Review: How to Achieve True Greatness by Baldesar Castiglione

This is the ninth book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 29 in the list and part of series two (the blue series).

To be honest, I found 'How to Achieve True Greatness' a bit hum drum. Firstly, I was expecting to find out how to achieve true greatness, and I totally didn't!!! I didn't even find out how to achieve normal greatness (though by the looks of it, I'd have no trouble doing that with google :-)

HtATG actually reminded me quite a bit of 'The Symposium' by Plato (which I did enjoy). In 'The Symposium' a group of (noble?) men discuss love, each making speeches describing and praising it. HtATG describes a gathering of noble men with the Duchess Elisabetta Gonganza and their dialogues describing the perfect Courtier. The perfect courtier, it turns out, must be many things - cultured, well written, of noble birth. Oddly enough, though, the dialogue also descends into love by the end, with discussions of whether older men have the right to love as younger men do and the consequences of it. (I did wonder if they'd possibly divereged from the topic somewhat).

To be fair, HtATG suffers from the same editing that has affected a number of books in the Great Ideas series. HtATC is not a book in itself, but instead is cut down from Castiglione's book 'The Book of the Courtier' (Il Cortegiano). I suspected this fairly early on because the book is littered with

[. . .]

This presumably indicated that text has been cut. I think this really contributed to the lack of direction in the book and the difficulty I had in remembering who was talking about what. Further still, where the original comprises 4 'books', this only takes excerpts of the first two, which probably augments the rather aimless conclusion this book also suffers from.

HtATG also suffers from one of the least impressive covers in the Penguin Great Ideas series too. For one thing the text on the cover is most definitely not centred (even more so than it appears in the scanned image). Perhaps this off-centered-ness is indicative of Italian Renaissance literature. I suspect, however, that coming late in the second series, Penguin may have been running out of ideas...

NEXT!!!

Review: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

This is the eighth book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 13 in the list and part of series one (the red series).

I felt a bit daring reading 'The Communist Manifesto'. I was reading it on the train at one point and someone asked me if I was one!! I'm not, but I did actually enjoy the book. Firstly, even though it is about 160 years old, the society described was recognisable (unlike, for example, the society described in The Social Contract). Perhaps it was because this book was written after the industrial revolution, which was obviously a period that radically changed things. Much of the writing seems very reasonable and logical, but I always had the idea in the back in my mind that, however well communism might work in an ideal society, humans are just not ideal. I think the developments in communism since this was written demonstrate this.

The manifesto itself is pretty short, just over 50 pages, with the rest of the book devoted to prefaces from editions and then another essay by Karl Marx. The prefaces were actually really great, spanning from 1872 to 1893 (after Marx's death), and covering editions printed in England, Germany, Poland, Russia, Italy, France and more. They essentially provided a commentary of how communism evolved over those years. It was particularly interesting to read prefaces commenting on the changes in Russia. Engels and Marx were really hopeful that events in Russia would provide momentum for communism to spread across Europe. With hindsight we know this didn't happen - and also know that communism did not even persist in the USSR.

I have to say, though, I really should have left it at that. After the manifesto and the prefaces comes 'The Eighteenth Brumiare of Louis Bonaparte', an essay by Karl Marx. I read this the whole way through - to took *aaages* - far longer than reading the rest and to this day I have no idea of what it's about. Ok, I know it's about France and it has stuff about peasants and the aristocracy and Louis Bonaparte (who, if I'd read this wiki page first, I'd know was Napoleon I's uncle). I'll leave it at that...

Review: The Symposium by Plato

This is the seventh book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 23 in the list and part of series one (the blue series).

If it wasn't for the slight mysogeny and rampant sexism in this book, I would absolutely love Plato's 'Symposium'. As it is, I can only love it with reservations (though it is pretty awesome).

The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written by Plato sometime after 385 BC. It is a discussion on the nature of love, taking the form of a series of speeches, both satirical and serious, given by a group of men at a symposium or drinking party at the house of the tragedian Agathon at Athens.

