Category Archives: Reading List – Books

Philosophy for Beginners – Osborne

Between you and me, Philosophy for Beginners by Richard Osborne and illustrated by Ralph Edney has probably been sitting on the bookshelf since its publication date of 1992. There’s a vague recollection of having had purchased it at Munro’s Books years ago. That was before the time of amazon.com. Before the time of ABE books. The good old days when I used to wander around the bookshops listening to the obligatory baroque chamber orchestras playing through bookstore loudspeakers. And buying more books than I was reading. Have to remember this in the future: balance input with output. Or better yet, consider the public library as an extension of your personal bookshelf. We all pay the taxes. Might as well derive benefit from it. And best of all, no philosopher is required to prove that theorem!

Philosophy for Beginners Cover Illustration

The ‘cosmic’ look of the Greek philosopher in the background is fitting. It must be Thales. And it appears the philosophers closer to modernity get bigger and colour as well (i.e. Nietzsche and nice use of foreshortening on his clenched fist). Three guesses to the philosopher smashing the painting? If you said J.J. Rousseau, you are absolutely right! That must be a reference to his First Discourse on the Arts where he said that all art is decadent. And on the top left that’s Pythagoras, who’s looking a little cross-eyed staring into his magical dodecahedron.

The art is really top notch as well. Did I ever tell you I used to be a comic collector? Not big time. But enough to go down to the comic book store every other paycheque and pick something up. Mostly Marvel comics. So nothing ‘serious’ like Image or DC. But the soap opera Spider-Man stories still have a place in my heart.

Philosophy for Beginners Back Blurb

Why does philosophy give some people a headache, others a real buzz, and yet others a feeling that it is subversive & dangerous? Why do a lot of people think philosophy is totally irrelevant? What is philosophy anyway?

The ABCs of philosophy-easy to understand but never simplistic.

Beginning with basic questions posed by the ancient Greeks-‘What is the world made of?’ ‘What is man?’ ‘What is knowledge?’ ‘What is good and evil?’-this guide traces the development of these questions as the key to understanding how western philosophy developed over the last 2,500 years.

Nice and to the point.

The Book

Its nice to read these summary books. And the visual comic format is inviting after a long day. Summary books give you the whole picture quickly and identify points of further interest. For example, I’d like to read something by Willard Quine, a contemporary American philosopher. Also J.S. Mill. He argued that things like pleasure could not be quantified like coal. This is one of my arguments in Paying Melpomene’s Price so it’d be interesting to see if my argument would be made stronger from seeing what he has to say. And the book reminded me that I must absolutely get with the times and read some Derrida, though I think he’s a bum. It’s always easy destroying meaning and form. Building it is harder. And more noble. As a summary, Osborne and Edney have done a terrific job. I would definitely check out others in this series.

The Comics

Here’s some of my favourites, in chronological order.

Aurelius

He’s too busy philosophizing to defend the Empire! He was one of the good emperors but its a funny caricature at any rate.

Spinoza

Here’s Spinoza arguing with Hobbes! Spinoza is so involved with Euclidean geometry that he has become a collage of boxes and triangles!

Hegel

Here is Daffy Duck interviewing Hegel’s imperial eagle. Or maybe it’s a fictitious heraldic animal of sorts. The joke must be that Hegel was an avowed Prussian nationalist.

CS Peirce 1

CS Peirce 2

I don’t know much about C.S. Peirce, but as you can tell, he’s an early American philosopher out in the Wild West! I like his actions speak louder than words philosophy!

Derrida

Haha, even though I don’t like Derrida, it’s funny watching his robot ‘deconstruct’ its structuralist adversary. If only it were the other way around!

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and these are the light hearted hours of Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Apology – Plato

The writing of Paying Melpomene’s Price has taken me to the final showdown between tragedy, comedy, history, and philosophy. They each have a different worldview. That’s why they’re different genres. Or at least that’s what I’m going to argue. The sections outlining the differences between tragedy, comedy, and history are in the process. I’ve been holding off on the philosophy section though. Philosophy intimidates me a little more than the other genres. Because it’s about thinking, it always involves more thinking. So, to get me into the swing of things, I’m rereading Plato.

Rouse’s Translation of Plato

On the bookcase is an edition of Plato’s Complete Works published by Hackett, Burnyeat’s Theaetetus (which will be next on the reading list: epistemology suddenly has become interesting), a Penguin edition of The Republic, an Adam and Bryn Mawr commentary on the same, a Skemp monograph on the state of Plato studies in 1976 (when I was two years old), a Stokes commentary on The Apology, and The Great Dialogues of Plato translated by W. H. D. Rouse. The Hackett edition is hardcover and bigger than my hardcover bible. The Rouse edition is paperback and small. The Rouse edition it is. There’s a certain pleasure in reading a paperback sitting in the comfortable rocking chair listening to music. The big hardcover wouldn’t be the same, although I am sure Hackett makes a fine edition.

Here’s the cover illustration. If you guessed it is from the 50s, you guessed right!

Great Dialogus of Plato Cover

I love these 50s covers. But unfortunately, the gold bar after ‘Symposium’ on the cover looks like it covers something up: maybe there was one more dialogue that was in the original scheme of things but got deleted when it went to press?

Here’s the back blurb:

‘Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato.’ – Emerson

The Republic and other great dialogues by the immortal Greek philosopher Plato, masterpieces which form part of the most important single body of writing in the history of philosophy, are here translated in a modern version. Beauty, Love, Immortality, Knowledge and Justice are discussed in these dialogues which magnificently express the glowing spirit of Platonic philosophy.

This paperbound volume, containing more dialogues than any other inexpensive edition, was translated by W. H. D Rouse, one of the world’s most outstanding classical scholars and the translator of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad.

I wonder how Rouse (one of the greatest scholars in the world) felt when he read that Mentor Books chose to use his laborious translation in their budget and inexpensive series! Powerful quote from Emerson. If I recall, like Plato, he was an idealist as well…

Reading Plato

Well, reading Plato is just fun. I’ve read The Apology in translation as part of a first year philosophy class and I’ve also read it in Greek in a fourth year language class. Plato grows on you as well. Before, I thought that his hero Socrates was annoying as hell. But after reading Kant and Hegel, it’s very nice returning to Plato. Socrates is always walking around. He’s talking to people. It’s much more welcoming than something like The Critique of Pure Reason. Returning to Plato is like listening to Led Zeppelin. Growing up I never much appreciated Zeppelin. But now, Zeppelin has grown on me to the point where I can say I rather enjoy them.

Ageism in The Apology

In the recent survey of historiography, it came to my attention that one could write speculative history based on conflicting dichotomies. In 1 and 2 Kings, history is based on good and bad kings, kings who ‘do evil’ or ‘do right’ in the sight of the Lord. And in Marx, the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeois is what gives shape to history. What other conflicting dichotomies are there? How about between young and old? Someone could certainly make the argument that recent history (1960s) is shaped by the conflict between the young (change) and old (tradition).

