“The Enneads” by Plotinus (translated by George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A.H. King, Andrew Smith, James Wilberding)

This huge corpus of philosophy was written by the Neo-Platonist, Plotinus, during the course of his lifetime, in the third century. He was almost certainly Greek, definitely born in Egypt, educated in Alexandria, and traveled during his lifetime as far afield as Persia and Rome. Plotinus wrote a comprehensive book of philosophy focusing on metaphysics, ethics, the human condition, and the nature of reality. He begins, “The virtuous person is always content and his state is one of tranquility, his disposition is lovable…. Happiness is living well, something which is bound up with the soul.”

Plotinus spent much of his thought grappling with the essence of the good and the nature of the human soul, the body, and the mind. “The Good is that upon which all beings depend and that ‘which all beings desire’; they have it as their principle and are also in need of it. It itself lacks nothing, being sufficient unto itself and in need of nothing. It is also the measure and limit of all beings, giving from itself Intellect and Substantiality and Soul and Life and the activity of Intellect. And all of these up to the Good are beautiful, but it itself is above Beauty and is the transcendent ruler of all that is best, all that is in the intelligible world…. Intellect is the primary activity that comes from the Good, and the primary Substance that comes from it, while it remains in itself.”

Not much space in “The Enneads” is concerned with worldly matters, but Plotinus does digress on the inequalities between men, “And if someone should complain of wealth and poverty, that is, of the inequality of their distribution to all people, then this person, first, fails to understand that the virtuous person is not interested in equality in these matters, nor does he think that those who have a lot of possessions are better off than those who do not, nor that those in positions of power are better off than private citizens, and that he rather leaves concerns of this kind to others. And the virtuous person is fully aware that there are two kinds of life here—that of the virtuous person and that of the human masses—and for the sage life is aimed at the highest peak and pinnacle, while the life of the all-too-human has again two forms—the one life involves the recollection of virtue and participating in some good, while the common mob is there, in a way, to do the manual work necessary to provide for the better kind.”

Metaphysics occupies the bulk of Plotinus’ philosophy. “And we are each of us an intelligible universe, connected to the world below by the lower parts of our soul, but to the intelligible world by our higher parts, that is, by our cosmic parts…. One should think that there is also a universe in our soul, not only an intelligible one, but a state like that of the soul of the universe. And just as the soul of the universe, too, has been distributed amongst the fixed stars and the planets according to its different powers, the powers in us are also of the same kind as these powers.” He continues, “Certainly, there is both the true universe and the imitation of the universe, that is, the nature of the visible universe. The true universe is, then, in nothing, for there is nothing prior to it…. The universe, the primary being, neither looks for a place nor is it in anything at all. Actually, the universe, being all, is not such that it falls short of itself; rather, it has both completed itself and is equal to itself. And where the universe is, it is there, for it is itself the universe…. And there is nothing to be astonished at if that which is everywhere is in being and in itself. For that which comes to be everywhere is already in unity.”

There is a dichotomy in Plotinus’ philosophy between the sensible world and the intelligible world. “Intellect, being real, thinks Beings and causes them to exist. It is, therefore these Beings…. For anything which is first is not a sensible. For the form in sensibles that is over and above their matter is an image of the real Form…. There must be, therefore, prior to the cosmos those Beings that are not impressions of other Beings, but archetypes and primarily Beings and Intellect’s substantiality…. Intellect, therefore, is the real Beings, and does not think Beings as if they were elsewhere. For they are neither prior to it nor after it. But it is, in a way, the primary lawgiver, or rather it is itself the law of their existence.” Plato’s theory of the forms also plays a substantial role in Plotinus’ metaphysics, “One has to grasp the general substantiality of the Forms, namely, that they exist, without someone, in thinking each of them, providing them with real existence by thought itself…. The thing itself, being without matter, is intelligible and intellection, not such as to be an account of the thing nor an act of apprehension of it, but the thing itself in the intelligible; what else could this be but intellection and scientific understanding…. This is not an image of the thing, but the thing itself…. One has to think that, generally, all things [in the intelligible world] lie within one nature, and that one nature contains them and, in a way, encompasses them, and not that they are each separate, as in the sensible realm.”

Finally, the primacy of the One is paramount to Plotinus’ metaphysics, “All beings are beings due to unity…. Being has life, too—for it is certainly not a corpse—it is, therefore, a many. If Being is Intellect, then it, too, would have to be many, all the more so if it contained the Forms. For the Idea is not one; rather, it is a Number, both each Idea, and all of them together, and one in the way that the cosmos is one. Generally speaking, the One is primary, while Intellect, Forms and Being are not primary…. So, neither will the One be all things, for then it would not still be one; nor is the One Intellect, for in that case it would be all things because Intellect is all things. Nor, finally, is the One Being. For Being is all things…. The biggest puzzle arising is that comprehension of the One is neither by scientific understanding or by intellection…. For this reason, Plato says it is neither to be spoken nor written of…. The One is certainly absent from nothing and from everything; it is present without being present, except to those who are able to receive it, and who are prepared for it, so as to be harmonious with it and in a way grasp it and touch it through their likeness to it…. The One, that is, the principle of all beings, is simple…. Intellect is not dispersed. Rather, it truly coheres with itself, without articulating itself, since it comes immediately after the One, having dared to depart somehow from the One…. Indeed, in truth no name suits it, but if indeed one has to name it, it is fitting to call it ‘One’, as is usually done, but not so that it is something else, and then one. This is the reason it is so difficult to know, and it is known rather through its offspring…. The One must be understood to be unlimited not because it cannot be traversed either in extension or number, but by being incomprehensible in its power…. Thus, there is no good for the One, and so it does not have a will for anything. It is beyond good, and is good not for itself but for other things, insofar as other things can participate in the Good.” 

“The Elephant in the Brain” by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler

Humans often act in their own selfish interests. However, humans do not want to appear to others to be acting selfishly. Through evolution, the brain has come up with mechanisms to obscure one’s own selfish behavior. This book discusses the hidden motives that are ubiquitous in human society. These motives are so hidden that they are often hidden even from our conscious selves. Hanson and Simler’s thesis is “we, human beings, are a species that’s not only capable of acting on hidden motives- we’re design to do it. Our brains are built to act in our self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep “us,” our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide from others.”

