List: Philosophy

I had a couple of stressful weeks, with both positive and negative experiences with wonderful people. When I start losing my equilibrium (ok, no, when I have irrevocably lost my equilibrium), I sometimes go back and read The Manual, a very short, 50-pages-at-most read of the Stoic principles by Epictetus.

Nietzsche – in this book, he is equally malevolent spirit, joyfully brilliant shitposter, and asshole. The full title is Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert). It's a dense book – not in that it is complex, but that it is just stuffed with aphorisms and opinions.

Josef Pieper on prudence as the most important of the cardinal virtues, following (as always) Thomas of Aquin.

A short book by Pieper, which I read mostly because it was there (and I like Pieper). Not as impressive as some of his work, it struck me more like one of the notebook blogs – a bit unfinished, a bit WIP, scoring points against other philosophers and theologists who I don't know or care about. Not worth the read unless you're actively interested in a Christian take on virtues.

This book came recommended by Seb Falk in the bibliography of The Light Ages, and it's also on the reading list of /r/askHistorians, which I trust a lot. I found this book harder to like – who writes sentences like “when the barbarian tribes took over or destroyed the Roman infrastructure” in this century? It was long-winded and seemed to alternate between being jovial and trying for jokes, and going for a more professorial style. Not only the style was uneven: I also felt like the assumed prior knowledge fluctuated a lot, and was sometimes left out entirely, and then filled in with excrutiating care at other times.

A very cerebral, nearly clinical book, and I wanted to like it more than I actually liked it. I'm very here for the character of Socrates, and … not much else, to be quite honest. It's a fun concept, but I felt that even where it tried to go past the clinical, detached nature, it remained off. High quality, but not for me.

Meh. Meh, I say. Books that preach at me have to be outstanding to convince me, not tedious and annoying and boring. They have to have characters and good reasons for their preaching, not two-dimensional cardboard cutouts who get a bit of action before it's time to get back to your regularly scheduled sermon. And they have to have content that is fascinating, not just reurgitating old philosophers and assume I care.

DNF. Not right for me, not right for now. It talks about Zen and Buddhism, but not in a way that's accessible to me.