Review: The Concept of Mind

Men are not machines, not even ghost-ridden machines. They are men—a tautology which is sometimes worth remembering.

The problem of mind is one of those philosophical quandaries that give me a headache and prompt an onset of existential angst whenever I try to think about them. How does consciousness arise from matter? How can a network of nerves create a perspective? And how can this consciousness, in turn, influence the body it inhabits? When we look at a brain, or anywhere else in the physical world, we cannot detect consciousness; only nerves firing and blood rushing. Where is it? The only evidence for consciousness is my own awareness. So how do I know anybody else is conscious? Could it be just me?

If you think about the problem in this way, I doubt you will make any progress either, because it is insoluble. This is where Gilbert Ryle enters the picture. According to Ryle, the philosophy of mind was put on a shaky foundation by Descartes and his followers. When Descartes divided the world into mind and matter, the first private and the other public, he created several awkward problems: How do we know other people have minds? How do the realms of matter and mind interact? How can the mind be sure of the existence of the material world? And so on. This book is an attempt to break away from the assumptions that led to these questions.

Ryle’s philosophy is often compared with that of the later Wittgenstein, and justly so. The main thrusts of their argument are remarkably similar. This may have been due simply to the influence of Wittgenstein on Ryle, or vice versa—there appears to be some doubt. Regardless, it is appropriate to compare them, as I think, taken together, their ideas help to shed light on one another’s philosophy.

Both Wittgenstein and Ryle are extraordinary writers. Wittgenstein is certainly the better of the two, though this is not due to any defect on Ryle’s part. Wittgenstein is aphoristic, sometimes oblique, employing numerous allegories and similes to make his point. Ryle is sharp, direct, and epigrammatic. Wittgenstein is in the same tradition as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, while Ryle is the direct descendent of Jane Austen. But both of them are witty, quotable, and brilliant. They have managed to create excellent works of philosophy without using any jargon and avoiding all obscurity. Why can’t philosophy always be written so well?

There is no contradiction, or even paradox, in describing someone as bad at practising what he is good at preaching. There have been thoughtful and original literary critics who have formulated admirable canons of prose style in execrable prose. There have been others who have employed brilliant English in the expression of the silliest theories of what constitute good writing.

Ryle also has the quality—unusual among philosophers—of being apparently quite extroverted. His eyes are turned not toward himself, but to his surroundings. He speaks with confidence and insight about the way people normally behave and talk, and in general prefers this everyday understanding of things to the tortured theories of his introverted colleagues.

Teachers and examiners, magistrates and critics, historians and novelists, confessors and non-commissioned officers, employers, employees and partners, parents, lovers, friends and enemies all know well enough how to settle their daily questions about the qualities of character and intellect of the individuals with whom they have to do.

This book, his most famous, is written not as a monograph or an analysis, but as a manifesto. Ryle piles epigram upon epigram until you are craving just one qualification, just one admission that he might be mistaken. He even seems to get carried away by the force of his own pen, leading to some needlessly long and repetitious sections. What is more, his style has the defect of all epigrammatists: he is utterly convincing in short gasps, but ultimately leaves his reader grasping for something more systematic.

Ryle is often called an ordinary language philosopher, and the label suits him. Like Wittgenstein, he thinks that philosophical puzzles come about by the abuse of words; philosophers fail to correctly analyze the logical category of words, and thus use them inappropriately, leading to false paradoxes. The Rylean philosopher’s task is to undo this damage. Ryle likens his own project to that of a cartographer in a village. The residents of the village are perfectly able to find their way around and can even give directions. But they might not be able to create an abstract representation of the village’s layout. This is the philosopher’s job: to create a map of the logical layout of language. This will prevent other foreigners from getting lost.

Ryle begins by pointing out some obvious problems with the Cartesian picture—a picture he famously dubs the ‘Ghost in the Machine.’ First, we have no idea how these two metaphysically distinct realms of mind and matter interact. Thus by attempting to explain the nature of human cognition, the Cartesians cordon it off from the familiar world and banish it to a shadow world, leaving unexplained how the shadow is cast.

Second, the Cartesian picture renders all acts of communication into a kind of impossible guessing game. You would constantly be having to fathom the significance of a word or gesture by making conjectures as to what is happening in a murky realm behind an impassible curtain (another person’s mind). Conjectures of this kind would be fundamentally dissimilar to other conjectures because there would be, in principle, no way to check them. In the Cartesian picture, people’s minds are absolutely cut off from all outside observation.

Ryle is hardly original in pointing out these two problems, although he does manage to emphasize these embarrassing conundrums with special force. His more original critique is what has been dubbed “Ryle’s Regress.” This is made against what Ryle calls the “intellectualist legend,” which is the notion that all intelligent behaviors are the products of thoughts.

For example, if you produced a grammatically correct English sentence, it means (according to the “legend”) that you have properly applied the correct criteria for English grammar. However, this must mean that you applied the proper criteria to the criteria, i.e. you applied the meta-criteria that allowed you to choose the rules for English grammar and not the rules for Spanish grammar. But what meta-meta-criteria allowed you to pick the correct meta-criteria for the criteria for the English sentence? (I.e., what anterior rule allowed you to pick the rule that allowed you to choose the rule for determining whether English or Spanish rules should be used instead of the rule for choosing whether salt or sugar should be added to a recipe?—sorry, that’s a mouthful.)

