“The Blue Flower” by Penelope Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald’s novel is historical fiction based on the life and loves of the Romantic poet and philosopher, Novalis, whom Fitzgerald refers to by his Christian name, Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg. Fritz’s father was a member of the impecunious aristocracy, who had turned pious late in life, after a religious awakening. “While they were living at Oberweiderstadt, the Hardenbergs did not invite their neighbors, and did not accept invitations, knowing that this might lead to worldliness…. As a member of the nobility, most ways of earning money were forbidden to the Freiherr.”

In college, Fritz fell in with the so-called Jena circle, led by the Schlegels and mentored by Goethe and Schiller, “They were all intelligent, all revolutionaries, but since each of them had a different plan, none of it would come to anything. They talked continually of going to Prussia, to Berlin, but they stayed in Jena…. To the Jena circle Fritz was a kind of phenomenon, a country boy, perhaps still growing, capable in his enthusiasm of breaking things, tall and awkward.” As a poet, he professed, “Politics are the last thing that we need. This at least I learned with the Brethren at Neudietendorf. The state should be one family, bound by love.”

Fritz was apprenticing to become a salt mine inspector, one of the few occupations open to the nobility. On a business trip he fell in love with a twelve-year-old girl, Sophie, on first sight, from across the sitting-room of an old manor home. “I can’t comprehend her, I can’t get the measure of her. I love something that I do not understand. She has got me, but she is not at all sure she wants me.” Fritz was much more confident about his philosophy, “I think, indeed, that women have a better grasp on the whole business of life than we men have. We are morally better than they are, but they can reach perfection, we can’t…. Furthermore, I believe that all women have what Schlegel finds lacking in so many men, a beautiful soul. But so often it is concealed.” The philosophy of Fritz borrowed much from Fichte, the Schlegel brothers, Schelling, and others in his orbit, who had learned idealism from reading Kant and hearing Fichte lecture. Fritz pontificated, “The external world is the world of shadows. It throws its shadows into the kingdom of light…. The universe, after all, is within us. The way leads inwards, always inwards.”

His friends knew Fritz lived life on another plane of reality. Johann Wilhelm Ritter said of him, “Hardenberg could not be judged by any ordinary standards.” Speaking to Caroline Schlegel, he continued, “For him there is no real barrier between the unseen and the seen. The whole of existence dissolves itself into a myth.” The great man himself, Goethe, tried to explain Fritz’s unusual love for the young Sophie to Fritz’s brother, Erasmus, thus, “Rest assured, it is not her understanding that we love in a young girl. We love her beauty, her innocence, her trust in us, her airs and graces, her God knows what—but we don’t love her for her understanding—nor, I am sure, does Hardenberg.”

Fritz, himself, concludes, “We think we know the laws that govern our existence. We get glimpses, perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime, of a totally different system at work behind them…. As things are, we are enemies of the world, and foreigners to this earth. Our grasp of it is a process of estrangement. Through estrangement itself I earn my living from day to day…. This is waking, that is a dream, this belongs to the body, that to the spirit, this belongs to space and distance, that to time and duration. But space spills over into time, as the body into the soul, so that the one cannot be measured without the other. I want to exert myself to find a different kind of measurement.”

“Twilight of the Idols (Or how to Philosophize with a Hammer)” by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by R.J. Hollingdale)

This short book is a mismatch of aphorisms, blurbs, and short essays that Nietzsche wrote towards the end of his sanity. He begins, “This little book is a grand declaration of war.” From that bold start, he gives a taste of some choice maxims, “Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows…. To live alone one must be an animal or a god—says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both—a philosopher…. Which is it? Is man only God’s mistake or God only man’s mistake?—…. Let us not be cowardly in the face of our actions! Let us not afterwards leave them in a lurch!—Remorse of conscience is indecent.”

In an essay disparaging Socrates, Nietzsche begins by commenting on the value of life, “In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless…. Everywhere and always their mouths have uttered the same sound—a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness with life, full of opposition to life.” In another essay he discusses morality and nature, “All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct of life—some commandment of life is fulfilled through a certain canon of ‘shall’ and ‘shall not’, some hinderance and hostile element on life’s road is thereby removed. Anti-natural morality, that is virtually every morality that has hitherto been taught, reverenced and preached, turns on the contrary precisely against the instincts of life…. It denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life…. Life is at an end where the ‘kingdom of God’ begins.” On determinism, he opines, “No one is accountable for existing at all, or for being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives…. One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole…. Nothing exits apart from the whole!… We deny God; in denying God, we deny accountability: only by doing that do we redeem the world.”

