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[From Introduction to Phenomenology by Dermot Moran.] In his discussion of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, Moran mentions off-hand, “Of course, Frege held the strange view that all true sentences have the same reference, namely the true, whereas for Husserlthe references of sentences will be the state of affairs that they affirm as holding.”

I need to look into Frege’s view, but this practice—though a perhaps cumbersome, idiosyncratic way of thinking about true sentences—seems to be rigorous in a way that forces one to think of the metaphysics underlying any utterance at all. This sounds to me more Platonic than I remember any of Frege’s writings to be, though.

I concede that there certainly is a sense in which when I state any true sentence, then it refers ultimately to The True, but it does so by-way-of that circumstance or thing I posit. There has to be something I’m not seeing: it seems either redundant to say that each true statement has as its reference the true—or indolent not to affirm it.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
—Goethe

When I was just old enough to know that I should control myself in the company of my elders but young enough to know I could still get away with being obnoxiously rambunctious and what was to my parents embarrassingly honest, I found myself confronted by a crisis of conscience.

At that point in my life, I thought of “department stores” as something like cubby holes, only bigger, where adults walked around like they knew what they were there for, while I hid giggling inside the circular standing racks of women’s blouses just because I knew that somehow it was something I could never get away with someday. My mother and I had gone to one such department store, and there in the midst of an aisle was standing a ridiculously irate toddler. He wanted something, clearly, from his mother; or rather, for her to buy him something—you know, I wasn’t clear on how all those transactions worked at just over half a decade old—and I crept up to investigate. I was an extremely shy child, you understand, but I just had to know what that kid was screaming about—and it ended up being something that I thought was utterly ridiculous. I thought to myself that he ought not to have been screaming about something so stupid, so utterly needless. But then, it hit me: maybe that’s how Mom thought of the stuff I wanted….

That didn’t make me want it less, whatever “it” might have been—and I would whine, beg, flash those doe eyes kids and seductresses share, and tug at her blouse to get it (thereby prophetically setting my path before me as a philosopher who would disprove the Socratic knowledge-as-virtue tenet). But that was only because I knew I could get away with it.

Another time, in a J. C. Penney, around the same age, the horrifying fate that must befall all firstborn sons and their poor distraught mothers occurred to me: I got lost. Here in these suffocating cubby holes, these cold, gridded floors with their fake tile and unyielding, Astroturf-esque carpeting that comprised some system that I just couldn’t grasp, I had gotten distracted by a diamond necklace or some such at the jewelry counter. Obediently not touching the glass, I stared in wide-eyed wonder at this sparkly rainbowmaker; and when my reverie broke, I turned to find—men, women, racks of clothing, an infinite sea of “stuff” and “things”—and precisely zero people who were my mother.

Knowing that this was when the “little kids” always panicked, I gathered myself, determined to outstay the anxiety with faith that Mom would realize where I was and come to rescue me from my present state—uncertain, hands clasped behind my back, rocking from the balls to the heels of my feet across the line between pseudotile flooring and stiff beige carpeting. Finally (probably after all of ninety seconds), my resolve eroded and I wandered at a near-gallop past all the places I thought she had been, only to find myself more lost than before, somewhere between “soft shiny things Dad likes on t.v.” (lingerie) and “things that would make Mom sneeze a lot” (perfume)—my sense of direction has only marginally improved since then. It was somewhere around this time that I passed the escalator, that great unmanned beast of a machine I’d heard of trapping my peers’ feet and ceaselessly moving people to and fro, up and down. Presently, I gave up hope, and began to tremble, then to softly weep; for it had been an eternity, and I had moved from the spot I’d been left besides, against all admonitions I’d ever received to the contrary. Lost to my curiosity, inadvertently abandoned light years from home, at the top of the gaping maw of an unfriendly peoplemover, a bad son for making my mother worry (and God only knew what Dad would say when we got home), I presently gave up hope. I felt more vulnerable standing, so I walked very slowly, sobbing quietly into my sleeve, embarrassed at the looks I got and still anxious about (not) being rediscovered—

