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Thursday morning at our usual time of 8:30am PDT / 11:30am EDT / 15:30 UTC, Adrian Lory and I will hold dialogue #4 in our series of live conversations about psychology and philosophy. We conferred briefly today and decided on a few possible topics: philosophical perspectives on happiness (or at least my perspective, informed by the book I'm writing about Aristotle's conception of human fulfillment), Adrian's recent reflections on the nature of art (a topic I've been pondering of late as well), and the deep connections between art, myth, and religion. One thing is for sure: you can't say we shy away from the eternities! :-)
See you then!
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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From reading my weblog, you might get the impression that I'm just another ivory-tower intellectual, philosophe, and artiste. It's true I started out that way after earning a degree in philosophy and ancient Greek, but over the course of my 30-year career in business and technology I learned quite a bit about the practicalities of life and slowly acquired traits and abilities that continue to stand me in good stead today, such as communication, negotiation, and public speaking.
Case in point: my current service to the community as president of my neighborhood association. Over the last few months I've been working diligently with folks in this corner of Douglas County, Colorado to oppose a dense, urban-style housing development being pushed forward nearby by mega-builder KB Home. Lest you immediately cry "NIMBYism!", I assure you that there is plenty of building going on around here, which the county's master plan channels to areas already slated for dense development; the difference this time is that the builder attempted to inject a pocket of urban housing into an area which the master plan has reserved for rural living. This is creeping urbanization: if the citizens want to modify the designation of protected areas they have a public process for doing so through modifications to the next version of the master plan, but one-off amendment proposals from developers ain't it.
Thankfully, because of a coordinated community response in my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods, at last night's well-attended public meeting the county's Planning Commission voted to deny KB Home's request to amend the master plan. I doubt we've heard the end of attempts to develop the parcels in question and similar properties here in Douglas County, but this victory gives the community some breathing room to collaborate with the county and the nearby town of Parker in a more measured manner as we navigate the inevitable tradeoffs between preservation and development. Personally I expect to be right in the thick of those conversations.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
In my classical guitar studies of late I've been learning a Bach prelude and fugue (BWV 999 and 1000, although so far I have only the prelude in my fingers). This has inspired me to think about tweaking my lifelong philosophy project of writing half a dozen books on the art of living well, as I've done several times before since first articulating it about twelve years ago.
All four of the books I've written so far in this series are short - perhaps too short. They are, as it were, my own somewhat improvisatory preludes to the large fugues produced by the great thinkers I've been encountering over the years.
Thus I've been thinking: what if I were to append each of my preludes with a fugue when producing (as I hope to do) new, high-quality editions of the books I've published so far? I already have the original materials on hand for a few of these, and I've been thinking about translating or arranging some of the other fugues. Here's what that might look like, in reverse chronological order...
First, Nietzsche (1844-1900). My book Songs of Zarathustra contains 72 poems riffing off aphorisms sprinkled throughout the works that Nietzsche published during his lifetime. The fugue would consist of my own translations of the hundred-odd aphorisms I cite in the poems. It's true that my German is rusty, but I think I could just barely pull this off.
Second, Thoreau (1817-1862). This one is easy, because the fugue already exists in Seasons of Thoreau, a companion to my book The Upland Farm containing relevant passages I selected from Thoreau's journal and published writings.
Third, Montaigne (1533-1592). Although Montaigne is a recent addition to my lifelong philosophy project, lately I've been warming to the idea of writing a long, rambling essay entitled "Apology for Michel de Montaigne" in which I would defend his personalist approach to soulcraft. The challenge here is producing a fugue of perhaps a dozen of his essays, since I don't know French; I'd likely need to use existing translations in the public domain.
Fourth, Epicurus (341-270 BCE). The prelude is my book Letters on Happiness and the fugue is already about half-done, since I've translated his Letter to Menoikeus, his Principal Doctrines, the collection of aphorisms known as the Vatican Sayings, and selected fragments from his lost works. I've been meaning to translate more of his fragments, some of testimonia from Greek and Latin authors, the ancient biography written by Diogenes Laertius, and perhaps his letters to Herodotus, to Pythocles, and to his mother.
