The Emperor’s Handbook

Posted on February 17, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Emperor’s Handbook: A New Translation of the Meditations
© 2002, translated by David and Scot Hicks.
160 pages

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I first read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in 2007 and have returned to selected passages from the book time and again. The good emperor is often in my thoughts, a severe figure attempting to live and govern wisely, but beset by the vastness of his responsibilities as ruler of the Roman Imperium. I’ve been looking for quality translations of both Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus to purchase this year, and I was excited to learn of the existence of The Emperor’s Handbook, a modern-English translation of Aurelius written by two brothers. One brother translated the literal Greek, while the other used the literal translation to convey the passages’ actual meaning as they understood it. The result is direct, simple, and unadorned to the point of austerity.

I predict this book will have two audiences:  those interested in Aurelius’ philosophy and thoughts, and those interested in how those thoughts have been rendered here. I especially enjoyed reading this for its straightforwardness and lucidity. Aside from the occasional allusion, I had no difficulty in understanding what Aurelius was attempting to say to himself here. I compared various passages from more formal translations, and their substantive integrity appears to be intact. Although some shorter statements fall a little flat,  this is an overall improvement to other versions I’ve read. While I sometimes missed more elegant phrasings* from other translations,  this translation is more communicative. I think  The Emperor’s Handbook will be well-received, particularly for those exploring the philosophy of the man.

Speaking of those explorers, what is it about Marcus Aurelius that compels translations and commentaries of his work today, hundreds of years after his death?  He seems the model of a philosopher-king, a ruler governing with wisdom and virtue. As Roman emperor, Aurelius’ power is unparalleled and unchecked: if potential excesses are to be prevented, he himself must prevent them. As a Stoic, Aurelius believes that his life must be guided by Reason — keeping in mind not only his duty to his people and the gods, but the difference between what he can control and what he cannot. Aurelius may be emperor, but his primary focus is governing himself well to prepare him for that task.  He does this through extensive self-counsel: he reminds himself constantly of his principles, reflecting on his life as it relates to the greater pattern.

The crisp passages vary in size from one-liners to page-long reflections, serving both to remind Aurelius of general ideas and explore ways of putting those ideas into action. For instance: since we are not truly bothered by men’s actions, but by our reaction to them, what reason is there for growing angry about others’ shortcomings, like poor personal hygiene?  Aurelius emerges as a fascinating character — a pious monk, a dutiful soldier, and a patient administrator who longs for a quiet life of contemplation and philosophy but who is compelled to take on the heavy mantle of responsibility amidst the  stressful circumstances of war, natural disasters, and difficult people. It is a marvel to me that he withstood the pressures as well as he did, and The Emperor’s Handbook reminds me why I was attracted to Aurelius’ Stoicism in the first place. I recommend it with ease.

You can preview some of the book’s language here, or browse selections from more formal translations here and here. The latter links to my personal favorites from my first time reading Aurelius.

Related:

* Compare the Hicks’: “This world is change; this life, opinion.” to “the universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” I prefer the latter expression: it seems to communicate more. This was the weakest passage in the book for me, and the only one I took any real exception to.

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Teaser Tuesday (16-2)

Posted on February 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday time once more, from Should be Reading. 

I complained to Houghton Mifflin that a reviewer in  discussing my book The Neutrino (my 70th) spoke of my “factory production”. I said that made it sound as though I had batteries of writers slaving over typewriters with myself walking down the aisles, looking over shoulders and occasionally saying, “I’d put a comma in there if I were you.”  
– Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters
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A Guide to the Good Life

Posted on February 14, 2010 by smellincoffee

A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
© 2009 William Irvine
314 pages

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Last year when I began to examine Stoicism in depth, having found strength in the works of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, I read or attempted to read various introductions to the philosophy. I was unable to find a truly useful guide: the accessible books were highly technical and intended for an audience well-versed in academic philosophy. While I was able to understand more about Stoicism’s history and context, I found nothing that truly added to the primary sources – nothing that knit what I understood already and shed light on what I did not.  William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life is the book I was looking for. I have not yet encountered a better introduction to Stoicism:Like Alain de Botton and Epictetus before him, Irvine brings philosophy to the level of everyday life and does so in a thorough, emimiently readable, and fair-minded style.