In an essay on German deficiencies, Nietzsche contrasts culture with the nation-state. “Culture and the state—one should not deceive oneself over this—are antagonists: the ‘cultural state’ is merely a modern idea…. All great cultural epochs are epochs of political decline…. Great and fine things can never be common property: pulchrum est paucorum hominum [beauty is for the few].” On a short paragraph on Thomas Carlyle, Nietzsche sneaks in his opinion on faith, “The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of scepticism: one is secure enough, firm enough, fixed enough for it.”

Nietzsche bemoans modern customs and takes shots at Schopenhauer and Christ all in one go, “Our softening of customs—this is my thesis, my innovation if you like—is a consequence of decline; stern and frightful customs can, conversely, be a consequence of a superabundance of life…. That movement which with Schopenhauer’s morality of pity attempted to present itself as scientific—a very unsuccessful attempt!—is the actual decadence movement of morality; as such it is profoundly related to Christian morality. Strong ages, noble cultures, see in pity, in ‘love for one’s neighbor’, in a lack of self and self-reliance, something contemptible…. ‘Equality’, a certain actual rendering similar of which the theory of ‘equal rights’ is only the expression, belongs essentially to decline: the chasm between man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out—that which I call pathos of distance—characterizes every strong age.” He transitions to thoughts on institutional development, “Liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained…. They undermine the will to power, they are the leveling of mountain and valley exalted to a moral principle, they make small, cowardly and smug—it is the herd animal which triumphs with them every time…. The man who has become free—and how much more the mind that has become free—spurns the contemptible sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is a warrior…. For institutions to exist there must exist the kind of will, instinct, imperative which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to centuries-ling responsibility, to solidarity between the succeeding generations backwards and forwards in infinitum.”

Nietzsche next discusses aesthetics and the concept of beauty, “Even the beauty of a race or a family, the charm and benevolence of their whole demeanour, is earned by labour: like genius, it is the final result of the accumulatory labour of generations. One must have made great sacrifices to good taste…. One must have possessed in it a selective principle in respect of one’s society, residence, dress, sexual gratification, one must have preferred beauty to advantage, habit, opinion, indolence…. Good things are costly beyond measure: and the law still holds that he who has them is different from him who obtains them. Everything good is inheritance: what is not inherited is imperfect, is a beginning.”

Finally, in an essay on the ancients and his love for tradition, Nietzsche finds time for a digression ripping Plato. “One does not learn from the Greeks…. Plato mixes together all forms of style; he is therewith in the matter of style a first decadent…. I find him deviated so far from all the fundamental instincts of the Hellenes, so morally infected, so much an antecedent Christian—he already has the concept ‘good’ as the supreme concept…. Plato is that ambiguity and fascination called the ‘ideal’ which made it possible for the nobler natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to step on to the bridge which led to the ‘Cross’…. Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types—that is what I called Dionysian…. I again plant myself in the soil out of which I draw all that I will and can—I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysos—I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence.”

“Vita contemplativa” by Byung-Chul Han (translated by Daniel Steuer)

This is another of Han’s short treatises, peppered with references to Heidegger, Arendt, and the German Romantics. His theme is, obviously, the life of contemplation. He first promotes inaction, “Life receives its radiance only from inactivity. If we lose the ability to be inactive, we begin to resemble machines that must simply function. True life begins when concern for survival, for the exigencies of mere life, ends. The ultimate purpose of all human endeavour is inactivity.” He continues with his definition of culture, “Culture sits beyond functionality and usefulness. The ornamental dimension, emancipated from any goal or use, is how life insists that it is more than survival.” He brings his theme around to happiness, “We owe true happiness to the useless and purposeless, to what is intentionally convoluted, what is unproductive, indirect, exuberant, superfluous, to beautiful forms and gestures that have no use and serve no purpose…. Ceremonious inactivity means: we do something, but to no end.”

