“Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke

This book might be labeled a mystery novel, of sorts. Or perhaps science fiction or fantasy. It is fantastical. And deeply mysterious. Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an eighteenth century Italian polymath who drew etchings of imaginary prisons. The eponymous hero of Clarke’s novel lives within a giant decaying house, made of stone, with endless halls adorned by giant statues and lapping tides of water that rise and recede with regularity. The novel is written as a series of diary entries, written by the protagonist, as he struggles to make sense of his world. He believes himself to be some sort of scientist. Or, at least, a man of reason and logic. He meets bi-weekly with the Other, the only other person he presumes to be living somewhere within the house, to exchange knowledge and insights into the mysteries of their home. “I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery…. The sight of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.”

“The City and the Mountain” by Jose Maria de Eca de Queiros (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)

This novel splits time between nineteenth century Paris and the mountains of Portugal. It is narrated by Ze Fernandes, the close friend of Jacinto, the heir to a fortune with vast estates across the Portugese countryside and a mansion in Lisbon. He was, nonetheless, born and raised in Paris, never having visited his homeland, the grandson of a self-exiled royalist noble. Jacinto spends his time indulging in food and wine, attending the theater and masked balls, perusing books from his 30,000 volume library, and tinkering with the newest mechanical inventions. “Jacinto had come up with an idea, namely, that “a man can only be superlatively happy when he is superlatively civilized.” And by “civilized” my friend meant the kind of man who, by honing his thinking skills on all the philosophy acquired since Aristotle onwards and multiplying the physical strength of his organs using all the mechanisms invented since Theramenes created the wheel, could make of himself a magnificent, near-omnipotent, Adam ready to reap—within a particular society and within the limits of Progress (at least as far as Progress had gotten in 1875)—all the pleasures and all the advantages that spring from Knowledge and Power.” Jacinto was also, as befits a man of his station, a dandy. “He always wore a flower in his buttonhole, not a real flower, but one skillfully concocted by his florist from the petals of several different flowers—carnations, azaleas, orchids, or tulips—all bound together on one stem, along with a sprig of fennel.”

Despite his wealth and position, the city of Paris gradually began to bore Jacinto. “He never openly confessed his feeling to me. Jacinto, elegant and reserved, did not wring his hands and moan: “Oh accursed life!” It was more the look of satiety on his face: a gesture angrily dismissing the importunate nature of things; the way in which he would sometimes sit immobile, as if in protest, on a divan from which he would not stir, as if he wished those moments of repose to be eternal; then there were the yawns, the gaping yawns with which he underlined everything he did.” All his books of political and economic philosophy and the modish salons, where they discussed the newest utopian fads, could not cure him. “Hardened in sin, the bourgeois revels in his strength, and against him all the tears of the Humanitarians, the reasoned arguments of the Logicians and the bombs of the Anarchists are impotent.”

Ever-tired of his routine in Paris, Jacinto spontaneously decides to journey to his family estate, spurred by the news of a ceremony to reinter the bones of his ancestors, displaced when a mudslide destroyed their resting place in the ancient familial chapel. “Those hairy Jacintos who returned to their high lands in Tormes, back from defeating the Moor at Salado or the Spaniard at Valverde, did not even bother taking off their battered armor to tend their fields and to train their vines to the elms, building their kingdom with lance and spade.” In the countryside, Jacinto finally finds himself, his calling, and his home. “Jacinto had put down strong loving roots in his rough mountain home. It was as if he had been planted, like a cutting, in the ancient soil from which his race had sprung and as if the ancient humus were seeping in and penetrating him, transforming him into a rustic, almost vegetable Jacinto, as much a part of the earth and as rooted in the earth as the trees he so loved.”

“Lectures and Conversations: On Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief” by Ludwig von Wittgenstein (edited by Cyril Barrett)

These were notes of lectures, primarily taken by Yorick Smythies, given by Wittgenstein to a small group of students in his private rooms at Cambridge, during the summer of 1938. Wittgenstein began by trying to clarify that language should be looked at in regards to its use and not to its form. “I have often compared language to a tool chest, containing a hammer, chisel, matches, nails, screws, glue. It is not a chance that all these things have been put together—but there are important differences between the different tools—they are used in a family of ways.” Pertaining to aesthetics proper, he begins on the importance of a system of rules. “If I hadn’t learnt the rules, I wouldn’t be able to make the aesthetic judgment. In learning the rules you get a more and more refined judgement. Learning the rules actually changes your judgment.” Aesthetics is not purely personal. It is not simply a matter of taste. “To describe a set of aesthetic rules fully means really to describe the culture of a period.” Aesthetics also involves tradition and conventions. “In order to get clear about aesthetic words you have to describe ways of living.” However, there is also a subjective component. It is by no means scientific. “The sort of explanation one is looking for when one is puzzled by an aesthetic impression is not a causal explanation, not one corroborated by experience or by statistics as to how people react…. You cannot arrive at the explanation by means of psychological experiment…. The puzzles which arise in aesthetics, which are puzzles arising from the effects the arts have, are not puzzles about how these things are caused.”

