“Stoner” by John Williams

This is a tragic novel that details the course of a man’s life. William Stoner grew up on a small farm, was the first in his family to attend college, and became a Professor of Literature at the University of Missouri. However, there is extreme melancholy that seems to follow Stoner as he progresses through each stage of his life. First, he comes to the realization that he wants to study literature and not agriculture at university, therefore, never returning to help his parents on the family farm. “He thought of his parents, and they were nearly as strange as the child they had borne; he felt a mixed pity for them and a distant love…. But he found that he had nothing to say to them; already, he realized, he and his parents were becoming strangers; and he felt his love increased by its loss.” The plot weaves its way through life on the university campus during both World Wars, as well as the Great Depression. “A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back.” Personally, Stoner is trapped in a strangely loveless marriage. “Years later it was to occur to him that in that hour and a half on that December evening of their first extended time together, she told him more about herself than she ever told him again. And when it was over, he felt that they were strangers in a way that he had not thought they would be, and he knew that he was in love.” Stoner makes only two friends during the course of his life: fellow graduate students, one who dies at the front during the First World War, and another, who, surviving, returns to the same university to become an assistant dean. “While they talked they remembered the years of their youth, and each thought of the other as he had been at another time.” The novel is a grand meditation on the nature of man and what makes life worthwhile. For Stoner, the world is literature and knowledge. “Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.” For him, life was also a war and one that he was gradually but perceptibly losing. He had a wife who did not love him, a daughter who grew more distant by the day, a best friend who died in his prime, a department chair who dumped upon him the worst classes every semester, and, most troubling of all, an internal emptiness that he could not escape. His old literature mentor had told Stoner, when he was deciding whether to enlist or stay on campus as a doctoral candidate, “You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history.”

“Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences” by Alex Mesoudi

Darwin posited that three factors were needed for successful biological evolution: variation, competition, and inheritance. Mesoudi makes the case that these same factors are necessary to effectively transmit traits culturally. However, “two societies living in the same environment can have entirely different behavioral practices,” especially the more limited their amount of inter-group contact. Cultural adaptation is favored over innate change in environments that are rapidly transforming because genes cannot adapt as quickly in the span of one biological generation. Cultural learning is also favored over individual learning because one does not need to bear all the costs of trial and error and one can benefit from piggybacking on new inventions and techniques not developed by oneself. Evolution, biological and cultural, however, is not a predetermined path that is ever progressing. “Humans are not at the top of the evolutionary ladder, because there is no ladder of which to be at the top. There is only local adaptation to local environments, which does not necessarily translate into global increases in fitness, and does not result in inevitable and entirely predictable evolutionary change along a prespecified course.”

Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” to refer to a discreet unit of cultural inheritance or a cultural replicator, akin to a gene in biological evolution. “In culture, on the other hand, one can learn beliefs, ideas, skills, and so forth, not just from one’s biological parents (termed “vertical cultural transmission”) but also from other members of the parental generation (“oblique cultural transmission”) and from members of one’s own generation (“horizontal cultural transmission”)…. People might preferentially copy very prestigious models who have high social status or excel in a particular skill (prestige bias). Alternatively, they might preferentially copy models who are similar to them in dress, dialect, or appearance (similarity bias) or preferentially copy older models (age bias).”

Finally, when looking at a particular set of cultures “within-group diversity and between-group diversity should be inversely correlated.” One specific area where Mesoudi stresses cultural evolution is language. In fact, Darwin stated, “a struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand.” There is also an interplay back and forth between biological and cultural adaptation and evolution. “The social brain hypothesis holds that the large brains of primates, including and especially humans, evolved to deal not primarily with ecological problems such as finding food or using tools, but rather to solve social problems…. Social interactions give rise to a range of particularly challenging problems, such as coordinating actions with others, successfully communicating intentions, forming coalitions and alliances, deception, trying not to be deceived by others, and so on, which demand quite sophisticated cognitive abilities.” The more social interactions and bigger the social group of a particular species of primate the bigger the brain, with humans having the biggest brains of all. We are the paramount social animal and we have achieved our primacy through a cultural inheritance that was the work of human cooperation without any explicit human design.

