweat, the limbs twitching helplessly, to lie awake uncertain which was the nightmare and which was the night.
--from Man's Storm
The incisors and canine on the good side were scarcely worn at all. I turned the skull over, to judge the abrasion on the molars, and stopped cold.
Very cold, in spite of the fire at my back. As cold as I had been in the lost, fireless dark, alone on the mountain with a dead man's head. For the late sun now struck sparks from my hands: from the silver band of my wedding ring--and from the silver fillings in my late companion's mouth. I sat staring for a moment, then turned the skull over and set it gently down on the desk, careful as though it were made of glass.
"My God," I said, all tiredness forgotten. "My God," I said to the empty eyes and the lopsided grin. "Who WERE you?"
--from Drums of Autumn
Keith Heller's historical mystery series set in early 18th Century London has just two volumes in my local library. they're short, short on clues, and eager to emphasize how historical they are by cramming unnecessary historical detail onto every page. Their mystery style is akin to A Study in Scarlet, in that the culprit is identified early, followed by a lengthy history as to how a more or less sympathertic character came to be a murderer. The main character is a "watchman" (Heller never passes up an opportunity to remind you that, OMG there were NO POLICE, and how could anyone have felt safe in those barbaric times, yada yada) whose last name is Man, leading to the punnish titles. Man's Illegal Life concerns a corpse found walled up under circumstances that mimic the quarantines of a decades-old plague outbreak (guess who would do that to someone years after the plague, and why), and Man's Storm is chiefly concerned with the foreshadowing, experience, and aftermath of a poorly constructed chimney falling in a storm. Moderate recommendations to both.
Drums of Autumn (#4 in the Outlander series) is a marked step up from the previous two. It's set largely on the frontier of the American colonies and has Claire and Jamie joined by their amazonian daughter from the 20th century. The time travel is a fluffy plot device that enables 20th century characters to discover incomplete records of some horrible thing from the past and to go to that era to try to investigate or prevent said thing. Coincidences abound, and there are more pirates, indians and crocodiles than in Peter Pan.. The series walks a tightrope between the desire to show horrible 18th century gender, colonial and racial oppression as it really was, and the need to reflect human values as justice would have them be. Hence we have scenes that try to skirt the line but that in fact depict spousal abuse, unjustifiable murders and sex crimes in an environment where such things were accepted as the natural order of things, but that temper it somewhat when the time-traveling characters manage to get the native 18th century dwellers to see how horrible the cultural norms are. And yes, a whole lot of hot erotica. Recommended for all of the above.
Unhappy in a Way All Its Own: The Man Who Loved Children, by Christina Stead
"I wish I had a hundred sons and daughters," sam rejoined with equal excitement, "Then I wouldn't have a stroke of work to do, see. All you kids could work for me. I'd have a CCC camp for the boys and an SSS, spick-and-span settlement for the girls. No work for Mother, Dad, or Bonnie. Yes, the Mornings [Mormons] had the right idea altogether: fifty women and their children, and no work for the old man."
This 1940s book by an Australian, set in America, left me feeling like i needed to be psychoanalyzed. for one thing, what does it say that, with an innocent sounding title like The Man Who loved Children, I immediately felt uncomfortable and wondered it it was about a child molestor? (Turns out it isn't, no worries, at least in that he only harms his kids psychologically).
The world is as seen by children, both playful and scary in a way that is natural when you're surrounded by irrational people bigger than you. The mother is a vicious horrible woman who is forever spouting cruelty, and the father is the kind of person I've spent my life trying not to be--so busy being amusing and playful that he's never grown up, and calls on his kids to do more adulting than he does; has a pleasant storyteller aspect to his personality, but is not strong enough to actually impose it on the real world; he merely sticks his head in the sand while the practical needs of the family fail. He does, however, insist on the respect due to him as patriarchal head of the household, even as he shirks the responsibility that a leader should have.
The protagonist is Louie, the eldest daughter, who is maybe a stand-in for the author, and who ends the story (as is usual when the protagonist is an older kid) by leaving home. Her journal is a masterpiece of creepy innuendo.
Farewell to Voltaire: The Portable Voltaire
Although young and rich, he knew how to control his passions, was unaffected, did not always want to be in the right, and was considerate to human frailty. People were astonished to observe that despite his good sense he never derided the loose, scrappy, noisy tittle-tattle, the reckless backbiting, the ignorant conclusions, the coarse quips, the empty tumult of words which in Babylon were called "Conversations" He had learned in the first book of Zarathustra that self esteem is a balloon swollen with wind, whence tempests issue when it is pricked. Above all, Zadig did not boast of his scorn for and power over women. He was generous and, in accordance with Zarathustra's great precept, "When thou dost eat, give to the dogs even though they bite thee", he did not fear to oblige ingrates. He was as wise a man as can be, for he sought to live with the wise.