The point is that we are led down an infinite regress if we require rules to proceed action. This is one of the classic arguments against cognitive theories of the mind. (I believe Hubert Dreyfus used this same argument in his criticisms of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. Considering the strides that A.I. has made since then, I’m sure there must be some way around this regress, though I don’t know what. Hopefully somebody can explain it to me.)

These are his most forceful reasons for rejecting the Ghost in the Machine. From reading the other reviews here, I gather that many people are fairly convinced by these arguments. Nonetheless, some have accused Ryle of failing to replace the Cartesian picture with anything else. This is not a fair criticism. Ryle does his best to rectify the mistaken picture with his own view, though you may not find this view very satisfying.

After doing his best to discredit the Cartesian picture, the rest of the book is devoted to demonstrating Ryle’s view that none of the ways we ordinarily use language necessitate or even imply that “the mind is its own place.” This is where he most nearly approaches Wittgenstein, for his main contentions are the following: First, it is only when language is misused by philosophers (and laypeople) that we get the impression that the mind is a metaphysically distinct thing. Second, our intellectual and emotional lives are in fact not cut off and separate from the world; rather, public behavior is at the very core of our being.

Here is just one example. According to the Cartesian view, a person “really knows” how to divide if, when given a problem—let’s say, 144 divided by 24—his mind goes through the necessary steps. Let us say a professor gives a student this problem, and the student correctly responds: 6. The professor conjectures that the student’s mind has gone through the appropriate operation. But what if the professor asks him the exact same question five minutes later, and the student responds: 8? And what if he did it again, and the student responds: 3? The following dialogue ensues:

PROFESSOR: Ah, you’re just saying random numbers. You really don’t know how to divide.

STUDENT: But my mind performed the correct operation when you asked me the first time. I forgot how to do it after that.

PROFESSOR: How do you know your mind performed the correct operation the first time?

STUDENT: Introspection.

PROFESSOR: But if you can’t remember how to do it now, how can you be sure that you did know previously?

STUDENT: Introspection, again.

PROFESSOR: I don’t believe you. I don’t think you ever knew.

The point of the dialogue is this. According to the Cartesian view, introspection provides not merely the best, but the only true window into the mind. You are the only person who can know your own mind, and everyone else knows it via conjecture. Thus the student, and only the student, would really know if his mind performed the proper operation, and thus he alone would really know if he could divide. Yet this is not the case. We say somebody “knows how to divide” if they can consistently answer questions of division correctly.

Thus, Ryle argues, to “know how to divide” is a disposition. And a disposition cannot be analyzed into episodes. In other words, “knowing how to divide” is not a collection of discrete times when a mind went through the proper operations. Similarly, if I say “the glass is fragile,” I do not mean that it has broken or even that it will necessarily break, just that it would break easily. Fragility, like knowing long division, is a disposition.

According to Ryle, when philosophers misconstrued what it meant to know how to divide (and other things), they committed a “category mistake.” They miscategorized the phrase; they mistook a disposition for an episode. More generally, the Cartesians mix up two different sorts of knowledge: knowing how and knowing that. They confuse dispositions, capacities, and propensities for rules, facts, and criteria. This leads them into all sorts of muddles.

Here is a classic example. Since Berkley, philosophers have been perplexed by the mind’s capacity to form abstract ideas. The word “red” encompasses many different particular shades, and is thus abstract. Is our idea of red some sort of vague blend of all particular reds? Or is it a collections of different, distinct shades we bundle together into a group? Ryle contends that this question makes the following mistake: Recognizing the color red is a knowing how. It is a skill we learn, just like recognizing melodies, foreign accents, and specific flavors. It is a capacity we develop; it is not the forming of a mental object, an “idea,” that sits somewhere in a mental space.

Ryle applies this method to problem after problem, which seem to dissolve in the acid of his gaze. It is an incredible performance, and a great antidote for a lot of the conundrums philosophers like to tie themselves up in. Nevertheless, you cannot shake the feeling that for all his directness, Ryle dances around the main question: How does awareness arise from the brain?

Well, I’m not positive about this, but I believe it was never Ryle’s intention to explain this, since he considers the question outside the proper field of philosophy. It is a scientific, not a philosophical question. His goal was, rather, to show that the mind/body problem is not an insoluble mystery or evidence of metaphysical duality, and that the mind is not fundamentally private and untouchable. Humans are social creatures, and it is only with great effort that we keep some things to ourselves.

I certainly cannot keep this review to myself. This was the best work of philosophy I have read since finishing Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in 2014, and I hope you get a chance to read it too. Is it conclusive? No. Is it irrefutable? I doubt it. But it is witty, eloquent, original, and devoid of nonsense. This is as good as philosophy gets.

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Review: The Essential Plotinus

The Essential Plotinus by Plotinus

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book after reading Glenn’s fine review, and I’m glad I did. This is an excellent volume; and although I haven’t read the complete Enneads, so I can’t say for sure, I suspect that the editor and translator, Elmer O’Brien, did an expert job in selecting the very best sections from that long tome. In just 170 pages, one finds a complete philosophical system and worldview. I’ve read few books that pack so much into so few words.

It is often remarked that Plotinus was more of a mystic than a real philosopher. But of course, those two aren’t mutually exclusive categories. I’ve heard both Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s works compared to mystical poetry, and indeed the clear demarcation between philosophy and religion is a relatively recent phenomenon. So don’t let the mysticism put you off. This is a serious and significant work of philosophy.

