Hell Hath No Fury Like Dido Scorned

It’s another Great Books Monday, and when I checked my spreadsheet to see how much progress we’ve made yesterday, I discovered we had passed the 6,000-page mark three weeks ago without my even realizing it. That’s the sort of surprise I could do with a little more often.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book V (GBWW Vol. 12, pp. 153-174)
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book VI (GBWW Vol. 5, pp. 509-537)
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 5 (GBWW Vol. 55, pp. 114-116)
4. “Micromegas” by Voltaire (GGB Vol. 2, pp. 241-256)
5. On Airs, Waters, and Places by Hippocrates (GBWW Vol. 9, pp. 18-39)
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book VI (GBWW Vol. 16, pp. 274-288; in the linked text, it’s the material under the heading “Of Varro’s threefold division of theology . . .” and its subheads)

We’re heavily weighted towards the ancients this week, but you’ll have to indulge me since I’m celebrating a birthday. We still have Dewey in the mix to give us a modern voice.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book IV:  Poor Dido. She’s the plaything of the gods, and then she mistakenly concludes that Aeneas doesn’t care about her when he receives the divine command to leave Carthage. She despairs and kills herself, thus representing (to the Roman mind) the inferior fortitude of Carthage to Rome.
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book V: It’s striking how both sides immediately set about undermining the “50-year truce” to its own advantage. No wonder they were at war again in five years. The affair at Melos shows the complete moral bankruptcy of the Athenians. After all of Pericles’s pretty words in Book II, too.
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 4: I don’t know how I feel about the idea that the class is not in fact a class, but a social group. It seems clear to me that this is where the Great Books people got the idea of “shared inquiry,” but in their case they have a higher authority (the Great Books themselves) to which they defer. It’s not obvious to me how, absent that, a teacher steers the learning process while himself being a member of the group.
4. “Of Studies” by Francis Bacon:  A couple of great aphorisms here in just a few lines: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Also, “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
5. “The Classification of Human Ability” by Sir Francis Galton:  Talk about politically incorrect! Galton would be shouted down at any Western university today if he tried to present this hypothesis. I seem to remember the authors of The Bell Curve arguing for a 60/40 split between the influences of nature and nurture, respectively, and even that caused a firestorm. Of course, Galton’s data set does not measure up to 21st-century standards, but that he was able to put together what he did from available sources is pretty remarkable.
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book V: Here Augustine takes on astrology, classical fatalism, and the ancients’ hankering for glory. How many dragons will he slay before the end of this work? I’d like to know whether any astrologers have ever attempted to answer Augustine; it looks to me like he has pretty well torn the concept apart.

It rained more than three inches in Montgomery over the weekend, and I know some areas got more than that. I suppose it was a good thing since we’ve had drought conditions here for some time. Now the cold weather is back, and I’m going to turn on the fireplace to enjoy a good book.

Spartans Actually Do Surrender Sometimes

Having just come off a weekend where I had the satisfying experience of seeing a live stream of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung from the Met, I feel like I ought to start an opera (or at least a classical music) project. Maybe later; the Great Books are keeping me busy enough at the present.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book IV  (GBWWVol. 12, pp. 136-153)
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book V (GBWW Vol. 5, pp. 482-508)
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 4 (GBWW Vol. 55, pp. 111-114)
4. “Of Studies” by Francis Bacon (GGBVol. 5, pp. 97-98)
5. “The Classification of Human Ability” by Sir Francis Galton (GGB Vol. 8, pp. 227-261; Chapters I and II of Hereditary Genius; pp. 1-49 in the linked edition)
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book V (GBWW Vol. 16, pp. 249-274; in the linked text, it’s the material under the heading “Of fate, freewill, and God’s prescience . . .” and its subheads)

