EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
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User ID: 78
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Conquest of Bread. Picking up Toffler’s Future Shock.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm still on This Star of England and The Conquest of Bread.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on This Star of England.
Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread starts off as a surprisingly typical communist screed, but it starts distinguishing itself after it denies the labour theory of value, saying that new forms of production must yield new forms of consumption. An interesting discussion of liberty soon follows. He has a keen eye to underappreciated people, which ameliorates his otherwise combative style.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on This Star of England, and picking up Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Mysterious William Shakespeare and This Star of England. I wonder if the distinction between orthodox and unorthodox is really between “objective” and “subjective” theories of art.
The orthodox (some of them?) tell us that Shakespeare was apparently an objective artist whose works stand on their own. He was a workaday man who wrote plays for profit and there is no hidden significance to be interpreted. The unorthodox would have us believe that the author’s life and the people he knew strongly influenced the works, to the point where the works themselves can help fill in a missing biography. He was a man who didn’t care about money and whose sensitive nature is visible in the works.
I find the orthodox position (if this is an accurate representation of it- it may be dated) baffling. I cannot believe that Hamlet is devoid of subjective intent. In fairness to the orthodox, the attempt to reduce Shakespeare to a force of nature seems in part a backlash to their own excesses in the past, where scholars painted fanciful biographies for the man from Strafrord. I’ll have to delve into some of their works soon.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on This Star of England and The Mysterious William Shakespeare. My appreciation of Shakespeare is certainly increasing as a side effect.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
This Star of England is a biography Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, in light of the theory that he wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
Some of its scholarship seems, for lack of a better word, incestuous, as Ward's biography (he was an Oxfordian) is cited often, and Looney’s (also an Oxfordian) attributions of certain poems to Edward de Vere are also taken as a given.
The narrative itself is much more engaging than I expected. Still the truth is that the Lord Oxford does not always come off as being the sensitive, honest and forthright man who they attempt to portray him as. He seems an awful lot like a man who avoided his wife despite her faithfulness and then accused her of infidelity because he had a personality disorder. But then again the record is not complete, so much is, as the authors say, optional to assume.
Yet I’m enjoying myself immensely; the book reads like a mythology which is pregnant with potential meaning, and such books I deem essential to a complete picture of wisdom. These are the kinds of things which make me upset with our society’s tendency to hide certain books from view: one doesn’t even know where to begin to find a canon of such books. One must rediscover in agonizingly slow steps, in utter confusion, and at his own peril. Ogburn Jr.’s preface (pdf) is well worth reading, if nothing else.
So, what are you reading?
I’m going through This Star of England by the Ogburns, an Oxfordian biography of the man presumed to be the real Shakespeare by the authors. Thoughts below.
Still going through Abundance, Generosity and the State and The Mysterious William Shakespeare.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
I never got around to actually reading Lacan, but the IEP's entry on him was stellar reading.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on Hülsmann’s Abundance, Generosity and the State. Also going through Ogburn Jr.’s The Mysterious William Shakespeare, an Oxfordian tract. So far it has been a lot of interesting information well-presented, though occasionally I find his logic odd.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m on Hülsmann’s Abundance, Generosity and the State, an attempt to understand gifts in the framework of Austrian economics. It was apparently inspired by Benedict XVI’s Caritas in veritate.
Wadsworth's The Poacher from Stratford, a book on the Shakespeare authorship question, has an unfortunate aspect of subtle but pervasive mockery under a veneer of objectivity, perhaps somewhat deserved, but still frustrating. Very rarely Wadsworth deigns to break the illusion and offer the most inane forms of contempt (“J. Thomas Looney, not to be confused with the Baconian, George M. Battey”). The information itself is appreciated, though by now at least some of it is known to be inaccurate.
For those anti-Stratfordians who seem more likely to have mental issues, there is often an element of a “hidden place” or something similar, some one thing which establishes complete proof of the proposition but is not really intended to be checked. Delia Bacon claimed that she had a historical study which proved her case that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare, one which she never published, and also that manuscripts would be found in Shakespeare’s grave, but (if what I’ve read is true) she lost the courage to unearth it. Similar things are noted in some of the other anti-Stratfordians, and not only Baconians. I wonder if something like this is necessary to underpin the general faith for certain kinds of minds. They may even believe it. Perhaps Delia never did write that historical study, but had a false memory that she did. In her telling, “It seemed better to save to the world the power and beauty of this demonstration, its intellectual stimulus, its demand on the judgement.” I do still wonder about the accuracy of reports of her insanity, given that this was the 19th century.
The book, in my opinion, gets less interesting after the Baconians are dealt with, no doubt because the Oxfordians were recent history at the time this book was written. Greenwood and Looney are given short thrift, and the familiar ciphers and buried documents take center stage again. I’m not finished yet, so there is still space to impress me.