But then there was a certain man who greeted me sheepishly. He was an elf to my hobbit, tall and thin and full of years yet still youthful somehow. (Looking back, he couldn’t have been any more than in his late twenties.) Kind but somehow timid eyes regarded me beneath a concerned brow framed by a close-cropped shock of black hair; he was dressed in a suit with shoulder pads the likes of which no one has seen since 1989. A regular joe, just a customer in the store, he had found me and asked me if I was lost. Yes, I replied, but truth be told it was Mom who was lost, or both of us, or—oh, I didn’t know! And he smiled a half-smile that bespoke what I later understood to be amusement and a gentle kindness tempered by the social awareness that he was trying to exude extreme professionalism and yet was talking to a lanky wet-faced six-year-old in the midst of a department store in the middle of the afternoon. Still nearly smiling, he offered to help me find my mother. Having grown up with pure, 1980s archetypes of what good and evil looked like (the former with geekiness, silliness, bombasticism, or at least, self-consciousness, and the latter with cigarette-smoking, sleazy self-assuredness, and sly turns of phrase), I trusted him for his half smile and his youth, which won out over his height and suit-wearing.

Rising in a small elevator with no more than this stranger who wore the look of kindness and pathos, my eyes dried. I steeled myself, drawing up my chest and clenching my fists; and with all the power of every bit of manners that had been drilled into me, I thanked the man straight-faced. But it was the kind of caricature of a straight face that I fancied must have looked like Jean Claude Van Damme in every movie in which I’d ever seen him, so I couldn’t help but smile, then giggle in spite of myself.

In what seemed a miracle tantamount to Philip being translocated by the Spirit, the two invested parties found each other upon the opening of the elevator doors. My mother was, as she tells it, “boo-hooing,” thinking she’d lost me forever, and I thought how interesting, how meaningful it was that she was just as upset as I had been (”—and then some,” I’m sure she’d interject). She thanked the man profusely, but kept crying till we got to the car, and even as we were pulling out of the parking lot. Finally, pitying her and thinking she must be going through the same thing I was going through in the store (only outside the store, that whole adults-thinking-abstractly thing), I patted her leg softly and said, “It’s okay, Mom, I’m right here, now. I love you!”

Vanitas-Viciosa © 1991 by Elsie Russell

I learned a lot in those department stores, from the ridiculously chainsaw-loud crying toddler who was murderously desperate for something inconsequential, and the half-smile man in a suit who, though a tall stranger, neither offered me candy nor tried to seduce me into his car. I learned that adults have different priorities than I did; and that if I were to earn worth and respect in their eyes—not as a child, not as a human being, but as someone real, someone worth hearing out—then I was going to have to really think about the things I wanted, and the things I did around them. And I learned that not all strangers are evildoers and “bad” to talk to, and purposed thenceforth to be kind to children when I became an adult—because maybe they would feel suspended in eternity, abandoned in deep space, just like me. In short, I began to really ponder how I came across to others, and how important it was to think and be conscious of how I should interact with what, years later, I would learn Sartre and Camus dubbed the Other. Indeed, how important was maturity itself—to act one’s age was not enough, but to act more than the age that one looked! (In my case that was quite a disparity, being very tall for my age.)

Just a couple of years later, this concept was gilded into the floor of my psyche.
(more…)

I’ll get right to the point. What assumptions do you carry with you that you never really have stopped to consider? We all have thousands. You can detect your own assumptions about the way reality is and ought to be by the way you react to certain social situations; do you remember the last time someone committed a faux pas at a restuarant? How about in your home? Did someone say something that offended you in conversation?

These are all based on assumptions that we hold that pertain to our daily lives. I will be soon posting a list of my “assumptions” as well, though of course these will be for public discussion and will not be unchallenged in the sense that I am asking you, my beloved readers, to consider your “assumptions.” Do you know of any off the top of your heads?

A while back, I found this on someone’s MySpace. Despite the trite, anonymous nature of the text, it seems this contains more truth than most MS memes. What do you think?