At both the literal and metaphorical center of Plotinus’s system is his concept of The One. The One is the source of all reality, the source of existence itself: “It is by The One that all beings are beings.” It transcends all forms of knowledge; it cannot be described in any words: “This principle is certainly none of the things of which it is the source. It is such that nothing can be predicated of it, not being, not substance, not life, because it is superior to all these things.” The One, which is the same as The Good, is the goal of Plotinus’s system: to seek, through contemplation, an experience of the wellspring of all existence. “By directing your glance towards it, by reaching it, by resting in it, you will achieve a deep and immediate awareness of it and will at the same time seize its greatness in all things that come from it and exist through it.”

Now this all sounds quite abstract and incomprehensible, but I think Plotinus’s point is rather simple. Nothing can exist without having some sort of unity; and the more unity something has, the more stable is its existence. For example, a choir only exists if all of the people composing it are organized in some way. When they disband, the unity is broken, and the choir ceases to exist. A human body exists because all of the diverse parts which compose it cooperate and coordinate their activities. Once this organization ceases, the unity of the parts is broken, and the body ceases to function and ultimately passes away. The more simple something is, the less contingency is has. To pick an inappropriately modern example, a molecule exists because the atoms which compose it are in a particular configuration; once this configuration is broken, the molecule is gone. What persists are the fundamental particles, quarks and electrons, which are (we think) absolutely simple, and therefore persist through all the shifting configurations of matter and energy that cause everything we experience through our senses.

The One is what Plotinus calls the “first hypostasis.” The One is the principle of all existence, because, without some sort of unity, nothing could exist. But by itself, The One doesn’t exist. In fact, to give it any predicate, even the predicate of “existence,” is to attribute some contingent quality to it. So just as Heidegger is fond of reminding us that Being is not a being—that is, the cause of existence cannot itself be something that exists—so does Plotinus warn us that we can know absolutely nothing about The One. It is formless, devoid of all qualities, transcendent of all thought, beyond even our categories of “real” and “unreal.”

But of course, the universe exists, and therefore cannot be identical with The One. This leads Plotinus to his “second hypostasis,” which is The Intelligence. Now, from what I understand, The Intelligence is the realm wherein dwell all the ideals and forms that comprise true reality. Plotinus, borrowing heavily from Plato and Aristotle, considers matter to be pure potentiality. What turns the potentiality into an actuality is a form or an ideal—such as Humanity or Fire in the abstract; and these can only be apprehended through the mind, or intelligence. These ideals are eternal and immaterial; hence it is these ideals that exist in the highest degree, being contingent only on The One, completely independent of matter.

But The Intelligence is static, comprising all things at once, timeless and perfect; yet the reality we know is ever-changing. This leads Plotinus to the “third hypostasis,” which is The Soul. Plotinus thinks not only that people have souls, but that The Soul is responsible for all movement and order in the universe. Just as a human is animated by an indwelling soul, so are the planets and animals and everything around us moved by The Soul, which mediates between the inactive realm of matter and the perfect world of The Intelligence. For Plotinus, each individual soul is just a part of The Soul; and like Plato, he believes in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls.

This elaborate metaphysical doctrine is the backdrop of Plotinus’s spiritual practices. Plotinus shares with many other Western mystics a scorn for the body. The senses are the source of nothing but illusion and suffering, and drag the soul down into petty considerations and vain pursuits. The first step is to appreciate the beauty in sensible objects, for beauty is not raw sensation, but consists of an order or organization in our sensations. The next step is to move beyond the senses altogether, engaging in dialectic to examine the pure ideals through thought alone. But unlike Plato, for whom philosophy was largely a social enterprise, the last step in Plotinus’s system is an introspective voyage to The One, a state of perfect blissful peace, a contemplation of the source of all reality, that transcendent origin which has no qualities and which cannot be grasped in words or thought.

It’s hard to know what to make of all this, especially for one such as myself, a secular rationalist. Of course, Plotinus is worth reading from a purely historical perspective, for his deep influence on St. Augustine, and thence on Christianity itself. And if you are religious or spiritual in any way, be it Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or simply fond of meditation, I’m sure that you can find something of value in Plotinus. From a modern perspective, as philosophy pure and simple, Plotinus’s system isn’t very compelling; for Plotinus does not make strict arguments, but rather grounds his thought in introspective experiences. Yet if you are like me, or like Bertrand Russell—a man who could hardly be more secular or averse to nonsense—you will nonetheless find something beautiful in Plotinus, even if it is perhaps just an elaborate dream, a philosophical fancy, an extended description of one brilliant man’s lonely meditations.

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Review: Tales of the Alhambra

Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To the traveler imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparably intertwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is as much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems.

The name “Washington Irving” has haunted me since I was a boy. I went to a school named after him. We visited his beautiful house, Sunnyside, on a field trip. The house where I grew up is just 500 feet from Irving’s grave in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery—quite a modest grave. My high school football team were the Headless Horsemen.

So imagine how it felt, after moving across an ocean, to see the name “Washington Irving” hanging above a door in the Alhambra: “Washington Irving wrote in this room his Tales of the Alhambra.” It was as if some circuit had been closed, some cycle had been completed. I’d spent the previous week racing through the book in preparation for my visit. And now, here I was, face to face with the same literary giant who hung over my childhood, who had also managed to cast his spell over this magnificent palace.

