Rome Falls

[N.B. This post was originally made about ten months ago at my Western Tradition website. Apologies for the long delay in cross-posting here.]

I am making good on my promise to resume the Great Books Project posts. True, I’m doing it about one year later than I had intended, but better late than never. The laptop on which I had been drafting posts and keeping track of all the readings died, and that derailed me for some time.

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book II, Chapters 11-21 (GBWW Vol. 51, pp. 86-110)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXVII (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 593-608)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 75-76 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 378-399)
4. Sonnets XXVI-XXX by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 25, p. 590-591)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XX, heading “Ambiguity of Retinal Impressions” to end (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 602-635)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book IX (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 743-757)

It’s really hard to pick up the thread of several tough works like these at once after not having read them for so long! I’m sure many of you know that feeling.

Here are some observations from the last set of readings:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book II, Chapters 1-10: These chapters follow the activities of Rostov and Prince Andrew as they accompany General Kutuzov’s army through Austria in the autumn of 1805. The fighting against the French goes badly. Rostov gets caught up in some drama over a purse stolen by a fellow officer, and Prince Andrew has his hopes for promotion frustrated. Tolstoy dwells on the less admirable features of an aristocratic officer corps: the nepotism, jockeying for position, etc. However, I suspect things aren’t all that different in the modern military.
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXVI: It all comes crashing down in this chapter (in the West at least). Genseric and the Vandals sack Rome (after another heroic intervention from Pope Leo saved many people). The pillaging lasted a full two weeks, and nothing of value was left at the end of it. Bishop Deogratias of Carthage stepped up and sold much of the Church’s treasure to buy and free many slaves Genseric brought back to Africa. He also converted churches into hospitals to alleviate the suffering of the captives. There followed a bewildering string of ineffective emperors acting as pawns for barbarian rulers. Odoacer finally put the imperial dignity, “that useless and expensive office,” out of its misery in 476 by deposing Romulus Augustulus and ruling directly. After centuries of decline, Italy now “exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation.”
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 71-74: In response to many of the objections about the ordering and activity of the fifth, sixth, and seventh days of creation, St. Thomas continues the refrain, “The authority of Scripture suffices.” I liked this statement rebutting the objection that water can’t bring forth fish (Day 5) because it’s representative: “But at the first beginning of the world the active principle was the Word of God, which produced animals from material elements, either in act, as some holy writers say, or virtually, as Augustine teaches. Not as though the power possessed by water or earth of producing all animals resides in the earth and the water themselves, as Avicenna held, but in the power originally given to the elements of producing them from elemental matter by the power of seed or the influence of the stars.”
4. Sonnets XXI-XXV by William Shakespeare: More musings on death in this group of sonnets, but there was some variety as well. I particularly liked number XXIV, which utilized an extended metaphor of painting: the poet’s eyes are a painter that paint the woman’s beauty in his heart, and his body is the painting’s frame. The woman’s eyes “Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun/Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.”
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XX, heading “The Summation of the Sense-spaces” to heading “Ambiguity of Retinal Impressions”: James begins this section by asking how the various sense-spaces get combined into a continuous whole. His response is that the mind automatically “locates together” sense-perceptions that can be attended to together even though each sense-organ is really its own little universe. He then rebuts contemporaries who argue that all sensation originates in the muscles, arguing that surfaces are what really matter. He cites evidence that joint surfaces are sensitive, for example. He argues that muscular contraction is only an indirect source of spatial perception. After an interesting discussion of how blind people are able to perceive space, he works to integrate vision into the combination of senses that take part in the process. We end up with a pretty technical description of images on the retina and how the eyes work together.
6. The Laws of Plato, Book VIII: This book combines discussion of what most moderns would consider common-sense laws on theft and the moving of property lines with what most moderns would consider horrible: severe restrictions of commerce, close prescription of athletic contests, and clamping down on illicit sexual activity. Introducing the section on sexual regulation, the Athenian states, “I could not help thinking how one is to deal with a city in which youths and maidens are well nurtured, and have nothing to do, and are not undergoing the excessive and servile toils which extinguish wantonness, and whose only cares during their whole life are sacrifices and festivals and dances. How, in such a state as this, will they abstain from desires which thrust many a man and woman into perdition; and from which reason, assuming the functions of law, commands them to abstain?” How, indeed? Many readers, especially those who have encountered the Symposium, will probably be surprised to see the hard line the Athenian takes against homosexual acts here.