The social brain hypothesis suggests that humans got smarter than other primates primarily through competing with other humans in social and political situations. It was an intra-species arms race that led humanity to such massive brain size, through natural selection. Robert Trivers suggests, “both the detection of deception and often its propagation have been major forces favoring the evolution of intelligence. It is perhaps ironic that dishonesty has often been the file against which intellectual tools for truth have been sharpened.” We yearn for sexual partners, friends, prestige, and to be part of winning coalitions and so our brains have evolved to facilitate that type of success. However, signaling fitness as a mate, friend, or teammate is costly. “The best signals- the most honest ones- are expensive. More precisely, they are differentially expensive: costly to produce, but even more costly to fake.” Furthermore, successful humans live within the bounds of societies governed by norms. “The insistent egalitarianism of our ancestors was arguably the world’s first true norm…. Collective enforcement, then, is the essence of norms.” Collective punishment can deter even the strongest of alpha males and force them into submitting to the group. Gossip is an effective tool in spreading reputation and, therefore, status within society.  Meta-norms have also been established, whereby those who don’t actively punish norm breakers, because it might seem too costly, are themselves punished, thereby reinforcing group cohesion and loyalty. 

So, while it pays to be selfish, even more so, it pays not to look selfish. However, “weaker norms, the ones that regulate intention, are harder to notice.” Intentions leave room for more leeway and ambiguity. “Pretexts are a broad and useful tool for getting away with norm violations. They make prosecution more difficult by having a ready explanation for your innocence.” Discreet communication also allows for ambiguous interpretation. Body language, cryptic talk, and subtext all allow for deniability. These methods allow one to convey one’s meaning to the intended recipient, but also leeway to deny that meaning if confronted by a third party or even betrayed by your target. It is even easier to appear unselfish if you are able to deceive yourself. “It’s possible for our brains to maintain a relatively accurate set of beliefs in systems tasked with evaluating potential actions, while keeping those accurate beliefs hidden from the systems (like consciousness) involved in managing social impressions.” As Robert Trivers notes, “we deceive ourselves, the better to deceive others.” This pays evolutionarily. “We’re often rewarded for acting on selfish impulses, but less so for acknowledging them.” To do this we often come up with justifications. “Rationalization, sometimes known to neuroscientists as confabulation, is the production of fabricated stories made up without any conscious intention to deceive.” We spin our version of the truth for others (and ourselves) to consume.

We convey many intentions through body language. Leonard Mlodinow notes, “much, if not most, of the nonverbal signaling and reading of signals is automatic and performed outside our conscious awareness and control.” Hanson and Simler continue, “body language, however, is not arbitrary. Instead nonverbal behaviors are meaningfully, functionally related to the messages they’re conveying.” Acts of following and copying another can show sympathy or submission. Rituals, such as hand shaking or kissing of the hand, similarly convey status. Body language’s primary usefulness is in its lack of explicitness. “Relative to spoken language, it’s considerably more ambiguous. While the overall patterns of body language may be consistent, any isolated behavior will have many interpretations…. This is the magic of nonverbal communication. It allows us to pursue illicit agendas, even ones that require coordinating with other people, while minimizing the risk of being attacked, accused, gossiped about, and censured for norm violations.”

Laughter is another way to convey intentions ambiguously and often unconsciously. “We use laughter to flirt, bond with friends, mock our enemies, probe social norms, and mark the boundaries of our social groups. It’s a response to social cues, laced with interpersonal significance, and yet “we”- the conscious, deliberate, willful parts of our minds- don’t get to decide when we do it.” Humans laugh thirty times more often in groups than when alone. Speakers laugh fifty times more than listeners. Babies laugh more when tickled by their mothers than when tickled by a stranger. Laughter is a social phenomenon. It is a signal of play. “When we laugh at our own actions, it’s a signal to our playmates that our intentions are ultimately playful (although we may seem aggressive)…. When we laugh in response to someone else’s actions, however, it’s a statement not about intentions but perceptions. It says, “I perceive your actions as playful; I know you’re only kidding around.”” Laughter can be used to test norms. “We use laughter to gauge and calibrate social boundaries- both behavioral boundaries (norms) and group membership boundaries (who deserves how much of our empathy)…. Laughter, then, shows us the boundaries that language is too shy to make explicit.” Laughter allows us to test what is appropriate and what will get sanctioned by the group.

Why do humans engage in so much conversation? “We spend roughly 20 percent of our waking lives engaged in conversation.” One might assume it is to gain information cheaply. “Listening costs very little, but has the large benefit of helping us learn vicariously, that is, from the knowledge and experience of others.” Yet, it seems most of us prefer to speak than to listen. In fact, humans have evolved and honed our tools for speech far more than our listening apparatus. It seems that we have evolutionarily adapted to become better speakers, while remaining relatively unchanged on the listening front. Speaking well must have a benefit. “Every remark made by a speaker contains two messages for the listener: text and subtext. The text says, “Here’s a new piece of information,” while the subtext says, “By the way, I’m the kind of person who knows such things.” We convey a signal about the type of person we are (or hope to portray ourselves to be) through speech. We demonstrate our fitness and imply that we are the kind of person others should gravitate towards by talking to others, not by listening.

Humans engage in consumption, but more than that, we enjoy conspicuous consumption. We take pleasure in showing off. We even discuss our services and experiences with others (or post them on social media), so that we can flaunt those intangibles, as well as material goods. What is self-described as individuality or personality is often another way of distinguishing ourselves from the herd. Advertisements rely on this instinct in humans. “The easier it is to judge someone based on a particular product, the more it will be advertised using cultural images and lifestyle associations.” Fancy products are often advertised to the masses, who cannot afford them, because of this third person effect. By showing the product to non-buyers, it still increases the prestige of the product and thus the prestige of those few who can afford to buy it.