That’s my tale; what of the book?

The Tales of the Alhambra is something of a hodgepodge. It begins as a travelogue and ends as a collection of fables. In 1829, Irving travelled from Seville to Granada, apparently out of simple curiosity. Once he arrived, he fell under the enchanting influence of the Alhambra, and ended up residing there for several months. At the time, the Alhambra was in a sorry state. Several centuries of vandalism and neglect had reduced it to a ruin, and dozens of poor squatters were its only residents.

Probably its derelict condition added to the romantic wonder with which Irving beheld it. The book is written in a high-flown, almost mystical tone, with fact and fantasy blended into a vibrant fabric. His own observations and experiences are interspersed with historical sketches and old legends, which he purports to have learned from the residents. The final impression is of supernatural beauty. If you’ve seen the Alhambra, this is forgivable; it’s hard to exaggerate its splendor.

As Warwick points out, Irving is most fascinated with the Moors of Spain. The fact that a people with enough culture and power to create the Alhambra could totally vanish beguiles him. Who were they? How did they live? His vigorous imagination fills in the continent-sized gaps in his knowledge, allowing his fancy to run rampant. It’s obvious that he considers the lost civilization of the Moors to be a kind of forgotten paradise; he has nothing but praise for the nobility and sophistication of Spain’s erstwhile inhabitants.

While he stayed there, he grasped at whatever trace of this civilization remained, in architecture, history, and in the people. Irving does his best to convince himself and the reader that the monumental dignity of the Moors of Spain can be seen still in the Spanish peasants of Andalusia. He praises these people almost as highly as their predecessors, saying “with all their faults, and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are, on many point, the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe.”

The book is enjoyable in short doses but gets tiresome in big chunks. Irving’s tone, though compelling, is monotonous. You can only tolerate breathless wonder for so long without craving something else. His stories, too, are quite repetitive. Hidden treasures, enchanted warriors, princesses in castles, forbidden love between Christians and Muslims—these make an appearance in nearly every tale.

Still, this book is well worth reading, not only because Irving is a skillful and charming writer, but also because it’s a window into the cultural history of the Alhambra, how it has been interpreted and understood by Western writers. For me, of course, this book has a personal significance that extends beyond the boundaries of its pages. Irving’s stories may not have been real, but his name is real enough, which for me has taken on the semblance of a ghost.

As for you, I hope you too get a chance to read this book, and to visit the Alhambra: “A Moslem pile in the midst of a Christian land; an Oriental palace amidst the Gothic edifices of the West; an elegant memento of a brave, intelligent, and graceful people, who conquered, ruled, flourished, and passed away.”

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Review: Democracy in America

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I struggle to penetrate God’s point of view, from which vantage point I try to observe and judge human affairs.

A few months ago, bored at work and with no other obligations to tie me to New York, I decided that I would look into employment in Europe; and now, several months and an irksome visa process later, I am on the verge of setting off to Madrid. Unsurprisingly, I’m very excited to go; but of course leaving one’s home is always bittersweet. This is partly why I picked up Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, as a sort of literary good-bye kiss to this odd, uncouth, chaotic, and fantastic place which has, up until now, molded my character, sustained my body, and contained my thoughts.

This turned out to be an excellent choice, for this book is without a doubt the best book ever written on the United States. I am able to say this, even though I haven’t even read a fraction of the books written on this country, because I simply can’t imagine how anyone could have done it better. As it is, I can hardly believe that Tocqueville could understand so much in the short span of his life; and when I recall that he wrote this book after only 9 months in America, while he was still in his thirties, I am doubly astounded. This seems scarcely human.

Part of the reason for his seemingly miraculous ability is that, with Tocqueville, you find two things conjoined which are normally encountered separately: extremely keen powers of observation, and a forceful analytic mind. With most travel writers, you encounter only the former; and with most political philosophers, only the latter. The product of this combination is a nearly perfect marriage of facts and reasoning, of survey and criticism, the ideas always hovering just above the reality, transforming the apparently senseless fabric of society into a sensible and intelligible whole. Almost everything he sees, he understands; and not only does he understand what he sees, but so often hits upon the why.

Although this book covers an enormous amount of ground—religion, slavery, culture, government, the role of women, just to name a few topics—there is one central question that runs through every subject: What does the appearance of democracy mean for the future of humanity? Tocqueville sees this question as the most pressing and significant one of his time; for, as he perceived, what was happening then in America was destined to inspire Europe and perhaps the whole world to adopt this new form of government, which would forever change the face of society. In short, Tocqueville is seeking to understand America so that he could understand the future; and the plan of the book follows these two goals successively. The first volume, published in 1835, is a thorough analysis of the United States; and the second volume, published in 1840, is a comparison of democracy and aristocracy, an attempt to pinpoint how a switch to a democratic government causes far-reaching changes in the whole culture.

Tocqueville is famously ambivalent about American democracy. He often sounds greatly impressed at what he finds, noting how hardworking and self-reliant are most Americans; and yet so often, particularly in the second volume, Tocqueville sounds gloomy and pessimistic about what the future holds. Much of his analysis is centered on the idea of social equality. He often reminds the reader—and by the way, Tocqueville wrote this for a French audience—that Americans, rich or poor, famous or obscure, will treat everyone as an equal. The entire idea of castes or classes has, in Tocqueville’s opinion, been abolished; and this has had many effects. Most obviously, it gives free reign to American ambition, for anyone can potentially climb from the bottom to the top; thus results the ceaseless activity and endless financial scheming of Americans. And even those who are quite well-off are not spared from this fever of ambition, for the lack of inherited wealth and stable fortunes means that the rich must continually exert effort to maintain their fortunes. (Whether this is true anymore is another story.)