I have high hopes of making another Great Books Project post within a week. I’ll be spending quite a bit of time alone in airports and on airplanes this weekend, and with the Great Books of the Western World entirely on my iPad now thanks to Noet, I should be able to get a lot of reading done. I also hope to begin posting on other topics a bit more regularly going forward.

Our Troubles May Be Over

Yes, yes, I know it has been forever since my last post here, but I’m happy to say my troubles with GBWW portability that have prevented me keeping up with the Great Books Project over the last year or two may be over in the near future.

Take a look at this product.

I have been waiting for an affordable electronic version of the GBWW series for a long time. This tool promises not only the 60 volumes of text, but also cross-links to all the Syntopicon references for the Great Ideas. Watch the video at the site to learn more.

All of you should pre-order this immediately for two reasons:

1. The price will double in a couple of days.
2. The sooner they reach the needed pre-order threshold, the sooner they’ll develop the software.

I get no commission or consideration of any kind for recommending this, but do me a favor and help get this thing on the market so I can make Great Books Project posts from the road!

Plato Channels Nigel Tufnel

Great Books Project posts in consecutive weeks? That hasn’t happened in a while! Let’s get right to it.

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book II, Chapters 1-10 (GBWW Vol. 51, pp. 60-86)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXVI (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 571-593)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 71-74 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 367-377)
4. Sonnets XXI-XXV by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 25, p. 589-590)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XX, heading “The Summation of the Sense-spaces” to heading “Ambiguity of Retinal Impressions” (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 570-602)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book VIII (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 731-743)

I believe we finish the Summa’s subdivision on the creation this week, so I’ll take another look at whether to keep plugging along in that work or to take a break. It might be good to shake things up a little since we’ve been in the same six works for several weeks now.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book I, Chapters 22-28: Again it seems like there’s an indeterminate passage of time. The count dies, and then we learn after a change of setting that Pierre has been declared legitimate and has inherited the estate, leaving the princesses with very little. Andrew leaves his wife with his father and sister as he heads off to war. His father loves Voltaire and hates anything smacking of the Romantic. Andrew himself appears to have some real feelings, but the narrative so far makes him out to be afflicted by a disdain for everyone around him. The sister seems to be the only one we should be rooting for right now.
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXV: Somehow I had never known that Attila had been repulsed from Gaul; the Romans and Visigoths together were too much for him, but the Visigoths couldn’t be bothered to defend Italy. I love the story of Leo the Great’s intercession on behalf of the city of Rome with Italy. Even Gibbon reluctantly acknowledges Leo’s accomplishment in turning Attila’s army away from the city. Attila died soon afterward, and Gibbon ends the book with a narrative of Valentinian’s decline and death.
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 68-70: These questions comprise St. Thomas’s discussion of the second, third,and fourth days of creation. Several of the articles seemed to me to be attempts to answer weird questions only philosophers could have thought of, e.g., whether it was appropriate for plants to appear on Day #3 (a day of “distinction” rather than a day of “adornment”). Over and over again, after rehearsing objections, he writes, “On the contrary, the authority of Scripture suffices.”
4. Sonnets XVI-XX by William Shakespeare: The dominant theme of procreation fades a bit in this group of sonnets, but there’s still an emphasis on the destructive nature of Time. One of Shakespeare’s best-known poems—“shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”—is in this group. I remember having memorized that one at some point in grade school, but I can’t recall it all now on demand. 
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XX, beginning to heading “The Summation of the Sense-spaces”: This chapter is shaping up to be a rough one. James begins by positing that our understanding of space grows out of our sensations of “voluminous,” whether in sight, touch, etc. He believes that one can sense space without having any grasp of spatial order, that this grasp is learned. Space-relations are “nothing but sensations of particular lines, particular angles, particular forms of transition,” etc. We thus mentally subdivide space through these space-relations, ordering objects by locality, size, and shape. James goes into great detail about this “construction of ‘real’ space.”
6. The Laws of Plato, Book VII: I do not have a very good handle on Plato’s treatment of music. He clearly thinks it to be extremely important in moral instruction and wants to prescribe specific modes of playing. However, I don’t think I get what’s in back of it all. (I couldn’t help hearing, “D minor is the saddest of all keys,” in my mind.) I noticed that near the end of the book he outlined the quadrivium as a curriculum. He got very specific on gymnastic in this section as well, but that seemed to be in tension with his declaration that nothing really good is ever learned from war, for which is gymnastic prepares one.