This was on my mind as I was reading Plato, and, when I got to The Apology, it seemed like there may have been something of a prejudice against age going on in his trial. Here’s a summation of what happens in The Apology for those of you who haven’t read it in a long time (I would imagine that is most people!):

The trial of Socrates took place in 399 B.C. when he was seventy years old. Meletos, Anytos and Lycon (Anytos is one of the characters in the Meno) accused him of impiety and of corrupting the young men.

The court which tried Socrates was composed of 501 citizens, and was a subdivision of the larger court of six thousand citizens, chosen by lot, which dealt with such cases. There were no judge and jury in the modern sense; the decision of the court was that of the majority vote.

When the court had pronounced Socrates guilty, the law required him to propose his own penalty, as an alternative to the death penalty proposed by Meletos; no penalty was prescribed by law for his offence. The court then had to choose, by a second vote, between the proposals of the accuser and the accused.

From the mention on page 439 it appears that Plato himself was present at the trial.

With respect to age, Socrates emphasizes in the opening statement how old he is and how speaking in the court is an entirely new thing to an old dog. As well, the charge is that he corrupts the youth. So there is this old-young dichotomy at the get go.

Then there are the repeated jabs at the vanity of the punishment: at 70, he is about to die anyways. 70 must have been back then an exceedingly long time to have lived. In addition, there are the references to how he would have more supporters, if they were not already dead, such as Theodotus and Chairephon. It seems Socrates is a bit like Gandalf at the end of the Lord of the Rings: his age is past. The new ‘age of man’ dawns…

Socrates himself categorizes his listeners as young or old, though there is no real advantage to his defence in doing so: ‘if anyone desires to hear me speaking or doing my business, whether young or old, I have never grudged it to any’, he says.

Lastly, most telling is the age of his accusers. There were three. In his cross-examination, the age of one of them is made clear: ‘Oh, dear me, Meletos’, says Socrates, ‘I so old and you so you and yet you are so much wiser than I am!’.

So, it is my conjecture that there is a bit of ageism going on. Like class struggle, or the clash between good and evil, there is a bit of an ‘age struggle’ that works as an agent of history motivating things to happen. It could also be seen as the conflict between change and tradition, with the young representing change and the old as representing tradition. In some ages, tradition wins out. In others, change wins out.

I wonder if a historian has written a speculative theory of history with ageism as the motivating factor. Or would this just be a form of discrimination? What do you think?

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m Doing Melpomene’s Work in my middle years between liberalism and conservatism.

The Quantum Moment – Crease & Goldhaber

The Quantum Moment: How Plank, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty

What a handful! Short title and a mouthful of a subtitle. It was actually the last word of the subtitle that caught my eye, the word ‘uncertainty’. One of the things I’m researching while writing the Paying Melpomene’s Price is the nature of the unexpected or unexpectation (that’s actually a word, spell check be damned!). Well, ‘uncertainty’ is close enough. Maybe the book will have some hidden insight that leads to a eureka moment…

That The Quantum Moment came out in 2014 was another selling feature: so many of the physics titles I’ve been reading are from the 80s. Various John Gribbin titles, Davies’ Cosmic Blueprint and others. What have the physicists discovered in the last 30 years? Maybe all those old books are outdated? By the way, though I said ‘selling feature’, like so many of the books I read, this is a loan from the might Greater Victoria Public Library, or GVPL to the initiates. Usually I’ll borrow secondary sources. Primary sources (which writers like to have around) I’ll usually buy used at Russell Books. They’re the go to used book place in Victoria. They might actually be one of the largest used places in BC, if not Canada: their main outlet on Fort street occupies two units on three floors. Then they have a satellite store a short walk away on View street. They’re not quite The Strand with their 18 miles of books, but hey, that’s in New York City (a fascinating adventure if you get the chance, take a NYC cab to get there for the full hair raising experience).

But for all the success of Russell Books (its good for readers and kudos to them), sometimes I wonder: it’s gotta be hard on the other local used book places. I mean, if you have books to sell or trade, you’d probably take them to Russell because it’s a one stop shop. If everyone’s selling their books to Russell Books, it’d be hard for other used places to stay open. I hear the owner of Renaissance Books is retiring. And Dark Horse Books on, what was it, Johnson street, is no longer there. But I digress…

Cover Illustration

Quantum Moment Cover

The chair reminds me of Glenn Gould’s old piano seat. The picture frame has the peculiar quality of being transparent and removing the person (who’s holding it up) from the image. There’s a set of tire marks in parallel. Do you get it? I don’t. The thing about the quantum moment was that it taught us that the observer is part of the system: by observing we change things. The magic frame seems to take the human out of the picture. The boldness of the image is catchy, but confusing.

Back Blurb

Since this is a hardcover, the back blurb to The Quantum Moment is actually on the inside of the dust jacket:

The discovery of the quantum-the idea, born in the early 1900s in a remote corner of physics, that energy comes in finite packets instead of infinitely divisible quantities-planted a rich set of metaphors in the popular imagination.

Quantum imagery and language now bombard us like an endless stream of photons. Phrases such as multiverses, quantum leaps, alternate universes, reinvented continually in cartoons and movies, coffee mugs and T-shirts, and fiction and philosophy, reinterpreted by each new generation of artists and writers.

Is a ‘quantum leap’ big of small? How uncertain is the uncertainty principle? Is this barrage of quantum vocabulary pretentious and wacky, or a fundamental shift in the way we think?

All of the above, say Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scarf Goldhaber in this pathbreaking book. The authors-one a philosopher, the other a physicist-draw on their training and six years of co-teaching to dramatize the quantum’s rocky path from scientific theory to public understanding. Together, they and their students explored missteps and mistranslations, jokes and gibberish, of public discussion about the quantum. Their book explores the quantum’s manifestations in everything from art and sculpture to the prose of John Updike and David Foster Wallace. The authors reveal the quantum’s implications for knowledge, metaphor, intellectual exchange, and the contemporary world. Understanding and appreciating quantum language and imagery, and recognizing its misuse, is part of what it means to be an educated person today.

The result is a celebration of language at the interface of physics and culture, perfect for anyone drawn to the infinite variety of ideas.

I feel like the blurb should have included something about the ‘Newtonian moment’. To define the ‘Quantum Moment’ the authors spend a lot of time contrasting it to the mechanistic Newtonian world where models can be still used to demonstrate ideas.

Cartoons!

The best part are the cartoons that occur periodically through the book:

Misuse of Quantum Terminology

Part of the book is devoted towards clarifying the misuse of the ideas of quantum physics in popular culture. Here’s another jawbreaker from Dilbert, one of my favourites (I used to work in an office):

Dilbert Uncertainty Principle

Although it’s a misuse, it’s because it’s wrong that it’s funny. Diligent readers will recall that nothing gets me going like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Here’s a good one:

2nd Law

One of the focal points of the book is defining the quantum moment against the Newtonian moment. This cartoon captures the differences between the two worldviews:

Quantum Versus Newtonian Worldview

The Takeaway

So, has a lot changed in the last 30 years? My impression is that historians of physics will see the period from 1900-1930 as being more revolutionary than the period between, say, 1980-2010. Between 1900-1930 you had Einstein, Bohr, Poincare, Planck, Heisenberg, and Pauli at their primes. Who do we have today? Hawking the only one I can name off the top of my head. To be sure, today there is CERN and things like ‘hunting for the God particle’ (which they might just have found), but to me things sure seemed more exciting in the first decades of the 20th century. So, it appears as though most of the physics books in the upstairs bookshelves are still up to date. Well, relatively up to date.