Thus we find a kind of money-obsession, where everyone must constantly keep their minds in their wallets. In America, money is not only real currency, but cultural currency as well, a marker of success; and in this context, the creature comforts of life, which after all only money can buy, are elevated to great importance. Rich food, warm beds, spacious houses—these are praised above the simpler pleasures in life, such as agreeable conversation or pleasant walks on sunny days, as the former require money while the latter are free and available to anyone. The central irony of a classless society is that it forces everyone to focus constantly on their status, as it is always in jeopardy. You can imagine how shocking this must have been for Tocqueville, the son of an aristocratic family. There simply was no class of Americans who had the leisure of retiring from the cares of the world and contemplating the “higher” but less practical things in life. All thought was consumed in activity.

This results in a society of the ordinary individual. In America, there are few “great men” (as Tocqueville would say) but a great many good ones. Americans are self-reliant, but not daring; they are often decent, but never saintly. They will sometimes risk their lives in pursuit of a fortune, but never their fortunes for the sake their lives. An American might temporarily accept hardship if there is a financial reward on the other end; but how many Americans would forsake their fortunes, their comforts, their houses and property, for the sake of an idea, a principle, a dream? Thus a kind of narrow ambition pervades the society, where everyone is hoping to better their lot, but almost nobody is hoping to do something beyond acquiring money and things. One can easily imagine the young Tocqueville, his mind filled with Machiavelli and Montesquieu, meeting American after American with no time or inclination for something as intangible as knowledge.

In the midst of his large-scale cultural analysis, Tocqueville sometimes pauses for a time, putting off the role of philosopher to take up the role of prophet. Tocqueville does get many of his predictions wrong. For example, he did not at all foresee the Civil War—and in fact he thought Americans would never willingly risk their property fighting each other—and instead he thought that there would be a gigantic race war between blacks and whites in the south. But Tocqueville was otherwise quite right about race relations in the slave-owning states. He predicts that slavery could not possibly last, and that it would soon be abolished; and he notes that abolishing slavery will probably be the easiest task in improving the relationship between blacks and whites. For although slavery can be destroyed through legal action, the effects of slavery, the deep-rooted racial prejudice and hatred, cannot so easily be wiped clean. In support of this view, Tocqueville notes how badly treated are free blacks in the northern states, where slavery is banned. Without a place in society, they are shunned and fall into poverty. The persistence of the color line in America is a testament to Tocqueville’s genius and our failure to prove him wrong.

But perhaps the most arresting prediction Tocqueville makes is about the future rivalry of the United States with Russia. Here are his words:

Americans struggle against obstacles placed there by nature; Russians are in conflict with men. The former fight the wilderness and barbarity; the latter, civilization with all its weaponry: thus, American victories are achieved with the plowshare, Russia’s with the soldier’s sword.

To achieve their aim, the former rely upon self-interest and allow free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.

The latter focus the whole power of society upon a single man.

The former deploy freedom as their main mode of action; the latter, slavish obedience.

The point of departure is different, their paths are diverse but each of them seems destined by some secret providential design to hold in their hands the fate of half the world at some date in the future.

While discussing such an obviously brilliant man as was Tocqueville, whose ideas have become foundational in the study of American society, it seems almost petty to praise his prose style. But I would be doing an injustice to any readers of this review if I failed to mention that Tocqueville is an extraordinary writer. I was consistently captivated by his ability to sum up his thoughts into crisp aphorisms and to compress his analyses into perfectly composed paragraphs. I can only imagine how much better it is in the original French. Here is only a brief example:

Commerce is a natural opponent of all violent passions. It likes moderation, delights in compromise, carefully avoid angry outbursts. It is patient, flexible, subtle, and has recourse to extreme measures only when absolute necessity obliges it to do so. Commerce makes men independent of each other, gives them quite another idea of their personal value, persuades them to manage their own affairs, and teaches them to be successful. Hence it inclines them to liberty but draws them away from revolutions.

In the brief space of a book review—even a long one—I cannot hope to do justice to such a wide-ranging, carefully argued, and incisive book as this. So I hope that I have managed to persuade you to at least add this work to your to-read list, long as it may be already. For my part, I can’t imagine a better book to have read as I prepare myself to visit a new continent, about the same age as was Tocqueville when he visited these shores, for my own travels in a strange place. And although, lowly American that I am, I cannot hope to achieve even a fraction of what Tocqueville has, perhaps his voice echoing in my ears will be enough to encourage me to look, to listen, and to understand.

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Review: The New Spaniards

The New Spaniards by John Hooper

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The New Spaniards is an updated and revised edition of The Spaniards, which was originally published in 1986. The revisions were extensive, and thus this text does not feel at all outdated. For subject matter, Hooper casts as wide a net as he can in the span of 400 pages, tackling subject after subject in a succession of pleasantly short but informative chapters. One learns here of Spain’s government, history, economy, culture, music, cinema, monarchy, military, sexual mores, as well as some of the ‘centrifugal forces’ (as Hooper calls them) in modern Spain, the separatist movements in the Basque country and Catalonia.

