Great Books Archives - Page 17 of 26

What a Coincidence

A Gentleman of Leisure is the story of Jimmy Pitt, the rather wealthy gentleman of leisure from the title, who on a trip from England to New York falls in love with a girl, but sadly never learns her name, gets back to New York, converses with some friends about a play involving a burglar, makes a bet with his friends he can burgle a house that very night, goes home and falls asleep only to wake up and find his house being burgled, interrupts the burglar, pretends to be a bigtime thief himself in order to impress the burglar, arranges with the burglar to go burgle a house that night, breaks into a house, which ends up being the house of the chief of police, who is, it turns out a corrupt chief of police well-acquainted with Jimmy’s new burglar friend, but alas the conversation which would have ensued is interrupted when the chief of police’s daughter wanders in, who is, lo and behold, the very girl Jimmy Pitt fell madly in love with on the boat.

Oh, don’t worry that the plot was just spoiled. That is just the first few pages of the book. Most of the book is all about how all these characters end up in the same castle in England. Throw in a bunch more characters, parties, jewels, thefts, detectives, valets, and butlers.

Will Jimmy get the girl?

Of course he will. This is a Wodehouse novel, after all. They all have the same plot.

One feature of Wodehouse novels is a remarkable series of coincidences. Take the above. What are the odds Jimmy Pitt will end up breaking into the very home where the girl he saw on a boat is currently living? Near zero, right? And that she is the daughter of the chief of police who knows Jimmy’s new burglar friend? Or that the burglar would break in the very night Jimmy made his silly bet? And none of these are the most improbable coincidences of the novel—every one of these things is vastly more likely than the things we see happen in the rest of the novel.

So, Wodehouse acquires a reputation of telling improbable stories. Everything is always just too coincidental. It is incredibly unrealistic. Right?

But…what makes us think that coincidences are unrealistic? If life really free of coincidences?

A few weeks ago, I was telling a student with whom I have had quite a number of memorable conversations (many involving American Girl books) over the last two years the story about the Family Trust my grandfather set up to benefit a small cemetery in the town from which his family came. The Foundation benefits not just the cemetery but other nonprofits in two incredibly rural counties.

I then mentioned the name of the counties: Custer and Lemhi. The student’s jaw hit the floor. It turns out, she has relatives in exactly that part of the country. She went on vacation there all the time when she was growing up. We then swapped stories of going to Idaho for vacation when you were a kid.

What are the odds of finding out someone you know used to vacation as a kid in roughly the same parts of rural Idaho as you did. And let’s be clear. We are not in Idaho right now—we are in Massachusetts. Neither of us grew up in Idaho. We both just used to get hauled by our families on vacation to the middle of nowhere to visit relatives.

Improbable?

Or how about this. I was at a conference in Utah this summer. I was talking with the organizer of the conference, whom I had never met before. Swapping stories, we discover we both went to the same college, UC Davis. Not that improbable; it is a big school. But…we graduated in the same year. We shared a major. We almost certainly took classes together in those large lecture halls where you don’t know a soul. What are the odds?

Or this. I was at a conference in Kentucky a few years back. The conference was for high school history and social science teachers in Kentucky. I was talking with one of the teachers there and discovered she was also from California. Big state, not so surprising. She went to high school in San Jose. Big city, not so surprising. She went to the same high school I did. OK, a bit suspiring. She graduated one year after me. Here I am a professor at a liberal arts college in Massachusetts and she is a high school teacher in Kentucky and we meet at a conference nowhere near San Jose, California.

Things like that never happen, right?

It turns out, when you think about it, your life is full of improbable coincidences. Indeed, when you think about it, everything you have ever done, every place you have ever been, and every person you have ever met is an incredible coincidence. It is just most of the time, you never know how unusual it is that you met that particular person at that particular time in that particular place.

Cormac McCarthy memorably describes this phenomenon in No Country for Old Men:

You know what date is on this coin?
No.
It’s nineteen fifty-eight. It’s been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it’s here. And I’m here. And I’ve got my hand over it. And it’s either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.

So given that our lives are one big coincidence, why does Wodehouse seem so unrealistic?

Think about the stories I told above. Why did I pick those stories? Because they seem unusual. I could have told three other stories about talking with people which would not have seemed unusual. Most of those stories would seem pointless to relate. So, we naturally relate the stores which seem improbable.