Despite this, the last two chapters, Saving Physics and The Now Moment taught me something new. Quite a few of these quantum physics books written for lay readers emphasize the weirdness of it all. Take The Dancing Wu Li Masters with the psychedelic image of multiple legs with pantyhose all revolving around a central axis as the cover:

Dancing Wu Li Master Cover Art

This book, lent to me by Mr. Durance, my indefatigable grade 7 teacher, equated quantum physics with psychedelia and eastern mysticism.

But is quantum physics that weird? In a way it says that, well, the observer is part of the observation. It’s like the hunter and the wolf: who’s the hunter and who’s the prey? In the final chapters, Crease and Goldhaber argue that there are things weird with Newtonian objectivity as well. Perhaps it’s because we’re so used to it that we don’t notice:

Quantum mechanics undermines a notion of objectivity based on nineteenth-century, Newtonian science-but only that notion. At the same tie that quantum mechanics was emerging in the twentieth century, so was a notion of objectivity that was suitable for describing quantum objects. The term ‘objectivity’ refers to an ideal of knowledge that is frequently characterized as a ‘view from nowhere’, one that an observer might somehow achieve when standing completely apart and disconnected from what was being observed. (emphasis added)

…

Quantum mechanics, for instance, has helped rid philosophy of the spectre of a Laplacean ideal of knowledge, and ‘intelligence sufficiently vast’ that it could see and describe things as if from no particular time and place, and rid philosophy as well of the vision of a unified science, of a too-narrow conception of phenomena, and of an impossible objectivity.

The Newtonian worldview posits that the scientist can stand and observe things from a godlike perspective outside time and space while the Quantum worldview posits that the observer is also part of the observation. Weird things happen during the observation (such as breaking down wave-particle duality), but in a way, the quantum view is a more human way to look at things. I like this thought.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and it’s been a pleasure to be Doing Melpomene’s Work.

The Symposium – Plato

Why I.m Reading Plato.s Symposium

It.s part of the research for the last chapter of the book I.m writing, Paying Melpomene’s Price. Have you ever noticed that the genres are like wolves–or other predatory animals–out in the wild? I mean, they.re very territorial, quite aware of where everyone is, and like to squabble if they get near one another. That was one of the things from Kingsolver.s Prodigal Summer that stuck with me. A very enjoyable read even if the characters I most associated with were constantly getting the better had of them by the characters I least associated with. But back to The Symposium by Plato. This should be a good read because it.s written by a philosopher and it stars not only a tragedian (Agathon), a comedian (Aristophanes), a philosopher (Socrates), and Alcibiades (a type of person that you find in histories). And of course, its all written by Plato, who bans citizens from performing comedy in the Laws (too degrading) and bans tragedy outright in The Republic (too easily overwhelms reason). So I.m reading Plato.s Symposium in the hopes of seeing something of a quarrel between philosophy, history, comedy, and tragedy (or between Socrates/Plato, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, and Agathon).

What is a Symposium?

It.s a drinking party. But this one is of course special. First, the guests are hung over from the day before (a holiday on which the host, Agathon, had one first prize for his tragedy at the City Dionysia). So less drinking. Boo. They also send away the flute-girl. Boo. But they decide that each of diners should compose a paean in honour of Love. Yay! They go around the couches left to right composing a speech to praise and define Love. We get to hear stories of how Socrates is schooled by Diotima. Yay! It.s refreshing to see Socrates schooled once in awhile, and by a woman philosopher! The comic poet Aristophanes comes up with a crazy creation myth explaining attraction. Yay! In the old day, humans had four arms, four legs, and two outward turned faces. There were three sexes: man-man, man-woman, and woman-woman. They were exceedingly powerful and their means of locomotion was by cartwheeling around on all eight of their limbs. Because Zeus was worried they would attack the gods, he cut them in half. Though cut in half, we are always seeking our other half. What a creative theory! If all philosophy were as colourful as this, I would certainly read more!

The Quarrel

There.s no smoking gun in The Symposium where philosophy ‘puts down’ the other genres. I mean, it.s not like Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy where tragedy is definitely getting the short end of the straw. Sure Aristophanes has the hiccups and Alcibiades is rather dissolute. But hey, it.s a drinking party. Socrates comes off better than the others, but it.s no slam dunk. So I.ll keep looking elsewhere for examples of the quarrel between philosophy, history, comedy, and tragedy. Assiduous readers with ideas are encouraged to help out!

But All is Not a Loss

Something came to mind while reading The Symposium that really should have occurred to me a long time ago. You know Plato.s criticism of art in Book X of The Republic, right? There he says there are three crafts for each thing that is used: the one that uses it, the one that makes it, and the one that imitates it. Take a flute. Somewhere out there is the perfect flute: the ‘blueprint’ of all flutes. But it.s like the perfect circle: you can.t attain it. But the flute player, being an expert in flutes, has an inkling of how the flute should work. He is closest to the perfect flute. He instructs the flute-maker, who, in turn, is an expert on flutes from his craft but not quite as expert as the flute player (since he doesn.t play). But if an artist were to paint an ‘imitation’ of a flute, it is a copy of a copy of a copy of the ideal flute. So that.s why Plato doesn.t like the arts: they.re mimetic and imperfect copies.

Now go back to The Symposium. According to the characters, how the events got recorded is this: Aristodemos was present at the symposium in March 416 BC. He tells the story to Apollodorus, who in turn tells it to an unnamed friend fifteen years after the party. So the story that we get in The Symposium is a copy of a copy of a copy, thrice removed from the ‘actual’ event! And then parts of the dialogue are also recollections of other dialogues. For example, Diotima isn.t actually present. Socrates is recollecting things that she said. So The Symposium is really a prime example of the things which Plato doesn.t like about the arts!

Is this Plato.s humour speaking out? If he.s so concerned about the fraudulence of dramatic or painted arts because they.re mimetic, then what about his own dialogues such as The Symposium, which is also purposefully mimetic, a he said that Bob said that Joe said that 15 years ago Diotima said… Why should I trust this ‘mimetic’ account if the author says elsewhere that copies are to be avoided at all costs?

I.m surprised that the question never occurred to me before. But this is a question for those doing Urania.s work (the Muse of philosophy). And, until next time, I.m Edwin Wong and while I like to consider Urania.s work, I am Doing Melpomene’s Work first and foremost.