The notes on Freud were taken by Rush Rhees after conversations with Wittgenstein between 1942 and 1946. Wittgenstein thought Freud always had “something to say,” even when he was completely wrong. Freud was one of the few people in any field whom Wittgenstein deigned to read, in fact. On Freud’s theory of anxiety, Wittgenstein states that it has a similar usefulness to it as did ancient myths. “Take Freud’s view that anxiety is always a repetition in some way of the anxiety we felt at birth. He does not establish this by reference to evidence—for he could not do so. But it is an idea which has a marked attraction. It has the attraction which mythological explanations have, explanations which say that this is all a repetition of something that has happened before.” For Wittgenstein, the genius of Freud was in the prism with which his theories allowed you to reimagine the world. The process was a new presentation of established facts. “It makes certain ways of behaving and thinking natural for them [his patients]. They have given up one way of thinking and adopted another.” However, Wittgenstein felt that Freud pushed his theories too much to the extreme. “It seems muddled to say that all dreams are hallucinated wish fulfillments…. It is probable that there are many different sorts of dreams, and that there is no single line of explanation for all of them…. [Freud] wanted to find some one explanation which would show what dreaming is. He wanted to find the essence of dreaming. And he would have rejected any suggestion that he might be partly right but not altogether so.”

Wittgenstein begins his lectures on religion by stating the different ways in which the term belief may be used. “There are instances where you have a faith—where you say “I believe”—and on the other hand this belief does not rest on the fact on which our ordinary everyday beliefs normally do rest. How should we compare beliefs with each other? What would it mean to compare them?” He goes on to question those who believe in the Last Judgment. “Am I to say they are unreasonable? I wouldn’t call them unreasonable. I would say, they are certainly not reasonable, that’s obvious. ‘Unreasonable’ implies, with everyone, rebuke. I want to say: they don’t treat this as a matter of reasonability. Anyone who reads the Epistles will find it said: not only that it is not reasonable, but that it is folly. Not only is it not reasonable, but it doesn’t pretend to be.” Finally on God, “If the question arises as to the existence of a god or God, it plays an entirely different role to that of the existence of any person or object I ever heard of…. One talks of believing and at the same time one doesn’t use ‘believe’ as one does ordinarily.”

“The Milk of Dreams” by Leonora Carrington

This is Carrington’s book of original children’s stories, complete with her own surreal illustrations. While the stories are child appropriate, most would also be appropriate for an adult tripping on acid. In one story, “Headless John,” a boy with wings for ears loses his head as it flies off. “With no head he couldn’t even cry.” In another, “The Monster of Chihuahua,” there is a character named “Senor Mustache Mustache who has two faces—eats flies, dances—here is his turkey.” Others of her stories have a taco vendor who “smelled of caca” and sold rotten meat that could talk, an angel who drinks camomile tea and pees on old women, sofa holes that grow teeth, and even more children getting decapitated. The stories draw on both her English upbringing and her time living in Mexico City. This short book is well worth a read just for the crazy drawings.

“The Complete Works of Zhuangzi” by Zhuang Zhou (translated by Burton Watson)

Zhuang Zhou was a Daoist philosopher, who probably lived in the fourth century BC. He was also probably an official in a place called Meng, in the state of Song. Probably. The Zhuangzi was almost certainly not entirely written by him, but was added onto and amended by his followers over the centuries. Even within the text considered most likely to be authentically his, he admits to a method of using imputed words, repeated words, and goblet words—basically, putting words into the mouths of famous people to help make a point more compelling, repeating the sayings of historic figures to add weightiness, and using ambiguous words, whose meanings could fluctuate over time and context. With those caveats, Zhuang Zhou has clearly written a masterful philosophical treatise with subtle nuggets of wisdom, intriguing paradoxes, and much to mull over. Also of some dispute was his relationship with Lao Tzu, his fellow Daoist, as well as with Confucius and Mozi. He writes about them a lot, and even quotes from them liberally, in what is sometimes a clearly nonfactual (imputed) manner to make his points.