Now consider the World of Wodehouse. If Jimmy Pitt had never again seen the girl from the boat, there is no story. In fact, if you imagine the full world in which this story is set, nobody else on that same boat had a story to tell. Why do we read Jimmy Pitt’s story? Because it is the only interesting story.

What are the odds that Jimmy Pitt would have this strange set of events in his life? That seems small. But what are the odds that someone on a boat will have an interesting story? That doesn’t seem improbable at all.

Maybe Wodehouse isn’t that unrealistic after all. Wodehouse is a clever one. His novels seem so effortless and fun and full of coincidence, but when you start looking at it, you realize he is actually describing what life is really like. Your life is full of incredibly improbable events. You just don’t notice them. Wodehouse does notice.

Embrace your inner Wodehouse. You think your life is full of dull routine, but you are immersed in an incredibly wonderful and complicated play, with improbable events and curious characters all around you. You just have to pay attention.

And there is no better way to remind yourself of this than to read P.G. Wodehouse.

Kanye 2024

“In democracies changes are chiefly due to the wanton license of demagogues.” Aristotle wrote that in Politics.

Hamilton, in The Federalist Papers warns: “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants.”

I think it is safe to say that nobody is a big fan of demagogues. Where does that leave democracy? Can we conclude that in a democratic society, we really don’t want rulers whose first instinct is to maximize their popularity with the crowds? Can we conclude that we want sober-minded leaders, who think about what is best to do and not what ill-informed citizens of the country might impulsively want to have done? Can we conclude we don’t want people who run for office on the basis of personal charisma instead of policy ideas? Can we conclude that a candidate who has handlers managing public appearances in order to orchestrate popularity is not good for the country?

Enter Coriolanus.

Coriolanus was a war hero in Rome. He single handedly defeated the city of Corioli, came back to Rome greeted with great praise, and was slated to be elected to high office. One problem. To do so, he had to go to into the marketplace and get the crowds to accede to his election.

As Shakespeare relates (in the play cleverly entitled Coriolanus), he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect:

CORIOLANUS: What must I say?
‘I Pray, sir’–Plague upon’t! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace:–‘Look, sir, my wounds!
I got them in my country’s service, when
Some certain of your brethren roar’d and ran
From the noise of our own drums.’
MENENIUS: O me, the gods!
You must not speak of that: you must desire them
To think upon you.
COR: Think upon me! hang ’em!
I would they would forget me, like the virtues
Which our divines lose by ’em.
MEN: You’ll mar all:
I’ll leave you: pray you, speak to ’em, I pray you,
In wholesome manner.
Exit
COR: Bid them wash their faces
And keep their teeth clean.

It is safe to conclude that Coriolanus did not have a high opinion of the Common Man.

But, if you want power in Rome, you have to play the game. What we can call Coriolanus’ handlers, the others promoting his candidacy (most notably his mother), earnestly try to persuade him to just do what he needs to do to get elected. First step he needs to stop insulting everyone.

My nobler friends,
I crave their pardons:
For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
Regard me as I do not flatter, and
Therein behold themselves: I say again,
In soothing them, we nourish ‘gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d, and scatter’d,
By mingling them with us, the honour’d number,
Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that
Which they have given to beggars.

Not exactly what his handlers have in mind, It doesn’t end well. Coriolanus to the crowd:

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair!

And so, he joins the enemy and proceeds to march on Rome.

Here is the question: Is Coriolanus doing what we want leaders to do? He stands on principle; he refuses to abase himself before the crowd; he is aghast at the idea of showing off his war wounds to curry popularity with people too cowardly to fight. He wants Rome to be great, but is deeply concerned that in the race for popular opinion, the rulers are doing long-term harm in order to garner short term praise from the rabble.

In other words, if you don’t want a popular demagogue, if you don’t want a leader who constantly checks the poll numbers, then is Coriolanus your type of leader?

In my reading group discussing this play (The Grecian Urn Seminar), the room was surprisingly split almost exactly in half on the matter of evaluating Coriolanus. Even on the simple question of whether he was a good guy or a bad guy in the play, the room was nearly perfectly split. Is he a noble guy who was sadly forced into a bad situation for betraying his country or is he an ignoble guy who despised the people and was willing to sell out his country for a personal vendetta?