“Symposium” by Plato (translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff)

This semi-drunken dinner party is perhaps Plato’s most famous dialogue. All the guests speak on the theme of love and Socrates gets the last word, at least before a fall-down drunk Alcibiades stumbles into the party. Socrates begins by relating the words of a woman, Diotima, who has taught him the true meaning of love. He relates that she said, “Those who love wisdom fall in between those two extremes [of being wise and ignorant]. And Love is one of them, because he is in love with what is beautiful, and wisdom is extremely beautiful. It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and, as such, is in between being wise and ignorant.” She continues speaking to Socrates, “I conclude that you thought Love was being loved, rather than being a lover. I think that’s why Love struck you as beautiful in every way: because it is what is really beautiful and graceful that deserves to be loved, and this is perfect and highly blessed; but being a lover takes a different form.” Love has two parts- the object being loved and the lover. One has attained its perfection and one is still striving.

Diotima also speaks of life having a continuity without necessarily a connectedness in a similar vein to Derrick Parfit. She states, “Even while each living thing is said to be alive and to be the same—as a person is said to be the same from childhood till he turns into an old man—even then he never consists of the same things, though he is called the same, but he is always being renewed and in other respects passing away, in his hair and flesh and bones and blood and his entire body. And it’s not just in his body, but in his soul, too, for none of his manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, or fears ever remains the same.” We might seem to be the same person, but we are continually changing, while maintaining some continuity with our previous selves.

When Alcibiades makes his speech he talks about the man he wishes he was. He says, “All that matters is just what I most neglect…. The moment I leave [Socrates’] side, I go back to my old ways: I cave in to my desire to please the crowd…. I’m doing nothing about my way of life, though I have already agreed with him that I should.” As Agnes Callard has stated, Alcibiades aspires to be a different man. His moral compass is in the process of changing. He is fighting to become a better man, but he cannot let go of his lust for fame and public glory.

Finally, Alcibiades praises the unique wisdom of Socrates. He states, “If you were to listen to his arguments, at first they’d strike you as totally ridiculous; they’re clothed in words as course as the hides worn by the most vulgar satyrs. He’s always going on about pack asses, or blacksmiths, or cobblers, or tanners; he’s always making the same tired old points in the same tired old words. If you are foolish, or simply unfamiliar with him, you’d find it impossible not to laugh at his arguments. But if you see them when they open up like the statues [of Silenus], if you go behind their surface, you’ll realize that no other arguments make any sense. They’re truly worthy of a god, bursting with figures of virtue inside. They’re of great—no, of the greatest—importance for anyone who wants to become a truly good man.” True praise for the esoteric philosophy of Socrates.

“Waiting for God” by Simone Weil (translated by Emma Craufurd)

This book contains some of Weil’s thoughts on the nature of God, on the established Church, and on the City of God versus the City of Man. Often, she writes about the proper synthesis and separation between the material and spiritual realms. The book is organized as a collection of letters, followed by a few of her essays, which, in total, detail her conceptualization of the idea of God and how she relates her earthly being to this transcendent spirit. Her writing is deeply moving, personal, and profound.

The first part of this book is a collection of letters that Weil wrote to a Catholic priest and friend, Father Perrin, as she prepared to flee Nazi-occupied France. In them, she explains her conception of her love of God, as well as explaining the reasons she decided not to get baptized into the Church. She writes, “The mere thought that, supposing I were baptized with any sentiments other than those that are fitting, I should ever come to have even a single instant or a single inward movement of regret, such a thought fills me with horror. Even if I were certain that baptism was the absolute condition of salvation, I would not run this risk, even to save my soul.” You can feel her sense of struggle, but also her certainty. Furthermore, her relationship with Christianity is certainly not orthodox. “If it cannot be given me to deserve one day to share the Cross of Christ, at least may I share that of the good thief. Of all beings other than Christ of whom the Gospel tells us, the good thief is by far the one I most envy. To have been at the side of Christ and in the same state during the crucifixion seems to me a far enviable privilege than to be at the right hand of glory.”

Weil also explains her conception of truth to her friend, Father Perrin. “One can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.” Weil describes her struggle with the established Church, because of her love and commitments to the variety of earthly things. “Christianity is catholic by right but not in fact. So many things are outside it, so many things that I love and do not want to give up, so many things that God loves…. Christianity being catholic by right but not in fact, I regard it as legitimate on my part to be a member of the Church by right but not in fact, not only for a time, but for my whole life if need be. But it is not merely legitimate. So long as God does not give me the certainty that he is ordering me to do anything else, I think it is my duty.”