The War of Art – Pressfield

Writer.s block. Ever get that? Even if you.re not a writer, you.ve had it if you.ve had a great idea that.s been hard to follow up. The last couple of days, writer.s block has hit me. Here.s the scoop: writing the last chapter of a book on tragic art theory, Paying Melpomene’s Price. There.s a section on the quarrel between four genres: tragedy, comedy, philosophy, and history. They each hold a different worldview. Philosophy is reason based. Tragedy and comedy are emotion based. And history features the active life of statesmen rather than the contemplative life of the arts. In philosophy, Plato bans tragedy from his Republic. In comedy, Socrates gets burned alive in Aristophanes’ Clouds (and it.s considered to be rip roaring funny!). In tragedy, Marlowe.s Faust declares philosophy to be odious. And so on. But finding examples from historiography which disparages the other genres is harder. The last couple of days, I.ve been reading Tacitus, Machiavelli, Livy, and others trying to find references. I haven.t been writing. I.ve debated whether I should just keep writing and leave that section blank. Or stop and do the proper research to go step-by-step. But it could take a loooooooong time to go through the history books in the bookcase: Spengler, Ammianus Marcellinus, Livy, Herodotus, etc.,

Pressfield to the Rescue

Chatting with talented graphic designer and Etsy proprietor EA a few weeks ago, I had asked how she had been able to get all her enterprises to where they are now. She said that the hardest thing was to take action on an idea. I had to agree and saw similar obstacles in my own life. Then she said, ‘There.s a book I.ll lend you, give it a shot!’. The book was The Art of War: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield. As MT had recently been reading Sun Tzu.s The Art of War in preparation for business negotiations (‘always negotiate from a position of power’ and other such fine advice), the Pressfield title–obviously a play on Sun Tzu–intrigued me. ‘The book is really short, you can read it in a sitting’, added EA. Well, I.m in! Nice cover design. The flower growing out of the harsh concrete slab gives readers an idea of what the book will recommend:

The War of Art Cover Illustration

Favourite Quotes from The War of Art

Resistance Only Opposes in One Direction: Resistance obstructs movement only from lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually. So if you’re in Calcutta working with the Mother Teresa Foundation and you’re thinking of bolting to launch a career in telemarketing…relax. Resistance will give you a free pass.

Resistance with a capital ‘R’ is Pressfield.s public enemy number one. It.s the force that holds people back from writing novels, finishing paintings, starting charities (or businesses), getting in shape, or running a marathon. Each of the sections (they.re far too short to be called chapters) focusses on an element of the Resistance and how to overcome it. Pressfield.s thoughts on how Resistance only opposes in one direction left its mark on me because its so true yet so full of mystery. If a telemarketer were debating whether to quit telemarketing and work with the Mother Teresa foundation, Resistance would rear its head. But not the other way around. Is it part of human nature to come up with excuses to do things we.re not happy doing? Strange.

Professionals and Amateurs: Aspiring artists defeated by Resistance share one trait. They all think like amateurs. They have not yet turned pro. The moment an artist turns pro is an epochal as the birth of his first child. With one stroke, everything changes. I can state absolutely that the term of my life can be divided into two parts: before turning pro, and after. To be clear: When I say professional, I don’t mean doctors and lawyers, those of ‘the professions’. I mean the Professional as an ideal. The professional in contrast to the amateur. Consider the differences. The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it’s his vocation. The amateur plays part-time, the professional full-time. The amateur is a weekend warrior. The professional is there seven days a week. The word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning ‘to love’. The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his ‘real’ vocation. The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time. That’s what I mean when I say turning pro. Resistance hates it when we turn pro.

Assiduous reader LH was wondering in a prior post if I.ve left my job. Blogging, after all, requires a bit of time and it would be interesting to see how one could hold down a full time job, commute 2-1/2 hours, and still have the energy left to write for a couple of hours. He.s right: I.ve put a career in the construction industry as an estimator/project manager with Bayside Mechanical behind me to pursue work on writing Paying Melpomene’s Price full time. The blog you.re reading, Doing Melpomene’s Work is meant to be a journal of the writing of the book. This segues into a most interesting topic that will tie back into Pressfield.s quote above.

During the Bayside years, whenever the question came up in conversation, ‘What do you do?’, I could always say, ‘Project Manager’. I experimented for awhile with saying, ‘As little as possible’ but for the most part in the scripted social exchange, you give your occupation and your interlocutor does the same. Since I.ve left Bayside, it.s gotten a little trickier. I see myself as writing full-time and also do some odds and ends in my condo building: sweeping, vacuuming, and helping people out. I also manage an investment portfolio. So I.m a writer (which is not revenue generating), janitor (which is very part time), and a rentier. How do I answer the question, ‘What do you do?’? (wow, I like that double question mark, groovy).

I didn.t really feel like introducing myself as a janitor or a building manager, since the work was so part time that it couldn.t really be considered a position. It.s more like helping out. To call myself a rentier is just bad in today.s ‘Occupy Wall Street’ milieu. We.ve come a long way from 18th century novels like Bronte.s Jane Eyre or Mann.s Magic Mountain or Balzac.s Father Goriot (or even the sitcom Cheers) where the main characters never work and never explain really why they don.t work. That was just the way things were. It was just right. But no longer today. So I was saying I retired. But I feel like that didn.t really cut it either. No one ever said so much, but I felt some people were resentful. I was too young to retire. I hadn.t ‘paid my dues’ so to speak. A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with an old work colleague, GF. We were chatting about the transition and I mentioned some of the things I.m putting to words on this post. I said, ‘I think some people resent it’. He said, ‘I know you.re not showing off or anything, but sometimes it can come across that way’. Well, GF.s one of the most straight up and good guys, so if he says it I trust him. So no more, ‘I retired’. But that still leaves the question: how to answer people asking, ‘What do you do?’?

Back to Pressfield.s quote. I.m going to say from now on that I.m a writer. I.ve gone pro. I.m playing for keeps. And when people ask, ‘Who.s going to read your book’, I.m going to say, ‘Everyone’. Before I used to say, ‘Well, probably no one because who.s really interested in tragic art theory?’. But that.s gotta stop. If I don.t believe in it, who will? I.m writing the book because it.s the most important thing in the whole world. I can say that because I truly believe: tragedy is the art that allows us to value human life, to understand the greatness of its worth. It.s my job to get the message out. Boy I.m glad Pressfield set me straight!

Fear: Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what? Fear of the consequences of following our heart. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. Fear of grovelling when we try to make it on our own, and of grovelling when we give up and come crawling back to where we started. Fear of being selfish, of being rotten wives or disloyal husbands; fear of failing to support our families, of sacrificing their dreams for ours. Fear of betraying our race, our ‘hood, our homies. Fear of failure. Fear of being ridiculous. Fear of throwing away the education, the training, the preparation that those we love have sacrificed so much for, that we ourselves have worked our butts off for. Fear of launching into the void, of hurtling too far out there; fear of passing some point of no return, beyond which we cannot recant, cannot reverse, cannot rescind, but must live with this cocked-up choice for the rest of our lives. Fear of madness. Fear of insanity. Fear of death. These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed.

