Author: Isaac

Dec 7, 2024

Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman; The Gift of Doubt by Malcolm Gladwell.

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“Previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is ‘a scientist,’ and ‘knows’ very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line. And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of — this is the paradox — specialists in those matters. By specializing him, civilization has made him hermetic and self-satisfied within his limitations; but this very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his speciality. The result is that even in this case, representing a maximum of qualification in man — specialization — and therefore the thing most opposed to the mass-man, the result is that he will behave in almost all spheres of life as does the unqualified, the mass-man.” (José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses)

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How Reading Josef Pieper Can Help You Stay Sane

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“…we can always do more for mankind by following the good in a straight line than we can by making concessions to evil. The illusion that it is wise or necessary to suppress our instinctive love of truth comes from an imperfect understanding of what that instinctive love of truth represents, and of what damage happens both to ourselves and to others when we suppress it. The more closely we look at the facts, the more serious does this damage appear. And on the other hand, the more closely we look at the facts, the more trifling, inconsequent, and absurd do all those reasons appear which strive to make us accept, and thereby sanctify and preserve, some portion of the conceded evil in the world.” (John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation)

More Crabbe

At IWP Books: George Crabbe, The Village (1783) and The Newspaper (1785).

Sing, drooping Muse, the cause of thy decline;
Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine?
Alas! new charms the wavering many gain,
And rival sheets the reader’s eye detain;
A daily swarm, that banish every Muse,
Come flying forth, and mortals call them news:
For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie;
For these, in sheets unsoil’d, the Muses die;
Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait
In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate.

The simple barber, once an honest name,
Cervantes founded, Fielding raised his fame:
Barber no more — a gay perfumer comes,
On whose soft cheek his own cosmetic blooms;
Here he appears, each simple mind to move,
And advertises beauty, grace, and love.
“Come, faded belles, who would your youth renew,
And learn the wonders of Olympian dew;
Restore the roses that begin to faint,
Nor think celestial washes vulgar paint;
Your former features, airs, and arts assume,
Circassian virtues, with Circassian bloom.
Come, battered beaux, whose locks are turned to gray,
And crop Discretion’s lying badge away;
Read where they vend these smart engaging things,
These flaxen frontlets with elastic springs;
No female eye the fair deception sees,
Not Nature’s self so natural as these.”

George Crabbe

New at IWP Books: George Crabbe, 1781, The Library. “To think of Crabbe is to think of England.” (E. M. Forster)

But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to change its native woes?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
Others more wretched, more undone than we?
This Books can do; — nor this alone; they give
New views to life, and teach us how to live;
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects what they show to kings.

Dec 2, 2024

“…telling the truth to ourselves and to the world is a condition of survival, the beginning of revival, and the only moral option.” Fania Oz-Salzberger, We Have to Choose

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“How rotten is the translation of Lang, Leaf & Myers. Surely Pope is better.” E. M. Forster (1903)

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Anonymity: An Enquire by E. M. Forster.

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What William Vallicella Likes About Wittgenstein

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“Unlimited gullibility is required to be able to believe that any social condition can be improved in any other way than slowly, gradually, and involuntarily.” Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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“Our progress is slow; the path leads upward at a very small angle. But let us remember that slowness of growth is what America most needs in all directions. In everything we have grown up too quickly. Today all things among us go crashing forward too quickly. We should not desire sudden changes, even for the better. Sudden changes signify short-lived events. Therefore, if we see steady improvement going forward anywhere, let us rejoice that it goes forward slowly, so that its roots may sink deep, and all nature may accommodate herself to the change. Thus will the good things become permanent. Isaiah says in a text that is too seldom quoted: ‘He that believeth shall not make haste.'” John Jay Chapman, 1915, The Negro Question

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“Tão cedo passa tudo quanto passa!
Morre tão jovem ante os deuses quanto
Morre! Tudo é tão pouco!
Nada se sabe, tudo se imagina.
Circunda-te de rosas, ama, bebe e cala.
O mais é nada.”
Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa)

like squirrels in a wheelcage

Christmas Book Recommendations by Jacques Barzun (Harper’s, Dec. 1976)

Delicacy linked with power is rare in fiction at any time and today more than ever. That is why I suggest reading the novels — six of them — written a quarter-century ago by the late Anne Goodwin Winslow, a New Englander transplanted to the South and widely travelled besides. Begin with It Was Like This (1949) or A Quiet Neighborhood (1947).

Then modulate to the short study, The Harried Leisure Class (1970) by the Swedish economist and member of parliament Staffan B. Linder. He explains in his own excellent English why in proportion to our help from gadgets and machines those of us from whose calm contemplation the world might conceivably benefit are driven like squirrels in a wheelcage.

For insight into another department of our unsatisfactory existense, turn to Theodore Caplow’s definitive statement of the reasons why programs of social betterment fail of their object and waste our money. Toward Social Hope (1975) is again a small book. It combines trenchant description with brilliant historical judgments and establishes the indispensable criteria for assessing and managing social undertakings, from the war on poverty to the avoidance of war itself. Caplow, as his other works demonstrate, is unique among sociologists in being a highly cultivated mind and a superb writer — witness the chapter in Two Against One (1968)where he applies to Hamlet his understanding of human alliances.

I call him unique, because I want to claim Robert Nisbet as an historian, despite his willingness to consort with sociologists and to be known as one of them. In any event, his most recent essay, Sociology as an Art Form (1976),shows his critical and historical powers in brief compass; the reader will probably be too busy thinking to bother about classifying the author.

After those short and suggestive works, all of them philosophical in the true sense, I would urge the reading of Jonathan Goodman on The Killing of Julia Wallace (1976). He reconstructs with consummate skill the best unsolved murder of our century — best, because it is as full of clues and limiting factors as any contrived tale, because the large cast of characters (including the police and the law men) is remarkable, and because the case has aroused conflicting passions in the notable literature published about it during the last forty years. Mr. Goodman, I may say with confidence, has produced the classic account: thorough but never tedious, scholarly yet original, vivid though sober in tone — altogether satisfying as history and entertainment.

(Note: The books by Anne Goodwin Winslow are available at IWP Books).