            Irvine begins by establishing context, explaining what philosophy is, why it was important to the classical world, and why it is still of use today. He differentiates academic and applied philosophy, and makes it clear that he believes philosophy ought to be used to help people live more fully.  He then introduces Stoicism proper, giving a history of the various Stoic teachers and famous practitioners. He focuses on Roman Stoicism particularly, given that the works of four — Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and Musonius Rufus — constitute the only surviving primary sources for understanding what the Stoics thought and how they lived.

 After this introductory portion of the book, Irivine examines how Stoic attitudes changed the way these people understood and responded to the world, devoting next sixteen chapters focus on Stoic attitudes, psychological techniques, beliefs, and practices. These range from the general (understanding Epictetus’ “dichtomy of control”) to the specific (handling insults). He gleans these concepts from the primary sources, but attempts to justify them through his and other’s experiences. I remain dubious about some of them, but I’m hardly an orthodox Stoic. Irvine often draws connections between Stoicism’s ideas and practices and those of other thought-systems, particularly the Zen Buddhism he espoused earlier in his life. If the book had stopped there, it would have been pretty good, but it gets better. The last part of the book sees Irvine give Stoicism a naturalistic rather than a theological justification and discuss the problems and benefits of living Stoically in the modern world. Grounding Stoicism in the natural is necessary, given that few people would accept Stoic theology and physics today.  What this does is turn around Stoicism’s approach, as we are often fighting nature instead of following it. Because human nature was not created for our happiness in mind, we have to subvert the plans of what Richard Dawkins calls our “selfish genes”.

This is the best book on Stoicism I’ve yet read, and I doubt I’ll ever read a better practical introduction to the philosophy. I recommend it highly.

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A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

Posted on February 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
© 2007 Howard Zinn
293 pages

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This year I have become convincted that democracy is not something that happens at the ballot-box but on the streets. It consists in mass movements forcing the institutions that oppose them to reform. Howard Zinn’s pet subject, social movements, is thus of great interest to me. His book title and cover invoke a spirit of conviction, of fighting for justice — and its contents do not disappoint.

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is a collection of essays, most written on a simple theme but some working the theme into biographical coverage of people and organizations. Zinn introduces the book with an essay on the use of history to inform, inspire, and provoke people to action. The essays that follow constitute such a history, although not one as general or as tightly woven as A People’s History of the United States. The essays can be read by themselves, and topics vary.  Although most of the essays are about people of conviction of who have stood up against the powers that be (Freedom Riders, Henry David Thoreau, Eugene Debs, soldiers in revolt) many see Zinn attempt to provoke readers more directly by writing on topics such as class, immigration, nationalism, pacifism,  government, and war. Although to witness so much injustice throughout history is almost discouraging, the ending essay encourages optimism: even when the odds are against us, human history has proven to be unpredictable. Struggling for a better society is always a gamble, but if we do not participate, there is no chance that matters will improve. 

As usual, Zinn communicates his own passion clearly. Because the essential idea is one so positive that no one could be against it — people struggling against injustice — I suspect those who object to Zinn do so owing to his approach. While some might prefer to defend various nations and concepts with some concessions that they do harm , Zinn sees national boundaries, war, and the like as fundamentally malevolent. I enjoyed visiting the stories of those who have tried to “fight the good fight”, and can imagine re-reading this book in the future. I reccommend it.

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The Tyrannosaurus Prescription

Posted on February 9, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Tyrannosaurus Prescription and 100 Other Essays
© 1989 Isaac Asimov
323  pages

I take for granted that I will enjoy a work by Asimov, particularly a collection of essays, but this made for a particularly enjoyable read. The Tyrannosaurus Prescription covers a lot of ground: while the initial sections of the book contain essays on the future, space, and science in general,  the book’s large “Forwards” section spans much of the humanities (history, literature, linguistics) in addition to miscellaneous matters like dogs and fantasy. Asimov’s essays on humanity’s future were especially enjoyable for me to read, given that the essays were written decades ago and many are dated now. “The Globalized Computer Library”, initially published in 1980, predates popular access to the Internet, but imagines a computer system like it — although closer in spirit to the databases of Star Trek. He’s a talented communicator, riveting me with his speculations on how humanity might begin to colonize the solar system. His own ideas emphasize the Earth-Moon system, but they won’t be happening anytime soon. Coincidentally, as I read that particular section I heard news that the US is more or less canceling its lunar and Constellation project plans. The book ends with reflections on science fiction and a few personal essays coauthored by himself and Janet Asimov.