Fifth, Pyrrho (ca. 360–270 BCE). Nothing is written or translated here except the first ~350 lines of my projected epic poem Gods Among Men. The fugue would probably consist of my own translations from ancient Greek of selections from Sextus Empicirus, Diogenes Laertius, and Eusebius. I might even throw in some passages from Montaigne's "Apology for Raymond Sebond" because what he says there about Pyrrho strikes me as extremely insightful.
Sixth, Aristotle (384-322 BCE). Over the last two months I've written the first half of my book Complete Thyself and I'll soon write chapter four of the projected six. My current idea is that the fugue would be my own translation of Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, supplemented with passages from his other works (such as On Thrivings and Failings of Character). I'd skip the Nicomachean Ethics because the world already has enough translations of that one; besides, I think the Joe Sachs translation is excellent even though I disagree with him on the rendering of some key terms.
(Astute readers will notice that I'm leaving out The Tao of Roark, my little book about Ayn Rand's philosophy of life. That's because what I wrote is very much intertwined with Rand's novel The Fountainhead, which is more of a symphony than a fugue; I'd like each fugue to be 2-4 times as long as my own prelude, but in this case the ratio would be more like 10:1. Plus there are copyright issues.)
Sometimes I wonder why I've set myself up for such a massive undertaking, but it helps to give focus and direction to my intellectual endeavors and I find the results deeply fulfilling...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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For reasons unknown, several friends have asked me of late about my perspective on spirituality. Might they suspect that the passing of my wife Elisa has prompted me to ponder these matters? Knowing that I philosophize about the deep questions of existence, do they feel that I might have insights to share? Do I give off an aura of spirituality? Is it something in the air, perhaps triggered by the seeming emergence of artificial intelligence?
Independently of these recent queries, I have indeed been thinking about spirituality for the last year or so. I've read or am reading books about the religious views of Spinoza (both his Ethics and Clare Carlisle's book Spinoza's Religion) and about the spiritual journey of Albert Einstein (who claimed to believe in Spinoza's god). I've also been reading about ancient Greek religion as background to my forthcoming book on Aristotle, and I've been trying to integrate and interpret the scattered remarks about god and the divine to be found in Aristotle's own works (which modern academics have shied away from discussing).
It was roughly fifty years ago that, at the age of nine, after period of fervent prayer to the personal god of the Christians, I concluded that such a god does not exist. Although I have not wavered in that conclusion, anyone who wonders as deeply as I do about the human condition must also wonder about spirituality; from time to time I've even written about it, starting with the very first post in my weblog (back-dated to 1989), quite occasional posts since then, and the stray essay.
With all that as a preamble, I offer the following thoughts, which due to the utmost complexity of the subject matter must necessarily be partial, vague, tentative, and provisional.
I think there is something divine about being.
Consider the sheer improbability of being alive. A humble example is a young Ponderosa Pine tree on my property in Colorado, which I suspect took root around the time that Elisa and I bought this land. There are 75 such trees on these five acres, which each year put forth perhaps a thousand or so pine cones, the female cones producing ovules and the male cones producing pollen that swirls around in green clouds every spring. Of the millions or more of potential ovule/pollen combinations, only a few germinate each year, even fewer actually sprout up, and of the few yearly sprouts I have observed that only this one tree has survived, in part because it grew up within the protection of a mountain mahogany bush (which I've cut back and replaced with wire mesh to protect it from the depredations of hungry deer).
I feel like saying to this little tree: congratulations, you have won the lottery of existence and have joined the great pageant of being!
The same could be said to the insects that creep on and under the pines, to the nuthatches and bluebirds that feed on the insects, to the squirrels that scurry over the branches and chomp on the cones, and to my dog Chance, who loves to chase the squirrels and who savors every moment of life. What was the chance, Chance, that you should have come into being on this beautiful planet? And what was the chance that I, too, should have come into being, blessed not only with mere existence but with a form of consciousness that can be behold and ponder the great pageant of being? Of all the human beings that ever could have lived, I am a virtual impossibility, yet here I am.
