On Friendship, Conversation, Women, and Dying a Good Death by the Father of the Essay

Effigie of Michel de Montaigne, 1593 , Musée d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France. Photo: Wikimedia/Pline CC BY-SA 3.0

On Friendship by Michel de Montaigne

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Philosopher of the French Renaissance and father of the essay, Michel de Montaigne's work provides an interesting self-analysis that reminds me of Oliver Wendell Holmes, less the tongue-in-cheek wittiness. Montaigne draws on Ancient Greek and Roman classics repeatedly, which indicates the mood of the Renaissance. Some suggest that his topics parallel the Stoics, especially the final essay on dying well. Montaigne's ready dismissal of women as other than rational beings reflects the attitude of the times, but in this one senses a form of earlier institutional sexism that is far from rational. However, Montaigne's nonsense might be overlooked given the work was written in the 16th century. His essays on friendship and conversation provide many lessons that are applicable today, as is the discussion of idleness, and the importance of having purpose in one's life. I could not help but think of Woody Allen in Montaigne's discussion of the love of a father for his children, and the ideas of Freud and other modern psychologists expand on these very themes (of course, the Oedipus complex stems from the Ancients). Of particular note is Montaigne's public self-analysis. Not in the bare-all sense, but certainly in how he discusses one's foibles and braggartry, and how one might self-assess the worth of one's own work. I suspect Screech's translation gives the work such a modern voice, and I can only wonder (on this first reading of any of Montaigne's work) how much is lost in translation.

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What's in a Game? Berne's glimpse into the beginnings of the behavioural turn in the social sciences

Freud's Last Session. Photo: Kevin Sprague on Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first read this book in about 2003. It was suggested to me by a woman with big hair who was making comments about other women with big hair. Bizarre! But I didn't see that game in Berne's work. As I began reading, I was struck by the 1960s tone. It was like watching the scene in Mad Men where Don Draper is discussing Betty's "psychological" problems with her psychiatrist, and the husband has more control over the process than the wife. Issues of American middle-class culture in the '60s emerge from time to time, and I wondered how such a book would fare today! It would be a candidate for the game of "Outrage" no less! But this time, I tried to comprehend the transactional analysis process by writing it down and going over the basis premises of games, and the social versus psychological roles of Parent, Adult, and Child, and how transgressions of social and psychological roles can lead to various games and situations. There is an emphasis on the results of group therapy and the therapist's observations of games, and it is clear that one is glimpsing the developmental stages of the profession of psychology (not so much psychiatry) as we know it today. Berne's work is based on his earlier publication, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, and while it is suitable for a well-read general audience, the psychology professional is clearly in mind. I daresay the analyses and types of games have developed significantly since the book was written, but it is rather helpful in recognising different types of "games people play", even if all one can do is identify and then avoid such games. There are elements of Berne's idea of games that resonate with game theory in political science, albeit with less rigour in identifying the inherent biases. Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that the behavioural revolution in political science was only beginning at this same time, and no doubt Berne was at the forefront of this revolution that continues to influence the social sciences.

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The Art of Letter Writing; or, Send a Letter, Post-Haste!

Letter writing is not entirely dead (just yet)

To the Letter: The Lost Art of Letter Writing and How to Get It Back by Simon Garfield

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a quirky book about the lost art of letter writing. I started writing letters again a few years ago, writing to family and later friends. My family and I still correspond but no friends ever returned a letter. One gentlemen did email me, saying he was pleasantly surprised to receive a handwritten letter, but that he used email these days. I have a letter waiting to go to my sister as I write this, and she will respond in kind. Garfield (his name was Garfunkel but this was changed by his forebears during the war; Simon Garfunkel would have been novel) touches on the re-emerging cult of letter writers, but begins at the beginning with the letters of Ancient Greece, and later Seneca et al., and mentions a number of famous authors and artists and their famous collections of letters that exist to this day. I did not know about Pliny the Younger's account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, nor many other letter-writing stories of old. The book is cleverly punctuated with letter from a soldier to a woman who becomes his pen pal/girlfriend during the Second World War, and the story of their growing love unfolds as does the history of the letter (and to some extent, the post). I found myself wanting to finish each chapter to get to the love story. It has inspired me to tackle a few of the as yet unexplored volumes of letters I have in my library: The Letters of Ernest Hemingway (three volumes), George Orwell: A Life in Letters, The Letters of John Keats, and, although not strictly letters, but The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. Garfield's work is well-referenced and provides a stack of further reading. This book was a gift, and while I may not have chosen it myself, it was an enjoyable and enlightening read, both from a historical perspective and also as one who might consider letter-writing, at least to my family, a form of hobby. I was surprised by the number of typographical errors in this book, typically words missing the plural where it was required and other words repeated other words repeated (like that), and while it is understandable that almost all but the longest surviving (and therefore most edited) works will have some typos, there were quite a few here. Nevertheless, there were many snippets of history I was completely unaware of, and for that alone it was useful, but as a complete package, with the love story intertwined, this is a delightful book and I am pleased to now have it in my collection.

See also: The Art of Manliness: The Art of Letter Writing.