Art seems to be wasteful from the standpoint of natural selection. Making art is “a costly behavior, both in time and energy, but at the same time it’s impractical.” However, while it doesn’t make sense to produce art in terms of fitness selection, it does in terms of sexual selection. It signals that you are the type of person who is so fit you can waste your time on art. “Human art is more than just a courtship display, that is, an advertisement of the artist’s value as a potential mate. It also functions as a general-purpose fitness display, that is an advertisement of the artist’s health, energy, vigor, coordination, and overall fitness. Fitness displays can be used to woo mates, of course, but they also serve other purposes like attracting allies or intimidating rivals.” That is why it is often the extrinsic properties of art that society judges artwork by. “These properties include who the artist is, which techniques were used, how many hours it took, how “original” it is, how expensive the materials were, and so on.” These properties help to advertise the “survival surplus” of the artist. It is the very fact that he can spend so much time and effort on something non-functional that suggests that he has such as surplus of fitness that he can afford to waste his energy on frivolous pursuits. The impracticality and waste is actually the feature.

Humans like to appear altruistic. However, “only 3 percent of donors do comparative research to find the best nonprofit to give to…. People also prefer to “diversify” their donations…. Only 1 percent of donations to public charities are anonymous.” This leads Hanson and Simler to believe that charity is actually more about making the giver feel good, than about helping others. They point to five factors that have been shown to influence charitable giving: visibility of the giving, peer pressure, proximity to the people being helped, relatability of the recipient, and thinking others from the opposite sex will notice. After all, “up to 95 percent of all donations are given in response to a solicitation.” Studies have also shown that men are much more likely to give to a cause when approached by a stranger of the opposite sex. We only get social rewards when others notice. Charitable behavior sends a signal that we have an excess of goods and wealth.  It also conveys that we are prosocial individuals, concerned with the greater good. They argue against Peter Singer’s theory of charity. “Singer may be right that there’s no moral principle that differentiates between a child drowning nearby and another one starving thousands of miles away. But there are very real social incentives that make it more rewarding to save the local boy. It’s a more visible act, more likely to be celebrated by the local community, more likely to result in getting laid or making new friends.”

Hanson and Simler rely on much of Bryan Caplan’s work to assert that most education is signaling. The sheepskin effect seems undeniable. “Each of the first three years of high school or college (the years that don’t finish in a degree) are worth on average only about a 4 percent salary bump. But the last year of high school and the last year of college, where students complete a degree, are each worth on average about a 30 percent higher salary.” Students signal their innate intelligence, work ethic, and ability to conform to expectations by finishing what is expected of them, school. School performance is just a proxy for future work productivity.

Medicine in America is expensive. Hanson and Simler suggest much of it is unneeded. There is social pressure to enlist every possible treatment, no matter the cost, lest there be gossip that we didn’t care enough for our dying parent or spouse. Expense has been equated with care. Cheap remedies are deemed not as effective as the newest expensive drug or fancy technological gadget. More is always better. The credentials and reputation of doctors shield them from probing questions. We are taught never to question the experts. However, Alex Tabarrok points out, “more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS and yet physicians still resist and the public does not demand even simple reforms.” Hanson and Simler add, “the public is eager for medical interventions that help people when they’re sick, but far less eager for routine lifestyle interventions.” The one is visible and thus could be commented on by neighbors and peers, while the other is often hidden from public approbation. “Medicine isn’t just about health- it’s also an exercise in conspicuous caring.”

Religiosity is still deemed admirable in American life. More citizens would prefer a Muslim president to an atheist one. Yet, “most religions are fairly lax on questions of private belief as long as adherents demonstrate public acceptance of the religion.” Jonathan Haidt says, “religion is a team sport.” Emile Durkheim agrees that “God is society writ large.” Sacrifice is a signal to the community that one takes religion seriously. Whether it is wearing distinctive clothes, abstaining from eating certain meats, giving alms, or actually killing an animal, sacrifice is costly and, therefore, hard to fake. By going to sermons you are implicitly submitting to the authority of the speaker and the religious organization at large. You are endorsing the message and staying within the norms of the group. Beliefs can be arbitrary, but as long as they are distinctive they serve the purpose of creating an in group/out group bond.

Politics seems to cost more than it’s worth. No single vote actually matters, but it costs time and energy to go to the polls. Yet, voting allows you to signal what team you are on. It is the symbolism that matters, not the results. Voters in “swing” states (where your vote might theoretically matter more) hardly show up to the polls in greater numbers than in “safe” states. Voters care more about values than particular policies. Even uninformed voters are encouraged to go vote. This only makes sense if voting is more about personal expression than actual outcome.

Hanson and Simler argue that in all these fields the brain distorts your real motives to your benefit. It makes you look better to the group than your real motives might. “Key tasks for our distant ancestors were tracking how others saw them, watching for ways others might accuse them of norm violations, and managing stories of their motives and plans to help them defend against such accusations. The difficulty of this task was a big reason humans had such big brains.” They conclude by suggesting, “savvy institution designers must therefore identify both the surface goals to which people give lip service and the hidden goals that people are also trying to achieve.” Humans are selfish and designed to conceal it. Any useful public policy will bear this in mind.

“Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future” by Dan Wang

For much of this past decade, Wang worked for an economics research firm, Gavekal Dragonomics, spotting macro and geopolitical trends for hedge funds and other well-paying institutions, while living in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai, also traveling the country extensively, looking at Chinese trends on the ground. Now, back in America, Wang has formulated this book into standalone chapters, loosely copying the format of the annual letters that he used to send out from China, which riffed on his thoughts of the past year. Wang begins, “Socialist China detains union organizers, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist…. China is an engineering state, which can’t stop itself from building…. Deng Xiaoping promoted engineers to the top ranks of China’s government throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By 2002, all nine members of the Politburo’s standing committee—the apex of the Communist Party—had trained as engineers…. Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua, China’s top science university. For his third term as the Communist Party’s general secretary starting in 2022, Xi filled the politburo with executives from the country’s aerospace and weapons ministries…. The fundamental tenet of the engineering state is to look at people as aggregates, not individuals…. The chief feature of the engineering state is building big public works, no matter the financial or human cost.”