Han describes living a life fully and presently here on earth. “The politics of inactivity liberates the immanence of life from the transcendence that alienates life from itself. Only in inactivity do we become aware of the ground on which we rest, and of the space in which we are…. Immanence as life is living in the mode of contemplation. Life as immanence is a capacity that does not act…. Immanence denotes a life that possesses itself, that suffices itself. This self-sufficiency is bliss.” Han promotes a life of reflection. “We must therefore increase the proportion of action that is contemplative, that is, ensure that action is enriched by reflection…. The compulsion to be active, to produce and to perform, leads to breathlessness. Under the weight of their own doings, humans suffocate…. Forgetfulness of being, resulting from the lack of reflection, takes our breath away. It reduces the human being to an animal laborans.”

Humans are creatures that unite with each other together through the common stories they tell. “The human being is an animal narrans, a narrating animal. But our lives are no longer determined by a reliable and binding narrative that provides meaning and orientation. We are very well informed, yet, in the absence of narrative, we are without orientation…. Truth is narrative. Information, by contrast, is additive…. Symbols create shared things that enable a We: cohesion within society…. In a symbolic void, society is diffracted into a collection of mutually indifferent individuals.” Han brings this back to having the time and space for inactivity, rest, contemplation, and reflection. “The future of humanity depends not on the power of people who act but on the resuscitation of the capacity for contemplation—that is, on the very capacity that does not act. If it does not incorporate the vita contemplativa, the vita activa degenerates into hyperactivity, and culminates in the burnout not only of the psyche but of the whole planet.”

“Introduction to Metaphysics” by Martin Heidegger (translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt)

This is a collection of Heidegger’s lectures on metaphysics and Dasein from 1935. He begins with the big question, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question.” He continues, “Philosophizing, we can now say, is extra-ordinary questioning about the extra-ordinary.”

Phusis is a big deal to Heidegger’s conception of metaphysics. He states, “The sway, phusis, first comes to to stand in what comes to presence. Beings as such now first come into being. This becoming-a-world is authentic history. Struggle as such not only allows for arising and standing-forth; it alone also preserves beings in their constancy.” We must look again to the nature of Being. “So the “universality” of “Being” in regard to all beings does not imply that we should turn away from this universality as fast as possible and turn to the particular…. The fact that for us the meaning of the word “Being” remains an indeterminate vapor is counterbalanced by the fact that we still understand Being, and distinguish it with certainty from not-Being—and this is not just another, second fact, but both belong together as one.”

Uncanniness is another critical concept for Heidegger. “The human being is, in one word, to deinotaton, the uncanniest….. The deinon is the terrible in the sense of the overwhelming sway, which induces panicked fear, true anxiety, as well as collected, inwardly reverberating, reticent awe. The violent, the overwhelming is the essential character of the sway itself…. But on the other hand, deinon means the violent in the sense of one who needs to use violence—and does not just have violence at his disposal, but is violence-doing, insofar as using violence is the basic trait not just of his doing, but of his Dasein…. We understand the un-canny as that which throws one out of the “canny,” that is, the homely, the accustomed, the current, the unendangered…. But human beings are the uncanniest…. They step out, move out of the limits that at first and for the most part are accustomed and homely, because as those who do violence, they overstep the limits of the homely, precisely in the direction of the uncanny in the sense of the overwhelming…. To be the uncanniest is the basic trait of the human essence.”

Heidegger does go off on what would seem to be some tangents. Many are still fruitful. He rants on the state of modernity, “The spiritual decline of the earth has progressed so far that peoples are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible even to see the decline…. For the darkening of the world, the flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the reduction of human beings to a mass, the hatred and mistrust of everything creative and free have already reached such proportions throughout the whole earth that such childish categories as pessimism and optimism have long become laughable.” He continues, “When the creators have disappeared from the people, when they are barely tolerated as irrelevant curiosities, as ornaments, as eccentrics alien to life, when authentic struggle ceases and shifts into the merely polemical, into the intrigues and machinations of human beings within the present-at-hand, then the decline has already begun. For even when an age still makes an effort just to uphold the inherited level and dignity of its Dasein, the level already sinks. It can be upheld only insofar as it is always creatively transcended.” Where is he going with this? What does it have to do with metaphysics?