It’s hard to believe we’re halfway through Thucydides already. When we finish him in March, we’ll have completed our second GBWWvolume.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book III:  I couldn’t decide whether the inclusion of Polyphemus, Scylla, and Charybdis in this book were a fitting homage to Homer or a cheap knockoff. The encounter with Andromache was particularly poignant; it’s nice to think that she eventually ended up in a pleasant situation. Why don’t Aeneas and his people simply stay with the Trojans they found? Are they really driven by a divine plan?
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book IV:  There was a lot to keep up with in this book, and a few surprises. The Spartan surrender at Pylos was disappointing, not so much from any Spartan greatness, but rather from the glory that accrued to Cleon as a result. (Remember Cleon was the one who wanted to massacre everyone in Mytilene.) Brasidas is one impressive character, both in diplomacy and on the battlefield.
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 3:  Dewey writes some things in this chapter that sound great. “Preparation” in education means that a person “gets out of his present experience all that there is in it for him at the time in which he has it.” Who wouldn’t want that? I wonder if he’s actually going to be able to explain how that’s to be accomplished in the remaining chapters of this book.
4. Riders to the Sea by John M. Synge:  Well, this was certainly depressing. Maurya loses her sixth son to the sea, and there’s a sense of purposelessness to it. I had a hard time visualizing how this play would be staged. The sort of poverty depicted in the Aran Islands a mere century ago is hard to conceive as well.
5. “Numerical Laws and the Use of Mathematics in Science” by Norman Robert Campbell:  I appreciated how Campbell tried to show the relationship between deduction and induction here. Clearly, Christianity would remove the constant sense of surprise he feels at how our intuitions match things in the real world.
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book IV: Lots more exposure of pagan inconsistency in this section. Why, if Victory is a goddess, ascribe the expansion of Rome’s borders to Jove? If Felicity is a goddess, why not worship her only if the point is to receive earthly benefit? And we mustn’t neglect to point out the great anecdote where the cheeky pirate disses Alexander the Great.

We finally got some winter here in Alabama . . . temperatures in the 20s over the weekend. I know that doesn’t sound like much to many of you, but it was our first time to get well below freezing this season. It has made for some good fireplace reading.

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

[Apologies for the tardy posting here. This post originally was published on Monday, February 6, 2012 at The Western Tradition.]

Do you feel a sense of responsibility when you realize that, when you read the Great Books, you are dealing with some of the most profound and influential documents in the history of the world? I think that some people actively avoid that responsibility. Like the scriptures, albeit to a lesser extent, the Great Books will change you, and many people don’t want to be changed.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book III  (GBWW Vol. 12, pp. 119-136)
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book III (GBWW Vol. 5, pp. 447-481)
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 3 (GBWW Vol. 55, pp. 104-111)
4. Riders to the Sea by John M. Synge (GGB Vol. 4, pp. 342-352)
5. “Numerical Laws and the Use of Mathematics in Science” by Norman Robert Campbell (GGB Vol. 9, pp. 222-238; Chapter VII of What Is Science?)
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book IV (GBWW Vol. 16, pp. 249; in the linked text, it’s the material under the heading “The empire was given to Rome . . .” and its subheads)

We have three 20th-century pieces again this week; I feel so modern and up-to-date!

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book II:  Beware of Greeks bearing gifts! The Trojans got played like a fiddle, being persuaded to take the giant horse inside the city. What a heel Aeneas was to leave his wife behind in the flight from Troy’s destruction. I suppose she had to be removed to set up the love affair with Dido. And poor Priam’s death was pathetic; first he has to watch the death of his son and then he himself is killed.
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book III:  The debates over the fates of Mytilene and Plataea were very unsettling. “Should we kill everyone in Mytilene, or only around 1,000 of them? No consideration of justice will enter into our calculations. We’re only concerned with what’s in our interest.” I hope the irony of this Athenian debate’s following on the heels of Pericles’s funeral oration in Book II is evident. And the Spartans were apparently no better, executing out of hand the men of Plataea to gratify the Thebans after the Plataeans had surrendered themselves to Spartan justice.
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 2:  I wonder if we’ll see Dewey owning a connection to Bacon or Hume. Exalting experience in the educational process goes back all the way to Aristotle in some ways. Dewey’s warnings about “educational reactionaries” seem a bit paranoid today. Would that those reactionaries had been more successful.
4. “My First Acquaintance with Poets” by William Hazlitt:  I learned a lot about Coleridge and a little about Wordsworth from this essay. Russell Kirk pointed to Coleridge as an important figure in conservative thought. Could he have been thought so in 1798, a Unitarian minister rebelling against the poetic conventions of the previous two centuries? It’s a little disheartening to know that Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote their poems in ordinary, everyday English, but that 21st-century students often can’t understand them.
5. “Measurement” by Norman Robert Campbell:  This piece resonated more with me than it would have if I hadn’t read Euclid last year. I remember commenting on the difficulty of working through many of his ideas without recourse to the numerals we take for granted. Campbell asks us to think through what it means to count and measure and what standard is appropriate to use. I’m not sure I followed him all the way through the section on density.
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book III: I’m trying to imagine how a 5th-century pagan would have attempted to answer Augustine’s argument in this book, and I can’t come up with any coherent line of counterargument. I can only imagine the pagan left stewing in his own juice. Augustine simply uses authoritative pagan authors to demonstrate that Roman history had always been plagued by crises and wars going back centuries before Christ. It made no sense to blame 5th-century problems on the abandoning of the worship of gods that had never prevented those kinds of calamities even in the days when their preeminence was undisputed.