Wow, did that hit a nerve with you? Pressfield nailed it on the head with that one. I.ve felt and have been destroyed by a lot of those fears: dangerous images flashed into my mind reading the passage. But the last line is true as well. The fear of success. Perhaps the fear of success is that if we do succeed, what.s next?

It.s been a long post, thanks for reading it through. Pressfield.s The Art of War is a thought provoking book. Coming full circle back to the original problem of writer.s block: I had been thinking of reading more and writing less in my book since I had gotten ‘stuck’. But now I know that that.s just the Resistance talking. I.m going to press on. When the solution occurs, I.ll fill that gap in at that time. Thanks for the tip, Pressfield!

Until next time, I.m Edwin Wong, and in Doing Melpomene’s Work, I.m also winning the fight against the Resistance. You can too!

The Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius

Boethius Cover Art Controversy

As far as Penguin covers go, the reproduction from the cover illustration of a thirteenth-century edition of Boethius’ Consolation in the Philosophical Library of New York has to be one of the most confusing:

Boethius Consolation Cover Illustration B&W

This is from the groovy 1969 edition translated by Watts. Okay, I can see Lady Philosophy. But what.s up with Boethius? I can see his hands, he.s holding in the left hand a manuscript and a quill in the right, but something weird is going on with his head. They.ve done something to give the image a sense of depth, but it obscures all the details. Trying to read the letters is impossible. Maybe you need 3D glasses to make things out? In a later 1986 reprint, someone made the right call:

Boethius Consolation Cover Illustration Line

Ah!–so Boethius has his head at a weird angle! I wonder if these old school illustrations with the words written in banners is a precursor to comic book art. And it.s nice to see someone has sewn back together Lady Philosophy.s dress: in the Consolation it had been torn to tatters from all the different philosophical schools each tearing off a square of the ‘true’ philosophy.

Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Tragedy

So I.ve started reading philosophical works since I.m writing the last chapter of Paying Melpomene’s Price. In the rest of the book, tragedy.s been defined by what it is: structure, audience reception, typology, and so on. In the last chapter I want to do something different. I want to define tragedy by what it is not. It is not history. It is not comedy. And it is not philosophy. One thing I.ve noticed reading all these genres is that they are not very fond of one another. Take Boethius’ Consolation. It starts off with Boethius communing with the Muses of tragedy. He is sad because he has been imprisoned on trumped up charges. They are lamenting together. In comes Lady Philosophy. She calls the tragic Muses harlots (yes, she uses those terms: scaenicae meretriculae!) and tells them to scram. She then proceeds to comfort Boethius with the ‘proper’ consolation of philosophy. But if you look in a work of tragedy, philosophy doesn.t come out looking so well: for example Faust calls philosophy ‘odious and obscure’. The ancient quarrel between the genres of philosophy, tragedy, history, and comedy suggest that tragedy can be defined by the generic boundaries that separated each of these disciplines. In the case of Boethius, how Boethius understood philosophy was that it was based on logic and reason. Defined negatively, the logic and reason of philosophy is not the lamenting of tragedy. So that is what I mean by defining something by what it is not. More on this in a later post as I gather up my thoughts.

Etymology of Tragedy (translating Boethius)

But for now, an interesting thing has come up while reading Boethius. Here.s Watts translation of a passage:

But even if you do not know the stories of the foreign philosophers, how Anaxagoras was banished from Athens, how Socrates was put to death by poisoning, and how Zeno was tortured, you do know of Romans like Canius, Seneca and Soranus, whose memory is still fresh and celebrated. The sole cause of their tragic sufferings was their obvious and complete contempt of the pursuits of immoral men which my teaching had instilled in them.

I was interested to see where the word tragic came from. Here.s the Latin:

quodsi nec Anaxagorae fugam nec Socratis uenenum nec Zenonis tormenta, quoniam sunt peregrina, nouisti, at Canios, at Senecas, at Soranos, quorum nec peruetusta nec incelebris memoria est, scire potuisti. quos nihil aliud in cladem detraxit nisi quod nostris moribus instituti studiis improborum dissimillimi uidebantur.

Interesting! Although Latin has the word for words for tragedy (tragoedia, tragicus, and tragoedus) the term Boethius uses is clades which Watts translates into tragedy.

Strange. So I looked up other things in the ancient world that could be understood to be tragedies in the lay sense of the term. The Fire of Rome (the one Nero reputedly started which raged uncontrolled for a week). Or Hannibal.s victories at Lake Trasimene or Cannae (which gave him control of pretty much the whole of Italy). Suetonius and Livy refer to these events as clades as well. They are not tragicus or ‘like a tragoedia’.

Both the Latin and the English terms go back to ancient Greek of course. So there.s where I turned next. What things would we consider to be ‘tragic’ to them? Perhaps the Sicilian Expedition (which put a permanent end to Athens’ hegemony) or The Battle of Salamis (from a Persian standpoint). Again, Aeschylus and Plutarch do not call these events tragoidia but rather sumphora.

So it would appear that the modern sense of the word ‘tragedy’ as in ‘the AIDS tragedy’ or ‘the Challenger tragedy’ or ‘the Chernobyl tragedy’ is completely modern. The ancients had a term for ‘tragedy’ but it could only refer to the art form of tragedy, never to tragedy in terms of a disaster or heartbreaking loss.

Did you know that?–well now you do!

Until next time, I.m Edwin Wong and these are the things that fascinate me on my journey of Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Consilience – Wilson

Consilience is a major work by a major author. It just might be the best book you.ve read in the last decade, or, maybe even two decades. It.s one of those books that, even if you disagree (many will), you have to admire Wilson for his daring and the passion with which he lays out the groundwork of consilience.

Consilience Cover

What is Consilience?

I had originally thought it was a Latin word from con + sileo meaning ‘a silencing together’. But this made no sense. It.s actually from con + salio ‘a jumping together’. Consalio doesn.t appear in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, so it must be a made up word. And that.s strange how the ‘a’ in ‘salio’ becomes an ‘i’. At any rate, consilience is a ‘jumping together’ and from the subtitle ‘The Unity of Knowledge’ it would appear that Wilson is talking about how knowledge converges into a unity through a jump.

The jump is metaphorically the leap of faith that a reductionist approach works. He is humble enough to mention that all bets are off if he is wrong. His thesis is that ethics and religion can be reduced into art; art can be reduced into the social sciences, the social sciences can be reduced into the hard sciences; finally, everything will be expressed in the terms of physics and pure math. He calls this the Ionian enchantment. It is the dream of Thales of Miletus, who thought that water was the basis of all things. Einstein was also ‘Ionian’ in his thought, who thought to find a Grand Unified Theory of physics.

Wison.s background is that of a biologist. His original claim to fame is the study of ant pheromones: in the 1950s he devised an experiment to test his hypothesis that ants communicate through chemical secretions. He might have even been the first to have come up with the idea of pheromones. I wouldn.t put it past him. It is to his credit that in his discussions on pheromones he does not draw undue attention to himself. In the 1980s he came up with the theory of gene-culture coevolution.