Weil also feels the presence of God here on earth. For her, there is no reason to hope for an afterlife. “Even if there were nothing more for us than life on earth, even if the instant of death were to bring us nothing new, the infinite super-abundance of the divine mercy is already secretly present here below in its entirety.” She compares the love of Christianity with that of Stoicism. “At any rate if I really have the right to be called a Christian, I know from experience that the virtue of the Stoics and that of the Christians are one and the same virtue. I mean true Stoical virtue of course, which is before anything else love…. When a soul has attained a love filling the whole universe indiscriminately, this love becomes the bird with golden wings that pierces an opening in the egg of the world. After that, such a soul loves the universe, not from within but from without.” In one of her essays she continues, “Christianity will not be incarnated so long as there is not joined to it the Stoic’s idea of filial piety for the city of the world, for the country of here below which is the universe…. The only true beauty, the only beauty that is the real presence of God, is the beauty of the universe. Nothing less than the universe is beautiful…. The universe is a country. It is our only country here below. This thought is the essence of the wisdom of the Stoics. We have a heavenly country, but in a sense it is too difficult to love, because we do not know it; above all, in a sense, it is too easy to love, because we can imagine it as we please. We run the risk of loving a fiction under this name. If the love of the fiction is strong enough it makes all virtue easy, but at the same time of little value. Let us love the country here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love.”

In another essay, Weil describes her idea of worldly justice. There is love contained in just punishment, as there can be justice in forgiveness. Both have their proper place and utility. “Justice in punishment can be defined in the same way as justice in almsgiving. It means giving our attention to the victim of affliction as to a being and not a thing; it means wishing to preserve in him the faculty of free consent.” Sometimes we need punishment and sometimes we need mercy. She continues, “Bread and stone both come from Christ and penetrating to our inward being bring Christ into us. Bread and stone are love. We must eat the bread and lay ourselves open to the stone, so that it may sink as deeply as possible into our flesh. If we have any armor able to protect our soul from the stones thrown by Christ, we should take it off and cast it away.”

Weil also describes the subjective experience of human reality as self-centered, but imaginary. “We live in a world of unreality and dreams. To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence…. To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world…. Such consent is love.” Later, when discussing the Lord’s Prayer, she concludes, “We cannot prevent ourselves from desiring; we are made of desire; but the desire that nails us down to what is imaginary, temporal, selfish, can, if we make it pass wholly into the petition, become a lever to tear us from the imaginary into the real and from time into eternity, to lift us right out of the prison of self.”

“If Not Critical” by Eric Griffiths

This is a collection of ten of Griffiths’ lectures on literature, delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge. Griffiths’ lectures were famous for their erudition and wit. Before a debilitating stroke left him unable to speak, Cambridge students, most of whom were not even enrolled his class, would flock to his lectures for the pure entertainment of hearing him speak. Griffiths spoke often about the power of analogies and he, himself, used them freely. In one lecture, he spoke of Shakespeare’s penchant for coining new words, dressed in the style of ancient language, “Shakespeare engaged in this fabrication of the antique, this production of ‘distressed pine’ or ‘stone-washed jeans’…. So in A Lover’s Complaint and Troilus and Cressida we find new words produced by affixation, particularly with prefixes such as ‘en-’ or ‘em-’…. These affixes all have in common a strongly latinate, and especially frenchified, timbre, and they produce when they appear en masse an air of faded courtliness, a sense of outdated refinement; they have an ‘indexicality’ rather like that which attaches to certain linguistic usages in old families, or families which like to pretend to antiquity, in the Southern United States.” Griffiths manages to poke fun at the seriousness of Shakespeare and get in a dig in at the pomposity of American southern gentility, all while expounding on Shakespeare’s lexical innovations. In another lecture dealing with the reign of Louis XIV, Griffiths offers the caution, “with analogies as with kings, it is important to know how far it is safe to go.” Perhaps he does not always take his own advice (or rather he considers himself at safe temporal distance), “The king and the official imagery which surrounded him are better understood as the seventeenth-century French equivalent of Eric Cartman’s repeated cry ‘RESPECT MY AUTHORITY’, which is not something that someone who unshakeably has authority needs to cry.”