After the stress of organizing and hosting an academic conference last week (with lots of help from others), I’m hopeful that this week will be a little more relaxed. That’s not to say I don’t still have more things to do than I can possibly finish, but at least I won’t have certain kinds of deadlines staring me in the face. I hope you’ll find the time to read this week and let me know how your own efforts in that area are proceeding.

The Great Books Are Diversity

Anyone who claims to appreciate diversity should enjoy reading the Great Books. In the past week we read one of the world’s greatest historians, a philosopher who thinks history is for little minds, and authors who variously interpret life as a effort to serve fate, a relationship to God, and a channeling of negative entropy. If that’s not diversity, I don’t know what is.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book II  (GBWW Vol. 12, pp. 99-118)
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book III (GBWW Vol. 5, pp. 417-446)
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Ch. 2 (GBWW Vol. 55, pp. 101-104)
4. “My First Acquaintance with Poets” by William Hazlitt (GGB Vol. 5, pp. 264-279)
5. “Measurement” by Norman Robert Campbell (GGB Vol. 9, pp. 204-221; Chapter VI of What Is Science?)
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book III (GBWW Vol. 16, pp. 208-229; in the linked text, it’s the material under the heading “The external calamities of Rome” and its subheads)

You may have noticed that this is the second time to read a work of St. Augustine parallel to a work of John Dewey. That juxtaposition was not intentional, but it’s turning out to be illuminating.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book I: The influence of Homer is seen in nearly every line of this work, and were it not for the references to the Roman people, Caesar, etc., you could almost believe that Homer wrote this as well. Poor Dido . . . almost from the moment she appears, you know she’s doomed. In this vision, no one can overcome fate; even the gods struggle in vain against it.
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book II: Pericles’s funeral speech is a masterpiece of propaganda; you can easily imagine it coming from the mouth of any U.S. president of the past 60 years. “We’re the greatest in the world; everyone wants to be like us.” It’s such a contrast to the speech of the Athenian embassy to Sparta in Book I: “We’re not going to defend our actions; just think twice before you cross us.” I got creeped out when Pericles said that by praising Athens he had sufficiently praised those who had fallen in its defense.
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Preface-Ch. 1: It’s kind of funny to see Dewey of all people posing as a moderate in educational theory. I suppose it’s a comfort of sorts to read his insistence that we shouldn’t jettison everything traditional simply because it’s traditional. I’m interested to see where he’ll end up in this work.
4. “On Some Forms of Literature” by Arthur Schopenhauer: Clearly, Schopenhauer was a man with strong opinions and not afraid to voice them. Of course I’m going to disagree with him on history, but I see where he’s coming from; too many “history buffs” are much more interested in minutiae than in the big picture of what history can teach us. Schopenhauer tells us what he thinks are the four greatest novels; what’s your top four?
5. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, Chapters 3-7: This piece had some twists and turns. After all the discussion of mutation, I thought that would play a central role in Schrödinger’s conclusions, but then he went off on negative entropy and ended up at free will. A bit confusing, but I appreciated his sense of wonder at the mystery of life, even though he seemed to be confident that eventually science would explain it all.
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book II: Theater buffs, this section probably will not endear Augustine to you. I wonder what he would have thought of Christian efforts to redeem the theater from the Middle Ages onward. I think there’s much to be said for dramatic representation, although I’m the first to acknowledge that the arena is too often a moral cesspool.

I’m knocking on wood to keep up with the readings this week. We’re putting on a conference this weekend at my university, and I have a presentation to get ready before then, along with all the other preparations. I hope that your week will not be as busy as mine!