I’ve managed to reunite with my family, albeit in a timeshare about a 100-minute drive from Montgomery. Commuting this week is a bear, but it’s worth it. Internet accessibility is almost nonexistent here, so I consider a post of any length this week a victory.

Don’t Trust Anyone Under Fifty

My high hopes for summer reading were disappointed as I took on new job responsibilities and my family went through a move (and is actually still going through it—we have been between houses for more than a month). I lost access to my Great Books of the Western World volumes for several weeks as part of that process. However, I’m back on campus now and hoping to get this project back on track!

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book I, Chapters 22-28 (GBWW Vol. 51, pp. 41-59)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXV (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 558-571)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 68-70 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 354-367)
4. Sonnets XVI-XX by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 25, p. 589)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XX, beginning to heading “The Summation of the Sense-spaces” (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 540-570)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book VII (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 713-731)

Chapter XX of Principles of Psychology is nearly 100 pages long, so I thought it would be wise to break it up into more manageable sections. It may take us a month to get through at this rate, but I prefer that to the overload sure to occur if we try to do the whole thing in one go.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book I, Chapters 15-23: I’m not clear on the passage of time here, but apparently some has already passed. Pierre has established himself as a ne’er-do-well, Boris and Natasha are in love, and the Count’s relatives are scheming about his will as he lies on his deathbed. If Pierre is declared legitimate, and the Count’s will is valid, Pierre gets all the money.
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXIV: In this chapter Gibbon treats us to a portrait of Attila the Hun, a real piece of work. For twenty years he was a thorn in the Romans’ side; he forced the eastern empire to pay what can only be described as a humiliating annual tribute and required it to follow his lead in foreign policy. Props to the city of Azimuntium, which made itself such a problem for Attila that he decided not to devote his resources to conquering it. Gibbon makes Theodosius II out to be a complete loser.
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 65-67: These questions lead off St. Thomas’s treatise on the six-day creation. In other words, the focus here is on the physical/material/corporeal creation as opposed to the purely spiritual beings treated in the earlier section. St. Thomas affirms that God did create matter and that it reflects his goodness, but that he did it without using angels as a medium. He works in a rebuttal of the Platonic conception of forms here. There’s also a discussion of the empyrean heaven as a sensible place with Genesis 1:1 as the proof text. Question 67 deals with the first day specifically, and I was intrigued to see St. Thomas anticipate the objection voiced by so many today, that you can’t read Genesis 1 literally because the chapter states there was light on the first day but no sun. 
4. Sonnets XI-XV by William Shakespeare: And yet more sonnets about beauty and the need for procreation to preserve it. I like Sonnet XV, where Shakespeare declares his intention to immortalize the youth’s fleeting beauty in verse; I guess we have to say he succeeded.
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XIX: James defines perception as “the consciousness of particular material things present to sense.” It is different from sensation (which James denies ever happening in adulthood) in that it conjures in the mind remoter facts about the material thing beyond what the senses apprehend. This is why perception is “baffled” to some degree when we look at things upside-down or repeat a single word ad nauseam. James discusses several kinds of illusions, or false perceptions, when our brains make associations that aren’t really there. He summarizes perception by saying part of it comes from our senses and part from out of our own heads.
6. The Laws of Plato, Book VI: The Athenian begins this book by asserting that good laws are useless without good offices for their administration. He recommends that no one be eligible for a guardianship until at least age 50. This strikes me as a wise policy that would have spared the USA not only Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt, but JFK, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama as well. However, it also would have kept Grover Cleveland out his first time around. Plato is sensitive to abuse of the word “equality”—would that more people were today—and discusses different senses in which the term is used and how the legislator should hope to bring it about.