Wang worries about the loss of manufacturing capacity in America. He contrasts it with China’s ability to constantly build. “Embracing process knowledge means looking to people to embody eternity rather than to grand monuments. Furthermore, instead of viewing “technology” as a series of cool objects, we should look at it as a living practice…. The National Nuclear Security Administration found that it could no longer produce “Fogbank,” a classified material used to detonate the bomb, because it hadn’t kept good records of the production process and everyone who knew how to produce it had retired. The NNSA then spent $69 million to relearn how to produce this material…. It’s rare for blueprints to encode enough information to be technologically valuable…. Process knowledge is hard to measure because it exists mostly in people’s heads and the pattern of their relationships to other technical workers. We tend to refer to these intangibles as know-how, institutional memory, or tacit knowledge. They are embodied by an experienced workforce like Shenzhen’s…. Shenzhen is a community of engineering practice where factory owners, skilled engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, and researchers mix with the world’s most experienced workforce at producing high-end electronics…. The value of these communities of engineering practice is greater than any single company or engineer. Rather, they have to be understood as ecosystems of technology.”

There is a takeaway, related first in an anecdote, from Wang’s return to America which stood out. “I found one item particularly quite irksome on my return to America in 2023: a yard sign that begins “In this home we believe science is real.” The Communist Party “followed the science” of zero-Covid to its logical conclusion: barring people from their homes, testing people on a near-daily basis, and doing everything else it could to break the chains of transmission. Four decades ago, it “followed the science” to forcibly prevent many pregnancies in the pursuit of the one-child policy…. We can agree that “science is real.” But we have to keep in mind that there is a political determination involved with how to interpret the science. And that is something the lawyerly society is better at. It has lawyers interested in protecting rights, economists able to think through social science, humanists who consider ethics, and many other voices in the mix, attempting to open policy prescriptions up for debate. China doesn’t have a robust system for political contestation; engineers will simply follow the science until it leads to social immiseration.”

China’s engineering society has other downsides. Wang discusses Xi’s recent effort to clip the wings of China’s own tech sector. “The Communist Party distrusts and fears the Chinese people…. Authoritarian systems aren’t good at disseminating bad news…. China’s crackdown consisted of both technocratic regulation and an effort to impose political discipline on a freewheeling sector. Xi has forcefully reminded China’s tech companies that they cannot represent a power center that challenges the state’s sovereignty…. The Communist Party reminded them that it retains the discretionary power to engineer all aspects of society…. In the name of achieving change, the engineering state delivers such beatings on people or industries that they are unable to pick themselves back up again. Even if Xi’s judgments are right, his brute-force solutions reliably worsen things…. Sometimes, the only thing scarier than China’s problems are Beijing’s solutions…. The Chinese government often resembles a crew of skilled firefighters who douse blazes they themselves ignited…. After alienating so many people, has Xi decided to change course? No, he’s doubling down on promoting engineers to leadership…. Social engineering will increase as well. In 2018, Xi praised teachers as engineers of the soul, a phrase first used by Joseph Stalin…. [Xi] has talked about how love of the party and the country needs to start young, which means to “grab little ones from the cradle.” The party’s messages need to “enter the mind, enter the heart, and enter the hands.””

Xi is also ready to isolate China from the West and go to war if need be to fulfill his vision of China’s future. “In speeches to China’s national security community, he has spoken about “ensuring normal operation of the national economy under extreme circumstances.” What does that mean? As usual, the top leader is oblique, but it suggests that he’s worried that China will one day be cut off from the rest of the world…. The intention, it feels to me, is to build China into a great fortress…. Xi has already put up higher walls. In 2018, while I was living in Hong Kong, I started to tell people that China might close its doors in forty years, by the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic. At that point, it will once again become the Celestial Empire, its people serenely untroubled by the turmoils of barbarians beyond its borders…. It turned out that I was off by a centenary: China had been mostly shut in 2021, a hundred years after the founding of the Communist Party. The pandemic was like a practice run—an exercise in what life in China would be like with its doors closed to the outside world. Xi apparently liked what he saw…. At the end of 2024, the country felt more fortresslike than before the pandemic…. It’s not encouraging for the future of Chinese and American relations that there are only about a thousand American students studying in China. Just before the pandemic, there were ten times that many.”

Wang concludes by, again, pointing out what China’s engineering state sees at its highest priorities. “Rather than prizing efficiency and just-in-time deliveries, China has invested in redundancies and shock buffers…. China takes energy security seriously…. Low carbon capacity—solar, wind, nuclear—has to be understood as part of a broader motivation to make the country dependent on energy sources within its borders…. In 2023, China added twenty times more coal-burning capacity than the rest of the world put together…. That also explains why China is so enthusiastic about electrifying the auto fleet: It would rather burn domestic coal than Middle East oil to power its cars…. China takes food security seriously as well…. [Xi stated,] “The bowls of the Chinese people should be filled mostly with Chinese grain.” The pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have made Beijing more conscious of food self-sufficiency. Chinese leaders have always been aware that food shortages have toppled imperial dynasties. And so one of the things that provincial governors are graded on is whether they are self-sufficient in rice and wheat, while mayors of major cities have to make sure that a variety of foods are grown locally.” Wang ends, “Communist Party propaganda blared in 2023, “China will always be a developing country.””

“The German Sturm und Drang” by Roy Pascal

Pascal's book is a history of the Sturm und Drang movement, which took place in Germany roughly between 1770 and 1778. Although relatively brief, the movement was to have a large impact on the contemporary debates about social criticism, morality, the role of government, religion, poetry, and, in particular, it was to presage the ideas of the German Romantic movement in many ways. “Associates of the Sturm und Drang were urged on by the desire to live according to instinctive feeling, to fashion their lives according to intuition and ‘revelation’, not social norms and practical reasonableness.” There was a general unease and restlessness about the current epoch that helped mold the Sturmer und Drangers. Hamann, Herder, Goethe, and Lenz were the movement’s most enduring members.

Hamann was the eldest of the group. He was a pietist, hated the French bureaucracy, installed by Frederick the Great, despite holding a minor post under it, was a thoroughly impractical man, and, finally, was an obscure writer, known for his Biblical allusions. He despised public affairs and social conventions. He prized intuition over reason. This led to a “repudiation of the claims of all political and social organization, an expression of his conviction that only religious faith, and private life in which religious belief can be fostered, have real value.” Thus he was “against the authority of all impersonal forces, whether of state or metaphysics, against all formalism in religion and secular life.” His was a spiritual, subjective individualism. Hamann espoused, “Everything that man undertakes, whether it be produced in action or word or anything else, must spring from his whole united powers; all separation of powers is to be repudiated.” He valued experience and personal feelings above all else.