Augustine Censures the Pagans

On this Great Books Monday, we launch into the reading of the most influential epic (I do not say the greatest) in the history of the West. With Virgil added to the readings from the most important post-apostolic theologian in the Christian church and the most highly regarded historian of the ancient world, I’d say that your brain should swell significantly in the coming weeks.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. The Aeneid of Virgil, Book I  (GBWW Vol. 12, pp. 81-99)
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book II (GBWW Vol. 5, pp. 387-416)
3. Experience and Education by John Dewey, Preface-Ch. 1 (GBWW Vol. 55, pp. 95-101)
4. “On Some Forms of Literature” by Arthur Schopenhauer (GGB Vol. 5, pp. 137-142)
5. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, Ch. 3-Epilogue (GBWW Vol. 56, pp. 481-504)
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book II (GBWW Vol. 16, pp. 187-207; in the linked text, it’s the material under the heading “A review of the calamities . . .” and its subheads)

I almost put Paradise Lost on the list before the Aeneid, but then decided that really wouldn’t make much sense, given the enormous influence of Roman epic on Milton. We’ll read Paradise Lost later this year.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. “I’m a Fool” by Sherwood Anderson: This is the first of Anderson’s stories I’ve ever read. The contrast between the narrator’s self-assured demeanor and the way he castigates himself for his cowardice and dishonesty is striking. His uncertainty regarding how to think about social status was interesting, too. He clearly wants to pigeonhole people as members of a certain class, but then makes all these exceptions for the concrete individuals he discusses in the story.
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book I: I never cease to be amazed at the speeches in this work. They are realpolitik through and through, with barely a nod towards any principles of justice. The Athenians seem to be particularly deficient in their ethics towards people of other states. The brutality of the first naval battle, in which enemy survivors from the shipwrecks were slain in the water rather than taken prisoner, is unsettling.
3. “Of Beauty” by Francis Bacon: This very short essay was actually a little difficult for me to interpret. I was a bit surprised at the assertion that beauty is fullest in the autumn of life rather than in youth. The analogy of virtue in the physical body to a precious stone in an appropriate setting was thought-provoking, too.
4. “First Inaugural Address” by Thomas Jefferson: My wife commented on Jefferson’s humility and how out of place it would seem in today’s political climate. I liked Jefferson’s summary of the foundational principles of the government, a list which, again, would be difficult to imagine coming from the mouth of any president-elect in 2012 (except maybe Ron Paul, who is pretty Jeffersonian). No entangling alliances?
5. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger: I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began this work, but it was refreshing to read about “naive physicists” and the potential limits of human understanding. There’s no Enlightenment hubris here. The discussion of chromosomes wasn’t too difficult to follow. Remember that this was published before the discovery of DNA.
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book I: Augustine takes Christianity’s pagan critics to the woodshed here. It really is bad form to take refuge in a Christian church from barbarian hordes and then attack the institution whose influence saved your life. The argument against suicide is very important as well. Augustine is sometimes criticized as a syncretist, but his willingness to take on the sacred cow of Lucretia is very significant.

I managed to finish last week’s readings on Friday, so I am back ahead of the game. I hope I’m able to keep up this level productivity now that classes are back in full swing.

Queequeg’s Coffin and the Great Man Theory of History

It’s Great Books Monday once again, and I’m feeling really motivated this week. I spent some time yesterday looking over what we’re likely to attack in the next few weeks, and it is really great stuff, starting with our selections for today. Jump right in!

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. “I’m a Fool” by Sherwood Anderson  (GGB Vol. 2, pp. 511-520)
2. History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Book I (GBWW Vol. 5, pp. 349-386)
3. “Of Beauty” by Francis Bacon (GGB Vol. 5, p. 94)
4. “First Inaugural Address” by Thomas Jefferson (GGB Vol. 6, pp. 518-521)
5. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, Preface-Ch. 2 (GBWW Vol. 56, pp. 467-480)
6. The City of God by St. Augustine, Book I (GBWW Vol. 16, pp. 165-187; in the linked text, it’s the material under the heading “Augustin censures the pagans” and its subheads)