I.m sure Consilience will piss off a lot of humanities people. How could the claim that art can be reduced into biology not? Although that.s not his point–that science is superior to art–it can come across like that. He.s arguing for interdisciplinary work, but not with science and the humanities on an equal footing: his approach is built from the sciences up. Science to him is like figured bass in baroque music: it anchors and provides foundation.

But he makes some good points which are too good to ignore. Here.s an example of a ‘consilient’ interpretation of snakes. There.s a lot of people who have an aversion to snakes. Snakes populate myth (i.e. snake in Garden of Eden). Snakes are part of many shamanistic South American rituals. There are a disproportionate amount of dreams featuring snakes (why not elephants or deer?). So far so good? It should be: up to this point things are well documented. So there is something going on between us and the snakes. But what? Well, if you ask Freud you will get one explanation. If you ask the anthropologists you will get another. Their explanations are wrong. Their explanations are wrong because they used too much intuition and not enough analytical science. In Consilience, Wilson argues that our fascination with snakes is genetically based. It is a ‘memory’ encoded in our genes from our descent from the Old World primates. Old World primates and chimpanzees actually have an instinctive fear of poisonous snakes. It is not learned. They make either a chattering sound or a Wah! sound when they see a poisonous snake. This in turn calls their friends to gather around and they carefully watch the snake until it leaves the territory. Our fascination with snakes, then, is part of human nature. His theory is based on hard science: evolution. Take that Freud!

To Wilson, everything–ethics, art, music making–can be reduced into biology which can in turn be reduced into chemistry, physics, and math. He argues with passion, because if he is wrong, then the deconstructionists, postmodernism, Derrida, and de Man are right. And gosh darn it, they can.t be right because they are bad people and they are wrong! Wilson is for hierarchy, order, and meaning. There can be meaning. His adversaries will fight for the opposite. The fight for meaning, order, and hierarchy is the good fight. I tend to agree.

Wilson reminds me a lot of Plato. Plato didn.t think too highly of art. Art distracted one from philosophy, which was emotionless and rational. But Plato would have made a damn fine artist. He is constantly using images and metaphors to explain his philosophy: think of the image of the cave or think of his image of love as two horses guiding a chariot. Even his Socrates is sort of a fictional character. Plato.s philosophy is cold and rational. But the way he gets there is full of art and warmth. While Wilson is not an art denigrator to quite the extent that Plato is, he takes the side of science. What do you expect?–he is a scientist! But he explains things in the terms of myth and art. He uses the image of the Minotaur.s labyrinth to explain consilience. He calls it Ariadne.s thread. In his labyrinth, there are dangerous minotaurs wandering around (I wouldn.t be surprised if they took the form of de Man or Derrida…). Near the entrance to the labyrinth is math. Physics is further in, but still close. Deeper yet in the cave are biology and chemistry. You get the idea. Next are social sciences and then art and ethics are really deep in the cave. If you get lost there, you are minotaur dinner! But what will save the adventurer is Ariadne.s thread. Ariadne.s thread is the faith that it all is rooted in the sciences. And it will guide you into the deepest parts of the cave and you will still be able to find your way out.

Wilson is a damn fine writer too. He writes memorable lines like:

The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.

Even if you don.t agree, don.t you think it.s a beautiful phrase? Oh, have a heart!

He ends Consilience with a look ahead. The problems of the future: ethics of modifying human DNA, dwindling biodiversity (remember, he.s a biologist), too many people and not enough resources. I can.t help but wonder if there.s a certain sadness or tragedy behind achieving consilience: the closer we get, the more resources are expended. This might not be Wilson.s point, will have to reread. It.s a lot to take in in one go.

I will be buying Consilience and rereading it. That should tell you how much I.ve enjoyed it. His chapters on art actually were the most illuminating. I thought they would be weaker since he.s a scientist but he is truly widely read. He.s got lots of other books as well, On Human Nature is supposed to be a classic.

Until next time, I.m Edwin Wong and I.m Doing Melpomene’s Work by reading books outside my comfort zone. That was the best advice I got from a certain professor: ‘If you want to get anywhere, read outside your field’.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – Perkins

How did I come across this most controversial book by Perkins? It all started when world travelling MT got back from a well deserved vacation at Dubai. At Dubai are the seven wonders of the new world: skyscrapers that literally scrape the sky, artificial islands shaped like palm trees, Ferrari dealerships on every corner just like 7-11s in Waikiki. I said, ‘Of course, it must be the oil revenue’. The reply was surprising: ‘Well, no, they don.t actually have oil there’. It turns out some of the Emirates are oil rich, but not all of them. Dubai is not. But for some reason, their infrastructure–that is to say roads, schools, hospitals–is in tip-top shape. They are also a tax free zone. So the question became: if they have no oil and are tax free, how do they get all this money to do all these things? I mean, over here, we have tons of natural resources and there.s all sorts of taxes but the average person on the street complains about the infrastructure and there.s certainly no Burj Khalifa punctuating the Victoria (or Vancouver) skyline. How did Dubai do so well? We couldn.t figure it out. But it was a most interesting question.

Flash forward a few weeks. I.d been asking people. No one seemed to know. One evening, I was on the rooftop talking to Z and her friend A. I recounted to them the words you read in the last paragraph. ‘Ah’, said A, ‘the reason they can do it is because of how supranational agencies controlled by the US such as the World Bank and the IMF funnel money into their economy. What the US gets in return is that US corporations are allowed unlimited access to the local economies’. He was quite sure of this and followed up with, ‘You.ve got to read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins’. Now, it seemed rather odd that the World Bank and the IMF would be lending Dubai money since their mandate is to provide last ditch support to failing economies (i.e. Eastern Europe when communism fell in the 1990s, Western Europe after WWII, and so on). Dubai seems to be doing too well to be getting a ‘rebuilding’ loan. But hey, there are stranger things! And here.s what else: TW also had a copy sitting on his bookshelf (it.s funny how things pop up all over the place after someone mentions it). His verdict: he read it a long time ago but was a good read.

They had a copy in the library. Here.s how it looks:

Perkins, Confession of an Economic Hit Man

I should start by saying my own confession: I didn.t finish it. There is something very wrong with the frame of reference from which the book is written. First, let me provide an example of what I mean by ‘frame of reference’ and then I will give some examples from Perkins’ book.

Frame of Reference

In the 2004 comedy Team America: World Police, the good guys are infiltrating the terrorist organization. You know, to gather intelligence. So they go undercover and in disguise to the restaurant the terrorists frequent. They say, ‘Who can I talk with to join the terrorists?’. The bar goes silent: that was not the right thing to say. While we call them terrorists, the terrorists do not call one another terrorists: they consider themselves freedom fighters; they are doing some kind of service for their communities. The joke is that the team America secret agents are too stupid to figure that out: they can only see things from their frame of reference. If they were more clever, they would have asked something along the lines of, ‘How can I join the movement?’, or something along those lines. That frames of reference can be turned into a joke in a comedy suggests that most people understand what they are: otherwise it wouldn.t be funny.