Pity me, my friends. Without a house in Montgomery at the moment, I have been separated from my family for almost two weeks. They are at my in-laws’ house in Texas as I get the fall semester underway in campus housing here in Alabama. I am counting the seconds until my reunion with them. I must rely on the Great Books to see me through this trying period.

Angels Weren’t Created Happy

We are down in the weeds in the midst of six lengthy works this week in the Great Books Project and will be for some time. Fortunately, my enthusiasm for recently resuming the project should keep me from getting bogged down.

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book I, Chapters 15-23 (GBWW Vol. 51, pp. 26-41)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXIV (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 545-558)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 65-67 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 339-354)
4. Sonnets XI-XV by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 25, p. 587-588)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XIX (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 502-539)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book VI (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 697-713)

I decided that since we are already more than halfway through this project, but are still not halfway through GBWW’s Summa selections, we need to stick with St. Thomas for now. Thus we move on into the treatise on the work of the six days.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book I, Chapters 1-14: Tolstoy certainly doesn’t seem to want the reader to have a favorable view of the Russian aristocracy; almost everyone is shallow and hypocritical. You can tell there will be a million characters. I was already losing track of them in these first 25 pages. I suppose the most fun part was the argument over whether Napoleon was a great man. Can anyone comment on the quality of the 1956 film version with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda? I haven’t seen it, but am wondering whether to give it a try.
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXIII: This was a short chapter focusing mostly on the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. Gibbon records the controversy over Donatism and the siege of Hippo, during which St. Augustine died. My favorite passage was the recounting of the tale of the seven sleepers, which I had never heard of before.
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 59-64: Angels have free will without fleshly appetites, according to Question #59. By nature they love God more than they love themselves. They are not eternal; citing Genesis 1:1, St. Thomas asserts that they did not preexist the corporeal world (take that, Milton!). They were not created in happiness, else none of them would have fallen; in fact, they needed grace to turn to God as the object of their happiness. However, they do merit their happiness. Angels can sin, but only the sins of pride and envy. The devil “sinned at once after the first instant of his creation” and fell immediately. This section was a lot to take in, and I’ll have to revisit it at some point to think about these conclusions further.
4. Sonnets VI-X by William Shakespeare: This block of sonnets contains more admonitions to marriage and childbearing like we saw in the first set of five. Sonnet #9 contains this theme, and it seems to be addressed to a man: “Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye/That thou consumest thyself in single life?” Sonnet #8 has an interesting metaphor of the strings of an instrument as members of a family (or vice versa).
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XVIII: I had to gloss over this chapter for lack of time. It looks like James continues with the theme of mental processes, in this case imagination, being underlay by neural processes. He concludes that the difference in the neural processes between sense and imagination is one of intensity, not of locality in the brain. 
6. The Laws of Plato, Book V: “Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both to Gods and men; and he who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool.” This book is full of statements like this one, so I was able to make it through even though the whole thing is one long speech by the Athenian and contains a call for a prohibition on private ownership of gold and silver.

It’s melting weather here in Alabama and most likely will be for at least the next 90 days. I’ll be staying inside watching my electric bill creep up and up. I hope you will be able to find an air-conditioned place to read something good this week.

Riding to Heaven on a Dung Beetle

It feels great to be able to make another one of these Great Books Project posts after so long a hiatus. To let you all know how serious I am about getting back into this routine, this week we’re pulling out the Mt. Everest of novels. You know the one . . .