It is useful to compare this book (as David does) with Giles Tremlett’s Ghosts of Spain. The books are, at first glance, quite similar: they are both about modern Spain, both were published in 2006, both are by British journalists who have spent much time living here, and, most importantly, both have yellow covers. But the approaches taken by the two authors differ considerably. Tremlett is personal and immediate; he is married to a Spaniard, has children in Spanish schools, and thus has a lot invested in the future of Spain. His book is thus more anecdotal; he frequently writes in the first person, telling us of his travels throughout the country, the people he meets, the food he tastes, trying to convey some sense of what it’s like to actually live here.

Hooper, by contrast, although he spent many years here, is now living elsewhere. Perhaps as a consequence of this, his tone is much more detached and (as much as possible in a book of this sort) objective. His writing gets straight to the point; he keeps the reader’s interest, not through storytelling or flashy prose, but simply by presenting insightful information clearly and succinctly. Thus, although somewhat dry, I often found the book hard to put down, as it is a veritable feast of facts, figures, particulars, and generalities. So I am heartily grateful, both to Hooper and to Tremlett, for now I feel fairly knowledgeable about my new home.

And what a fascinating place to call home. I’m somewhat ashamed that I had so little interest in Spain before I came here, for it is a country well worth knowing. As many Spaniards like to point out, Spain is “different.” Just the other day, someone remarked to me that “Europe begins at the Pyrenees,” which is a saying here. There is, apparently, a widespread notion among Spaniards that Spain is quite unlike other European countries. Perhaps this is because Spain didn’t fight in either World War I or World War II, and lingered under a repressive regime until the mid 1970s, more or less isolated from the anxieties of the Cold War.

But Spain is changing quickly. Arguably, the theme of both Hooper’s book and Tremlett’s is “change.” Justifiably so, when you consider that Spain went from a Catholic society where divorce was nigh impossible to one of the first countries to legalize gay marriage. And perhaps because many Spaniards think that their country lags behind, they have fully and enthusiastically embraced modernity. According to Hooper, moderno has unambiguously positive connotations here (something which I haven’t had enough time to verify yet). But one only has to skim the history of modern Spain to be convinced that, in the last forty years, Spaniards have thrown themselves into the future. Indeed, Hooper begins this book with the results of an international survey which found that, in Spain, there exists the biggest difference in basic values between the young and the old.

Though, of course, some things change and some remain the same. The Spanish attitude to work is, as far as I can tell, still quite different from both the United States and the northern European countries. After witnessing how much people work in New York, a Spanish friend of mine, with a worried look on his face, told me “Work is good, but there are other things in life.” Simply by walking around Madrid, which I’ve heard is one of the most hardworking parts of Spain, I notice a big difference. In New York, at rush hour, the streets are filled with legions of men and women dressed for work, cramming into the subway, all with vaguely worried looks on their faces. Yet here, rush hour is not very noticeable; in fact, it took a few weeks for me to notice it at all. True, at certain times of the day, the metro is likely to be more full of nicely dressed people; but never is it packed, and nobody runs for the train or tramples you on their way out the door.

The cultural attitude that has been programmed into me since birth is that work is a duty, and the more and the better work you do, the more worthy you are. The money earned is a marker of personal value; and the more accumulated, the better. Indeed, I know people who are tremendously successful and who make a great deal of money, but who are loathe to spend even chump change. The attitude here is quite the opposite. Spaniards seem to regard work as a necessary evil. This is not to say that they can’t or don’t work hard—during the recession, many worked themselves to the bone, and still do—but the idea that one’s productivity is a measure of one’s dignity, and the sort of perverse pride some people in the States take in staying long hours at the office, eating at their desks, and hardly sleeping or spending time with friends—this seems to be largely absent here. And while most people I know in the States think of enjoying oneself as a privilege to be earned through work, in Spain enjoyment is regarded as a right. Thus, while the rush hour here is easy to overlook, the crush of women wearing high heels and make up, and men with gelled up hair and collared shirts, is noticeable every night of the week.

Doubtless, what I’ve just written is a stereotype, lacking in depth or nuance. But if you want something more insightful, you’ll just have to read this book. It is a sweeping and penetrating look at modern Spain, written with authority and rigor. Indeed, it is a bit hard for me to believe that Hooper is a journalist, for this book lacks that characteristic myopia of most journalism, which concentrates exclusively on the present moment. Hooper, by contrast, is scholarly and maintains a historical perspective throughout. In short, I recommend this book heartily; and I hope that it inspires you as much as it has me to ponder modern Spain.

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2015 on Goodreads

2015 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As I set out to review my year on Goodreads, I find myself thinking about what a wonderful place this site is. Really, compared to so much of the internet—which so often seems to be the digitized version of a very dim teenager’s brain—Goodreads is almost miraculous. How else can you have intelligent discussion with people all over the world about subjects ranging from quantum physics to Medieval love poetry, from political philosophy to Babylonian astronomy? Every time you find yourself thinking about how technology is ruining our culture and impoverishing thought, remind yourself of Goodreads. So to all of the people who read my reviews or who write great reviews for me to read, I’d like to say, Thanks!