It stars Socrates, Plato's teacher, which is interesting in itself, because, while Socrates was a real person, we only really know of him through the writings of others. It wasn't something that I'd really thought about before, until reading this wikipedia entry, where Socrates is refereed to as a character. 'But he's real!', I cried, 'Wasn't he??'. It threw me for a second, but it served a good reminder that, while Plato remains largely hidden in the text, he *is* present because he wrote it (I'm sure others didn't need this reminder).

Also included in the back is The Allegory of the Cave, which describes Socrates view of reality as we know it (shadows) and *true* reality, made of real forms. I'd actually heard of this allegory before, thanks to Sophie's World (which was my first and possibly *only* foray into philosophy), so it was good to reread relatively familiar concepts in a different context. (Although I do think many much of modern science dilutes the effect of Socrate's theory).

But why did I love 'Symposium' so much?? Well, it's all about love isn't it - and not just love - platonic love between men and their boyfriends. It's all rather sweet. Rather than a non-sexual affectionate relationship, *real* platonic love is chaste only because sexual energy has been transmogrified! Oh my! As I mentioned before, women get a pretty short shrift in these discussions, particularly in a description of humans when they were male, female or androgynous and all 'whole'. However, it was also great to hear descriptions of Socrates' life - wrestling, going to the gym and having fervent admirers such as Alcibiades. Sure, I'd seen the fun-loving representation of Socrates in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, but I didn't ever take it seriously...

Anyway, I'm interested in reading more of Plato's Dialogues - perhaps not for the philosphical arguments, but to learn more about Ancient Greek life.

Review: The Pleasure of Hating by William Hazlitt

This is the sixth book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 12 in the list and part of series one (the red series).

Like most (all?) of the 'Great Ideas', I had no idea what 'The Pleasure of Hating' was about before I started it. So I was somewhat surprised to start reading the first chapter/essay ('The Fight') to find it very much in the same tone as Jerome K. Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat', which is fiction!! It isn't, apparently, but is instead Hazlitt's account of a fight in December 1821, between William Neate and Thomas Hickman, The Gasman (and his travel there and back). While I assumed (given the nature of the book) it wasn't fiction, and I could definitely read it as a piece of satire, it is also (apparently) a commentary on journalism (as laid out in this rather interesting post on the Penguin Classics blog), something I have to admit that I *didn't* pick up at the time.

The other essays in this volume are a little more conventionally written, and all beautifully so. The second, 'The Indian Jugglers', was probably my favourite because of the way Hazlitt slyly weaves in the real topic of the essay - the differences between cleverness and genius - into an introduction that seems to follow on in tone from 'The Fight'. I loved the way how Hazlitt touched so many different topics in this essay, finishing with the (rather charming) obituary of one John Cavanagh, a famous fives hands-player.

'On Reason and Imagination' was another favorite, arguing (rather interestingly) that:

Logic should enrich and invigorate its decisions by the use of imagination

I am a scientist and so reason generally holds sway with me. The idea that 'imagination' should play a part in decision making seemed rather novel, however when I then thought about decisions made using logic alone, but with insufficient data or too narrow a view (and there are numerous historical examples), then it seemed to make sense. Perhaps we are seeing the injection of some 'imaginations' in studies with more holistic multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating social and physical sciences. I also liked this essay because Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 'The Social Contract' was given as an example of an argument based on cold, hard reason (which I could appreciate having read it very recently because of the Great Ideas books!!), which Hazlitt argued was not appropriate for arguments based on human nature.

I have to admit that 'What is the People?' left me indifferent. However, 'On the Spirit of the Monarchy' was notable because of Hazlitt's fairly scathing attack on the monarchy (not that I disagreed). I also loved the quote at the start (not Hazlitt's) equating poets with Tories and mathematicians with Whigs, and then also to 'that wise, plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch'. How droll! Hazlitt argues that man's craving for the Monarchy is the search for 'The One'. I have no idea whether 'The One' had the same romantic connotations as it does now, but I do wonder if mankind's 'craving' has now been transplanted to more common people - the winners of reality TV shows such as Big Brother or Pop Idol.