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Book I, Chapters 1-14 (GBWW Vol. 51, pp. 1-25)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXIII (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 537-545)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 59-64 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 306-338)
4. Sonnets VI-X by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 25, p. 587)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XVIII (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 480-501)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book V (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 697)

This week will wrap up the treatise on angels in the Summa. I haven’t decided yet whether to push forward in that work or take a break.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. Peace by Aristophanes: It’s so odd how Aristophanes takes the subject of war and treats it preposterously. Trygaeus flies a giant dung beetle to the home of the gods, warning the audience as he flies that they must not defecate or pass gas for the next three days so as not to distract his mount. When he finds most of the gods absent, he knowingly thwarts Zeus’s will by bribing Hermes to discover Peace’s location and then digging her out of the well where she was buried. He returns triumphantly to Athens and gets a wife out of the deal as well. According to Wikipedia, this play was staged in 421 B.C. shortly before the Athenians and Spartans actually did sign a truce. 
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXII: Gibbon heaps praise on Theodosius, but has no regard for his successors. Much of this chapter revolves around the abuses of the eunuch Eutropius, who confiscated nobles’ property to enrich himself until the empress maneuvered to have him executed. Lots of sordid stuff like that here.
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 54-58: These questions deal with the knowledge of angels: whether they know themselves, other immaterial things, material things, etc. St. Thomas concludes that the do know themselves as well as each other and God (in the sense that other created beings can know God). However, he insists that angels do not know future events “in themselves” in the way God does; they can only know the future “in its cause.”
4. Sonnets I-V by William Shakespeare: I wasn’t expecting the multiple admonitions to marriage and childbearing: “But if thou live, remember’d not to be,/Die single, and thine image dies with thee.” I couldn’t figure out #5.
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XVII: Here James begins a sequence of three chapters that “treat of the processes by which we cognize at all times the present world of space and the material things which it contains.” This chapter deals with sensation, which James says is different from perception. In the debate whether contrasts in sensation are psychological or physiological, James sides with the physiological side. He completely rejects the theory of “eccentric projection” of sensations according to which sensations originate in the mind and then are made to appear as being located outside it. I was pleased to find that it wasn’t too difficult to ease back into this work.
6. The Laws of Plato, Book IV: “There neither is nor ever will be a better way of establishing a polity than by a tyranny.” Maybe so, but it’s much harder to keep it going that way, as Plato admits. I was a bit surprised to read the sections advising the mingling of persuasion with coercion, to persuade the people that the laws are in their best interest because they help them to develop virtue. The end of the book sets us up for a major speech by the Athenian.

Every year I have this fantasy that the summer will be a nice, relaxing time. Then summer actually arrives and I find myself with a project list as long as my arm. I’ve finished the Liberty Classroom course and presented successfully at a conference last week, but there’s much more to do. At the moment our house in on the market, I have a book review to write, and there’s a big pile of grading to do for both spring and summer classes. C’est la vie.

You Are Not a Trojan Woman. Count Your Blessings.

It’s a new year, we’re passing the 4,500-page mark in the Great Books Project’s Science and Mathematics category, and I am already a week behind! Let’s get right to it.

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. Peace by Aristophanes (GBWW Vol. 4, pp. 748-769)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXII (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 523-545)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 54-58 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 284-306)
4. Sonnets I-V by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 25, pp. 586-587)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XVII (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 452-479)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book IV (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 677-686)