A book like this would have never been published without the author’s name being the key selling point, however much I enjoyed it.  Although I don’t know how many people would enjoy the book in total, the scope is so general and varied that I imagine anyone can enjoy at least some of it — and readers who enjoy Asimov will be interested regardless. I enjoyed this more than I’ve enjoyed any Asimov work since reading Constantinople in the fall.

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Teaser Tuesday

Posted on February 9, 2010 by smellincoffee

Via Should be Reading.

A reader once wrote: “If violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, why is there so much violence in the world?”
And I replied, “Because there is so much incompetence.” – p. 206-207.

– Isaac Asimov, The Tyrannosaurus Prescription 

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Storm of Steel

Posted on February 8, 2010 by smellincoffee
Storm of Steel
© 1921 Ernst Jünger
319 pages
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Storm of Steel is the oddest war memoir I have ever read. I’ve read a few of them in hopes of understanding various motivations for young men marching off to war, and ensure that I never foget the human cost of war and nationalism, but Lieutnant Jünger’s story begins when he and his company disembark from troop trains onto the front and ends with his final retreat from the front, having been injured repeatedly in the meantime. For about four years, Jünger lives in the trenches or in occupied French homes on the front when he is not in the hospital recovering. He writes of life in the trenches and the experience of “going over”: he coughs his way through clouds of poison gas, roots for Baron von Richoften’s airmen above him, admires the new tanks being brought into battle, and writes frequently on the trials of war. 
 Although he offers many details about life at war, humanity seems to be missing. Junger is a curious soldier: his passions are never inflamed. He sees the war as a rough trade, a game almost: he does not view enemy soldiers with hatred nor contempt, and he pities his fellow Germans who have made the war personal. He sees the war as a crucible of sorts: a great trial of the soul. It is a chance fro him to prove himself. He sees nothing greater than  a man’s ability to stand in the admist of a storm of bullets and artillery and fight — never losing his nerve, never doubting that his cause is just and his duty imperative. Aside from this, Junger seems detached from the dirty business of fighting. He scarcely reacts to the horrors around him except to hope that things can be repaired after the war. When he is injured by shrapnel and arms fire, his reaction is bizaarely non-emotional. He merely comments that blood loss is copious and summons one of his soldiers to help him back to the nurse’s station. When a trench partially caves in on him, he comments that it made for a “very unpleasant” half-hour.  What he does wax emotional about beyond courage under fire  is a soldier’s Duty, which is his primary motivation for fighting. So committed is he to “duty and honor” that when he and his company are partially surrounded by English troops, he drags himself up from the ground with blood in his lungs and starts shooting at them at close range. Incredibly, his company escapes to safety.
There are many details here for the student of the Great War: one of the most poignant for me was his account of digging a trench and encountering long-buried equipment left over from 1914, serving as a grim reminder that for all the western front’s bloodshed, the lines of battle scarcely  moved.  Despite this, I don’t know how effective  the memoir might be in communicating the horror of life on the front. Jünger’s detachment seems to deny war its sting, but at the same time adds a deeper level of subtle horror in giving him the ability to accept it. The worst kind of tragedy is the unnoticed. Although Jünger’s attitude makes him appear to be a stereotypical soulless Prussian soldier, intent on advancing the Fatherland, I have not noticed the attitude expressed in such an extreme way before — and I wonder if this version of the memoir has been edited to reflect the postwar Jünger’s political views. 
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A Dirty Job

Posted on February 6, 2010 by smellincoffee

A Dirty Job
© 2006 Christopher Moore
400 pages

When the Devil is too busy,
and Death’s a bit too much
They call on me, by name you see —
For my special touch. 
(Voltaire, “When You’re Evil”)
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Charlie Asher is the last person you might expect to find stealing into the homes of the deceased, looking for beloved possessions to make off with. He’s a typical Beta male — a timid, nonconfrontational “nice guy” who survives on intelligence and disarming kindness rather than brute strength. All he ever wanted out of life was the love of a beautiful woman and the chance to keep his late father’s secondhand store in business, but he saw someone he should not have seen — Death, in the form of a tall dark stranger wearing a minty green suit standing at his wife’s bedside in the hospital, where she has just given birth. The startled stranger soon vanishes, along with her favorite CD. She won’t be needing it anymore, for she is now dead: killed by a blood clot in her brain formed during labor. No one else sees Death, not even the hospital security tapes — but Charlie did, and now along with the demanding responsbility of taking care of a newborn by himself, he will soon be drafted into the ranks of Death.