Zhuang Zhou begins, “Liezi (Lao Tzu) concluded that he had never really begun to learn anything. He went home and, for three years, did not go out. He replaced his wife at the stove, fed the pigs as though he were feeding people, and showed no preferences in the things he did. He got rid of the carving and polishing and returned to plainness, letting his body stand alone like a clod. In the midst of entanglement he remained sealed, and in this oneness he ended his life.” Zhou continues by describing the ways of the sage, in general, “The sage contemplates Heaven but does not assist it. He finds completion in Virtue but piles on nothing more. He goes forth in the Way but does not scheme. He accords with benevolence but does not set great store by it. He draws close to righteousness but does not labor over it. He responds to the demands of ritual and does not shun them. He disposes of affairs and makes no excuses. He brings all to order with laws and allows no confusion. He depends on the people and does not make light of them. He relies on things and does not throw them aside. Among things, there are none that are worth using, and yet they must be used.”

Essential to Daoist philosophy is the concept of the Way. “He who holds fast to the Way is complete in Virtue; being complete in Virtue, he is complete in body; being complete in body, he is complete in spirit; and to be complete in spirit is the Way of the sage. He is content to live among the people, to walk by their side, and never know where he is going. Witless, his purity is complete. Achievement, profit, machines, skill—they have no place in this man’s mind! A man like this will not go where he has no will to go, will not do what he has no mind to do. Though the world might praise him and say he had really found something, he would look unconcerned and never turn his head; though the world might condemn him and say he had lost something, he would look serene and pay no heed. The praise and blame of the world are no loss or gain to him. He may be called a man of Complete Virtue.”

Zhou continues with some specific advice. Be wary of those who claim that they have found the answers to life’s mysteries. “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. Therefore the sage practices the teaching that has no words.” Inaction is paramount to Zhou’s worldview. The true sage practices inaction. “He who practices the Way does less every day, does less and goes on doing less until he reaches the point where he does nothing; does nothing and yet there is nothing that is not done.” Acceptance of the interconnectedness of the world also leads to wisdom. “You have only to comprehend the one breath that is the world. The sage never ceases to value oneness.” Zhou then quotes Chizhang Manqui on the paradox of virtue. “In an age of Perfect Virtue, the worthy are not honored; the talented are not employed. Rulers are like the high branches of a tree; the people, like the deer of the fields. They do what is right, but they do not know that this is righteousness. They love one another, but they do not know that this is benevolence. They are truehearted but do not know that this is loyalty. They are trustworthy but do not know that this is good faith. They wriggle around like insects, performing services for one another, but do not know that they are being kind. Therefore they move without leaving any trail behind, act without leaving any memory of their deeds.” Zhou also brings in Confucius, who, in this case, appears to agree with Zhou’s conception of the true sage. “To understand that hardship is a matter of fate, that success is a matter of the times, and to face great difficulty without fear—this is the courage of the sage.”

Zhou also quotes Confucius in cautioning against the unabashed goodness of knowledge. “The sacred turtle could appear to Lord Yuan in a dream, but it couldn’t escape from Yu Ju’s net. It knew enough to give correct answers to seventy-two queries, but it couldn’t escape the disaster of having its belly ripped open. So it is that knowledge has its limitations, and the sacred has that which it can do nothing about.” In general, Zhou cautions against being the nail that sticks out. He quotes Taigong Ren, “The straight-trunked tree is the first to be felled; the well of sweet water is the first to run dry. And you now--you show off your wisdom in order to astound the ignorant, work at your good conduct in order to distinguish yourself from the disreputable.” It is far better to know your nature and be true to it. Zhou quotes Man Goude, “The petty man will die for riches, the gentleman will die for reputation. In the manner in which they alter their true form and change their inborn nature, they differ. But insofar as they throw away what is already theirs and are willing to die for something that is not theirs, they are identical.... Do not strive to make your conduct consistent; do not try to perfect your righteousness, or you will lose what you already have. Do not race after riches; do not risk your life for success, or you will let slip the Heaven within you.”

Finally, Zhuang Zhou advises on setting limits, knowing oneself, and being content without external trifles. “He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labor over what life cannot do. He who has mastered the true nature of fate does not labor over what knowledge cannot change. He who wants to nourish his body must, first of all, turn to things. And yet it is possible to have more than enough things and for the body still to go unnourished.” He suggests that wisdom is always hard to find among the living. “The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?”