After finishing Milton’s corpus last week, I couldn’t help hanging on to early modern English poetry a while longer. Indulge me.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. The Trojan Women by Euripides: Remember what I said about Euripides being light reading? Forget that, at least in terms of emotional weight. The prospects facing the Trojan women at the end of the war are gut-wrenching, and the military execution of the infant Astyanax is just too much. I was glad to see some glimmers of conscience from the herald who kept bringing them the bad news. There’s lots of railing at the gods in this one. I thought the introduction with Athena and Poseidon was curious; it doesn’t seem to fit very well with the rest of the play unless it’s to plant the seed of understanding that the Achaeans are going to get theirs, too.
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXI: “If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.” In other words, the Roman government was exceedingly incompetent at this point, and the result was the sack of Rome. The comparison of the Roman response to Alaric with its response to Hannibal more than six centuries earlier was well done, as was the comparison with the sack of Rome by Charles V’s troops in the 1520s. I was surprised to see such a long quotation from Ammianus Marcellinus here, but I have to say it was on point.
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 50-53: I suppose the first article of Question 50 is St. Thomas’s answer to the question that the chronological snobs keep saying was the fixation of medieval philosophy: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? St. Thomas’s answer in effect: the question contains a false premise, that angels are at least partially corporeal. It’s interesting that one of the objections the idea that angels are incorruptible is a quote from Plato’s Timaeus. The discussion of the locations and movements of angels got pretty intricate.
4. Translations of Psalms 80-88 by John Milton: My comments from last time on these psalms pretty much hold for this batch. I did particularly like Psalm 84, especially verse 10: “For one day in thy Courts to be/Is better, and more blest/Then in the joyes of Vanity,/A thousand daies at best.” We now bid Milton a fond farewell.
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XVI: I don’t have much to say about this chapter. I still feel off balance reading this work, although I find a lot of it very interesting. I like the way James frames the issue of memory and the way he explores why we remember some things while forgetting the vast majority of what we experience. This melancholy sentence jumped out at me: “But there comes a time of life for all of us when we can do no more than hold our own in the way of acquisitions, when the old paths fade as fast as the new ones form in our brain, and when we forget in a week quite as much as we can learn in the same space of time.” May this time be yet far off for all of us!
6. The Laws of Plato, Book III: I sometimes assign this passage to graduate students when I teach my seminar on government. No one ever seems to know what to make of the just-so story of how governments and laws arose after the deluge (the Greek memory of which is intriguing). The Athenian’s “principles of rule” are jarring to a democratic age: 1. Parents rule their offspring; 2. The noble rule the ignoble; 3. The elder rule the younger; 4. Masters rule slaves; 5. The strong rule the weak. I suppose he’s just being descriptive, but everyone seems to endorse these principles.

After all the traveling in 2014, it’s a bit of a relief to return home with no trips planned until the last week of March, which is my spring break. I have a heavy teaching schedule this semester as usual, but I’m hoping to make up some ground on these readings after falling behind in the second half of 2014. All encouragement in the comments is welcome!

“I Would My Horse Had the Speed of Your Tongue.”

This week in the Great Books Project we finish off the last of the John Milton volume and start Thomas Aquinas’s treatise on angels. We’ll also read about the Visigoths’ sack of Rome if my guess is right. All this as we pass the 21,000-page mark in our reading plan!

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. The Trojan Women by Euripides (GBWW Vol. 4, pp. 363-382)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXXI (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 495-523)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 50-53 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 269-284)
4. Translations of Psalms 80-88 by John Milton (GBWW Vol. 29, pp. 78-90)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XVI (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 421-451)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book III (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 663-677)

Normally I wouldn’t consider Euripides light reading, but I think he will be in the middle of this batch.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare: I can’t read this play without picturing the Kenneth Branagh film version, which was my first exposure to the text. I appreciate Joss Whedon’s take as well, but the 20th-century California setting doesn’t quite speak to me the way Tuscany does. Beatrice and Benedick have so many great one-liners here, but the Constable very nearly steals the show with all his malapropisms. My favorite is the line about being “condemned into everlasting redemption.”
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXX: Things are definitely going downhill. The chapter recounts two invasions, the bigger by the Visigoth king Alaric. Gibbon portrays Honorius as utterly hopeless: “The emperor Honorius was distinguished, above his subjects, by the pre-eminence of fear as well as of rank.” Stilicho had to save his bacon when he was about to be captured after a ling flight from Milan. This chapter also contains a brief account of the abolition of gladiatorial combat in Rome, with Gibbon extending grudging acknowledgment to Telemachus, the Christian monk who was martyred while attempting to separate combatants in the arena. 
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 47-49: St. Thomas argues that the unity of God produces distinction and hierarchy in the creation, but he also states that God created only one world, by which I understand him to mean “universe.” Take that, Prof. Hawking. In the next question he argues for the privation theory of evil. Moreover, since evil is merely an absence of good, something good must in some way have originally been the cause of evil.
4. Translations of Psalms 1-8 by John Milton: I’m not quite sure what to think about these renderings. On the one hand, they sound more archaic and awkward than the psalms in the King James Version, which predates these by nearly half a century. Milton was trying to put the square peg of Hebrew poetry into the round hole of an English meter and rhyme scheme, and that had to involve many contortions. On the other hand, I’m really impressed that he was able to make anything out of it at all.
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XV: This chapter on the passage of time has its expected share of head-scratching: “Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming. . . . Reflection leads us to the conclusion that it must exist, but that it does exist can never be a fact of our immediate experience.” Heavy. James stresses that our sense of past time is actually a present sensation. His use of the term “specious present” was unfamiliar to me; I assume he meant something like short-term memory by it.
6. The Laws of Plato, Book II: Plato is quite frankly elitist: “The excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be that of chance persons; the fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one man who is pre-eminent in virtue and education.” This way of thinking, whatever its merits, can’t make it to first base in a culture, like ours, where no one can agree on standards. Later in the book the Athenian revisits the regulation of drinking, and I was struck again by how seriously everyone took it.