Herder considered Hamann a friend and a mentor. However, he was not as doctrinaire as him. Herder sought a synthesis of theory and practice, of thought and action. However, he too prized feelings, intuition, perception, and using one’s senses as a means of discovering reality. Herder, alone in the movement, was “to construct a general philosophy of life, embracing the scientific, practical and intuitive faculties of man…. a philosophy of man which would justify all his capacities, including the senses, that would give all his faculties more intense life and vibration.” He had manic and depressive spells in which he alternated between rapturous enthusiasm and hypochondria.

Goethe is perhaps the most famous of the Sturmer und Dranger. Although his views would significantly change as he got older, in this period of his life, he prized feelings over science and reason. As he put it, he was “surrendering himself from moment to moment.” Herder would say to him, “everything with you is vision.” He lived an intense life in which experience dominated and he was able to express both his feelings and imagination ably. During the Sturm und Drang period, Goethe exclaimed, “I am delighted! I am happy! I feel it, and yet the whole content of my joy is a surging longing for something I do not possess, for something I do not know.” His happiness was buoyed by the search of something indescribable. He was  a man of extremes, who lurched from one intense experience to another. “Goethe lives in a constant inward war and rebellion, since all things have a most violent effect on him.” He did not respect the normal social and moral values, and so “he sought in his works not to teach or preach, but to find a form for his experience of the world, and through this form to grow in range and depth.”

Lenz is perhaps the least well known major character in the Sturm und Drang movement. He was an emotional man. He felt, “the greatest misfortune is lack of capacity for feeling…. My greatest sufferings are caused by my own heart, and yet, in spite of all, the most unbearable state is when I am free of suffering.” He was a man who suffered much, but who knew that his greatest thoughts were propelled by such suffering. He revealed to a colleague, “my philosophical reflections must not last more than two or three minutes, otherwise my head aches.” His thoughts could be profound. Lenz pondered, “the more I investigate myself and reflect on myself, the more reasons I find to doubt that I am really an independent being, despite the burning desire within me to be so.” Yet, he was a man crippled by his own doubts and insufficiencies, “give me more real sorrows so that the imaginary ones don’t overwhelm me.”

What united the Sturm und Drang? There was a conviction that life was all about feelings and intuition above reason and metaphysics. They also buckled against the social mores and general morality of their age. “They suffer continually under the pressure of practical life, not only in the form of routine work but also in that of social morality. The normal definitions of good and evil are irrelevant to their values, for they seek above all intense life, joy and woe, without which all human relationships are meaningless for them. They are tossed about by their emotions and imagination, are unstable, can see no perspective for the realisation of their ideals, and often feel themselves to be prey to forces within them which they worship even in their destructive power.” Theirs was a quest for “personal significance within an environment they considered worthless.”

The members of the Sturm und Drang movement were opposed to all absolutism. They did not believe in universal values. They buckled under the rule of an absolute monarch and impersonal laws. They were concerned with a national culture. However, this was far from the racist nationalism that sprung up and corrupted their thoughts later in the 20th century. Theirs was an appreciation for the forms of life and art that were grounded in the nation. Hamann would always stress the primacy of family versus the State as an organizing social institution. Leisewitz would ask, “And must the whole human race, in order to be happy, be locked up in states- where each man is a slave to others, and no-one is free- where each is riveted to the other end of the chain by which he holds his slave fast? Only idiots can dispute whether society poisons mankind- both sides admit that the state murders freedom.”

The Sturm und Drang praised the simple morality of the common folk that was unreflecting and unsophisticated. They particularly found sympathy with the Volk, the poorest of the laborers and peasants. The Sturm und Drang praised practical work, free from the learned society of professionals and bureaucrats. The Volk possessed a simple wisdom, spoke with unvarnished speech, and often felt and believed without having to espouse a reason. “Here sturdy individualism and communal ties, realism and religion were reconciled.” Moser would emphasize, “learning has weakened and perverted all human pleasures.” Herder, particularly, saw folksongs as embodying latent knowledge and national culture, passed down through the generations. The national poetry was embedded in folksong. For Herder, folksong was “the impression of the nation’s heart, a living grammar, the best dictionary and natural history of the people.”

Most of the Sturmer und Dranger were Pietists or, at least, viewed Christian religion with respect and awe.  “Religion as they understood it is not a mere code of belief in a supernatural reality, a mere discipline or rule of behaviour, but the expression of a total relationship between man and the universe, man and his fellows, and between the different faculties of man; it embraces theory and practice.” The Sturmer und Dranger felt obliged to surrender to their innermost feelings, often expressed in their religious devotion. Merck would chastise the Deists, who “have deprived religion of all its sensuous elements, that is, of all its relish.” Hamann’s world was “a living web of meanings, instead of an objective, impersonal structure.” Hamaan would insist, “our own existence and the existence of all things outside us must be believed, and can be proved in no other way.” Herder would ask, “but what is a God, if he is not in you and you do not feel and taste his Being in an infinitely inward fashion?” Goethe did not consider himself a believer and yet he found “love and tolerance towards religion, a friendly feeling towards the Gospel, a holier veneration for the Word.” Faith, for Goethe, was the inner expression of the good life. He stated, “in religious faith, I used to say, the important thing is that one should believe; what one believes is of no concern…. Whether [children] believe in Christ, or Gotz, or Hamlet, it’s all one, but see that they do believe in something. If you don’t believe in something you despair about yourself…. The only useful religion must be simple and warm.” Lavater also believed in “the immediate feeling of Christ” that was a “sensuous experience.” He stated, “religion is the need for higher invisible things and a faith in them; religion is always sense, feeling, genius for the invisible, the higher, the superhuman, supermundane; religion is always faith!” Lenz would agree, “the soul creates itself and therewith its future state…. So all our independence, our whole existence is based on the number, the scope, the truth of our feelings and experiences, and on the strength with which we face up to them, think about them or, what is the same, are conscious of them.”

