Category Archives: Philosophy

BOOKS: “Play” by Stuart Brown

Posted on by
Reply
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the SoulPlay: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart M. Brown Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Why does biology encourage play? Why does it stop encouraging play at some point? Should play end, or should one maintain a dedication to play throughout life? These are principal questions addressed by this book.

Brown explores the advantages of leading a playful life, and he doesn’t restrict himself to childhood play. In fact, the book doesn’t restrict itself entirely to human play, but also presents insights derived from the study of other playful species. One of the most profound lessons from the book comes from a story about a sled dog that has repeated playful interactions with a polar bear — a hungry polar bear, at that.

The book is presented more like an essay or a collection of essays than the usual popular science or pop psychology book. That is to say, it is not annotated and lacks a bibliography. The author sites the occasional book or study in the text, but it’s in the manner one would see in journalism or essays. This approach has its advantages, but the flipside of those advantages are the disadvantages. On the positive side, the author is able to communicate more freely, including the ability to discuss more speculative possibilities than one would expect from scientific reporting (with its usual “just the facts” approach.) Of course, the extensive speculation will be frustrating to readers who want to know what evidence has been produced for the proposed benefits. Furthermore, it often feels like the speculation in question is of the “when you’re a hammer every problem is a nail” nature — i.e. when one is a play researcher, one may be inclined to see play as a panacea for all the ills facing humanity (it surely is for some, but probably not all.) [To be fair, the book is almost fifteen years old, and I suspect it was / is probably harder than pulling teeth to get academic funding for play research outside of early childhood development, and so part of what the book was probably trying to do was build enthusiasm for supporting this kind of research, which necessitated talking about possibilities that were outside the known.]

The book does have a chapter on “the dark side of play.” It deals with compulsive behaviors like gambling and video game playing addiction (i.e. not people who like playing video games once in a while, but those who go 48 hours without sleep and who live in cave-like darkness to limit screen glare.) Much of the chapter argues that, while those problems are real and of concern, the activities aren’t play, not as per the definition presented early in the book.

This book does make a sound case for a number of benefits of play and for not abandoning play in one’s youth. If you’re interested in how play can help one to cope in a world of uncertainty, to keep one’s mind and body healthy, and to maintain or grow one’s capacity for imagination, this book is well worth reading.

View all my reviews

“Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

Posted on by
Reply 
Under the wide and starry sky,
   Dig the grave and let me lie.
 Glad did I live and gladly die,
   And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
   Here he lies where he longed to be;
 Home is the sailor, home from sea,
   And the hunter home from the hill.

“Strong” [Poetry Style #8] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]

Posted on by
Reply 
Walk with a mind that's clear and unburdened, 
   With life force that flares -n- flows like rainbows,
 Traversing the witch's gorge through the mountains --
   Among the floating clouds and blowing winds. 
 Drink up the spiritual; dine on the real;
   Let them ever build up in your body.
 Emulate the health and might of the gods,
   Preserve your energy through harmony.
 Be one with Heaven, be one with the Earth.
   See in yourself divine transformations.
 Know all this to the utmost -- be all this,
 And hold on to it 'til the bitter end.

NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a translation of the eighth of the twenty-four poems.

BOOK: “The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded” by Dana Sawyer

Posted on by
Reply
The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded: A Guide for the Mystically-inclinedThe Perennial Philosophy Reloaded: A Guide for the Mystically-inclined by Dana Sawyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Release Date: July 9, 2024

The good news is that this book does a thorough, clear, and balanced job of discussing Perennial Philosophy along a number of dimensions including metaphysics, psychology, theology, and aesthetics. The bad news is that it can lead one to believe there IS NO Perennial Philosophy, just a hodge-podge of (often disparate) assumptions about the grand metaphysical questions of life, the universe, and everything, assumptions that are usually Eastern, mystical, or both and which appeal to the kind of person who likes to say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” but which are all over the place, intellectually speaking. We learn more about the varied metaphysical perspectives that can be lumped under rubric Perennial Philosophy, than we learn of any internally consistent set of beliefs which distinguish the Philosophy from others. Sawyer does acknowledge that there is not a unified worldview that is Perennial Philosophy and that, instead, one must think in terms of “family resemblance.” The problem is that Perennial Philosophy displays the kind of family resemblance seen in a foster home. One can believe in a god or not, believe in a soul / persistent self or not, one can hold any number of beliefs about time, causation, creation, and other aspects of metaphysics. Sawyer does solidly distinguish Perennial Philosophy from Materialism, but it’s not clear why we needed it, given we already had various permutations of Idealism.

The book does provide a lot of food-for-thought, if often frustratingly so. The most important thing it does is lay out the various questions at the fore of Perennial Philosophy, how they’ve been addressed by different thinkers, and the crux of discord.

I did find myself disturbed by the arguments on occasion. A prime example is when Sawyer writes about students who describe themselves as non-spiritual but who enjoy going hiking. Because Sawyer couches the experiences that are had on a good hike in spiritual terms, he believes the students are wrong to describe themselves as “non-spiritual.” However, it’s far from clear why they need to twist their interpretations into line with his worldview. I suspect that his “non-spiritual” students, like me, see in “spiritual” types a need to escape the surly bonds of nature, to have magic exist in their worlds, something above and beyond nature. I see “spiritual” people as having a craving like the proverbial true-believer / flood victim whose neighbors come by in a truck and a boat to rescue him (and then rescue services come by with a helicopter,) but he turns them all down because “God Will Save Me!” Then he dies and goes to heaven and berates God for letting him drown, to which God says, “I sent a truck, a boat, and a helicopter. What do you want from me?” Well, he wanted a divine golden light to levitate him not some mundane solution based in the natural world; he wanted magic, rapturous rescue.