Granted: Coriolanus is not exactly the best or worst type of leader imaginable. That isn’t the real question. The real question is whether his impulses with regards to being popular are the right ones. In the midst of being persuaded to play the popularity game, Coriolanus exclaims:

Well, I must do’t:
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit!

Consider that line. Do we want leaders possessed of some harlot’s spirit? All things to all people? Policies promised in order to get a few more votes in crucial places?

Whether you want it or not, of course, doesn’t really matter. That’s what we have.

Imagine someone wanted to be elected leader of the most powerful country in the modern world. What is the best path to power? Become a Rock Star. Have a Reality TV Show. Perfect the art of delivering exactly what people want to hear and see.

I know you are thinking of the current President of the United States right now. But it goes back further than that. Much further. When was the last US Presidential election where the more telegenic, charismatic personality did not win? Go election by election and ask, “Which Candidate is more like a Rock Star? Which candidate is more likely to light up the room by walking into it?” (Note, this is not the same question as which candidate do you personally like better. Imagine a crowd of normal people, the type of people who never read blog posts about Coriolanus.) You have to go all the way back to 1964, when the candidate with more of that Rock Star quality lost. That year, by the way is not only before I was born, it is also when TV was in its infancy.

So, ask yourself again: would you rather have Coriolanus as leader? Would you rather have a leader who despised the people? Would you rather have a leader who asked what was best for the country instead of what is most popular?

Or put it this way: if the election was between Coriolanus and Kanye West, for whom do you vote? Who wins?

A History of Futility

The Question of the Day: When is a history book not a history book?

Or, maybe this should be the Question of the Day: When is an author simply trying to be too clever for his own good?

The Answer to both questions: Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind.

Let’s start with the positive. This is a fun book to read. A very fun book to read. It is the sort of book that makes you realize again that the world is littered with fascinating anecdotes and facts and factoids which are interesting, informative, and marvelous fun. Open up to a random page in this book and you have a very good chance of learning something like that.

Picking five pages a random—really I am just going to open the book to five different pages and relate what is there—this book has the following bits:

1. In looking through The Code of Hammurabi we discover that society has two genders and three classes, and that each gender-class combination can be described with a specific monetary value.

2. For the first time since the demise of Hitler, the idea of using biological methods to “upgrade” humans in back in vogue.

3. The development of linguistics was vital in allowing European countries to build empires

4. For all the talk of how humans are causing mass extinction these days, this is actually the third time humans have done this. The First Great Extinction happened as humans spread out to become foragers. The Second Great Extinction came when humans became farmers.

5. In 1450, the world could be divided into 5 distinct non-overlapping groupings of people: The Afro-Asian world, the Oceanic world, the Australian world, the MesoAmerican World, and the Andean World. Over the next three hundred years, the first group “swallowed up all the other worlds.”

Harari is a marvelous story-teller. Harari organizes this rollicking ride through the history of the species around three Great Moments:

1. The Cognitive Revolution, when homo sapiens suddenly became quite distinct from other animals;

2. The Agricultural Revolution, when the species radically changed not only the way they lived but the environment in which they lived;

3. The Scientific Revolution, in which modern science was born along with the industrial revolution and rapid technological advances.

At the end, Harari notes we are on the verge of the Fourth Great Revolution when either robots with AI take over the world or we genetically modify ourselves so that we are no longer really homo sapiens at all. Well, unless the climate changes so fast we just go extinct.

As I said, a marvelously fun book.

But…

Sapiens is an incredibly annoying book to read. Harari is a smart guy who has read a lot. But, a guy this smart and this well-read should really not make so many absolutely inane arguments. You see, mixed in with all this fascinating history is Harari’s constant penchant to go wandering off into editorial asides in which we learn one thing very clearly: Harari is a very opinionated guy who never actually talks with people with whom he disagrees.

We could take his constant refrain that modern science has proven there is no soul and thus all those religions out there have now been proven to be false. But, I just wrote about that error a week ago.

So, instead, take a pair of other examples.

1. In his argument that there is no such thing as an eternal or natural law or truth, he rewrites the famous sentence from the Declaration of Independence to show what it would say if it was written using what Harari knows to be accurate biological statements. So, for example, there is no Creator who endows us with anything, so that should just say “born.” This is what he derives:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.