“Philebus” by Plato (translated by Dorothea Frede)

In this dialogue, Socrates debates two Athenian youths, Philebus and Protarchus, on whether pleasure or knowledge is the greater Good. Socrates begins, “Philebus holds that what is good for all creatures is to enjoy themselves, to be pleased and delighted…. We contend that not these, but knowing, understanding and remembering, and what belongs with them, right opinion and true calculations, are better than pleasure and more agreeable to all who can attain them.” Socrates later continues, “Philebus says that pleasure is the right aim for all living beings and that all should try to strive for it, that it is at the same time the good for all things, so that good and pleasant are but two names that really belong to what is by nature one and the same. Socrates, by contrast, affirms that these are not one and the same thing but two, just as they are two in name, that the good and the pleasant have a different nature, and that intelligence has a greater share in the good than pleasure.”

Socrates proceeds to relate the defining quality of the Good. “Any creature that was in permanent possession of it, entirely and in every way, would never be in need of anything else, but would live in perfect self-sufficiency.” Because of this nature, Socrates already conceded that neither pleasure nor intelligence alone, unmixed, can be called the absolute highest Good. “Let him put memory, intelligence, knowledge, and true opinion into one class, and ask himself whether anybody would choose to possess or acquire anything else without that class. Most particularly, whether he would want pleasure, as much and as intensive as it can be, without the true opinion that he enjoys it, without recognizing what kind of experience it is he has, without memory of this affection for any length of time. And let him put reason to the same test, whether anyone would prefer to have it without any kind of pleasure, even a very short-lived one, rather than with some pleasures, provided that he does not want all pleasures without intelligence rather than with some fraction of it…. So neither of these two would be perfect, worthy of choice for all, and the supreme good?… We ought not to seek the good in the unmixed life but in the mixed one.”

Socrates points out that knowledge, in all its degrees, from the highest to the lowest forms, is beneficial to ignorance. “Our love for every kind of knowledge has made us let them all in together.” However, he posits that this is not so with pleasure. He rhetorically addresses knowledge, ““Will you have any need to associate with the strongest and most intensive pleasures in addition to the true pleasures?”…. [Knowledge] might reply, “They are a tremendous impediment to us, since they infect the souls in which they dwell with madness or even prevent our own development altogether. Furthermore, they totally destroy most of our offspring, since neglect leads to forgetfulness. But as to the true and pure pleasures you [Socrates] mentioned, those regard as our kin. And besides, add the pleasures of health and of temperance and all those that commit themselves to virtue as to their deity and follow it around everywhere. But to forge an association between reason and those pleasures that are forever involved with foolishness and other kinds of vice would be totally unreasonable for anyone who aims at the best and most stable mixture or blend.”” Pleasure, unlike knowledge, is unwise to imbibe in to an extreme. “It is obvious that it is in some vicious state of soul and body and not in virtue that the greatest pleasures as well as the greatest pains have their origin.”

Socrates posits that the Good requires three forms. “If we cannot capture the good in one form, we will have to take hold of it in a conjunction of three: beauty, proportion, and truth.” He states how these three are all interrelated, “That any kind of mixture that does not in some way or other possess measure or the nature of proportion will necessarily corrupt its ingredients and most of all itself…. But now we notice that the force of the good has taken refuge in an alliance with the nature of the beautiful. For measure and proportion manifest themselves in all areas as beauty and virtue.” Finally, Socrates gets Protarchus to compare pleasure to reason using these three forms. “Pleasures are perhaps rather like children who don’t possess the least bit of reason. Reason, by contrast, either is the same as truth or of all things it is most like it and most true…. I don’t think that one could find anything that is more outside all measure than pleasure and excessive joy, while nothing more measured than reason and knowledge could ever be found…. No one, awake or dreaming, could ever see intelligence and reason to be ugly; no one could ever have conceived of them as becoming or being ugly, or that they ever will be…. In the case of pleasures, by contrast, when we see anyone actively engaged in them, especially those that are most intense, we notice that their effect is quite ridiculous, if not outright obscene; we become quite ashamed ourselves and hide them as mush as possible from sight, and we confine such activities to the night, as if daylight must not witness such things.” So while Socrates concedes that knowledge, alone, is not the greatest Good, for it must be mixed with a little bit of pleasure, he posits that it is, nonetheless, far superior as a Good than pleasure ever will be. “Whatever the ingredient in the mixed life may be that makes it choiceworthy and good, reason is more closely related to that thing and more like it than pleasure.”