The collection ends with the title essay 'The Pleasure of Hating', in which Hazlitt's description of hate ranges from beautiful descriptions of his involuntary feelings towards a spider on the floor to discussions of why humans must fight and hate. I could agree with many of the statements Hazlitt makes in this essay and - all in all, I am very impressed with the collection. I'd be interested in reading more of Hazlitt's essays, although I think the work that most interests me may be 'The Spirit of the Age', a collection of portraits of his contemporaries, including Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Jeremy Bentham, and Sir Walter Scott.

(As always, there's more on Hazlitt over at Wikipedia)

Review: The Art of War by Sun-tzu

This is the fifth book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 22 in the list and part of series two (the blue series).

For me, 'The Art of War' came at a good time. After the dense, heavy reading of 'The Social Contract', The Art of War seemed beautifully sparse.

"OMG! It's a friggin poem!!' was my immediate reaction when I first flicked through the book. It's not a poem, but the text is arranged in very short paragraphs along the left hand side of the page. There's a lot of white space which give the text a lovely sculptural feeling, which is also reflected in the layout of the cover. From a practical point of view, laying out the text in this way has made 'The Art of War' a 'slim' book, rather than the ultra-skinny book it would have been otherwise, but the layout also suits the text, and I guess was probably ultimately a product of the original way in which the text was laid out on bamboo strips (see here). I'd be interested to know whether this layout was a design choice by Penguin, or if all editions of' The Art of War' are laid out like this by default.

As to the words themselves, I found this treatise on military strategy oddly charming. It's an interesting mixture of very practical advice (for example, it discusses the amount of money you need to run an army, describes different types of terrain) and more philosophical thoughts (know your enemy and know yourself). I can't quite see how it is applied to modern business and managerial strategy, but it wasn't really looking at if from that point of view so probably missed it. I suspect that 'The Art of War' may be a book I revisit later on to spend more time thinking about the text a bit more fully, now that I have a general idea of what it is about.

The book is laid out in thirteen different sections/chapters, and comparison of the chapters titles in the book to those mentioned in the wiki page show that this translation by John Minford is relatively new. Indeed further googling shows that John Minford's translation was first published by Viking in 2002 and included both the unadorned text, plus further commentary. I think that in this case further commentary would be very valuable in gaining the most out of the text (and, actually, I think this may well turn out to be true for many of the 'Great Ideas').

Review: The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This is the fourth book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 8 in the list and part of series one (the red series).

This book took a loooong time to read. Weeks and weeks! In comparison to other 'great ideas' it is relatively long - 167 pages, when most seem to be closer to 100. However, the length of time it took probably has less to do with the number of pages, rather than the depth of arguments and ideas presented here.

After looking at his wikipedia page, Jean-Jacques Rousseau seems to have been some literary, philosophical, musical, political genius (darn him). The first thing that struck me about 'The Social Contract' was the absolute logical rigour that Rousseau applies to all his arguments. They're razor sharp and the scientist in me loved this, even though it did make the text very dense (I'm sure I've not taken away half the information that I could have). Rousseau builds his arguments from first principles, which means that unlike some of the previous (and abridged) 'great ideas' the reader can appreciate all of Rousseau's arguments. Rousseau argues that for any form of governance, 'the people' must form together and agree to a binding social contract, which essentially strips them of all private will, so that only the greater public will remains. He then discusses the flaws which make such governance difficult (impossible??), such as the fact that the 'private will' of those in power will inevitably conflict with their 'public will'. He describes numerous forms and sizes of government, the role of religion (there isn't one), as well as the mechanics of legislative and administrative power.

This was the first book I felt I *had* to bookmark pages so that I could come back to sections later for the review. Because of the way Rousseau builds up his arguments, he came up with a number of points that I'd not considered or though of before:

• the right of life and death in the social contract - 'whoever wishes to preserve their life at the expense of others must give his life for them when necessary'
  
• the idea that there is only one good government for each state, and that different governments may suit different people and even different climates!
  