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn’t supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it’s harder every time. You’ll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You’ll fight with your best friend. You’ll blame a new love for things an old one did. You’ll cry because time is passing too fast, and you’ll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you’ve never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back.

I really enjoy texts like this. Give it to me straight, Doc. Don’t sugar-coat. But often things that are meant to be straightforward are just angsty; this seems beyond angst. The unfortunately saccharine ending (your typical “dance like no one’s looking” nonsense, as though that actually means something) detracts from the thought, but nevermind that. Again, I really want to know your opinion.

It’s refreshing to see something so openly existential and still entertaining. Lately existentialist thoughts have become watered down; this is a ridiculously excellent animated webcomic.

Tying in with the previous post, isn’t it interesting how much misery arises when we instinctually entertain vengeance? A wrong done to us might turn into anger, and then to grief; but if we don’t then “get over it,” so to speak, that is, to forgive, it becomes a grudge. It’s perfectly natural not to forgive. You have people that will tell you that a civilized individual knows well enough to forgive and that it’s only an impulse of the abased to hold a grudge; but in reality what civilization will tell you to do is merely to sublimate your pain, not to genuinely move past it in forgiveness, which is a uniquely Christian concept based on the forgiveness we have in and through Christ Himself.

Whence this kind of thing springs, too, is interesting; rage and retaliation are driven at base by honor, a sense of one’s own reputation and value in and of oneself over and above another person, or above their (negative) actions done to you. What makes Christ so radical is that He tells us to submit to His power and (only thereby) lay down that sense of selfish pride, the honor in oneself that makes us hold grudges and seek vengeance and nurse ill will and make the ones who did us wrong come groveling back to kiss our feet before they’re in our good graces once again. This is a huge part of the reason that to the Gentiles (Greeks especially), Jesus and His whole message were “foolishness,” that is to say, a laughingstock—because the thymos by which the Greeks governed themselves and their sense of self-seeking pride was the very foundation of personal dignity and warlike sensibilities. The Greeks were appalled to hear anyone known as “wise” to be telling them that they had to lay down their pride and vengeance voluntarily—since the only ones who did that were the ones who were too weak to fight in the first place.

Beautiful. This is probably my new favorite webcomic, with apologies to MegaTokyo and 8-Bit Theater. Come to think of it, maybe it just ties them for first.

“This gun’s bullets will only pierce the flesh of your true love!” Genius; so is this.

Some are funnier than dark.

Some are both, admittedly.

Thanks, PJ.

If you could forget painful memories with a pill, would you do it? Canadian researchers may have struck gold in a drug that is designed to blank patients’ painful memories. It could be exceedingly beneficial for PTSD, but would it stop there or would it turn into a Ritalin: Part II, where everyone has “some” symptoms that need to be “controlled” medically? This is a subject near and dear to my heart; I’ll be revisiting this next week. But for now, read the article; and note what one reader insightfully said:

Jan Johnstone from Kincardine, Canada writes: It is a huge ethical dilemma. Once the drug companies get a hold of it, it becomes marketed as a fix for everything. I remember reading advertisements in People Magazine for a popular antidepressant. Part of the script was aimed at getting rid of those pesky sad feelings of grief. Don’t feel blue, ask your doctor for this. But feeling grief and sorrow is a good thing, unless we all believe that certain emotions and states of being are more desirable. Dito for this drug. Our memories, no matter how painful, are important. This drug if marketed should be limited. I could see uses for it but it should not be the pancea for all bad memories. I think there could be uses for it, especially around people who have bad memories around torture.

Technorati Tags: medicine, memory, ethics, propranolol, anxiety

I love people who have a shocking message—Isaiah, Messiah, Nietzche, Martí—that contradicts the norm, the status quo, when it is so spot-on. When Jose Martí, Cuban nationalist in the mid to late nineteenth century, wrote his diatribe against the paternalistic policy of the United States, it was dead on in so many ways, in so many places … but his call to arms for the warring factions of Latin America to unite went unheeded.

Why is it that so many of the good ones, even the prophets, speak to deaf ears? It’s maddening. What do you think?