So I say: it is wondrous and divine that there is something rather than nothing, that there is life in its infinite variety, that there are human beings to be conscious of existence and wonder about its meaning, that I am alive and conscious and wondering, and that of the ten billion or so people alive today I have ten or so dear friends with whom to share these thoughts and go through life together, making and sharing meaning as we proceed.
None of this requires a creator god. The pageant of being simply is. Is it eternal, or will it come to an end with the heat death of the universe? I know not and I care not, for I know the divinity of being and the wonder of living in the here and now.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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Revisiting Montaigne's essay "Use Makes Perfect" just now, I was reminded of his personalist insights regarding the rambling and uncertain pace of the soul, and its intricate internal windings. Having little of a universalist cast to share and not feeling much like writing these days, somewhat reluctantly I turn to the personal.
Last week I visited the coast of Maine to help one of my sisters with a variety of tasks. Given that in Colorado we just experienced the winter that wasn't, I found myself revelling in the snow and cold rain. Plus those glimpses of the ocean were a tantalizing balm for the soul. One of these years I need to spend a week or two on Monhegan Island to get my fill of the North Atlantic - breathing in the salt air, beholding the waves breaking on the rocks for hours on end, and simply being.
On the writing front, progress on my Aristotle book has slowed somewhat because as I move along the material becomes more knotty, which is forcing me to revisit Aristotle's works and my copious notes on the scholarly literature to figure out what I want to say. However, before traveling to Maine I completed the first draft of chapter 3, so I'm now halfway done. This book has been on my project list for years and I'm excited about finally putting pen to paper. (Actually I am writing this book in the notes app shared between my computer and phone, which enables me to write and edit whenever the fancy strikes me.)
Art continues to be a source of solace for me, but only certain kinds of art. Since Elisa's passing, and in fact for months before that, I have been unable to read novels or poems, nor have I been able to listen to music with words; somehow my feelings are still too raw for these art forms. However, purely instrumental music is fine, thus I've been immersing myself in classical music most mornings and jazz most afternoons. Recent favorites are J.S. Bach (as always), Gabriel Fauré, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk. Because my guitar teacher suggested that I learn a prelude by Bach (BWV 999), much of my practice time has been devoted to that enjoyable and rewarding task. I've also continued a tradition started last year of reading biographies of jazz musicians (Bill Evans and Lennie Tristano have been the latest subjects) and I've been digging into books about my favorite painters (especially Jan Vermeer and Joaquín Sorolla). As to my own creations, I've been making progress on several musical compositions and hope to have them in shape to share more widely later this year.
In remembrance of Elisa, I've purchased a work of art by Colorado sculptor Rosetta that we had talked about buying last year for a special location in our house, above a fireplace we added a few years ago. Because of her illness we didn't make that happen at the time, but I reached out to Rosetta and she still had one of her "Lion Mask" castings available. It was Elisa who discovered Rosetta's work and this is the third sculpture of hers we've acquired, which makes it even more meaningful. Hanging the mask on the wall turned out to be something of a challenge because the sheetrock had degraded there (perhaps because of the heat?), but after several trips to Home Depot I was able to assign the king of beasts to his rightful place of honor.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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This Thursday at 8:30am PDT / 11:30 EDT / 15:30 UTC, my friend Adrian Lory and I will hold the third in our series of live conversations about psychology and philosophy. Inspired by my friend Dave Jilk's SF novel Epoch, which is subtitled "A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga", Adrian and I have decided to name this series the "Psy-Phi Dialogues", where "psy" is short for psychology and "phi" is short for philosophy. Clever, eh? My friend Dave is very creative. :-)
As Adrian has already pointed out at his Substack blog, potential topics for this third conversation include the marketing and media portrayal (or is it distortion?) of psychological theories and philosophical schools, whether it's healthy to self-identify as a follower of particular thinkers or isms, the nature of psychological diagnosis, the path from diagnosis to therapeutic healing, and the nature of happiness according to the philosophical tradition (with some sneak previews into my rapidly progressing book about Aristotle), sprinkled here and there with connections to the practice and experience of music.
We're looking forward to it and we hope you are, too!
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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