Another of Griffiths’ lectures dissects Shakespeare’s Hamlet in great detail. Griffiths speaks of the distinction between history and poetry- “the boundary between the realm of history, contingent on facts, and that of poetry, of general rules. History tells us what in fact happened, poetry lays out the pattern according to which we could have seen the event coming…. This distinction between history which ‘merely’ records what happened in all its particularity and poetry, which gives, as it were, a template for how in general things happen, the pattern or rule of events, has counted in various ways for a lot in literary history.” Griffiths takes to task much of the modern literary criticism of Shakespeare. “A principal weakness of much comment on Shakespeare’s plays is that the commentators pay little attention to what a figure in the play is doing by uttering these words at this point; commentators are often preoccupied rather with such things as imagery, or with what they take to be the philosophical suggestiveness of what is said, as if it were a secondary consideration who says what when and where to whom, whereas it is not secondary, not at all, but rather the drama itself. Some commentators are so concerned with putting across how deep the plays are that they have no energy to spare to describe how they are deep, but they are deep because of, through, their surfaces.” For Griffiths, the whole mode of much modern criticism entirely misses the point. And the point is that Shakespeare wrote plays for the stage to be spoken by actors out loud. “It is as if the words had been said by nobody to nobody in an atmosphere which exercises no pressure on what is said, or as if they had been whispered by Shakespeare himself directly into our collective ear…. So many essays about Shakespeare’s plays make him sound as if he had been occupied in writing essays rather than plays. My claim is that Shakespeare’s material as an artist is interaction, interaction of two kinds—between the figures on the stage, and between the figures on stage and the audience. These interactions are what he composes, and to neglect them is to neglect an essential of his art.”

Griffiths often speaks of appreciating the technique involved in writing exquisite literature, while impressing on his audience, in a light tone, what the purpose of literature is actually for. In a lecture on Kafka he says, “Our fictions concern individuals…. Most of our fictions concern spatiotemporally unique beings who have proper names…. [However,] in our fictions, as Proust writes, ‘the individual is bathed in something more general than himself’. That is, our fictional personages, events, objects, are not sheerly irreducible particulars, but intimations of what Marx called species-being, sketches of an as yet unrealized humanity, representatives.” Griffiths makes the case that the study of literature is every bit as much a study of humanity as the social sciences. “Realistic fiction, such as Flaubert’s or Kafka’s, is a form of human natural history, and human natural history in the Wittgensteinian sense is something distinct from social or psychological science. The realism of such writing consists in attention to overlooked general facts of human nature—to such things as our experience of time, our capacity to draw rules from instances as also to know when instances do not suggest rules, our abilities to aspire and to concede, our thwartedness…. To observe the connective tissues of realistic story, its ‘he said’s and ‘then’s, ‘at just the moment when’s, is to pay attention to elemental constituents of the fictional worlds and the world outside fiction…. These speech-markers are structural conventions of storytelling, but just because they are conventions it does not follow that they are ‘mere conventions’. On the contrary, again. To the real artist no convention is ‘mere’; convention is rather just where artistry is likely to be most challenged, most at work.”

The final lecture of Griffiths for this collection is on the theme of “Godforsakenness”. He speaks of the Passion of Christ, his last words on the Cross, and of the duality of Christ, as both man and God. Griffiths’ lecture meanders into wondering upon possible ends for this world and on the omnipotence of God. He then ties this all back to the theme of tragedy as a literary form. “In the long run, either God becomes all in all or all becomes nothing, dust and ashes as this earth falls into the sun. Tragedy is quite indifferent to either of these conclusions, not being an art of the ‘long run’ but rather of the ‘from time to time’ realities of human experience and what we believe we can find through or within that experience…. God is essential to tragedy because He is its supreme audience, and it is a fundamental process of tragic art to enable its human audience for a time and from time to time to guess what it might be like to be such a God.”

Griffiths, in speaking of the joys of experiencing literature, supposes, “this is one source of the pleasure we take in works of art, whether comic or tragic: they offer us worlds we cannot change, before which we are without recourse, as we are at times helpless in our own world, but now our incapacities have become a spectacle for us rather than a dilemma or a source of the despair.” Sometimes it is best if we can laugh or cry at our impotence, whether real or imagined.