If you are interested in the various debates between Materialism and Idealism, this book is well worth reading, and if you describe yourself as “Spiritual, but not religious,” you’ll probably really love it.

View all my reviews

Worlds, Inner & Outer [Free Verse]

Posted on by
2 
Inside -- Outside...
    Is there an outside?
 I don't know.
 I feel I can breathe into 
   Infinite space.

But how far beyond
   My reaching fingertips
 Must the cage walls be
   For me to feel that I'm
     In a cave of unknown 
       Circumstance?

Five Wise Lines [April 2024]

Posted on by
Reply
Diogenes Sitting in His Tub by Jean-Leon Gerome (1860)

Of what use for us is a man who, although he has long practiced philosophy, has never upset anyone?

Diogenes of sinope on Plato, according to themistius

The superstition that we must drive from the Earth is that which, making a tyrant of God, invites men to become tyrants.

Voltaire in On Superstition

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

T.S. Eliot in Tradition and the Individual talent

What’s the difference between a king and a poor man if they would both end the same bundle of white bones.

Zhuangzi

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Carl sagan (Note: There are variations on this quote that long predate Sagan’s)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

You live off the crumbs that fall from the festive table of my genius.

Kurban Said in Ali and Nino [Not so much wisdom as a wicked burn]

To roam Giddily and be everywhere, but at home, Such freedom doth a banishment become.

John donne in a Poetic letter to rowland woodward

Lions are not the slaves of those who feed them, it is the feeders, rather, who are the lion’s slaves. For fear is the mark of a slave, and wild beasts make men fearful.

Diogenes the cynic

BOOKS: “The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic” by Jean-Manuel Roubineau

Posted on by
Reply
The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the CynicThe Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic by Jean-Manuel Roubineau
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This is a translation of a French book about the life and philosophy of Diogenes the Cynic. It’s a thin volume, as there is much that’s unknown about the life of Diogenes, and the dearth of surviving texts means that some of what is believed about Diogenes and Cynic philosophy maybe corrupted by the reports of detractors. I learned a great deal from reading this book, but not because I learned much new about Diogenes, himself. The colorful anecdotes from his life have been extensively discussed.

With respect to what I did learn, it largely fell into three categories. First, I gained insight into the context and environment in which Diogenes lived. Second, I discovered that many of the stories of Diogenes’ life are far less certain than we have been led to believe through the presentations of them in so many books. For example, we know Diogenes was exiled from his native Sinope in relation to a scheme involving currency debasement. This is often straightforwardly stated as “Diogenes was a counterfeiter,” but Roubineau shows that we don’t know much (if anything) about the degree to which Diogenes was involved (i.e. whether he was mastermind, accomplice, or an unwitting pawn.) Third, I benefited from the comparing and contrasting of Cynic philosophy with that of predecessors (e.g. Socratics) and successors (e.g. Stoics,) and – in a few cases – comparisons between Diogenes and other Cynics.

The book consists of four chapters. The first is a discussion of what is known about Diogenes as a historical figure. The second focuses on the Cynics views on economy, wealth, and related ideas. The third explores the Cynic view of the human body and related topics like sex, pleasure, and pursuit of health and well-being. The last chapter considers Diogenes as a teacher and the Cynic approach to practicing philosophy.

I’d highly recommend this book for readers interested in philosophy.


View all my reviews

PROMPT: Unique

Posted on by
Reply

Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

Genetic code and life story.

ESSAY: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot

Posted on by
1
Tradition and the Individual Talent: An EssayTradition and the Individual Talent: An Essay by T.S. Eliot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for free at the Poetry Foundation

Amazon.in Page

While this is a controversial essay and I don’t accept it wholesale, myself, I would wholeheartedly recommend it as required reading for poets (and other artists.) What is Eliot’s controversial thesis? It’s that poetry should be less about the poet. That broad and imprecise statement can be clarified by considering two ways in which Eliot would make poetry less about the poet. First, Eliot proposes that poets should be in tune to the historic evolution of their art and — importantly — should not be so eager to break the chain with the past masters. He’s not saying a poet needs to be a literary historian, but rather that one be well-read in the poetry of the past. Second, Eliot advocates that a poet avoid packing one’s poetry with one’s personality, and – instead – let one’s personality dissolve away through the act of creation.

A quote from the essay may help to clarify — Eliot says, “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not an expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”

One can imagine the accusations of pretension and dogmatism that Eliot received in 1919 from the mass of poets who were moving full speed ahead into poetry that was suffused with autobiography, was avant-garde, and which was free of meter, rhyme and other compositional elements that had once been seen as the defining characteristics of poetry.

I don’t see this essay as being the map to our new home, but rather as the catalyst of a conversation that could move us to a more preferable intermediary location. I have, too often, picked up a collection by a young poet that was entirely autobiographical and (also, too often) of the “everybody hates me, nobody loves me, I think I’ll go eat worms” variety of wallowing in personal feelings. And I always think, when I want to read something depressing, I’ll read something from someone who has lived tragedy — e.g. a Rwandan refugee, not something from a twenty-four-year-old MFA student at some Ivy League school.

So, yeah, maybe we could use more connection to the past and a bit less autobiographical poetry from people who haven’t lived a novel-shaped life.

View all my reviews

“Darest Thou Now O Soul” by Walt Whitman [w/ Audio]

Posted on by
4 
Darest thou now O soul,
 Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
 Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide,
 Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
 Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not O soul,
 Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
 All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land. 

Till when the ties loosen,
 All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
 Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

Then we burst forth, we float,
 In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
 Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfill O soul.