I’m making some slight adjustments to how I put the readings together each week because the system I had been using would have resulted in mostly short works needing only one week to complete. It seems to me like we need at least three longer works going each week by this point in the program.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Ch. 133-Epilogue: “Where is the ship?” Talk about horrifying! I have to say that Melville cheated here at the end by trying to slide back into a first-person perspective after hundreds of pages of omniscient narration, during which we found out all about different characters’ states of minds and interior monologues, not to mention private conversations which Ishmael would have had no way of overhearing. Still, it’s hard to imagine a more dramatic conclusion to this story.
2. “Great Men and Their Environment” by William James: James certainly has Herbert Spencer’s number here. This may be the best discussion I have read of the impact of the individual on the course of history. I’m considering making it assigned reading in my Philosophy of History class next year. James is in line with what Ludwig von Mises wrote several decades later about ideas being ultimate data and technologies themselves being the outcome of ideas.
3. Rules for the Direction of the Mind by René Descartes, XVII-XXI: I wonder if it’s possible to blame Descartes for the modern attempt to cram all human actions and relationships into mathematical equations. If so, we can pin the corruption of economics and the social sciences on him. We’d have to establish links between him and more recent thinkers; I know that he influenced John Locke a great deal. It’s interesting to think about.
4. Antigone by Sophocles: Reading this play in tandem with Moby Dick, it was impossible not to see some parallels between Ahab and Creon. Both of them are so bull-headed as not to see divine disapproval staring them in the face, and both lead to the deaths of many people around them. Antigone knows that duties to kin and to the gods trump duties to human rulers, and her courage in observing those duties, although ultimately leading to her death, make her one of literature’s great heroines.
5. “On the Conservation of Force” by H.L.F. von Helmholtz: I always feel so smart when I make it to the end of one of these science pieces and feel as though I understood all of its key points. The big thing for me to take away from this essay was the role of heat production in work, something I very dimly remembered from high school but had never thought through how it fit into the overall conservation of energy.
6. The Politics of Aristotle, Book VIII: I wish I understood the context for Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussion of musical modes. There is a lot to ponder in the brief section on liberal education vs. menial education. Ditto for the section contrasting leisure to amusement.

Through an odd quirk of the calendar, I have no classes to teach until Wednesday of this week. I’m hoping to be able to clear the decks today and tomorrow by tying up a number of loose ends hanging around from different projects. I hope you’re also planning for a productive week.

Breaking Captain Ahab’s Head on an Anvil

We’ve put it off for too long; it’s time to read some ancient Greek drama.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Ch. 133-Epilogue  (GBWW Vol. 48, pp. 246-260)
2. “Great Men and Their Environment” by William James (GGB Vol. 7, pp. 171-194)
3. Rules for the Direction of the Mind by René Descartes, XVII-XXI (GBWW Vol. 28, pp. 257-262; I could not find a complete version of this work online, but this site contains at least the summary of each rule. Here is a volume containing the entire text.)
4. Antigone by Sophocles (GBWW Vol. 4, pp. 159-174)
5. “On the Conservation of Force” by H.L.F. von Helmholtz (GGB Vol. 9, pp. 451-484)
6. The Politics of Aristotle, Book VIII (GBWW Vol. 8, pp. 542-548)

I’ll be sorry to bid farewell to Ishmael and the crew of the Pequod, but we’ve had a great voyage. We’re also finishing the Politics and Descartes’s Rules this week, giving us more closure than we’ve enjoyed in a single week up to this point.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Ch. 102-132: Ahab fascinates me. I have an idea for a post drawing an analogy between him and a modern corporate CEO. The exchanges with Starbuck draw out some great contrasts, but I also like the part where he offers to lay his head on the blacksmith’s anvil so the crease in his brow can be smoothed. I’m intrigued by all the supernatural overtones as well, from the tempering of the harpoon with heathen blood to the lightning storm.
2. “Of Repentance” by Michel de Montaigne: I was a bit surprised to see this veer into a commentary on old age near the end, but this is one of the few places where Montaigne shows his Christian faith and the necessity of submission to the divine will. I’ve had mixed reactions to several of his essays, but there were some fine passages in this one.
3. Rules for the Direction of the Mind by René Descartes, XII-XVI: I’m going to have to go back and look at some of these again this week. I did like his insistence on understanding the question before attempting to find an answer. It’s easy to see how this method will be applied very usefully to the physical sciences; its applicability to questions involving the “human element” is much less certain.
4. “Of Seditions and Troubles” by Francis Bacon: The analytical portion of this essay was stimulating, and from the point of view of a ruler, I suppose the counsel was pretty effective as well. Not having read Bacon in several weeks, I was struck all over again by the classical quotations.
5. “Probability” by Pierre Simon de Laplace: I enjoyed the clear exposition of the mathematical concept here. His discussion of convention and the assigning of intelligent design to certain patterns with which we are familiar reminded me of Hume for some reason. This whole notion of being able to solve all problems through the application of probability led Adler to comment, “His was not an age of intellectual humility.”
6. The Politics of Aristotle, Book VII: Some things here obviously I would shy away from: selective infanticide, etc. Still there are several important ideas lost on the modern mind here. For example, the natural limits to the size of the city is a notion that we really need to recover.

It’s a rainy day here in Montgomery, and unfortunately I have to head out into it shortly. We’ve had spring-like weather for several days, but the cold is scheduled to return soon. I’m looking forward to some Great Books by the fire.