Finally, Heidegger brings in how logos interacts with phusis, “In the inception, this is what happens: logos as the revealing gathering—Being, as this gathering, is fittingness in the sense of phusis—becomes the necessity of the essence of historical humanity. From here one need take only a single step to grasp how logos, so understood, determines the essence of language and how logos becomes the name for discourse. Being-human, according to its historical, history-opening essence, is logos, the gathering and apprehending of the Being of beings.” He concludes, “Being and the understanding of Being are not a present-at-hand fact. Being is the fundamental happening, the ground upon which historical Dasein is first granted in the midst of beings that are opened up as a whole…. Being, in contradistinction to becoming, is enduring. Being in contradistinction to seeming, is the enduring prototype, the always identical. Being in contradistinction to thinking, is what lies at the basis, the present-at-hand. Being in contradistinction to the ought, is what lies at hand in each case as what ought to be and has not yet been actualized or already has been actualized. Endurance, perpetual identity, presence at hand, lying at hand—all at bottom say the same: constant presence, on as ousia…. The mere determinateness of Being is not a matter of delimiting a mere meaning of a word. It is the power that today still sustains and prevails over all our relations to beings as a whole.”

“Master Incapable: A Medieval Daoist on the Liberation of the Mind” by Wunengzi (translated by Jan de Meyer)

This treatise, written in the ninth century, by a pseudonymous Daoist scholar is fairly unknown. It incorporates the teachings of the Tao Te Ching and Zhuanghzi, but is also very much its own philosophical work. Master Incapable begins by discussing the Daoist concept of spontaneity, “He who relies on spontaneity will last, and he who obtains constancy will be saved…. It is the spontaneous nature of the mind to be flood-like and empty.” For him, the naming of terms was the start of unnatural distinctions, “When all-under-heaven was in its natural state, there was no distinction between rulers and subjects. That rulers and subjects were created so as to separate the venerable from the lowly means that those called “sages” used their knowledge to deceive the ignorant. Using one’s knowledge to deceive the ignorant is fraudulence.” Lack of purpose is actually a goal, “When there is no purposive action, humans are uncorrupted and correct, and accord with the natural order…. When there is purposive action, there are cravings and desires, and people’s inborn nature is brought into disorder.”

Much of Master Incapable’s teachings are on the proper role of the gentleman, “Whether you’re treated generously or poorly depends on allotment…. The gentleman can be humane towards others, but he cannot make others behave humanely towards him. He can treat others with propriety, but he cannot make others treat him with propriety…. Just now, I was formless in emptiness and silence. Free of emotions, I was immersed in unfathomable darkness. I know nothing to be anxious about and amuse myself by strumming the zither and singing.” In another discourse, he continues, “Thus is the mind of the gentleman: he cultivates himself without fault with others, and he conceals his own usefulness instead of shining among the crowd. When the right time arrives, he responds, and when approached, he gives help. He responds according to the moment, but without scheming for himself. He gives help without being zealous about his achievements. For this reason, no favors become attached to him, and resentment has nowhere to pile up.”

The Void is another recurring theme of Daoist philosophy, “Someone who has immersed in the Void and who concentrates on the Permanent would not feel ennobled to become a king or marquis, nor humbled to become a servant or slave…. Inside himself he has room for neither sadness nor happiness…. The physical form and material things are the root of decay and decline. They affect you emotionally, and you experience the impermanence of depression and happiness. If you entwine the root of decay and decline with impermanent emotions, then waking is like dreaming, and one hundred years are like a single night. If you are able to immerse yourself in the Void and to concentrate on the Permanent, then hunger, cold, wealth, and honors will lose all significance to you.”

Finally, Master Incapable concludes, “When you show a mountain with tigers and leopards or a sea with whales to an ant in an anthill, or to a frog in a well, they will certainly grow suspicious: they are only familiar with what they themselves have seen. When you talk about the principle of nonpurposive action to people who crave and desire worldly pursuits, they will certainly feel puzzled: they dwell in what they are habituated to…. They are lost in cravings and desires until death. In the whole world there is not a single person who returns to the origin and does not allow any cravings and desires to arise…. So! Nonpurposive action is our own choice, and cravings and desires are our own choice. Nonpurposive action leads to serenity, while cravings and desires lead to undertakings. Serenity leads to happiness, and undertakings lead to worrying…. Those who are enlightened turn their back on custom.”

“Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics” by Martin Heidegger (translated Richard Taft)

This is a collection of lectures that Heidegger gave, primarily on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, through the winter of 1927. It is dense stuff. It also often strays from the consensus into Heidegger’s own unique interpretations. Heidegger quotes Kant first, “I entitle all knowledge transcendental that is occupied in general not so much with objects as with the kind of knowledge we have of objects, insofar as this is possible a priori.” Heidegger adds, “Hence, transcendental knowledge does not investigate the being itself, but rather the possibility of the preliminary understanding of Being…. The Critique of Pure Reason has nothing to do with a “theory of knowledge.”” He continues, “With the problem of transcendence, a “theory of knowledge” is not set in place of metaphysics, but rather the inner possibility of ontology is questioned…. The transcendental problem of the inner possibility of a priori synthetic knowledge is the question concerning the essence of the truth of ontological transcendence. It is a matter of determining the essence of “transcendental truth, which precedes all empirical truth and makes it possible.””

Kant begins with pure reason, according to Heidegger, “The ground for the source [Quellgrund] for laying the ground for metaphysics is human pure reason, so that it is precisely the humanness of reason, i.e., its finitude, which will be essential for the core of this problematic of ground-laying…. Finitude lies in the essential structure of knowledge itself.” Heidegger continues, “Pure intuition is required as the one essential element of ontological knowledge in which the experience of beings is grounded…. In this way both pure intuitions, space and time, are allotted to two [different] regions of experience.” Kant states, “Time is the formal a priori condition of all appearances whatsoever.” Heidegger explains, “Hence, time has preeminence over space. As universal, pure intuition, it [time] must for this reason become the guiding and supporting essential element of pure knowledge, of the transcendence which forms knowledge…. The object of an intuition, which is always a particular, is nevertheless determined as “such and such” in a “universal representation,” i.e., in the concept. The finitude of thinking intuition is therefore a knowing through concepts; pure knowing is pure intuition through pure concepts…. Ontological knowledge is rightly termed knowledge, however, if it attains truth. But it does not just “have” truth; rather, is is the original truth, which Kant therefore terms “transcendental truth.”… Ontology is none other than the explicit unveiling of the systemic whole of pure knowledge, to the extent that it forms transcendence.”

Kant wants to separate a priori knowledge from the realm of empirics, “Now, because what matters first and foremost to Kant is to make transcendence visible once in order to elucidate on the basis of it the essence of transcendental (ontological) knowledge, that is why the Objective Deduction is “also essential to my purposes. The other seeks to investigate pure understanding itself, according to its possibility and the powers of knowledge upon which it itself rests, and, consequently, seeks to consider it in a more subjective relationship…. The chief question always remains: What and how much can understanding and reason know, free from all experience?””

Heidegger views the subject, the I, as integral to Kant’s metaphysics, “The pure, finite self has, in itself, temporal character. However, if the I, pure reason, is essentially temporal, then it is precisely on the basis of this temporal character that the decisive determination which Kant gives of transcendental apperception first becomes understandable…. Time and the “I think” no longer stand incompatibly and incomparably at odds; they are the same. With his laying of the ground for metaphysics, and through the radicalism with which, for the first time, he transcendentally interpreted both time, always for itself, and the “I think,” always for itself, Kant brought both of them together in their original sameness—without, to be sure, expressly seeing this as such for himself…. Precisely because in its innermost essence the self is originally time itself, that I cannot be grasped as “temporal,” i.e., as within time. Pure sensibility (time) and pure reason are not just of the same type; rather they belong together in the unity of the same essence, which makes possible the finitude of human subjectivity in its wholeness…. Kant’s laying of the ground for metaphysics leads to the transcendental power of imagination. This is the root of both stems, sensibility and understanding. As such, it makes possible the original unity of ontological synthesis. This root, however, is rooted in original time. The original ground which becomes manifest in the ground-laying is time.”

Finally, Heidegger explicitly brings in the concept of Dasein, “The problem of the laying of the ground for metaphysics is rooted in the question concerning Dasein in man, i.e., concerning his innermost ground, concerning the understanding of Being as essentially existent finitude…. Insofar as its essence lies in existence the question concerning the essence of Dasein is the existential question…. The unveiling of the constitution of the Being of Dasein is Ontology. Insofar as the ground for the possibility of metaphysics is found therein—the finitude of Dasein as its fundament—it is called Fundamental Ontology…. The basic fundamental-ontological act of the Metaphysics of Dasein as the laying of the ground for metaphysics is hence a “remembering again.”” Heidegger concludes, “[It is] because the understanding of Being must be projected upon time from out of the ground of the finitude of the Dasein in man, that time, in essential unity with the transcendental power of imagination, attained the central metaphysical function in the Critique of Pure Reason.”