I set off on my last trip of the year tomorrow morning and will return after the New Year. Look for the next project update and a 2014 retrospective around Jan. 3. Merry Christmas!

Back to Cloud Cuckoo Land

Another month has been lost as a result of my extensive travels, but I continue pressing forward with the Great Books Project. The next round of readings includes a Shakespeare favorite, so there is no excuse to stop now!

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare (GBWW Vol. 24, pp. 503-531)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXX (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 477-495)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 47-49 (GBWW Vol. 17, p. 256-269)
4. Translations of Psalms 1-8 by John Milton (GBWW Vol. 29, pp. 71-77)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XV (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 396-420)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book II (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 653-663)

I believe Milton’s translations of the Psalms are the last of his works we’ll read, so we are very close to finishing another GBWW volume.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. The Birds by Aristophanes: In case you haven’t noticed by this point, disrespecting the gods is always a bad idea in Greek literature, so I’m surprised Aristophanes lets the birds get away with their “usurpation” of the realm between the gods and men. I had a hard time visualizing a staging of the play; I suspect that’s why I didn’t find it as funny some of the other comedies we’ve read.
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXIX: After my hiatus, I couldn’t help but be struck with the elegance of Gibbon’s prose all over again. “The genius of Rome expired with Theodosius, the last of the successors of Augustus and Constantine who appeared in the field at the head of their armies, and whose authority was universally acknowledged throughout the whole extent of the empire.” Rufinus, by contrast, is “an odious favorite” for whom we shed no tears when he receives his just deserts. This chapter includes the final division of the empire into eastern and western halves. I couldn’t help but cringe a little at the description of Honorius near the end; his subjects discovered that he was “without passions, and consequently without talents.”
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 44-46: Now that St. Thomas has completed his treatment of the Trinity, he moves into a treatise on the Creation. The positions he advances are not too surprising: God is the Creator of all things; God is the telos of all things; all the persons of the Trinity participate in the act of creation. My head started to spin the same way it did with St. Augustine when St. Thomas started talking about the beginning of time.
4. “A Custom of the Island of Cea” by Montaigne: The title of this essay is a bit misleading because Montaigne doesn’t get around to Cea until the last couple of paragraphs. The whole thing, though, is about peoples who have some sort of custom of suicide when they determine their time has come. Montaigne relates anecdotes of people who drink poison at a ripe old age and of towns that commit mass suicide when surrounded by a superior military force. It’s all very gruesome.
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XIV: This chapter was a bit dense, but it’s clear that James views the mental function of association as extremely important. He writes that is the result of “neural habit,” and argues that “when two elementary brain-processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one of them, on reoccurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other.” Pavlov’s dogs immediately come to mind. Apparently not everyone in James’s day accepted that the mind works in such a way, and he devotes several pages to rebutting their arguments.
6. The Laws of Plato, Book I: An Athenian, a Spartan, and a Cretan walk into a bar . . . you can tell even this early in the work that Plato sounds less utopian here than in the Republic. I thought the discussion hardship vs. luxury was a bit surprising, and the part about drunkenness was really interesting.