Overall, it was worth reading, with some caveats. There are hints of familiar tropes, such as Shakespeare’s “genius” and allegations of snobbery, but these are surprisingly subdued. Most of it delves into details about the works and methods of anti-Stratfordians, with some terms like “literary sincerity” (the idea that an author’s life necessarily exerts a direct influence on his art) perhaps deserving a second look. The evident sneering (at least, that’s what I saw, it isn't always open) thoroughly undermines any claims to fair play, and it leaves an unpleasant image of a face behind the mask which outwardly says “Our role should be not to suppress debate but to instruct students how to consider the Oxfordians’ (and others’) arguments carefully and thoughtfully.” Nevertheless he did after all bother to write a book about the topic. A somewhat inauspicious but still valuable beginning to academic overviews of the topic.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on The Poacher from Stratford. Thoughts below.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m on Wadsworth’s The Poacher from Stratford, a now somewhat dated academic book on the Shakespeare authorship question which affirms the orthodox case and studies the skeptics.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m reading Greenwood’s The Shakespeare Problem Restated, an old book positing that the man from Stratford didn’t write the plays, without suggesting a candidate of its own. It is remarkable how little the conversation has changed. Skeptics are still being called crazy reactionary snobs, and orthodox scholars are still being told that they’re appealing to authority, inertia and speculation.
Also going through Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief and James’ The Will to Believe, both short works. So far Clifford’s essay, which posits that one has a moral duty to base his beliefs on verified evidence (or something like that), is beautiful in its initial purity but gets a little confused when it has to make a framework for ethically believing in what others (like experts) say. Well worth reading in light of squabbles over conspiracy theorists.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on The Future Does Not Compute. Also trying to catch up on my Shakespeare with The Tempest.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m on Gardiner’s Athletics of the Ancient World, after reading the paper Mens Sana in Corpore Sano? Body and Mind in Ancient Greece by Young which was in part very critical of him. Still going through Reagan in His Own Hand and The Future Does Not Compute.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
Seems to be from 1975-1979, not long before his presidency, although the last section has miscellaneous writings from 1925-1994. It’s very engaging, much better than I would expect from a politician but not as dense as an actual book. The lack of a voice definitely diminishes his usual impact.
According to this CIA pdf there’s been a reappraisal in the 2000’s. As for my own previous impression, they were coloured by brief and likely misremembered readings of Lou Cannon’s work, which gave me the impression that he was aloof.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Future Does Not Compute. Picking up Reagan in His Own Hand, a collection of radio addresses he wrote, which has been cited as proof that the "amiable dunce" theory of Reagan is clearly false.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on Human Action and The Future Does Not Compute. Also finding my way back to the Bible, chiefly due to a growing interest in Ronald Reagan. As always, Ecclesiastes steals the show, though this time around Proverbs has resonated as well. It has been a very long time, and it’s apparent to me now that whatever the Bible lacks in technical quality, it makes up for in structure and direction. It is easy to forget its uniqueness.
I’m kind of obsessed with those points on human nature (though I get obsessed with new ideas on a weekly basis). I’m actually less interested in the economics, though that is interesting too. What really caught my attention was an extrapolation of his “methodological dualism” (Mises’ belief that the scientific metaphor is inappropriate for the social sciences), the idea of deductive reasoning as related to classical humanism, the liberal arts, etc. It’s one of the reasons why I’m getting interested in Spinoza as well.
As for the value of books, all I can say is that nothing else in my life has made such reliable and profound personal changes in me than books. Artistic works (including stories) are always an irreplacable whirlwind of feelings, and videos are very useful for finding new directions, but some things only come out in the written word, longform, as difficult as it can be to keep going.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading? (There was another book thread in the Fun Thread here)
Still on Human Action. Also going through Talbott’s The Future Does Not Compute, an early and very unusual warning shot against the dangers of the internet. It is a bit haphazard, but also a bit profound, and I wonder why I have never heard of this book before.
To run on automatic is, for the human being, to sink toward instinct, unfreedom, and statistical predictability. It is to give up what sets us most vitally apart from our material environment and our tools. It is to remain asleep in our highest capacities.
Whether our ideals can survive depends- beyond all pessimism and optimism vested in automatic processes- on whether we can consciously take hold of the mechanisms around us and within us, and raise them into the service of what is most fully human because most fully awake. The first prerequisite is to recognize the severity of the challenge.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on Mises’ Human Action. Also going through Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching which appears to have had an influence on the classical education movement.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm going through Mises' Human Action. Milei's appearance has been a gift to my mind. I've tried reading Mises and Rothbard before but they never clicked until now. Also reading the Enchiridion after reading Stockdale's essay Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior.
There were also other book threads in the Fun Thread here and here.
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Conquest of Bread and Future Shock. Also finished Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life, which posits that Wallace was a precursor of intelligent design. The biography was good, though the arguments at the end were sometimes confusing.
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