“The Hebrew Bible: Esther” (translated by Robert Alter)

Alter begins his introduction to the Book of Esther, “Of the several biblical books that test the limits of the canon, Esther may well be the most anomalous. It is the only scriptural text of which no scrap has been uncovered at Qumran…. The likely date of the book’s composition would be sometime late in the fifth century B.C.E. or perhaps slightly later…. In all likelihood, then, the book was written not long after the return to Zion authorized by the Persian emperor Artaxerxes and led by Ezra and Nehemiah.”

Alter alerts us to the uniqueness of Esther, “The most unusual aspect of Esther, for a book that made it into the biblical canon, is that it offers very strong evidence of having been written primarily for entertainment. It has variously been described as a farce, a burlesque, a satire, a fairy tale, and a carnivalesque narrative, and it is often quite funny, with sly sexual comedy.” One theme repeats itself, “Reversal is the key to the plot of Esther.”

In Esther 2:5, Alter gives us the history of the name, “Mordecai son of Jair. His father has a good Hebrew name, but his own name is derived from that of the Babylonian god Marduk…. Similarly, Esther (who also is given a Hebrew name, Hadassah) has a name deriving from that of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.” Alter continues with the derivation of words in Esther 3:7, “a pur. This is a Persian loanword, and thus it is immediately glossed by the Hebrew word for “lot,” goral. The Hebrew plural form of the word, Purim, becomes the name of the carnivalesque holiday for which the Book of Esther serves as rationale.”

Alter points out one striking aspect of the book in his comments on Esther 4:14, “relief and rescue will come to the Jews from elsewhere. The early rabbis understood this to be God, but the expression is quite vague, and as throughout the book, God is not mentioned.” Throughout the book, te theme of reversal returns again and again. In Esther 7:9, “Look, there is actually a stake that Haman has prepared for Mordecai…. In the fairy-tale logic of this narrative, that action is a neat reversal: the very instrument of the would-be executioner is used to execute him.”

Finally, in Esther 8:15, there is reference to earlier biblical canon, “And Mordecai came out before the king in royal garb…. Behind Mordecai’s being clothed in regal garments (earlier he was in sackcloth) lies the Joseph story, in which the former Hebrew prisoner is dressed by Pharaoh in regal clothing after he is invested with power as vice-regent.”

“The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James

Arguably James’ best known novel, this is a tale of love, duty, wealth, and mores. The heroine, Isabel, is an American lady, who comes into a great fortune while visiting her aunt in England. “The pessimism of this young lady was transient; she ultimately made up her mind that to be rich was a virtue, because it was to be able to do, and to do was sweet. It was the contrary of weakness. To be weak was, for a young lady, rather graceful, but, after all, as Isabel said to herself, there was a larger grace than that.”

Isabel had her hands full of eligible suitors, but her love found its own path. “Her mind contained no class which offered a natural place to Mr. Osmond — he was a specimen apart. Isabel did not say all these things to herself at the time; but she felt them, and afterwards they became distinct. For the moment she only said to herself that Mr. Osmond had the interest of rareness. It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that distinguished him; he indulged in no striking deflections from common usage; he was an original without being an eccentric.” For his part, Gilbert Osmond might not have been in love, but he was intrigued from the start. “Osmond was in his element; at last he had material to work with. He always had an eye to effect; and his effects were elaborately studied. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the motive was as vulgar as the art was great.” James’ cutting description of the man continues, “Under the guise of caring only for intrinsic values, Osmond lived exclusively for the world. Far from being its master, as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success…. Everything he did was pose…. His ambition was not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world’s curiosity and then declining to satisfy it.”

The marriage of Isabel and Gilbert was not a success. “It was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one…. She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her. That was all she accused him of…. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had only seen half his nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now — she saw the whole man.”