This year I had resolved to read bigger books. In 2014 I managed to make it through 172 books, but the majority of those were rather short. So this year, I decided that I would read a smaller number of heftier tomes. I don’t think I’ll even make it to my goal of 120 books this year, but that’s just as well. In fairness, probably I would have reached this goal had I not moved to Spain, which upset my carefully worked-out reading schedule I had developed in New York—not that I’m complaining.

One of the most persistent feelings of my past few years has been the nagging sense that I am hopelessly ignorant. This led me to read mostly science and history, as I attempted to banish this self-doubt. But unfortunately this venture feels an awful lot like trying to fill the Grand Canyon one pebble at a time. There’s just too much I don’t know; and every new fact or new theory just makes me more acutely aware of how much further I have to go. But I suppose I should be thankful for this. Learning, after all, is one of the most wonderful feelings there is; and life would be intolerably dull if there wasn’t more out there to wrap my mind around, or at least to try.

In this spirit, I managed to slog my way through three textbooks this year: Fundamentals of Physics by R. Shankar, Economics by Paul A. Samuelson, and General Chemistry by Linus Pauling. I didn’t put in enough effort to master any of the books, though I think some knowledge nonetheless managed to sink in. One can only hope. The best of the lot was easily Samuelson’s book, which I read in the original 1948 edition.

With more hope than success, I also tried to teach myself something about the mathematics behind quantum mechanics and relativity. This led me to read Leonard Susskind’s Theoretical Minimum book on quantum mechanics, and Peter Collier’s A Most Incomprehensible Thing, a self-published book about general relativity. Both books were designed to teach neophytes like me something about the mathematics behind the ideas. Susskind’s was certainly the better book, since he has a much deeper understanding of the subject matter. Whether some of his understanding rubbed off on me is an open question.

But the real hero of my science reading this year has been Richard Feynman. I made my way through six of his books, all of them excellent. First were his Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, excerpts from his landmark Lectures in Physics. The latter was especially good, giving a fantastic account of special relativity. I followed this up with The Character of Physical Law, another slim book where we see Feynman at his most philosophical. But the real gem of the lot was QED, the best work of popular physics I’ve ever read; it’s a masterpiece.

And this is not to mention the two volumes of Feynman’s quasi-autobiography I read, Surely You’re Joking and Why Do You Care What Other People Think? Though the second was good, I loved the first. Feynman had a personality of Dickensian proportions; and even now I often hear his voice in my head, among the chorus of authors who occasionally give me advice. (Doesn’t this happen to you?) I made my girlfriend and my brother read it, and I’d make you read it if I could.

The second star of my year in reading has been Will Durant, from whose pen I consumed six books. I feel much more ambivalent about Durant than about Feynman. As a thinker and a writer, he has many faults; and of his six books, I gave bad reviews to three of them. But his Story of Civilization series is simply splendid. I’m rather addicted, in truth. This year I read his books on Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages, and I just started his book on the Renaissance. I plan on continuing through the entire series; and considering that each volume is at least 700 pages long, this is no small compliment to pay to an author.

To supplement my reading in science and my reading in history, I tackled a few books about the history of science. I began early on with Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, a book part botany, part geology, and part adventure story; don’t miss it. Galileo came next, whose Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems combines sharp thinking with sharp prose. After I was done pondering the earth’s orbit, Newton showed me some of his experiments and theories on light in his Opticks. And Otto Neugebauer, a frightening mix of intelligence and erudition, then lectured me on Babylonian astronomy and Egyptian mathematics in his Exact Sciences of Antiquity, a great little book which Manny recommended to me. In this category I might also mention Richard Oerter’s The Theory of Almost Everything, a book which managed to compress both a history and an explanation of the Standard Model of physics into 300 pages.

A mini-project I engaged in was to read more drama. I began with Molière, who quickly became one of my favorite authors. His plays are laughter on paper; few experiences are so effortlessly joyful. Ibsen was next, a much darker sort of master; and then came Shaw, who is not worth describing if you haven’t already read him. Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and William Congreve also made brief but memorable appearances, and I hope the future brings us together again. A second mini-project was to read more poetry. To this effect, I read John Donne, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But for all this, I remain an uncultured buffoon.

One more project was to educate myself about the political and intellectual history of the United States. This first led me to Montesquieu, whose Spirit of the Laws effectively laid out the basic plan of the U.S. constitution; then I was led naturally to The Federalist Papers, and finally to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I found the first two, if informative and interesting, a bit of a slog to get through. But Tocqueville’s was perhaps the best book I read all year. Read and be amazed; it’s magnificent. In the literary realm of Americana, I read Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Adams. The first is an extraordinary writer, but not much of a thinker; and the second is not much of either.

My readings in philosophy have been a bit light. I began with George Santayana, whose Life of Reason ushered me into 2015. I loved the book, though I’m still unsure whether it was great philosophy or just great writing. Heidegger made another appearance into my reading life this year, after Being and Time defeated me in 2014, though this time I think I understood him better; and then came Plotinus, who was equally as mystical. Oh, and I shouldn’t neglect to mention Ayer, Kripke, and Russell. The philosophic highlight of the year, however, was definitely St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. I read both of their major works, though in abridged versions, and I found both to be richly rewarding.

In the realm of literature, I also managed to cross some big names off my list. I read and fell in love with David Copperfield; and then I did the same with Tom Jones. Both Dickens and Fielding are filled with such exuberance and good will that I smiled constantly through their books. Lawrence Sterne and Rabelais then exploded into my reading life, in the form of Tristram Shandy and Gargantua and Pantagruel, leaving the inside of my skull dripping with ink and littered with allusions and puns. I recommend each of them with all my heart.