The minty green stranger is not in fact Death himself: the “Big D” has been gone for centuries. Forces unknown compel those among the living, like Charlie and Minty Fresh (the hospital visitor’s proper name), to seek out the dying and protect their souls. The souls attach themselves to beloved posessions, and “Death Merchants” — Minty’s name for his coworkers — collect these posessions and deliver them to their new bodies as soon as possible, thus facilitating in reincarnation. It’s a dirty job, but important — for if souls are not protected by the likes of Charlie, they become food for the Forces of Darkness. Like the imprisoned Titans, these forces cannot be allowed to gain any strength, lest they invade Earth and chaos ensue. Charlie’s life, never an epitome of normalcy — not with mildly but lovably insane employees — becomes increasing strange. His neighborhood and city are soon home to sinister voices from below and menacing birds from above. Charlie is a  Death Merchant in a prophetic time, one in which a great battle is predicted to be fought in San Francisco — one that will end with the rise of a new “Big D”. The Death Merchants have no real idea as for whom that might signify a victory.

As Charlie settles into his role as a father and death merchant through the next six years, the predicted battle draws closer. Physical manifestations of dark spirits are able to take to the streets of San Francisco, feeding on the souls Charlie and others miss. As dark forces are wont to do, they delight in wreaking havoc. Charlie’s daughter becomes an object of attention to two massive hell hounds named Alvin and Muhammad — and then matters just get weird, culminating in a desperate drive to the Three Jewels Buddhist Center.

For a book about death, A Dirty Job is surprisingly funny, both darkly and absurdly so. Moore’s dialog is particularly effective, and the characters here are more developed than in Lamb. A plot twist at the climax made for a delicious surprise, giving the endgame new vigor. If you’re looking for an entertaining novel, A Dirty Job will delight.

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Red Emma Speaks

Posted on February 4, 2010 by smellincoffee

Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader
© 1973, 1996 ed. Alix Kates Shulman
464 pages
         

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 Emma Goldman was an incorrigible political activist and social critic during the Gilded Age, speaking out against nearly everything society held dear – the government, capitalism, organized religion, and marriage. She was clearly a woman of passion, and I bought this book intrigued by what she might have to say about a period that I am a student of.

Red Emma Speaks consists of articles and essays opining on the organization of society, social institutions, violence, and revolution. Compiler Alix Kates Shulman introduces each section of the book, giving the reader context, and Emma introduces the book proper herself with an extended essay titled “What I Believe”. The themes there are repeated and expanded throughout the book. All of Emma Goldman’s beliefs originated from a fervent belief in humanity’s potential – the belief that people can and should take command of themselves, living purposely. She did not, however, value states and nations: her belief in the human spirit is ardently individualistic. She takes arms against any institution that would in any way limit the individual from living freely – thus her passion for anarchism. Anarchism as understood and practiced by anarchists is not the absence of order, but the absence of outside, inflicted order. She, like Emile Carles, sees people as being able control and governs themselves as individuals. She sees the society’s progress as not resulting from the will of the majority, but caused by the provocations of individuals. The “majority”, the masses, are an inert thing that conform to outside pressures and accomplish nothing on their own. 

Her worldview and passion are certainly interesting and well-expressed here. I enjoyed engaging with her, reading and reflecting. Her relationship with socialism was particularly fascinating: like Carles, her ideal is of anarchic socialism. Reading Carles made me realize that socialism and communism were not ideals necessarily connected with a strong state, and Goldman is a reminder of this. Socialism connects to Goldman in that it supports the equality of humanity. Of particular interest to those interested in the history of socialism and communism is her analysis of the Russian state, which she claims is not communistic at all. To her, Russia is nothing more than another class-bound state: its economy is not socialized, but nationalized. She draws a sharp distinction between any government and the society it purports to serve.  Her relationship to violence is equally interesting: she seems to wrestle with it, regarding political violence as a necessary evil but then retreating given that it creates more problems than it solves. A perfect example of this is the planned assassination of Henry Clay Frick: not only did the attack on the robber-baron’s life fail to draw positive recognition to their cause, but it undermined their moral high ground.

            This is a strong book, well worthy of a recommendation to students of the period and of related thought. Goldman’s is a passionate, articulate voice that provokes the reader into revaluating convention and old perceptions.

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Teaser Tuesday (2-2))

Posted on February 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbringer of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State- and Church- begotten weed, marriage?  – Emma Goldman (p. 211, Red Emma Speaks)

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