After her marriage, Isabel was still not forgotten by a few of her past loves. One was a Bostonian, Caspar Goodwood, who travelled to Rome to call on her and assess for himself her nuptial situation. “To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her to-morrow, and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge that he was as superfluous as ever. About herself he had gained no knowledge; she was imperturbable, impenetrable. He felt the old bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his throat, and he knew that there are disappointments which last as long as life.” Adding to the insult, her husband, Mr. Osmond, had befriended him on his many social calls to their palatial residence and once tried to give marital advice. Whether genuine or not, it was hard to judge, “Ah, you see, being married is in itself an occupation. It isn’t always active; it’s often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my wife and I do so many things together…. If you are ever bored, get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that case; but you will never bore yourself. You will always have something to say to yourself — always have a subject of reflection.”

Gilbert Osmond could be profound, even when not sincere. In speaking to Isabel, he offered, “You smile most expressively when I talk about us; but I assure you that we, we, is all that I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of not doing so. I am not aware that we are divorced or separated; for me we are indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than any human creature, and I am nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable proximity; it’s one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You don’t like to be reminded of that, I know.”

“Metaphysics” by Aristotle (translated by W.D. Ross)

Aristotle is never an easy read. Some might say he is boring, repetitive, arcane, and dense. This treatise is the Master getting into first principles. He begins by defining philosophy. “It is right also that philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth. For the end of theoretical knowledge is truth, while that of practical knowledge is action (for even if they consider how things are, practical men do not study what is eternal but what stands in some relation at some time). Now we do not know a truth without its cause…. So that that which causes derivative truths to be true is most true. Therefore the principles of eternal things must be always most true.”

Aristotle discusses Plato’s concepts of the Forms, which he calls Ideas. “Nor is it possible to define any Idea. For the Idea is, as its supporters say, an individual, and can exist apart…. If the Ideas consist of Ideas (as they must, since elements are simpler than the compound), it will be further necessary that the elements of which the Idea consists, e.g. animal and two-footed, should be predicated of many subjects…. But this is not thought possible—every Idea is thought to be capable of being shared…. Now of these things being and unity are more substantial than principle or element or cause, but not even the former are substance, since in general nothing that is common is substance; for substance does not belong to anything but to itself and to that which has it, of which it is the substance…. Clearly no universal exists apart from the individuals…. The proximate matter and the form are one and the same thing, the one potentially, the other actually. Therefore to ask the cause of their being one is like asking the cause of unity in general; for each thing is a unity, and the potential and the actual are somehow one…. All potentialities that conform to the same type are starting points, and are called potentialities in reference to one primary kind, which is a starting-point of change in another thing or in the thing itself qua other…. The terms ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ are employed firstly with reference to the categories, and secondly with reference to the potentiality or actuality of these or their opposites, while being and non-being in the strictest sense are truth and falsity.”

Aristotle circles back again to the purpose of philosophy. “One might discuss the question whether the science we are seeking should be said to deal with the principles which are called elements. All men suppose these to be present in compound things; but it might be thought that the science we seek should treat rather of universals; for every formula and every science is of universals and not of particulars, so that as far as this goes it would deal with the highest classes. These would be being and unity; for these might most of all be supposed to contain all things that are, and to be most like principles because they are first by nature; for if they perish all other things are destroyed with them; for all things are and are one…. It is in general hard to say whether one must assume that there is a separable substance besides the sensible substances (i.e. the substances in this world), or that these are the real things and philosophy is concerned with them. For we seem to seek another kind of substance, and this is our problem, i.e. to see if there is something which can exist apart by itself and belongs to no sensible thing.” Aristotle returns next to substance. “Substance is the subject of our inquiry; for the principles and the causes we are seeking are those of substances. For if the universe is of the nature of a whole, substance is its first part; and if it coheres by virtue of succession, on this view also substance is first, and is succeeded by quality, and then by quantity. At the same time these latter are not even beings in the unqualified sense.”

Finally, Aristotle introduces his concept of the first mover. “There is, then, something which is always moved with an unceasing motion, which is motion in a circle; and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. Therefore the first heavens must be eternal. There is therefore also something which moves them. And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of wish…. Therefore if the actuality of the heavens is primary motion, then in so far as they are in motion, in this respect they are capable of being otherwise,—in place, even if not in substance. But since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise than as it is…. The first mover, then, of necessity exists; and in so far as it is necessary, it is good, and in this sense a first principle…. On such a principle, then, depend the heavens and the world of nature…. There is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things. It has been shown also that this substance cannot have any magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible. For it produces movement through infinite time, but nothing finite has infinite power…. But it is also clear that it is impassive and unalterable.”