The book which has most affected my life outside of Goodreads has been David Burns’s Feeling Good, a self-help book which, indeed, helped me help myself. I was feeling rather depressed and anxious for a while, and Burns helped me get out of it. The change in my mood was almost immediate; and I’ve been feeling good ever since. Also in this category might be placed the books I’ve read on the history and culture of Spain, which helped me to get accommodated in my new environment. The New Spaniards was the best of this lot, though Ghosts of Spain was close.

This “review” has already grown monstrously long and dreadfully dull; and still I have passed over most of the wonderful books who were my companions through the passing days and months of another year. Yes, another year has gone, and hopefully I have grown that much more knowledgeable and perhaps just an iota more wise. What is beyond doubt is that I have grown happier, partly thanks to these books, and also thanks to you, who serve as a constant reminder to me that, despite all the ugliness and stupidity we so often meet with, the world is full of thoughtful, intelligent, and kind people. If 2016 is as good as this year has been, I will count myself enormously lucky.

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Review: Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself.

Autobiographies and memoirs are, I think, the best books to read on vacation. Not only are they light, easy, and entertaining, but they’re usually not hard to put down. This is important because, if you’re like me, you may end up spending your whole vacation with your head buried in a book. Most valuable, however, is simply seeing how an excellent writer transforms their experiences into stories. The vague emotions of daily life, the interesting characters we encounter, the sights and sounds and smells of new places—good autobiographies direct our attention to these little details.

In this spirit I picked up Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia to read during my trip to Seville. It was an excellent choice. It’s been a while since I’ve read Orwell, and I’d nearly forgotten what a fine writer he is. In fact, perhaps the most conspicuous quality of this book is the caliber of the prose. It is written with such grace, clarity, and ease, that I couldn’t help being constantly impressed and, I admit, extremely envious at times. The writing is direct but never blunt; the tone is personal and natural, but not chummy. The book may have been a bit too readable, actually, since I had a hard time prying myself away to go explore Seville (and a book has to be very good indeed to compete with Seville).

There seems to be a bit of confusion about this book. Specifically, some people seem to come to it expecting to learn about the Spanish Civil War. This is a mistake; Orwell only experienced a sliver of the war, and his understanding of the political situation was limited to the infighting between various leftist groups. The events and conflicts that led up to the war, and the progress of the war itself, are for the most part unexplained. This book is, rather, a deeply personal record of his time in the Spanish militia. We learn more about Orwell’s military routine than about any battles between fascist and government forces. More light is shed on Orwell’s own political opinions than the political situation in Spain.

If you come to the book with this in mind, it will not disappoint. His time in Spain made a deep impression on Orwell; he writes of it in a wistful and nostalgic tone, as if everything that happened occurred in a dreamy, timeless, mist-filled landscape, disconnected from the rest of his life. Characters come and go, soldiers are introduced, arrested, or killed in action; but we do not get acquainted with anyone save Orwell himself. The mood is introspective and pensive, as if it all took place in another life. Even when he is describing his friends’ imprisonment, or his experience getting shot in the neck and hospitalized, he manages to sound dispassionate and serene.

Two chapters, however, do not fit into this characterization. These are Orwell’s analyses of the political situation in Barcelona during this time. In some books, they are published as appendices—which I think is a good choice, actually, since they interrupt the flow of the book quite a bit. Despite the abrupt change in tone and subject-matter, however, they make for valuable reading. The machinations and petty political squabbles that went on during this time are astounding. One would think that having a common enemy in Franco would be enough to unite the various factions on the Left, at least for the duration of the war. Instead, the anti-revolutionary communist party ended up declaring the pro-revolutionary communist party (of which Orwell was a member, entirely by chance) to be a fascist conspiracy, resulting in hundreds of people—people who had spent months fighting at the front—being thrown in secret prisons. Orwell himself narrowly escaped.

Nevertheless, I think that Orwell’s analyses of the general situation in Spain should be taken with copious salt. He understands nearly everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of class-warfare, which I think fails to do justice to the complex political and cultural history of the conflict. Added to this, one gets the impression that Orwell’s command of Spanish was fairly rudimentary, which I think greatly limited his ability to understand the war. To his credit, though, Orwell does warn us about his limitations:

In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war.

But these are minor complaints of a book which I found to be supremely well-written and absolutely fascinating. His accounts of life at the front were possibly the best descriptions of war that I’ve ever read, with the exception of those in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. This is not because Orwell saw very much fighting; quite the opposite. Rather, he conveys a sense of the crushing boredom and the sense of futility that many soldiers must feel during a long, draw-out war. Also superb was his portrayal of political oppression, the climate of fear and backstabbing that arose during the party conflicts in Barcelona.

Perhaps most impressive, though, is that, despite all of the hardships Orwell endured, and despite the obvious injustices inflicted on both himself and his friends, he does not come across as bitter or resentful. I leave you with his words:

When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this—and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering—the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.

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Lotz in Translation

Saving the world—one long, pretentious blog post at a time.

Category: Reviews

Review: The Concept of Mind

Review: The Essential Plotinus

Review: Tales of the Alhambra

Review: The New Spaniards

2015 on Goodreads

Review: Homage to Catalonia