Perhaps that is cute. (A couple of the students in my reading group which talked about this book thought it was funny.) But, it is absurd nonsense. Take it seriously for a second—which is exactly what Harari wants us to do. It says that one of our “mutable characteristics” is “life.” So, we all “evolve differently” but one of the mutable characteristics with which we are born is…life? Uh…if you think about all the differently evolved people reading this book, what exactly is the range mutations of “life” in that population? How is it even possible to be “born” with a mutated version of “life”? The sentence makes absolutely zero sense.

This is the sort of philosophical non sequitur into which Harari falls all too often in his attempt to be that kid in the back of the room trying to show off how clever he is.

2. In his discussion about the amazing fact of technological innovation and economic growth since the advent of the scientific revolution, he begins with the question, “What accounts for this stupendous growth?” Good question. He starts answering it by showing how the banking system creates money. I cannot even begin to convey my shock. The manner in which the banking system creates money is in every introduction to macroeconomics textbook out there. And Harari gets it wrong. The technical details are thoroughly botched.

Moreover, and even more seriously, money creation does not cause economic growth. At all. Ever. There are a zillion technological advances he could have used to illustrate his point and yet he picked one thing that every student who ever took a first year college course on economics should know is wrong.

Now what is particularly interesting about confusing money creation with economic growth is that it was terribly unnecessary. Much of the rest of the argument about growth is fine. It is thus one of many examples of how the good and the bad of this book are intricately intertwined.

This perfectly explains how the book is simultaneously immensely enjoyable and extremely annoying. It depends entirely on whether you are just taking the bad with the good or if you are seeing some good amongst the bad.

By the time I was nearing the end of the book, I was becoming increasingly fascinated with wondering how Harari could write a book which simultaneously has moments of clear insight and moments of absurdity. It was slowly dawning on me that while it looked like a history book, it wasn’t. In a history book, one expects the author to care a lot about getting the details right.

But, what if the book is really just a long argument for…something? Maybe all the asides and strange wandering attacks on Christianity and Islam and Communism and Liberalism and anyone who believes something is True…maybe all those asides were not really asides at all. Maybe they are the point of the book.

And then, in the penultimate chapter, Harari shows his cards.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is not a history book at all. It isn’t even intended to be a history book. It is an evangelistic tract for…Buddhism.

The chapter is entitled “And They Lived Happily Ever After.” It beings innocently enough by asking if people have become happier as they and the societies in which they lived have evolved. There is a long discussion about meaning of happiness and an argument that happiness probably has not increased.

So, what do we do? None of the absolutist creeds which Harari has been roundly mocking for 394 pages can give life any meaning at all. All of human history is full of futile attempts to provide meaning to life. But don’t despair. There is an answer: “The Buddhist position is particularly interesting.”

If we all just start Buddhist mediation techniques, then we can all be liberated from our suffering. And here is the kicker:

The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it.

That sentence would fit right into any book arguing how wonderful it is to be a Buddhist. A book like that could be well worth reading, and you would learn a lot even if you aren’t a Buddhist.

But, remember…that sentence comes as the conclusion to a book that is pretending to be a matter-of-fact history of the human race.

And suddenly the whole book makes sense. If you read this book as an argument for Buddhism, then the annoying asides and the absurd arguments all fade. Of course the details don’t really matter; it doesn’t even matter if Harari gets these things right. What matters is showing you how futile your life is. Harari shows you how futile your life is by showing you the record of human futility. But, don’t despair. Just become a Buddhist.

If I had the nonfiction section of my library organized by topic, I would now file this book in the religion section. That is where it belongs. In the religion section, it is a very good book; highly recommended.

The Structure of Confessions

Augustine’s Confessions has a curious structure. It is divided into 13 chapters. The first nine read like autobiography; Augustine tells the story of his life concentrating on all the sins he has committed. He confesses them, and then he points constantly to God who is the real object of Augustine’s attention. Lots of things we can learn and ponder from these nine chapters.

But, then, in Chapter 10, the book takes a rather stunning turn for those reading it for the first time. Chapter 10 is all about memory. Chapter 11 is about time. Chapter 12 is about Creation. Chapter 13 is an interpretation of Genesis 1. Then Confessions abruptly ends.