• good laws lead men to make better ones; bad laws lead to worse
  
• laws constantly gain strength in any well constituted state, if laws becom weaker this shows there is no longer any legislative power and the state is dead

And my favorite line, which made me think of many recent governments:

'Usurpers always choose troubled times to enact, in the atmosphere of general panic, laws which the public would never adopt when passions were cool'

I don't agree with all these ideas, but they did make me think. Ultimately I think many of Rousseau's arguments are outdated now. People, particularly in the western world, probably like their 'private self' too much to sublimate themselves totally to a greater public good, as Rousseau requires. Monarchy seems to be taken as a fundamental component in government in 'The Social Contract', and this is less so now. Finally, Rousseau's ideas of economic are very outdated - his economies are based almost entirely on agriculture and crops, with no thought of the technology and 'value adding' (tourism! entertainment! IT!) by which many nations make substantial portions of wealth now. I did not find it the 'blue print for political terror' as it was once considered.

Still, the books *was* written in 1762 and, despite the effort it required, I loved the absolute rational approach Rousseau takes to his work (William Hazlitt makes mention of this in 'The Pleasure of Hating', but more on that later). Overall it was a really interesting book to read.

Review: Eichmann and the Holocaust by Hannah Arendt

This is the third book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 40 in the list (the last one!!) and part of series two (the blue series).

Hannah Arendt was a German (and Jewish) political theorist (not philospher), who fled both Germany and then France before travelling to the United States during World War II. Like both of the 'great ideas' I had read before this, 'Eichmann and the Holocaust' is not an original work in itself. Instead it provides excerpts of Arendt's commentary on Nazi Adolph Eichmann's trial, first printed in the New Yorker and then published as Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963.

For me the book suffered from a lack of context. Arendt is reporting on current events and she assumes her reader is familiar with the Eichmann trial and also the actions Eichmann carried out as part of the Final Solution. Whether this would be less of a problem in Eichmann in Jerusalem is hard to tell, but either way it's this is hardly Arendt's fault. Instead blame should probably be laid at Penguin's feet for the way it has packaged the book - or at mine for being not well-enough informed...

Still, there is much of interest in this book. Arendt's arguments are razor sharp and her description of Eichamnn as an arrogant but thick-headed dolt, and his embodiment of the 'banality of evil' is very thought provoking. Perhaps even more thought provoking, however, was her criticisms of prominent members of the Jewish community, who also cooperated with Nazi Germany and justified sacrificing 'less worthy Jews' as a means of saving others (when in fact very few Jews were saved by their actions in comparison to the thousands who died) . Arendt also criticises Israel for holding the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, argued that holding the trial in a more impartial state would have led more credence to the final judgement.

Despite her criticims, Arendt concludes her book:

'And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations - as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world - we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.'

Perhaps the best part of this book is the final postcript, in which Arendt answers criticisms leveled at Eichmann in Jerusalem, particularly for her attitudes towards Israel and those Jews who colluded with the Nazis. Because it was written 'after the fact', Arendt's summary of what she has previously written is clearer and more consise than the previous excerpts and I was very glad it was included in the book.

Review: The Inner Life by Thomas a Kempis

This is the second book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 4 in the list and part of series one (the red series).

Thomas a Kempis and I were never going to see completely eye to eye. He was a deeply religious Renaissance Catholic monk and I am... not. Ultimately I found Kempis' exhortations to renounce all worldly life for quiet religious devotion irrelevant and repetitive. (Particularly the repetitve). This is perhaps uncharitable; apparently 'The Inner Life' is actually an excerpt of Kempis' more well-known text 'The Imitation of Christ" (see reviews at Amazon for more info). Perhaps the whole book would be more satisfying - it was never meant to be a literary masterpiece, but a text to offer religious instruction to monks. However, I'm not religious, not looking to devote my life to Christ, and therefore not going to read the extended version.

In its favour, some of Kempis' views (that we should not worry about gossip, arguments, and what other people say about you or what they do) do have an appealing zen-like quality and are probably an ideal that is worth aiming for. Like Marco Polo before it, this has been disappointing as it is not a complete book in itself. I'm hoping that my next (random) choice will be a full text and a great idea.