I have another few weeks of traveling coming up, so I’m not entirely confident the posts will be regular through the end of 2014. I will do my best, however. The spring semester looks very calm compared to what I have been through the last few months, so I anticipate a lot of catching up then.

Many a True Word Hath Been Spoken in Jest

I’ve been putting off for some time, but the time has finally come to dig into Plato’s Laws. It will be a heavy week with that, Aquinas, and James, but Aristophanes will lighten things up a bit.

Here are the readings for the coming week:

1. The Birds by Aristophanes (GBWW Vol. 4, pp. 770-797)
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXIX (GBWW Vol. 37, pp. 468-477)
3. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I, Questions 44-46 (GBWW Vol. 16, p. 238-256)
4. “A Custom of the Island of Cea” by Michel de Montaigne (GBWW Vol. 23, pp. 206-213)
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XIV (GBWW Vol. 53, pp. 360-395)
6. The Laws of Plato, Book I (GBWW Vol. 6, pp. 640-653)

I thought of trying to find something Halloweenish for this week’s readings, but couldn’t muster the energy that would have been necessary. Don’t hate me.

Here are some observations from last week’s readings:

1. King Lear by William Shakespeare: In the discussion with my doctoral seminar, I heard several students make insightful observations about the injustices committed not only by the daughters, but also by Lear himself in seeking fawning treatment from his family in Act I. We also had some good discussion about Shakespeare’s habit of having the natural world mimic the disruptions experienced by his plays’ protagonists. Can anyone tell me whether this movie version is worthwhile?
2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter XXVIII: Gibbon claims that “the ruin of paganism . . . is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of ancient and popular superstition.” The only problem with this statement is just about all of it. Paganism wasn’t extirpated; the strand of it that was eliminated was only the state cult, which wasn’t popular. Gibbon also rehearses the cult-of-the-saints-as-adapted-paganism thesis, an idea that was pretty much exploded by Peter Brown and others in the second half of the 20th century.
3. “To Sir Henry Vane the Younger” and “To Mr. Cyriack upon His Blindness” by John Milton: These two sonnets are the last of Milton’s for us to read. At this point all we have left of his work are some translations of psalms. Milton praises Henry Vane, who sat in the Long Parliament if I remember correctly, as a man wise beyond his years: “On thy firme hand religion leanes/In peace, & reck’ns thee her eldest son.” 
4. On Sleep and Sleeplessness by Aristotle: Aristotle certainly approaches the subject of sleep in a manner most 21st-century scientists would not recognize. However, it’s hard to find fault with his methods considering the state of knowledge in the 4th century B.C. He starts with the commonplace observation that wakefulness is the exercise of sense-perception, and that sleep would thus seem to be the privation of that. But then he pokes around and identifies some problems with that conclusion. By the end he says that “sleep is a sort of concentration, or natural recoil,” of the body’s “hot matter.”
5. Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter XIII: “The notice of any part whatever of our object is an act of discrimination.” James has kind words for Locke at the beginning of this chapter and laments that later generations of empiricists never followed up on some of his early insights with respect to humans’ ability to discern. Further in there’s an interesting statement that “any total impression made on the mind must be unanalyzable, whose elements are never experienced apart.” This took me aback at first, but as he developed the point it seemed more and more reasonable. 
6. “Of Drunkenness” by Michel de Montaigne: This essay contains some real zingers. “Each man lays weight on his neighbor’s sin and lightens his own. . . . The other vices affect the understanding; this one overturns it, and stuns the body. . . . A sedate man knocks in vain on the door of poetry. . . . No excellent soul is free from an admixture of madness.” It was interesting how Montaigne, after blasting drunkenness in ancient and contemporary times, ultimately settles down and starts talking about the selection of wines and moderation in drinking.

We’ve had some nice weather over the last couple of weeks here, but today’s temperatures were in the mid-80s. That’s so wrong for late October. What’s more, it’s not going to get cool for several more days, so I’ll be reading inside again.