It isn’t hard to see why the first nine chapters are the popular part. Much faster pace and it is easy to figure out where it is all going. What is with chapters 10-13, though? Why are they there?

My reading group discussing this book was puzzled by exactly this question.

Consider “Time.” Really. Actually consider the nature of time. What is time? Does time exist? Does the present exist? Does the past exist? If the past exists, where is it existing? If the past no longer exists, then how can we remember it and ask about it? The same sort of thing applies to the future. The longer you think about it, the weirder time is.

Is time a created thing? Did God create time or did time predate God? Seems clear that time must be a created thing. So what happened before time was created? That question is, when you think about it, nonsensical. There can’t be a “before time was created.” Before implies time. So if something is before time is created then time is before time is created. The mind reels.

So, if God is outside time, then is God in the present only? Obviously not. God sees all time simultaneously. For God there is no past or future. We can’t describe “God’s time” because time is that thing God created and observes. (I am not sure what observes means either because it implies a location different than the location in which God exists, but space was also created by God, so God is not in a location.)

So, if God is outside time, when I pray for the future, then God knows the future when I am praying for the future. But, God knows the past equally well. For God, there is no difference between future and past. So, can I pray for the past? Can I pray that God will help George Washington make wise decisions? Is that weird? When George Washington was alive, God knew about my prayer for Washington. Why is this weirder than praying for the future? From God’s perspective, praying for the past and praying for the future must be identical.

The longer I puzzle over Augustine’s discussion of time, the more bewildering it gets. T.S. Eliot captured the same thing—this poem (Bunt Norton) could be called the Spark Notes version of Confessions

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

All time is eternally present. That is the key.

Think about the idea of Augustine confessing his past sins. Those sins are not really past in God’s view. They are eternally present to God. So, Augustine repenting of stealing pears 30 years earlier is not repenting of something that happened 30 years ago for God. It is something that always is existing for God.

In this world, we cannot say, “I sinned in the past.” We can say, “I am a sinner.” And it makes no difference which sins you contemplate; your past sins, present sins, and future sins are all the same from the perspective of God.

And suddenly, chapters 10 and 11 of Confessions seems inseparable from chapters 1-9. When time and memory collapse into the realization that thinking about the idea of memory of his past life leads to the thinking about the idea of time and the realization that “past” time is not really past, then our impression of the autobiographical portion changes. Augustine is not confessing his past sins at all. The sins he committed when he was an infant or teenager or last month are not just things in the past. Augustine is not saying “I used to be a sinner.” He is saying “I am a sinner.”

All time is eternally present. All time in unredeemable. If Augustine is a sinner, not was a sinner, but is, then what hope does he have? That is where God walks in. Augustine is spending the whole book noting that it is not exactly true that God has forgiven him for his past sins. Instead, God is forgiving him for his very nature as a sinner.

What then is going on with the last two books of Confessions? Augustine seems to go off track again, by spending many pages thinking about how to interpret the creation account in Genesis. He notes there are obviously many different interpretations of Genesis, and people spend a lot of time arguing about the right way to interpret it.

But, Augustine argues, God is very clever. What if He intended it to be written in a way that there are multiple true interpretations of the text? If so, then if your interpretation of the text leads to a conclusion which is true, and my different interpretation of the text leads to a different conclusion which is also true, we do not need to argue about whose true interpretation is correct. All interpretations which bring glory to God are true.

Thus you may want to read Genesis as a factual account of the mechanism of Creation. If that is how things were created, then Augustine has no problem with that reading. But, Augustine is more interested in the allegorical readings, the readings in which the structure of the first verse and the first chapter of Genesis reveal an extraordinary number of things about God.

At one level, these last two chapters of Confessions are a very useful description of the modern debate about seven day creationism.

But, what is this discussion of how to read Genesis 1 doing in Confessions?

How do we read Confessions? Our temptation is to read it as an autobiography. Augustine has no objection to us reading it in that way because it is, in fact, a true autobiography. But, then Augustine slyly notes in the final two chapters, this is just one way to read the book. After demonstrating that Genesis 1 can be read for the figurative lesson it offers, Augustine implicitly is inviting us to ask another question: is there a figurative reading of the book you just read?

Of course there is. This is not just the story of Augustine and his life. Indeed, for Augustine, that reading may be the least interesting reading of it. It is also a book about the majesty of God, the nature of sin, the work of Christ, the eternal design of God’s plan, and on and on and on.