The Sturm und Drang struggled to find a purpose in the harsh reality in which they lived. “Obscurely but determinedly they refuse to see man as the instrument of external forces or as chained to external purposes, be they religious, metaphysical, physical, or social; they refuse to exalt one side of man, his soul or reason or sense, at the expense of others; they destroy the image man made of himself as an abstract intelligence, or a sentimental idealist, or a sensual egoist in the Mandeville or Helvetius sense. Man exists, in their view, to be himself most intensely, to develop all his powers to the full.” Goethe would summarize, “All that a man undertakes, whether it be by deed or word or anything else, must spring from his whole united powers; all separation is to be rejected.” Herder would emphasize, “The development of the forces of our soul is the purpose of our existence on earth…. Everyone’s actions should arise utterly from himself, according to his innermost character, he should be true to himself: that is the whole of morality.” Herder espoused a moral pluralism as well as a cultural pluralism. He stated, “each nation has its centre of happiness in itself, as a sphere its centre of gravity…. We live in a world we ourselves create.” Herder would go on, “The ideal of happiness changes as circumstances and regions change- for what else is it but the sum of fulfillment of wishes, of the purposes, and the gentle surmounting of wants, which all are transformed according to land, time and place.” Each culture is unique and cannot be judged by the criteria of another. There is no single purpose to life. Klinger would say, “I live like all true sons of Prometheus in the inward war of energies and activity with the bounds which men have imposed on demi-gods for their own comfort, for otherwise they would be crushed for ever.” Lenz would emphasize, “that action, action, is the soul of the world, not enjoyment, not sentimentality, not ratiocination, and only so do we become images of God, who incessantly acts and incessantly rejoices over his works. This we learn: that the active force within us is our spirit, our highest portion, which alone gives our body with all its sensory properties and feelings a true life, and true consistency, and true value, and without which all our enjoyment, all our feelings, all our knowledge are merely passive, merely a postponed death.” Goethe would say of man, “Nature is the source of his being, as it is the limit; what is beyond is meaningless, is unreal.” Herder sums up the Sturm und Drang’s feelings that man “is but an ant, that crawls on the wheel of fate.”

The Sturm und Drang movement is perhaps best expressed through their poetry. Herder would claim that poetic beauty is “what raises me above myself, what sets in motion all my powers.” He speaks to the poet, “for you, as a dramatic poet, no clock strikes on tower and temple, but you have to create space and time; and if you can produce a world and it cannot exist but in time and space, lo, your measure of time and space lies within you.” On language, Herder hypothesizes, “in a sensuous language there must be unclear words, synonyms, inversions, idioms…. Idioms are patronymic treasures of beauty, like the palm trees round the academy of Athens which were dedicated to Minerva.” He concludes, “the object of poetry is the energy that adheres to the inner meaning of words, the magic power which works upon my soul through fancy and memory.” Hamann would intone, “Speak so that I can see you…. Senses and passions speak and understand nothing but images. In images rests the whole treasury of human knowledge and understanding.” Lavater felt there was something divine expressed in poetry. He asks and answers himself, “Who is a poet? A spirit who feels that he can create, and who does create, and whose creation does not only please himself as his work, but of whose creation all tongues must witness: Truth! Truth! Nature! Nature! We see what we never saw, and hear what we never heard, and yet, what we see and hear is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone!” Poetry, above all, must have realism; it must be lived within you. Burger would write, “in poetry, in spite of all divine sublimity, everything must be tangible and visual; if not, it is no poetry for this world, but perhaps for a different world which, however, does not exist.” Lenz summarizes the aims of the poetry of the Sturm und Drang, “We would like to penetrate with one glance into the innermost nature of all beings, to absorb with one feeling all the joy that is in nature and combine it with ourselves.”

“One Way and Another” by Adam Phillips

Phillips is truly the master of the essay. Whether primarily about psychoanalysis, literature, or just the quirks of life, he combines pithy epigrams, keen observations, and beyond-the-surface commentary in a succinct and funny way. His essays allow him to ramble, to meander, and to explore a subject, while always circling back to the heart of the matter, in a thoroughly enlightening trip. In this collection of essays Phillips writes deeply about the craft of analysis and the process of psychoanalysis, while referencing the points of view of both the analyst and the analysand. He quotes Freud on the unconscious, “everything conscious was subject to a process of wearing away, while what was unconscious was relatively unchangeable.” He discusses the theory of the Self, “one’s history, of course, never begins with oneself.” On the subjectivity of memory, “memory is reprinted, so to speak, in accordance with later experience.” On childhood, “every child grows up in the climate of his parents’ mostly unconscious history.” On the Self as seen by the Other, “other people see us in ways that we cannot anticipate; we cannot know ourselves because we cannot be everyone else in relation to ourselves.” On self-betrayal, “people who believe too much in compromise believe too much in not getting what they want.” On the purpose of dreaming, “awake or asleep we do not want to be awakened to, or by, our wishes, the wishes that represent our unconscious forbidden desire. Dreams just help us to stay asleep when we are asleep.” On our ideals, “we are tyrannized by our picture of ourselves as we would prefer to be; we organize our lives around it.” On the nature of our preoccupations, “our preoccupations are the way our pasts go in search of a future.” On the role of accidents in interpreting life, “it may not be that all accidents are meaningful, but that meaning is made out of accidents.” On imagining one’s inhibitions, “if we can’t to some extent imagine it- whether consciously or unconsciously- we wouldn’t know not to do it, or how to go about avoiding doing it.” On what failing in life actually means, “to fail at one thing is to succeed at another.” Each essay muses on a different subject matter, but the book is held together by the process of exploring the Self as a continual project that may or may not be helped through analysis. He does not judge and hopes the reader does not judge either.

“One Life to Lead: The Mysteries of Time and the Goods of Attachment” by Samuel Scheffler

Scheffler begins this philosophical treatise with a question, “What is it to lead a human life?” More precisely, perhaps, Scheffler is concerned with the idea of human flourishing and what it means to have led a good life. “The attachment-sensitive conception that I will be developing affirms the importance of the temporal and interpersonal dimensions of human life, and it sees these two dimensions as being intimately related…. Both dimensions are fundamental features of human experience.”