Moral relativists make the grievous mistake of assigning to their beliefs truthiness instead of truth, in my humble opinion. For a hilariously accurate exposition of Truthiness and, by extension, relativism, see the Wikipedia article.

The more I know of Stephen Colbert the more I like him. Articulate, hilarious, and precise. Do you remember his roasting of President Bush back in April? No? Well, I didn’t either, so you’re in good company: here’s the full transcript, and the YouTube mirror of the videos [First, Second, Third parts], as well as the opening segment of the next broadcast of the Colbert Report (01 May 2006) after the roasting.

The more I understand, the more questions I have; and the more I get to know Colbert, the more I believe him to be a genius.

One of my dearest and longest-standing friends is a Green Beret. Another is in the National Guard. Several others are Marines and Army infantrymen, retired or otherwise. Now, another of my friends is considering joining the armed forces, and her friends are (largely) giving her flack about it because of the war in Iraq.

Among the reasons for joining the military is certainly “to fight in the present war.” But each of my friends had a different agenda going in, and that doesn’t figure high on their list of desires, if at all. But if you have friends that are in the armed forces or are considering joining them, don’t be a jerk because of your own agenda. Our men and women “over there,” wherever and whenever that happens to be, need our support. Don’t sell them short.

Platonic friendships as they are known today are those which exist between two people in which the sexual element plays no part, particularly in those cases where it would be assumed that it would. So technically, two heterosexual females (or males) who love one another but do not engage in any sexual acts are friends, Platonically speaking. We are always deeply moved by displays of this love, as in the case of any war movie ever made—dude goes into the line of fire to save his buddy’s ass which, incidentally, has been shot off by a round from an M-16 or something. And some have taken to creating humorous ways of explaining how women are capable of this kind of love, but men aren’t, and so forth.

The debates start raging over the very possibility of amor platonicus, however, as soon as we move into the realm of two heterosexual individuals of opposite gender. “Can a guy and a girl really ever just be friends” ranks right up there with “Is it okay for two guys to share the same bar of soap” and other such mysteries of the æons!

The answer, I think, is obviously affirmative; but not without caveats and complications, and it will take a bit of explanation.

I hold that the soul, at its core, is not intrinsically “male” or “female”: that artifact of Aristotelian philosophy was what allowed him to say that women were inferior to men, what allowed men to say that women were ignorant and shouldn’t be allowed to vote (or what have you), and what still, even today, makes women scared of fields like science and mathematics. If this were the case (male and female souls being extant), that would mean we could infer things about the value of mens’ versus womens’ souls.

This is absolutely not, however, to say that there are no differences between men and women, or in the way that we interact, or in the different capabilities of each gender. Obviously, for romantic love or any kind of generative eros to be possible, there must be crucial differences that penetrate to the soul. But it goes back to the difference between the ways in which we approach one another through the two kinds of love, eros and philia: one approaches from the outside, the body, through that part of the soul that owns the gender roles and embodiment as one is, and finally, if ever, to the core of that person as they are; the other strings a bridge between cores, from person to person, black, white, man, woman, boy, girl, Japanese, Indian, Zambian, or Canadian. It respects individuals as they are, with all their differences but not focusing on them, like cells in a human body.

We are given bodies and a sense of gender to perpetuate the theatron, to play out the beautiful drama of Christ and his bride, and of the state of all creation in our lives; we are all “feminine” in relation to God, being the bride of Christ collectively, so there is certainly a large part that gender must play in our lives and interactions with others, and framing it this way is in no way diminishing the importance and joy of erotic and/or sexual love. In that sense, we are all like actors on the stage of this world; where Paul talks about the apostles being “made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men” in 1 Corinthians 4:9, I say it applies to us all. While we are on stage, we are dressed in fruity frills to play a role, whether we know it or not. But when we finally finish our part of the play, our final act, we go backstage, and remove the face-paint, the clothing, the shoes, and what-have-you: and we’re all dressed alike, we’re all just people.