The last four chapters of Confessions are extraordinarily clever. You thought you were reading an autobiography. But, oh, it is so much more than that. Once you realize it is a deep book, a very deep book, it makes you want to reread it. Again. And again.

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Augustine Confessions “Cheap Repentance”
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Do You Have a Soul?

“O my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful.”

That is Socrates talking in Phaedo, Plato’s account of the last conversation of Socrates’ life. If the soul is immortal, then surely Socrates is right. Indeed, if the soul is immortal, it is hard to imagine how that could be wrong.

In the phrase “if the soul is immortal,” one might think that it is the “if” which is the point of discussion. But, as it turns out, the “if” isn’t the problem at all. The problem these days is the word “soul.”

We talked about this book in one of my reading groups (The Grecian Urn Seminar). The room was sharply divided on whether there is such a thing as a soul. Socrates spends a lot of time in the dialogue proving that your soul existed before you were born and will continue to exist after you are dead. But, in order to figure out the life-span of the soul, it is obviously first necessary to believe in the existence of the thing itself.

The soul is not much in fashion in intellectual circles these days. What is the soul?

To hear the chatter in the academic world, the soul is dead. With the extraordinary advances in brain imaging, people have become quite confident that our brains are making decisions before we are even conscious that these decisions are being made. There is incredible confidence that the day is not far off when we will have cracked the code and we will be able to predict what you will think by watching your brain at work. Note: that is not “predict what you will do,” but “predict what you will think.” Free will has died. Your thoughts are just neuro-physical-chemical reactions in the lump of cells we call your brain.

Having shown that there is no free will, that you are just a lump of flesh falsely thinking it is making decisions, there is no need for and no room for the soul anymore. Once we can observe your thoughts as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen, what is left for the soul to do?

Ah, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The strange thing about the soul which has been destroyed by modern research is that it bears almost zero resemblance to the soul as discussed by Paul or Augustine or Aquinas or…well, by anyone who ever took the soul seriously. Nobody who ever believed the soul was real and important would be the least bit troubled by all that research on the brain.

Now I understand that modern scientists and philosophers are all far too cool and hip to actually go read a theology book and take the argument seriously and think about it for five minutes before they rush out to declare the soul is done and gone. But, surely all the cool kids could at least read Plato. Right?

And, further, is not one part of us body, and the rest of us soul?
To be sure.
And to which class may we say that the body is more alike and akin?
Clearly to the seen: no one can doubt that.
And is the soul seen or not seen?
Not by man, Socrates.
And by “seen” and “not seen” is meant by us that which is or is not visible to the eye of man?
Yes, to the eye of man.
And what do we say of the soul? is that seen or not seen?
Not seen.
Unseen then?
Yes.
Then the soul is more like to the unseen, and the body to the seen?
That is most certain, Socrates.
And were we not saying long ago that the soul when using the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses)—were we not saying that the soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence?
Very true.
But when returning into herself she reflects; then she passes into the realm of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom?
That is well and truly said, Socrates, he replied.

The soul is by definition the part of man which is unseen. By definition. So, if someone wants to come along as talk about all the things we can now see, that discussion is by definition not about the soul at all.

To repeat what should have been obvious: by definition, the existence of the soul cannot be disproven by any physical means.

The mistake being made here is, to be honest, a bit shocking. Consider the argument: “we cannot prove the existence of the soul, therefore the soul does not exist.” Obviously faulty logic. How about “I cannot reason out why the soul needs to exist, therefore the soul doesn’t exist”? Or, “I cannot provide a precise definition of the soul, therefore there is no such thing”? Or…well, you get the idea. These are all just variations on a theme.

Imagine we define the soul as the unseen and unseeable part of a human, the divine spark in the image of God, that part of a human which longs for God or Heaven or immortality or truth. The soul is, in other words, the essence of the person, the immortal part of the person, the only part of the person that really makes a person a person instead of merely a hunk of decaying flesh. Such a soul would not even be fully describable in human language; it is something that transcends the physical realm that we can sense.

Now, defining the soul that way does not prove that it exists. But, if that is what a soul is, then it cannot be proven to exist. It would only be discoverable by faith.

And recall, the argument “If something can only be discoverable by faith, then it does not exist” is not a reasonable or logical argument.