First, Scheffler seeks to dispel the notion of temporal neutrality. “I have three aims. The first is to argue that temporal neutrality, if thoroughly internalized, would compromise our ability to form and sustain the personal and social relationships we most value. The second is to argue that temporal neutrality is not a general requirement of rationality, so the fact that future bias represents a departure from neutrality does not make it irrational. The third is to argue that an excessive reliance in the framing distinction between temporal neutrality and temporal bias is liable to distort our understanding of the diachronic dimension of our lives…. Properly understood, the very idea that one has a life to lead depends on one’s viewing the past and the future asymmetrically…. The phenomenon of future bias is best seen as a special case of a more general phenomenon, which is that various of our attitudes change with the passage of time…. The puzzle is why our prospective and retrospective attitudes toward purely pleasurable and purely painful episodes differ so greatly in their intensity…. I don’t think that our aim, in trying to answer it, should be to establish that a bias toward the future is rationally required or rationally defensible. I am sympathetic to the bias where it exists and is deeply entrenched, and I am disinclined to criticize it in the name of an abstract norm of rationality. But my inclination to defend the bias, or at least not to criticize it, has less to do with a belief that it is endorsed by such a norm than with a conviction that it is woven into the fabric of human life in such a way that dislodging it would compromise much that we care about and much that makes us  recognizable to ourselves.”

Scheffler discusses the persistence of a life and how that reality stands in contrast to the fact that we can only live in the present moment. “The fact that our emotions and feelings have different diachronic profiles is symptomatic of the complexity of our response to the temporal dimension of our lives. We are, after all, persisting beings. We live always in the present, yet at each moment most of our lives lie either in the future or in the past…. Through the establishment of patterns of activity that express our values or desires or preferences, we mark the world with continuities that are expressive of ourselves…. When, as agents, we direct our actions in accordance with our personal portfolio of values, desires, and aims, we create and extend a record of our distinctive presence in the world. In this sense, we are all performers. What we perform are actions, countless actions, day after day, month after month, year after year. And what guide those actions are not scripted roles but rather our values and aims. Taken together, these performances provide much of the content of our lives…. And the lives we shape testify to our persistence over time.”

Despite living in the constant present, Scheffler recognizes the asymmetry between the life that has happened and the life that is to come. “We confront the future as agents: our agential capacities are essentially forward-looking, and by exercising those capacities we seek to influence or shape the future, or at least some portion of the future. Things are different when we look back to the past. Here our epistemic position is improved but our practical position is much weaker. We generally know more about our pasts than we do about our futures, yet we cannot change the past through the exercise of our agential capacities.”

Next, Scheffler discusses our role as social beings, leading our lives through interpersonal interactions. “It is in the company of the people who matter most to us that we experience and interpret the world around us…. And it is, to a great extent, through communication and interaction with the people who matter most to us that we make sense of the world and our place in it…. Our relationships with the people to whom we are most deeply bound serve to structure and to shape our engagement with the world, and one of the primary ways in which we lead our lives is by forming and sustaining such relationships.”

For Scheffler, our nature as temporal beings is as important to our lives, as our interpersonal relations. “One of the most basic challenges of living is to come to terms with the temporal dimension of our lives. Our temporality is as fundamental a feature of us as our embodiment…. I believe that our sense of ourselves as persisting creatures goes hand in hand with a sense of ourselves as participants in an ongoing chain of generations…. We have lost a sense of ourselves as being involved in a kind of notional partnership with our ancestors and descendants, as participants in a common enterprise. And we have lost the sense that one of our important roles, whether we play it wittingly or unwittingly, is to transmit cultural materials, including knowledge, skills, values, and understanding, from our ancestors to our descendants…. It is humanity as a biologically grounded, interpretively rich, historically situated, and temporally persisting form of life—a form of life in which we ourselves are participants—that we want to survive under conditions conducive to human flourishing…. We face the future, not as independently defined agents confronting an array of actual and possible beneficiaries, but as creatures whose values and self-understanding already incorporate, if only implicitly, a rich set of assumptions about our place in history and our relations to our predecessors and successors.”

Partiality towards one’s relations is, for Scheffler, a reasonable aspect of living a particular human life, across time and space. “In general, to value one’s relationship with another person non-instrumentally is, in part, to see that person’s needs, interests, and desires as providing one, in contexts that may vary depending on the nature of the relationship, with reasons for action that one would not otherwise have…. If I have a relationship with you, and if I attach non-instrumental value to that relationship, then I will see myself both as having reasons to do things on your behalf that I have no comparable reason to do for others, and as having reason to give your interests priority over theirs…. Valuing a relationship is not best thought of as an alternative to valuing the person with whom one has the relationship…. One’s emotions, when one values a relationship, are sensitive to what happens both to the person with whom one has the relationship and to the relationship itself…. What contributes to a good or successful life is not the mere existence of people one admires, but one’s relationships with (some of) those people…. It is both because they are sources of contentment and because estrangement is so painful that people make such efforts to sustain relationships…. The people with whom we have close relationships matter a great deal to us, but so do our relationships with those people…. A personal relationship is a joint human creation or construction, and each particular relationship has its own distinctive qualities and character. To suppose that valuing a relationship is self-referential is to elide the distinction between this joint creation and oneself.”

Scheffler concludes with a note on objective morality in the face of this particularism, “Although my participation in valuable relationships gives me special reasons to do things for the people with whom I have those relationships, it does this not because those people are more valuable than other people but despite the fact that they are not…. Thorough internalization of a utilitarian or consequentialist theory of justification, with its associated commitment to interpersonal neutrality, would jeopardize our capacity to form and sustain the personal attachments that matter to us most…. The only way that one can engage with the world is to engage with particular bits of it…. An estrangement from one’s own standpoint would be a form of estrangement from life itself: or, more precisely, from the enterprise of leading a life.”

“The Party’s Interests Comes First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun” by Joseph Torigian

Torigian’s massive tome cannot be read without reflecting on Xi’s most famous son, Jinping. That said, this is a biography of Zhongxun in his own right: a famous Chinese revolutionary, an underling of Mao’s, and a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist. Xi had no problems with breaking a few eggs in the name of communism, “Revolution demands killing, but in the process of killing, it is still necessary to maintain a principle of caution: resolutely kill those who should be killed; don’t kill those who could either be killed or not killed; and don’t kill those who should not be killed. We need to expand propaganda to make people understand that every killing should have an educational effect…. As long as reactionary forces exist inside and outside the country, the struggle will remain. Moreover, as the counterrevolutionary forces come closer to annihilation, the struggle will intensify and become more brutal.”