All Christians will someday be backstage together, behind the scenes sipping heavenly joe together, if you like: having exited the stage of this world, we will be backstage, in heaven, in the greater part. To approach someone on a level of pure friendship is to approach someone as though already backstage—it is to give them their due as a human being, an individual created in the image of God. People today have become so oversexed, and have forgotten that it is possible and even desirable to be “just friends,” to such an extent that we equate love and sex, and we forget that the greater part is underneath the makeup and costumes. Some people, I expect, will get to heaven like some stunned accidental Saducee, for whom finally the Scripture Jesus spoke will finally make sense: “In the resurrection men will neither marry nor be given in marriage, for they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:23-30).

It will be this and only this, I think, that will allow us to realize that works of art including literature that is permeated and shot through with a sense of gender is nevertheless art and literature, the product of an individual person made in God’s image, a product not of costume but of substance; likewise for manifestations of emotions (she may cry, he may punch a wall, &c.).** Yes, there are different communication styles between men and women; yes, there is a reason for stereotypes, and there are vast psychological differences between the two genders as played out; but we nevertheless communicate the same things, do the same things, only in different ways. So the manifestations of the soul will be varied and sundry according to all sorts of external factors, like gender, race, and creed, but we all are human beings.‡

So Platonic love, that kind of deep friendship that focuses on the beauty of a person’s character and intelligence, emotional profile and spiritual relationship as opposed to the beauty of the physical delights of a body, is certainly possible. Those that deny it deny the greater part of their humanity, have forgotten what it is like to be children,†† and (I believe) have not understood what it will mean to be fulfilled spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically in Christ at the resurrection to come.

But that doesn’t make it easy. I propose that it is much easier to be Platonic friends with a person when one or both of you is unattracted to the other in some fundamental way, and imagine that’s probably self-evident. When there’s a barrier to being “more than” friends, whether it’s your lack of attraction or the other’s, or some external circumstance, or some internal knowledge that something is or would be deeply wrong about it, it’s easier to be friends. It’s that in-between stage that’s the trouble, where there are no concrete barriers to being “more than” friends with someone.

More on this tomorrow.

** The greatest error of militant feminism is that it goes beyond equality in terms of soul and makes the female lust for the male’s role: some feminists forget that they are fighting for a 1:1 soul-to-soul interaction and instead go backstage and raid the “male” costumes and refuse to take it off, even when they leave the theater.

‡ This is what really infuriates me about men who claim that their wives are unknowable, or wives that claim their husbands can’t be understood. The reality is that they have hardened themselves against placing themselves mentally in a different costume, in their spouse’s shoes specifically, to figure out what it is they’re communicating and why. It’s like the old grandmother of a friend of mine who claimed she didn’t know how to pump gas; and even though she had been shown many times, she claimed ignorance (the lady was sharp as a whip)—not because she was truly senile or couldn’t learn, but wouldn’t—because her husband had always pumped the gas; it was a “man’s job.”

†† In so saying, I realize that children, too, are given gender roles and know and act instinctively on gender differences; but not because their cores are different, but because they are still trying to find their role, find some clothes that fit in observing Mom and Dad as they act out their own roles.

[This is the second of a three-part series.]

What is the difference between a romantic relationship versus a friendship with someone? I think it has something to do with the difference between relating to someone through two different but interlinked avenues.

Romance

In a romantic relationship, partners relate from a top-down, outside-in perspective, it seems. If I spy you across a room and you are immediately beautiful to me, or vice versa, that notion carries with it a certain amount of romanticism. (I will use “I” here for simplicity’s sake; but you may place yourself in my shoes, regardless of your gender and orientation.) I see your body, or you see mine; and immediately either or both of us picks up on something in the other’s body or, more precisely, way of being embodied, that relates to my way of being embodied, at least as I see myself. As we talk and get to know one another, we are looking for ways to complement ourselves in the other; what began with the body and gender-roles filters down through to the top layer of the soul, if you will—that part of ourselves that is still shot through with our conception of our gender and relates to other people with a sense of our own embodiment in relation to the other’s in terms of, not necessarily sexual, but procreative, erotic love.**

Now, there is certainly a place for that kind of love in us; it is God-ordained, and if you have any doubts about that, read Song of Solomon without framing it allegorically.