This is what I should have done with Voltaire--and Diderot, too--from the beginning. Not really philosophers so much as "wits" and generalists with more output than can be comfortably read in one year, some of which has lasting value and much of which has none.
The Portable Voltaire is a collection of his best and most lasting writing, including sections from Candide and the Philosophical Dictionary--which showed me some worthy entries I had skimmed over last month when confronted with the whole thing. Also included are "Zadig" (a story at least as instructive and witty as "Candide" and other stories and fables; some letters and epigrams, philosophical essays, and a poem lamenting the Lisbon earthquake. Good stuff, all of it, and most of the Voltaire you need to know.
Detachment Parenting: Emile, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
How swiftly life passes here below! The first quarter of it is gone before we know how to use it, the last quarter finds us incapable of enjoying life. At first we do not know how to live, and when we do know how to live, it is too late. In the interval between these two useless extremes we waste three fourths of our time sleeping, working, sorrowing, enduring restraint and every kind of suffering. Life is short, not so much because of the short time it lasts, but because we are allowed scarcely any time to enjoy it. In vain is there a long interval between the hour of death and that of birth; life is still too short, if this interval is not well spent.
Okay, so the 18th Century has three towering "Giants of philosophy". one English, one French, and one German...and they all wrote a lot and so I've staggered them. Been toughing my way through David Hume for a few months now, and now starting Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Emile is his treatise on education, which might as well be subtitled "How to raise your good child not to be corrupted by phony society." Rousseau's central thesis, from which all his works stem, is the opposite of Hobbes: Rousseau says that all people are born good, and that the artificial constraints of government, business, manners, private property, you name it, are responsible for evil. THANKS OBAMA!
It's not really a novel, and not really a nonfiction guide. Emile is a colorless Everychild to be molded into a good, well-adjusted citizen in a one size fits all sort of way that discourages book learning and emphasizes learning by going out into society and doing things. Probably great for people who learn kinesthetically, and horrible for those who would benefit from seeing or hearing.
The last part of the book, where the parent progresses from leading the child from infancy through childhood through adolescence through learning a trade and finally completes his education by seeing him married off to the right woman of the parent's choice, is mind-bogglingly offensive, as it is here that Rousseau reveals that everything he's been saying has been about boys only, and that girls are to be brought up wholly differently, because of how weak they are, and that nature wouldn't want it any other way. I could barely read it myself, and I can't even imagine how a modern woman must feel exposed to that garbage. Hopefully, she'll laugh at it...except that there are Republicans out there trying to bring us back to those days.
As American as Rhubarb Pie: The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg’d it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro’ the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang’d them with that view, as they stand above. Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquir’d and establish’d, Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improv’d in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtain’d rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second place. This and the next, Order, I expected would allow me more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once become habitual, would keep me firm in my endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality and Industry freeing me from my remaining debt, and producing affluence and independence, would make more easy the practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method for conducting that examination.
I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul’d each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I cross’d these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.
The first major American book to come out of what was to be the United States of America is a harbinger and guide for much of what American writing has been known for ever since, especially when it comes to what we tell children about America: Horatio Alger. Thomas Edison. Walt Whitman. Dale Carnegie. Page-a-day calendars. The seeds of all of them are in here. Honestly, it's not much of a heavy duty book, and it breaks off in 1757 before all the Revolutionary and Diplomatic events happened; and yet, the Harvard Classics set gives Franklin the place of honor as the first work in the set, ahead of many works that are much more important, or written centuries earlier. Maybe it's intended to be an introductory, easy to read, work. The order of the HC set is peculiar.
The most memorable sections are some domestic squabbles; the spectacle of wee Benny arriving in Philadelphia and carrying his three yeasty rolls under his arms; the beginnings of Poor Richard's Almanac and other print jobs; a long section in admiration of a golden-tongued preacher who was able to scam money from anyone who listened to him; and most of all, Franklin's plan for self-improvement via cultivating the values of temperance, thrift, industry, etc. How fitting that the first lasting American book should be, in part, a self-improvement book. pin the tail on your inner donkey, and all that.
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: admnaismith.livejournal.com/...