Penguin Great Ideas Series

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.

When Penguin released their Great Ideas Series, I have to admit that I bought the books for their covers. I did always mean to read them too, however, and so in 2008 (and 2009) I'm going to read two 'great ideas' a month for 20 months. I'll be picking them at random and will blog a review of each as I go along. Click on a link below to see which ones I've reviewed so far...

Series 1 (Red)

1. Seneca - On the Shortness of Life
   
2. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
   
3. St Augustine - Confessions of a Sinner
   
4. Thomas a Kempis - The Inner Life
   
5. Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince
   
6. Michel de Montaigne - On Friendship
   
7. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub
   
8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract
   
9. Edward Gibbon - The Christians and the Fall of Rome
   
10. Thomas Paine - Common Sense
    
11. Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
    
12. William Hazlitt - On the Pleasure of Hating
    
13. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto
    
14. Arthur Schopenhauer - On the Suffering of the World
    
15. John Ruskin - On Art and Life
    
16. Charles Darwin - On Natural Selection
    
17. Friedrich Nietzsche - Why I Am So Wise
    
18. Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own
    
19. Sigmund Freud - Civilization and its Discontents
    
20. George Orwell - Why I Write
    
    
    Series 2 (Blue)
    
21. Confucius - The First Ten Books
    
22. Sun-tzu - The Art of War
    
23. Plato - The Symposium
    
24. Lucretius - Sensation and Sex
    
25. Cicero - An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom
    
26. The Revelation of St. John the Divine and The Book of Job
    
27. Marco Polo - Travels in the land of Kubilai Khan
    
28. Christine de Pizan - The City of Ladies
    
29. Baldesar Castiglione - How to Achieve True Greatness
    
30. Francis Bacon - Of Empire
    
31. Thomas Hobbes - Of Man
    
32. Sir Thomas Browne - Urne-Burial
    
33. Voltaire - Miracles and Idolatry
    
34. David Hume - On Suicide
    
35. Carl Clausewitz - On the Nature of War
    
36. Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
    
37. Henry David Thoreau - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
    
38. Thorstein Veblen - Conspicuous Consumption
    
39. Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
    
40. Hannah Arendt - Eichmann and the Holocaust
    

Review: Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan by Marco Polo

This is the first book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 27 in the list and part of series two (the blue series).

My first thought when reading this book was that it's not really an idea as such, it's a description. My second thought was that it would've been nice to have some background to give the book context. My third thought was 'Duh! You have the internet and google skillz. Go find the background for yourself!'

Which I did :-)

Marco Polo, a Venetian, traveled to China in 1271 and returned back to Venice in 1291. I have vague recollections of reading a book about him, which argued that he never actually got as far as China when I was traveling to China myself in 1999 (a long time ago now :-). This is a relatively recent argument, based on omissions in Polo's description and the fact that there are no records of him serving Kublai Khan. However, I can appreciate why even the first readers of the book describes it as being filled with 'a million lies'. Polo's descriptions are extraordinary. Kublai Khan, who is by now relatively old (60-ish) lives a life of hunting and feasts, wives and concubines. Khan has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, four wives, a rotating roster of concubines, ten thousand hounds and a palace that can be taken down and constructed at will. I found it hard to believe he got any work done! Despite claims of falsehood, Polo's book was still remarkably influential, and widely popular hundreds of years before the advent of modern printing.

This book does not tell the whole of Polo's travels in China (Cathay). As far as I can tell, it is in fact book two of four. Despite my skepticism of the veracity of the contents, I do love the way that it's written. It's a very chatty style with lots of 'Oh!! I must tell you about...' and 'I almost forgot to mention...', which perhaps ties in with the fact that Marco Polo didn't actually write the book himself, but instead dictated it to Rustichello da Pisa (while Polo was in prison). While I don't feel that this 'great idea' has particularly changed or influenced me, I can appreciate that much of it's impact is probably lost after 700-odd years. Still, it was a enjoyable read and an easy introduction to the series.