Dostoevsky is a Downer

It’s another Great Books Monday, and we’re on pace to break the 4,500-page mark this week. Just today I was speaking to a colleague about this project and noted how it has helped me to have meaningful conversations and a deepening acquaintance with several colleagues at my university who teach in different disciplines. Now that we’re about to get into biology for the first time, we can cast the net even wider.

Here are the readings for the upcoming week:

1. The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill  (GGB Vol. 4, pp. 357-382)
2. “A Plea for Captain John Brown” by Henry David Thoreau (GGB Vol. 6, pp. 714-732)
3. “Letter to Herodotus” by Epicurus (GGB Vol. 10, pp. 216-229)
4. Federalist #66 (GBWW Vol. 40, pp. 200-203; Antifederalist responses are here)
5. An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals by William Harvey, Introduction-Chapter V (GBWW Vol. 26, pp. 267-280; you’ll have to scroll down some way on the linked site to skip the editor’s intro and get to Harvey’s text.)
6. The Way Things Are (or On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius, Book V (GBWW Vol. 11, pp. 58-77)

As promised, we’re up to three short works this week, so if you’re just getting started with the readings, you have some bite-sized portions to from which to choose. I apologize for the double dose of Epicureanism this week, but given the length of the different selections I had available this time out, it seemed like the best combination.

Here are some observations on last week’s readings:

1. “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky: This story is pathetic, in the most precise sense of the term. It was especially poignant to me because there was a time in my life when I could have seen myself turning out exactly like the narrator; the passage of fifteen years in the last paragraphs hit me between the eyes.
2. “The Character of Socrates” by Xenophon: This short selection had several points of interest. For a guy who had a reputation for having his head stuck firmly in the clouds, Socrates’s recommended curriculum seemed remarkably practical. Then there’s this quote: “They live best, I think, who strive best to become as good as possible: and the pleasantest life is theirs who are conscious that they are growing in goodness.” I’m not sure whether anyone in the pagan pre-Christian world could have been closer to the truth.
3. Second Treatise on Civil Government by John Locke, Chapters XVI-XIX: Locke has a good argument if you accept his premises and his understanding of natural law. I’m not sure I followed the logic of the chapter on conquest though. My understanding of Locke’s view of the importance of property is its connection to one’s labor, which is an extension of one’s body, so I found it strange that he argues that a conqueror has authority over one’s body but not one’s property. Is it because of the unjust nature of conquest?
4. Federalist #64-65: These papers on the Senate’s role in treaties and impeachments are largely unobjectionable. Of course, so much of the original justification of the Senate was made moot by the 17th Amendment that much of the reasoning here is of historical interest only.
5. “On Ancient Medicine” by Hippocrates: I imagine that most modern readers would fail to see the point of including this text and others like it in an anthology of this nature. However, the way in which Hippocrates pokes holes in the reasoning of ancient physicians is a great example of the early development of a scientific outlook. It’s interesting that so much of ancient medicine revolved around diet rather than what we think of as “medicine” today.
6. The Way Things Are (or On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius, Book IV: Some of Lucretius’s attempts to explain the working of the senses seemed a bit clumsy to me. But the statement about there being no purpose to any part of the body goes right to the heart of the naturalistic worldview. Statements like this properly belong in the realm of philosophy, where Lucretius is operating. Unfortunately, too many today attempt to pass them off as science.

I’m posting in the evening rather than the early morning today. In my defense, I made up a day from last week’s Tuesday posting. I hope that next week I’ll be back to the normal early Monday posts.