After the victory over the Japanese military and the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Communists consolidated their power in Beijing. “When Mao asked Bo what he thought of Xi, Bo answered that he was “a promising youth.” Mao shook his head and said Xi was instead “a pure blue flame in the stove”—an expression that refers to Daoist priests making pills of immortality, meaning someone with extremely high talent…. Mao brought Xi to Beijing to assume work as part of one of the most famous personnel reassignments in Chinese history, known as “the five horses entering the capital.” Gao Gang, Rao Shushi, Deng Zihui, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Zhongxun all left their positions as powerhouse figures in the regional bureaus to take up new positions in the capital…. Born in 1913, [Xi] was eight years younger than Gao Gang and nine years younger than Deng Xiaoping. Xi became vice-minister of the Culture and Education Committee, a member of the new State Planning Commission (which was chaired by his former leader Gao) and minister of propaganda.”

Xi was always concerned that the Chinese Communist Party act in concert with the peasants and not act above them. “If we party cadres oppose the masses, then we should worry that the masses will beat us with poles. This is the lesson of the collapse of the Nationalist regime…. After victory in the entire nation and after the leading organs entered the cities, the living and work environments changed. This kind of change had a definite influence on the thinking of our cadres. A real change occurred. What was the nature of this change? It was a move far away from the masses, a weakening in the consciousness of the masses, and a cooling in the care for the difficult living conditions of the masses…. It is necessary to be emotionally prepared, to strengthen ideological thinking, to stand up, and to take responsibility for solving the problems. There is no other way. Otherwise, our days will be numbered.”

Just before the Cultural Revolution got under full-swing, Xi ran afoul of Mao with the publication of the novel, “Liu Zhidan”, a historical fiction tale, loosely biographical, about a hero of the northwest campaign. Xi did not write or edit the novel, but he was given drafts ahead of time and it came out with his tacit blessing. ““Isn’t writing novels very popular now?” Mao began sardonically. He said that “using a novel to engage in antiparty activities [was] a great invention…. Whenever there is a desire to overthrow a regime, it is necessary to first shape public opinion, to conduct ideological work, to engage in the superstructure—both revolution and counterrevolution are like this.”” Xi would spend the next sixteen years doing hard labor in the countryside and in and out of prison, including years in solitary confinement. “As time passed, Xi would also face charges of smoking opium, inappropriate relations with women, and spying for the Soviets…. The fall of Xi Zhongxun was a turning point in Chinese history.”

Upon Xi’s rehabilitation, he worked hard to heal the scars of the Cultural Revolution throughout China. “In the past, he killed your family; today, we kill his family…. In this way, you start a feud between your two families. You start a grudge, and then it will never end—it will last forever. When does such a circle of vengeance end?” Xi continued, “How many people joined in the struggles during the Cultural Revolution? How many people have to be executed before it will be enough? During the Cultural Revolution, so many people were beaten to death; our government can no longer kill people in that way! Things cannot be done like that anymore, otherwise what would be the difference between then and now?” He ended by telling his personal history, “Today, I came to help you solve this problem as a representative of the province, but do you know what? It was only a little while ago that I too was sent down. I was sent down for sixteen years, and I also experienced a great injustice. But what is to be done? The Cultural Revolution already caused such great losses. But we still have to live, we have to live happily, and we have to look to the future.”

Xi was one of the critical government officials tasked with establishing the Special Economic Zones in southeastern China. “Xi even said that if “Guangdong were an independent country,” it would be able to develop more quickly.” He stated, “Guangdong is planning to copy the form of foreign-processing zones to observe, study, test, and use foreign practices, to set aside a place in areas bordering Hong Kong and Macau, such as Shenzhen and Zhuhai, and Shantou—a city with important connections to overseas Chinese—to engage in independent management, to serve as a venue for investment by foreign businessmen in the Chinese diaspora and compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau, to organize production according to the demands of the international market, and initially to call these areas ‘trade-cooperation zones.’” However, “Xi emphatically stated that the purpose of the zones was only to obtain foreign currency, solve employment problems, and learn advanced technology and management practices. He called for ideological vigilance: “When using Hong Kong and Macau, there inevitably will be struggle. The special economic zones mean directly interacting with the capitalists too, and that means even more struggle.””

By the summer of 1982, Xi had once again climbed the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. “At the Twelfth Party Congress, Xi was elected to both the politburo and the secretariat…. He was placed in charge of personnel, the United Front, ethnic policy, and religion, as well as given responsibility for specific bodies like the General Office, the Organization Department, and the United Front Work Department. He was also assigned to be in charge of liaison work with the National People’s Congress, Chinese People’s Political Consultive Conference, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the trade unions, Youth League, and Women’s Federation. He was even entrusted with arranging for the meetings of the secretariat and the politburo…. The secretariat ran the country, and Xi ran the secretariat.”

Like many so-called reformers within the CCP, Xi had a nuanced view of democracy, “There is no socialism without democracy. There is no socialist modernization without democracy. Chaos and arbitrariness were the rule during the Cultural Revolution…. Even though the Party plays a leading role, any cult of personality is forbidden, and activists are not above the law. The Constitution widens the role of various mechanisms. The role of mass organizations and spokespersons for the people is also improved. The union between the Party and the democratic parties and personalities without parties is therefore strengthened…. The Party is not above the law and on the contrary must respect it in an exemplary fashion.”

Similarly, Xi’s views on socialism, especially doctrinaire Maoism and Marxism, were equally nuanced. “In the past, we did not understand socialism enough. We saw it too narrowly…. Is it better to do socialism with full stomachs or empty stomachs? Only full stomachs can manifest the superiority of the socialist system…. That was learned through decades of struggle.”

Finally, Torigian ends his biography of Xi Zhongxun with a coda on the thoughts of his son, Jinping. “My father entrusted me with two things: don’t persecute people and tell the truth. The first is possible, while the second is not.” In a speech to the military in 2012, Jinping stated, “An old leader said to me that we comrades who are governing must always remember three things: five thousand years of excellent culture must not be lost, the political system established by the old generation must not be damaged, and the territory left by the ancestors must not shrink.”