Incredibly, Socrates provided a description of all those in the modern age convinced that they have proven the soul does not exist:

the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste and use for the purposes of his lusts—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy

That passage is pretty funny when you think about it. Feel free to use it the next time someone tells you that all truth exists only in a bodily form in the realm of things we can observe.

Evil For No Reason

Who is the greatest villain in the Comic Book World? That sounds like one of those debates you can merrily have with your friends.

But, truth be told, while it easy to imagine debating who is the second greatest villain, the top spot is obvious.

The Joker.

A few years back, in honor of its 75^th anniversary, DC comics released a series of retrospectives of its greatest heroes and villains. The Joker: A Celebration of 75 Years is an interesting history, not just of the character but of the course of comic books in that time.

(Yes, I know what you are thinking, “Surely you are not about to write a whole post about comic books.” Ah, ye of little faith. There are more things in comic books than are dreamt of in your philosophy.)

The Joker started out in 1940 as a very nasty criminal. The first image of him is as a clown with an evil glare peering over his shoulder at the reader. His first crime culminates in the corpse undergoing a change, “Slowly the facial muscles pull the dead man’s mouth into a repellant, ghastly grin, the sign of death from The Joker.”

During the Comic Code era, the crimes become less horrific and more playful. The Joker merrily devises clever traps for Batman. And then, at the end of the Comic Code era in the 1970s the ingeniously gruesome murders return. When the infamous “Should Robin Die?” vote was conducted, there was no doubt who the killer would be. He did it in the shack with a crowbar. Of late, the crimes are even more viscerally gruesome.

You can see the transformation of the Joker perfectly reflected in the movies. The Joker in the campy Adam West version was a giggling bad guy. Jack Nicholson brought back the calculated sense of evil. Heath Ledger went over the top. (It is incredible that Nicholson and Ledger pulled off incredible performances with noticeably different personalities.)

After skipping through the history of comic books featuring The Joker, what can we learn? Two things, one about comic books and one about humans.

First, the comic books: if you read comic books from the last 75 years, it is readily obvious that the Joker is much more gruesome of late than he ever has been before. But, when you look at the stories themselves, they haven’t really changed all that much. Take away all the art, and just print out the words, and there really is not a tremendous difference between 1940 and today. During the Comic Code years, nobody ever died, so you would notice that difference. But the nature of the Joker has changed very little.

What has changed in the quality of the art, which is entirely a technical innovation. Take any of the latest stories and recreate them using the technology of yesteryear, and they would be much less visceral.

This is a perfect example of my constant complaint that comic books are not taken more seriously by the Arbiters of High Taste. No comic book I have ever read is Shakespeare or Dante or Eliot. No other writers of literature of any genre are in that league either.

But, if we are willing to say that the written word can produce great stories and that drawings and paintings can be great art, then why is it impossible to conclude that a comic book, which is nothing more than words married to art, could also be great?

Don’t get me wrong: nothing in the present collection rises to the level of Great Books. But, some of the stories herein are as good as many other books I read that nobody would ever think to disparage.

The moral: Just because there is art along with the words does not make it low-brow schlock.

The second lesson from this book. What exactly motivates the Joker?

Unlike your garden variety criminal, the Joker is not interested in wealth or power. At times, it is obvious, he isn’t even really all that interested in winning. He constantly battles his nemesis, Batman, but it is very clear at many points that if he had the ability to kill off Batman, the Joker would refrain from doing so. He needs Batman. He needs a worthy opponent. Why? What does he hope to attain?

That’s just it. He isn’t trying to attain anything at all. He just does horrible, gruesome, evil things because…it is fun.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the first part of Augustine’s Confessions and quoted the following passage:

Now let my heart tell you what it was seeking there in that I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

Augustine wrote that to show how wicked he was, and by implication how wicked we all are, so that he could tell us all how joyful we should be that God rescued us from ourselves.

But, read that passage again. Stripped of the surrounding narrative in Confessions, that passage could easily be labeled The Joker’s Creed. While Augustine says all that in lament and repentance, the Joker would utter those exact same words with pride and glee.

Why read The Joker: A Celebration of 75 Years? Because in a very worrisome way, it is an autobiography. My autobiography. Your autobiography. The Joker is a truly great villain, the greatest villain of all, because he is us.