Perkins’ Frame of Reference

So when young Perkins gets out of university and starts hunting for a job, he gets hired on by an international consulting firm to falsify economic projections. That.s how the evil corporations sell infrastructure projects to unwitting third-world countries: they inflate growth projections to create a perceived need for infrastructure (but don.t countries employ their own statistics bureaus to estimate growth?). Since Perkins doesn.t know a lot about how to do economic projections, the corporation sends him to the Boston public library for three months to do research (really, a company would do this with a new hire?). They also assign their new hire an attractive study partner to accompany him at the library every day and seduce him (wow, you don.t say?). So his marriage gets wrecked in the process. But here.s where it gets strange: his study partner/mistress tells him her job is to transform Perkins into ‘an economic hit man’ or EMH.

This is the part that I just couldn.t believe. There.s lots wrong with the book, but this is what caused me to put it down. It.s a problem with the frame of reference. Let.s say companies do a lot of bad things, I give you that. But they don.t look at it as bad things from their point of view. Take everyone.s favourite example today: oil companies. The word on the street is that they.re poisoning the environment. But if you.re looking to work for an oil company or you.re an oil company executive, you don.t look at it that way: you.re ‘powering the future’ or something like that. They don.t hire new interns and tell them their job is to be ‘environmental hit men’ whose job it is to poison the world! But this is the corporate structure according to Perkins: evil for evil.s sake. To do pure evil is actually quite hard. Just think of all the novels you.ve read in the last ten years: how many have characters that just delight in doing evil, who are motivelessly malign?

It.s the same thing with bribes in Perkins corporatocracy. People give him bribes all the time to falsify economic projections. Now, I.m not saying that bribes don.t happen–they happen all the time. But I.ve never seen it happen quite so transparently. In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man they go down something like this:

Evil Director/Boss/CEO: Perkins I will give you a bribe to falsify the report so we can suck the money out of this unsuspecting Latin American third world country. I am asking because I am an evil capitalist CEO and that.s how evil corporations function.

Perkins: I.m new to this but since this is how you say evil corporations function, sure, I.ll take your money.

Even when Microsoft was taking over the world in the 1990s, they didn.t frame their growth in terms of a maniacal drive to enslave the world: they framed it in terms of coming up with a better spreadsheet, coming up with productivity tools to help businesses thrive, and so on. In Perkins corporatocracy, he and his associates’ frame of reference is pure evil. It.s like a cartoon where Cobra commander or the Decepticons’ one and only goal is to destroy the good guys. While that may be convincing in a cartoon for kids, this is the real world! Sure there are bribes and other nefarious going-ons, but they are never that transparent! Wollstonecraft hits the nail on the head with this quote:

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, which is the good he seeks.

What comes to mind is Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcasts in the 1930s. When it aired, some people actually thought the aliens were attacking. We now laugh at how gullible people were back then. It couldn.t happen to us moderns, who are so much more sophisticated. But to me, Perkins’ Confession of an Economic Hit Man is just as unbelievable. And people take that book to be an accurate representation of how the IMF, World Bank, and international consulting firms work. I am beginning to understand people.s distaste for capitalism: from the point of view of Confession it is very bad. But does Confession speak the truth?

IMF Interest Rates

So I decided to do some research. There.s a lot of backlash on the exorbitant interest rates supranational agencies such as the IMF inflict on distressed countries. But I.ve never heard anyone divulge the actual figures. Greece is an example of a country getting bailed out by the IMF today. How much interest are they paying on IMF loans?

According to this September 2013 article from the German magazine Der Spiegel, Greece is paying 0.7% on the first 80 billion bailout package and 2% on the second 145 billion bailout package. Presumably, Greece is using the proceeds from the bailout packages to pay pensions and public servants and to generally keep their economy afloat. Going to the Bloomberg site tracking ten year Greek bonds, if Greece had secured the money by issuing its own bonds in September 2013, they would have paid 10% at market rates.

What would you have done if you were Greece? Accept loans at 0.7% and 2% from the IMF with conditions (i.e. austerity) or raise the funds by going to the market at 10% (but no strings attached)? It.s not an easy choice, is it?

But Doing Melpomene’s Work is always an easy choice and until next time, I.m Edwin Wong and that.s what I.ll be up to.

Self-Publishing in Canada – Anderson

The self-publishing market is coming of age and there.s a good selection of conventionally published books and self-published ‘how-to’ titles. The Naked Author by Baverstock was reviewed here. Although it had the ‘across the pond’ perspective (she.s based out of the UK), 95% of the information transfers over. As the title suggests, Self-Publishing In Canada: A Complete Guide to Designing, Printing and Selling Your Book by Suzanne Anderson is much closer to home. In fact, Anderson is based out of Duncan, BC, which is 45 minutes north of Victoria. Here.s how the book looks:

Self-Publishing In Canada COVER

A no-nonsence approach to cover illustration.

As diligent readers have come to expect, here.s the back blurb:

DO YOU DREAM OF BEING A PUBLISHED AUTHOR? It is hard to get a book published the traditional way. Today more writers are turning to self-publishing to get their books into the hands of readers quickly. They are also taking control over their book and making money with the first book they sell. Self Publishing in Canada makes the process easy to understand as you are guided step-by-step to publishing your own book. This new edition gives current information for today’s self-publisher to help you get started right away.

The power words with which prospective readers are lured in are: ‘quickly’, ‘control’, and ‘making money’: Anderson has identified the motivations which drive authors to self-publish. By mentioning them on the back blurb, she sells the book to prospective authors. ‘Step-by-step’ is a nice power word as well: the process of self-publishing must appear to aspiring writers like a maze–after all, if it were so easy, why would the behemoth of the publishing industry exist?

Below the back blurb are recommendations from Anderson.s peers (other successful self-published authors) and a reminder to any doubters that this is the book you want: ‘The first edition was the winner of a Writer’s Digest International Self-Published book award’. Good work!

Anderson.s ‘About the Author’ also appears on the back cover:

Suzanne Anderson is an author, publisher and book coach. She is considered to be Canada’s foremost expert in self-publishing. Visit her website at www.selfpublishing.ca

The ‘About the Author’ is a convenient spot to put a website address.

The book itself is as advertised. It covers everything from conception to writing, and from writing to editing and marketing. It is laid out in a series of chapters that flows like a timeline: the beginning chapters covers the gestative aspects of writing and the latter chapters describe how the author sets up the self-publishing business: marketing, incorporation, invoicing, and so on. Anderson writes in a a deliberate, no-nonsense style. She focuses on the structure of the items that she discusses. So ‘book design’ would be broken down into front cover, prelims, text, and back matter. Each of these structures is in turn reduced into finer structures. So ‘back matter’ gets split into: appendix, index, glossary, and bibliography. The analytic approach breaks down the units of the self-publishing experience into manageable pieces.