Friendship

There is another kind of love, too: friendship. My first impulse is to type “friendship-love,” but this is an artifact of postmodern social networking: we say “So-and-so is my friend,” but in reality, what we mean to say is that they are an acquaintance whose existence is somewhere between benign and beneficial to our own lives, but which, if removed, would cause us no great disappointment. So friendship here means a deep and abiding, rich dedication to another’s well-being. Thomas Jay Oord defines friendship—philia—as “an intentional response to promote well-being when working in cooperation with others.” Aristotle indicated that the action behind friendship is “wanting for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not for one’s own, and being inclined, so far as one can, to do such things for him” (1380b36–1381a2).††

It doesn’t require knowing someone very well, either, though that is often a part of it: several of my cousins on my mother’s side and I don’t really know each other extremely well (though I think they do read this blog these days, which is delightful—Hi guys;)), but I would nevertheless do whatever was needed for them, any time, day or night—likewise for the cousins on my father’s side, most of whom I haven’t seen at all in about ten years. This is an example of friendship that springs from blood ties.

But it can also spring from other means, as well, and I think from a different way of approaching another human being. It hinges on the difference in meaning between eros and philia: friendship approaches the other person from inside-out and bottom [i.e., foundation]-up, and is not concerned with how its embodiment interfaces with another’s embodiment.

In friendship relations, people seek the other person’s good for their own sake, not because there’s a sexual, political, academic, or other power-related attraction there but because of the image of God, that sentient, rational, loving part of oneself that takes joy in doing for others where one is able because it is something for which he or she is uniquely designed.

When you need someone to talk with at three o’ clock in the morning, a romantic partner acting solely from romantic love will (if at all) be there for you because of a sense of obligation, or because they might get something out of it, or because the power of attraction and genitive love overcomes the self that wants to merely sleep. A friend will be there for you not because they get something out of it, but because they are in a unique place, one soul to another, to help you. (A romantic partner might well stay up with you and talk out of friendship, or a mix of eros and philia, and is how dedicated relationships are supposed to work, but I give the above example a sharp dichotomy for purposes of contrast.)

Likewise, a professor under whose active tutelage you find yourself will look over something you’ve written and critique it, free of charge, even if it’s not part of the class—because he or she knows that it will look good and you’re in a position to give them high marks in the evaluation at the end of the semester. But a friend will do the same, even if it bores them to tears, because, one soul to another, they care about you. (Let me take this moment to thank those of you who are reading this!)

Men and women, boys and girls, and any combination thereof can act out of friendship for the sake of another, independent of and irrespective of gender, AMDG, without respect to procreativity (sexual or otherwise).

This has been on my mind a lot lately, and I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

** Eros in the Greek from at least Socrates’ and Plato’s day carries with it any kind of creative, constructive force. There is the image, for instance, in Socrates about wiser men planting the seeds of thoughts in young men and fools and helping nurture them until it is time for them to be given “birth”—implied allusions to pederastic ancient Grecian nonsense aside, this isn’t so foreign to us today, as in the advisor(s) when a student is coming up with, writing, presenting, and then defending a massive thesis paper. This same process is at work when two people are bouncing ideas off of one another with one person playing the lead: think Bible studies, questions in the classroom, and so forth. When a couple is engaged in helping build one another up, make each other better, and help each other enjoy life, whether walking down the street in deep and meaningful (productive) conversation or in an act of marital coitus, both are erotic.

It is a shame of Occidental culture today, particularly America, that we have made all friendships into erotic relationships, and all erotic acts into sexual acts. It is for this reason that, particularly young people (among whose demographic I include myself) these days claim that in order to know that they are loved, they must be kissed, touched, and well-sexed.

The conservative lady or gentleman who reads this explanation of eros presently, blushing, is evidence that the meaning of the word has been twisted into something altogether sexual. I invite you to re-evaluate your conception of the word, because you have but the very top layer of snow on the tip of the iceberg, or the sprinkles on top of the frosting of a cupcake, from this crippled conception.

