Writes Sebastian Castillo, in "The Secret to Getting Through Big, Dense, Difficult Books/Learning is painful, pleasant and, above all, communal" (NYT).
The book club's first book was Spinoza's "Ethics." Castillo sums it up: "The book’s argument, supposedly, is that everything one needs for salvation is already at hand."
Posts
15 comments:
I was really interested right up to the part about gender being a construct, then I remembered why I have twice tried book clubs, and twice quickly quit them. I lack perseverance when it comes to suffering fools.
This post is worthy of the "lightweight religion" tag.
"Deep and difficult", eh? For me, that was a 2-inch tome entitled Fundamental Electro-magnetics.
If their first choice was Spinoza, unless they dial it down to Oprah altitude, they may get to a second, but certainly not a third book in the "Club".
My Five brothers and I all read the same copy of Ron Chernow's big, dense, difficult biography: 'Grant'.
Holidays for us means swapping bags of books. Sometimes you'll get one of yours back. Clears out the shelf of deadwood, and saves on bullshit present buying.
Is that a book club?
The calculus book we had at West Point was called "The Black Death." It was known for the phrase "The solution to the problem is intuitively obvious to the casual observer."
No. It wasn't.
That book was the downfall of many cadets.
@Joe Bar
We used to call Organic Chemistry the "Killing Fields" of pre-med undergrads.
Ethics is the theory of moral relativity a liberal religion.
I didn't read the article, but this might be the equivalent of office workers going to the gym. Life is no longer that challenging intellectually. When's the last time anyone worked out a figure using long division instead of a calculator?.......I read Borges in Spanish for the same reason I go on long walks and eat leafy greens. I don't know if it's all that life enhancing, but it serves a prophylactic purpose..
@Money Manger.
I know. I took Orgo with hopes of going to Med school. Another big discriminator. I got a B+ IIRC, which was pretty good, at that time, at that school.
I like the idea and have been craving the same— as an antidote to swimming in the shallows all day. A long time ago I read War and Peace with a group— and it was life changing. You cannot read War and Peace without coming away a Believer: in the One, Transcendant God— not the god in Spinoza’s image.
Lord, I feel as if I need this desperately. I no longer read any books except my one book club book each month, when I used to read voraciously. Aside from that one, always-lame book a month, I only read short form (largely this blog, these days). I feel my brain cells dying ...
"I have a chance to dedicate myself, among friends, toward material that requires sincere mental devotion,"
I'm currently teaching myself general relativity. Don't have any friends joining me, however.
The book club's first book was Spinoza's "Ethics." Castillo sums it up: "The book’s argument, supposedly, is that everything one needs for salvation is already at hand."
I saw that movie. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."
Having some time on my hands upon retirement, and the weather not conducive to golf, I undertook to read Eric Neumann's "The History and Origins of Consciousness." This was based on the recommendations of Jordan Peterson, and a similar desire to test and exercise my faculties.
A lesson learned. Yeesh. What was comprehensible, I found to be tendentious speculation "supported" by numerous footnotes simply making unexplained reference to what are apparently the similarly speculative theories and conclusions of other Jungian acolytes, taking extreme liberties and making quantum leaps regarding purported meanings and connections, with scant archeological evidence remaining from millennia long past. (I gave up about 1/3 of the way through).
I still find Peterson's inquiries into human consciousness, religion, popular culture and philosophy to be fascinating and entertaining, but I frankly lost a little respect for him based on his citation of Neumann as a primary and accessible "authority." Perhaps it is the nature of psychology and philosophy to speculate, but let's not pretend that there is anything scientific about it.
I do believe that the exercise was good for my softening brain, although it unfortunately provided support for my skeptical and cynical side rather than my hopeful and optimistic side. Good thing I have the Althouse blog to keep me sane!
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.