“The Hebrew Bible: Qohelet” (translated by Robert Alter)

Qohelet is more commonly referred to as Ecclesiastes. Alter suggests, “Qohelet is in some ways the most peculiar book of the Hebrew Bible. The peculiarity starts with its name. The long tradition of translation into many languages, beginning with the ancient Greek version, uses some form of “Ecclesiastes” for the title. The Septuagint translators chose that title because it means “the one who assembles.”” The exact meaning behind Qohelet, however, remains a mystery. “It is best to think of Qohelet as the literary persona of a radical philosopher articulating, in an evocative rhythmic prose that occasionally scans as poetry, a powerful dissent from the mainline Wisdom outlook that is the background of his thought…. His unblinking, provocative reflections on the ephemerality of life, the flimsiness of human value, and the ineluctable fate of death read like the work of a stubborn and prickly original—one who in all likelihood wrote in the early or middle decades of the fourth century B.C.E.”

Alter continues by laying out the background of the book, “The stringing together of moral maxims in concise symmetrical or antithetical formulations, sometimes with rather tenuous connections between one maxim and the next, is clearly reminiscent of the Book of Proverbs…. The central enigma, then, of the Book of Qohelet is how this text of radical dissent, in which time, history, politics, and human nature are seen in such a bleak light, became part of the canon…. Qohelet has enough of a connection with tradition that he never absolutely denies the idea of a personal god, but his ‘elohim often seems to be a stand-in for the cosmic powers-that-be.”

Breath is the recurring theme of the Book of Qohelet. Alter begins, in discussing Qohelet 1:2, by detailing this subject matter and relating why some other translations have missed the mark, “merest breath. The form of the Hebrew, havel havalim, is a way of indicating a superlative or an extreme case. Rendering this phrase as an abstraction (King James Version, “vanity of vanities,” or Michael Fox’s more philosophically subtle “absurdity of absurdities”) is inadvisable, for the writer uses concrete metaphors to indicate general concepts, constantly exploiting the emotional impact of the concrete image and its potential to suggest several related ideas. Hevel, “breath” or “vapor,” is something utterly insubstantial and transient, and in this book suggests futility, ephemerality, and also, as Fox argues, the absurdity of existence.”

In Qohelet 1:5, Alter describes how jarring some philosophical ideas in this book are, “The sun rises and the sun sets. The cyclical movement of day and night is taken as prime evidence in nature of the repetitive cyclical character of reality. This notion is a radical challenge to the conception of time and sequence inscribed in Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible, where things are imagined to progress meaningfully (as in the seven days of creation) toward a fulfillment.” Another theme of the Book of Qohelet is the contingency of life. In Qohelet 3:13, Alter relates, “this is a gift from God. Qohelet repeatedly urges us to enjoy the pleasures of life here and now, but he is perfectly aware that it is a matter of luck, or God’s unfathomable determination, whether we are given the time and means to enjoy the good things of life, or whether we are condemned to die, to uproot, to rip down, to mourn.”

Death is another recurring motif. Alter relates in Qohelet 7:1, “and the day of death and the day one is born. Many commentators understand this to mean that one can never be sure of one’s good name until the end of life, but this make Qohelet blander than he actually is. He begins with a rather anodyne proverbial saying, that a good name (shem) is better than precious oil (shemen), but then he goes on to say that departing life is better than entering it, for life itself, whatever one’s reputation, is a miserable affair from one end to the other.”

In Qohelet 11:8, Alter recounts yet another return to the concept of breath, “Whatever comes is mere breath. It is unlikely that this refers to death, as some have claimed, because in Qohelet it is darkness that is associated with death, whereas “mere breath” is rather the futile substance of worldly experience. Whatever happens, then, in our lives is mere breath—fleeting, insubstantial, without meaning—and all we can do is to take pleasure in what seems pleasurable.” Finally, Alter details a kind of envelope structure framing the book in Qohelet 12:8, “Merest breath, said Qohelet. In a gesture of tight closure, Qohelet repeats precisely the refrain with which he began the book.”