I Love Checklists

The best thing about Anderson.s book is the checklist at the end. It takes the kernel of the whole book and condenses it into a two page checklist. Here.s how it looks:

Anderson Checklist #1

Anderson Checklist #2

What a terrific idea! Each row on the checklist corresponds to a section in the book. So as the reader goes through the book, decisions can be made as to how far to plan ahead. And once more and more rows are ticked off, you know that the project is getting closer to the happy day!

Life of Castruccio Castracani – Machiavelli

Why History?

The final chapter of the soon to be released (soon as in glacially soon 2017) book Paying Melpomene’s Price: Miscalculated Risk in Tragedy will finish off with a bang. What sort of a bang? Well, sometimes the way to really define something is to define what it is not. In the last chapter will be a discussion of the differences between tragedy, philosophy, history, and comedy. This means I should start reading other genres! Well, it so happens that history is a close second favourite after tragedy. They are in fact quite related. You can get, for instance, tragic history like the Leonidas’ last stand. In a later blog I will disclose what my third and fourth favourite are. So there you have it, assiduous readers: this is the reason why I.m reading The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca by Machiavelli. There will be more histories, philosophies, and comedies to follow.

Why Machiavelli?

I.ve read (and enjoyed) Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Sallust, Caesar, and other ancient Greek and Roman historians. Thinking it.d be a good idea to branch out a bit for the purposes of Doing Melpomene’s Work, I went down to Russell Books to find something new. Boy do they have a big history section! It was overwhelming. The selection confounded me and I left without making a purchase. Stacks and stacks of WWII, WWI, early Canadian exploration, and so on. What is worse, the ones I looked at didn.t read like the ‘narrative’ type history that I was familiar with.

Later that afternoon, while meeting up with MT at Moka House (a well-heeled coffee shop for artists, students, on-duty police, and locals) on Cook street, who did I bump into but my (erstwhile) neighbour SG. SG happens to be a history professor at UVic, so he knows a thing or two about history. I asked him for some tips. He asked what I had read and then had three suggestions: Machiavelli, Ibn Khaldun, and Gibbon. Thanks for saving the day, SG!

Back to Russell Books

Next day, back to Russell Books. Believe it or not, they only had one copy of Machiavelli.s historical works there! It had the History of Florence (which was the recommendation) and also some other works, one of which among them is The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca. Normally, complete works are better. But seeing that this was all they had, well, beggars can.t be choosers! It was a bargain at $4.50 (well actually not so much since the original price was $1.45). No image on amazon or googleimages, here.s a snapshot:

Cover Illustration Machiavelli (The Great Histories Series)

The sparse looking cover is a welcome sight. I could imagine the stone lion guarding the bridges at Florence. It might even date back to Machiavelli.s time but on second thought maybe it.d be more weathered. It.s a sort of noble image that captures what the imagination anticipates in a Machiavelli history: noble, monolithic, distant, from another era.

[edit] There is a note on the front cover illustration inside the book:

Sculpted in sandstone by Donatello circa 1418, The Sitting Lion, also known as The Marzocco, is a Florentine emblem. Designed for a papal residence, this statue now reside in the Mseo Nazionale in Florence.

Back Blurb and ‘About the Author’

Since readers of the blog are becoming experts at analyzing back blurbs, here.s the one from this volume:

Machiavelli–whose name has become synonymous with the cynical, scheming, and immoral–was in truth an idealist with a cold, clear eye on reality. A passionate, courageous patriot, he would have spent his entire career in the active service of a free Florence. But upheavals of war ousted him after fourteen years. Yet his assertion that politics has inherent rules not necessarily related to morality, and his blunt aphorisms–so easily distorted out of context–account for his undeserved notoriety.

For Machiavelli, the historian played a significant pedagogic role. In Th Description of the Affairs of France and the Discourse on the Government of Florence, he viewed history with an eye to contemporary problems. The Life of Castruccio, a romanticized biography, illustrates his ideal of strength.

The major portion of this book is devoted to selections from The History of Florence. Here Machiavelli applied the criteria of success and failure developed in his earlier studies to evaluate his city’s past

Machiavelli was edited by Myron P. Gilmore, Professor of History at Harvard University.

Some thoughts. Wow, if you are a tenured professor at Harvard with an initialed middle name, you don.t need much of an ‘About the Author’ or in this case ‘About the Editor’! Just that you have three initials and work at Harvard suffices. Hmm, maybe I could be Edwin C. Wong. Or, not to be outdone, maybe I could use my Chinese middle name for even greater effect: Edwin C.L. Wong!

The back blurb in this volume gets the attention by dispelling conventions. It also has the advantage of being written from the point of view of someone who appreciates Machiavelli and wishes to recuperate his cold-blooded reputation. Whether Machiavelli was calculatingly cold-blooded I.ll leave it up to you. But to argue for his redemption (‘passionate, courageous patriot…’) is stronger than arguing that he was a prick because the argument for redemption is filled with sympathy and not bile. It.s the same with Homeric scholarship. There there are unitarians–who argue Homer was one person–and analysts–who argue that Homer is not one person but a long tradition epic poets. The analysts are probably correct, but I always liked the unitarians because they were loyal to the genius of one man: they loved the Iliad and Odyssey as artists. The analysts I always thought of as being clinical and dry, without love and fellow-feeling.

Castruccio

Now to the good part. History has one fantastic feature: aphorisms by famous folks. Even if apocryphal, they.re fun. So here.s a reward for diligent readers! Enjoy! These are selections, there.s more in the Life of Castruccio:

When a friend was reproving him for having bought a partridge for a ducat, Castruccio said: ‘You would not have spent more than a soldo on it’. When his friend agreed, he replied: ‘A ducat is worth much less to me’.

That one illustrates the difference between price and value. Castruccio believes in value, not price.

When Castruccio said to a man who was a professional philosopher: ‘You are like dogs who are always hanging around those who can feed them best’; the other replied: ‘We are more like doctors who go to those who need them most’.

Like I was intimating at the beginning of this post, there is some kind of ancient enmity between philosophy, history, tragedy, and comedy.

Castruccio was going to sea from Pisa to Leghorn and was overtaken by a dangerous storm that frightened him badly. One of the men who were with Castruccio accused him of cowardice and said he was not afraid of anything. Castruccio replied that he was not surprised, for each person set the right value on his own soul.

A similar reckoning between the value of a ducat and a soldo in the first aphorism.

On being asked how Caesar died, Castruccio said: ‘Would to God I might die like him’.

I have to remember to use this one. It is awesome. It hits the nail on the head by twisting hackneyed thought on its head: his death was proof that he was Caesar. A lesser tyrant would have lived.

And one more for the road:

When someone asked him a favour, and used a lot of superfluous words, Castruccio said to him: ‘When you want anything else of me send another man’. When a similar person had bored him with a long speech and had ended by saying: ‘Perhaps I have tired you by talking too much’; ‘Not at all’, Castruccio said, ‘because I did not her a word you said’.

Until next time, I.m Edwin Wong and apparently I.m Doing Melpomene’s Work by reading Clio.s works.