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On the Origins of the "Great Man" Theory of Leadership

Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881. Historian and essayist, 1879.
By Mrs Helen Allingham (1848 - 1926) (Scottish). Public Domain via Wikimedia.

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thomas Carlyle's lectures On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History were delivered in 1840, and published as a book in 1841 by James Fraser, London. My version is a public domain reprint of the 1912 version published by D.C. Heath, Boston, edited and with an introduction by Herbert S. Murch, PhD, of Princeton University. I first learnt of Carlyle in teaching leadership, where this book is regarded as the first leadership theory, the "Great Man" theory. Carlyle considers the hero as divinity (Odin), prophet (Mohammed), poet (Dante, Shakespeare), priest (Luther, Knox), man of letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns), and king (Cromwell, Napoleon). Of note is his Orientalism toward the Prophet Mohammed. In his treatise of prophet as hero, the Muslim Prophet is sincere, yet Carlyle repeatedly turns on the Prophet in his other chapters. Notable, too, is his treatment of any hero who is not related directly to the history of England (i.e. Odin and Luther), in that Mohammed, Rousseau, Dante, and Napoleon are heroes to the non-English, and therefore cannot escape this title, but are otherwise overly-emotional hypocrites and shams in their beliefs, if not in their honour in pursuing their (otherwise incorrect) convictions. Yet Carlyle seems to use this as a vehicle for rhetoric, rather than admonishment, and his respect for these non-Anglo heroes is obvious, where he is not attempting to convince his audience that he is using these only by way of example, rather than having any respect for the "other" that is anymore than skin-deep. Nevertheless, his espousal of the "Great Man" theory is more detailed than the leadership textbooks would suggest, as it is easily dismissed due to contemporary sensibilities, yet in its historical context, it is an important starting point for any student of leadership. This edition is well-supported by notes, but it must be taken as a transcript of a lecture. If one reads this as a coherent "book", the speech is enthusiastic, to say the least, and makes for difficult reading. But after a couple of false starts, I was able to envisage Carlyle giving his lectures, and by imagining the reading to be the man actually speaking, the "book" reads quite well. I find it difficult to rate this work higher than three stars, as it is a bit like reading a medical text of the times on the benefit of leeches - in hindsight, there is much to debate. However, when one considers Carlyle's influence on the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, this is no light-weight intellectual, but someone like James Mill to Ricardo and Bentham, and therefore not to be too readily dismissed.

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Why Governments Shouldn't Over-Step the Mark; or, It happened before and it could happen again...

Prince of Orange Landing at Torbay, engraving by William Miller after J M W Turner (Rawlinson 739), published in The Art Journal 1852 (New Series Volume IV). George Virtue, London, 1852. Public Domain via Wikimedia.

The Second Treatise of Government/A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Locke is one of the many philosophers I am familiar with through secondary sources. but this was my first reading of his work. In the Second Treatise of Government, Locke painstakingly covers power in the parental, political, commonwealth, legislative, and tyrannical modes, leading to a conclusion that is equally applicable to social contract theory (explicitly put by Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and the doctrine of the separation of powers. What is taken for granted in liberal democracies today has a clear lineage to Locke. This book also contains Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration, focusing on freedom of the practice of religion. Freedom of speech and religion are major themes in the letter, with Locke reinforcing what many still regard as proper democratic practice: punish those who break the law, rather than discriminate against individuals with religious characteristics that may, because of unfamiliar or incomprehensible (to conservatives, at least) differences that the dominant group may find confronting. I held the view while reading the Treatise that this might only apply to Christians, but the Letter makes it clear that while "Mahometans" might be "rightly considered" infidels (by Christians), they (and anyone of any religion, even atheists) still had the right to live, work, prosper, and worship as they saw fit so long as they did so with respect for the rule of law. It is interesting that the concepts of liberalism, the social contract, the doctrine of the separation of powers, and the "rule of law" all make an appearance in these works, these are not explicitly mentioned or defined. Yet the definitions and justifications of these concepts used in the present reflect precisely Locke's ideas. That he is known as the "father of liberalism" makes a good deal of sense. Reading Hobbes will be an important endeavour, but so too is the understanding of history, especially of the "Glorious Revolution of 1688", in understanding Locke's work. I also need to read Burke and Kant. While it would probably be smarter to begin at the beginning and work my way through in some sort of chronological order in reading some of the greatest thinkers in political theory, but at the same time, I enjoy the haphazard manner in the same way that one can enjoy a jigsaw puzzle. Not that I pretend that I can ever complete this endeavour, but each completed reading adds a sense of understanding that would otherwise never be gained. Finally, Locke was surprisingly easy to read. Hobbes will be much harder, but there is something about the Enlightenment that changed the nature of written English. Laurence Sterne, too, has a modern form yet it is of the eighteenth century, but Locke's style is not too far removed. I had never considered before how written English may have changed to attract a larger audience. I have been grappling with whether to drop the essay as a form of assessment for undergraduate students (where possible), but also felt like I may be selling out. But an important lesson from history is that it has happened before, and it will happen again; the world never did fall apart. And so we may well be in that space once more. Not because of Facebook, or short attention spans, but because of an undoing of the intellectual elite. Just a thought.

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