†† From Wikipedia on -phil- and Philia.

[This is part one of a three-part series.]

142: “The hatred and violence that you can already feel rising up in people. Nothing pure left in them. Nothing unique. They think together. You meet only beasts, bestial European faces. The world makes us feel sick, like this universal wave of cowardice, this mockery of courage, this parody of greatness, and this withering away of honor.”

So it is. This is where Solomon comes back full-force: there really is nothing new under the sun.

142: “There is one fatality which is death, and outside this all other fatality disappears. In the space of time between birth and death, nothing its [sic] predetermined. You can change eveything, you can stop the war and even maintain peace, if you want to do so intensely and for a long time.”

That’s so existential it hurts. You just have to want to change the world, and you can. Too optimistic, or is there something hidden there that’s closed to my eyes because of cynicism?

142: “Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man.”

Absolutely. And, furthermore, look for what is valid in every thought and philosophy that exits a person’s mouth or pen—and never stop learning. As soon as you think you’ve mastered what it is to live, think again.

144: “Goethe (to Eckermann): If I had wanted to throw off all forms of constraint, it would have been in my power to cause my own complete ruin and that of everyone around me.

“The first thing is to learn to rule over oneself.”

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, the amount of truth here. It’s not a testament of Goethe’s unique strength so much as it is a testament of how we’re all interconnected, and how one person affects another, for good or for ill. The closer you are to someone, the more power they have to destroy you—aye, but also you them. It’s what makes love so profound in the first place.

Hellenistic philosophy has historically not had as much attention as ancient Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle, whose dichotomous views of the world set the stage for the two “major sides” of almost every philosophical discourse since then, at least through the modern period (rationalist versus empiricist metaphysics). Nevertheless, it is important to study the traditionally less popular Hellenistic philosophers, in order to have a grasp on the mental life of the Greek culture at the time. It is also important to draw from that group of philosophers ideas and arguments that have the potential to shape the way contemporary thinkers—including those who have not yet established themselves as such—see and do philosophy both presently and historically. In order to effectively study the arguments of the Hellenistic philosophers, one must have a kind of compendium of their thoughts as such, a collection of their writings by which one can compare one movement to another, one thinker to another. It is in this that the second edition of Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson succeeds tremendously. As an introductory anthology to the principle doctrines and arguments of the philosophers of Hellenistic Greece, it is robust, with only minor faults that the reader might wish to change about the book.

The book is split into three primary sections, with a thin introduction by the authors in the beginning of the book. Sections in the book include writings by Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics, with each of these lines of thought delimited by its own section heading. Each of the main sections contains English translations of the Greek texts. Because of the differing availability of writings on and differing focus within each train of thought, sections are represented differently. The book is intended to give an overview of Hellenistic thought through the mouths of the Greek thinkers themselves.

As a didactic work consisting almost entirely in original writings, the anthology is remarkably intuitive and well laid-out. There is also a consistency in the method of presentation for each section: the book begins with a selection from Diogenes Laertius discussing the biographical account of Epicurus, for example, but the Stoic section is laid out according to the primary sections in their doctrines—logic, ethics, physics, and so forth—while the account of the Skeptics treats of the progression and deepening of their methods. The glossary of key terms in the back of the book is helpful for pinpointing exactly what word is being used at any point in the translations, and the indices of names, sources, and translated fragments were highly useful, particularly where to the novice many of the names and concepts can seem to bleed together. The only things I personally missed in this anth0logy were persistent section headings and a cross-referencing system. By persistent section headings I mean the intermittent reminder of where the reader is in the hierarchy of readings: in long sections, it was easy for me to lose track of the author, particularly. I would liked to have seen more cross-referencing in the texts than merely the occasional footnote, also; since I realized numerous times that I had read of X concept before but could not pinpoint it, I would spend a good deal of time finding like passages to the one I was reading.

Overall, I would recommend this anthology to anyone who is interested in Hellenistic philosophy. As an anthology of original writings, this plain-English translation is very well put together and is as friendly to the novice as to the more seasoned Hellenistic investigator.