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I tend to agree with Tanner that the author seems like a nietzschean whiner, and same goes for Andreessen and Hanania (of which I have a theory that he has absolutely no conviction what so ever, always trolls, and decides that some of his trolling might actually be what he truly thinks after seeing how people react. but that is an aside).
The problem with Nietzschean whiners is that they don’t understand Nietzsche at all, and this whole post is a pretty good example of that.
Basically what happens is this. These guys have a certain understanding of what a Great Men are, they are people that do things. They know that Nietzsche critics nihilism, and nihilism has something to do with being passive, reactive, and they also know that the Ubermensch is supposed to be anti-nihilistic. The conclusion they draw from this is that Great Men are something akin to the nietzchean Ubermensch.
The problem is that they misunderstand what being reactive means for Nietzsche. And they also have no idea what the Ubermensch actually is.
Being reactive is not about reacting to what others do. It’s not because you plan, and you have a vision, that you are actually active. Thanos may have a plan, but he is highly reactive in a Nietzschean sense. And Achilles maybe be only motivated by the glory, but I believe he is highly active in a nietzschean sense.
The dyad active-reactive, has nothing to do with planning or acting. It’s about the objective behind it. Achilles maybe after the esteem of his peer, but by doing that he is affirming his own worth, and that is precisely what being active means. Thanos maybe planing etc. but he wants to disappear, he wants the end of his own suffering, and that is highly reactive because it is the opposite of affirmation, it is a negation of everything.
To see the active-reactive dyad as meaning action-reaction is absurd, because any action is always a reaction. And this is not what Nietzsche had in mind. What interested him was whether something lead to the affirmation of one’s own power or if it was just a negation of that power. Achilles is affirming his power, Thanos is negating his.So what about the Ubermensch ? Well it’s a (psychological) type of human that is most able to affirm his own power, mostly for 2 reasons. 1st because he is, in a way a complex character with a multiplicity (sometimes contradictory) of drives, and 2nd because he is able to master those drives and put them to work in order to create the conditions of his own greatness.
Here’s a list of examples that Nietzsche gives of types of Ubermensch : Cesar Borgia, Napoleon, but also Shakespeare, Hafez, and Goethe. Appart from the 1st i’m pretty sure this isn’t what the post’s author, Andreessen and Hanania, imagine when they think of Great Men.So this is not about control, or power, it’s about creation.
Remy from Ratatouille is quite a good example of an Ubermensch.
The second document doesn’t mention Thucydides, but Schelling (and says that the 1st session was also on Schelling). Am I missing something or is the link wrong ?
Most of what I’ve found in criminology about Freud and psychoanalysis refers to post freudian psychodynamics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_criminologyBut this article seems to make quite clear that psychodynamics approaches are not that important in criminal law :
https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/unilllr2005§ion=33&casa_token=6IOQOaXUGaoAAAAA:0i9sUUE1jEkKT2yLlLDyHEjPtQML2MYD9M07u_mbgkJb8dFDLoWRHOMWY4prSjyVuQ4bxRpjdvESo my take so far, is that he seems taught alot, but I doesn’t seem used much.
Thx for the feedback. I’m not surprised in Freud is not found in forensic psychiatry.
He’s clearly taught in criminology at Princeton, and I’ve seen several other uni where that is also the case. The few criminology textbook i’ve looked at mention that his theory is one of the major ones in the field. But that doesn’t prove much. I’d love to hear more from someone with more insider’s knowledge.
My prior is that Freud is of little consequence, even though he has been hugely influential. But my student is so adamant, that I wanted to look more into this, but so far, all I’ve seen is confirming that Freud is not really that important.I tend to agree with the rejection of metaphysics. But i’m somewhat partial to epistemology (being a philosopher myself, i have a hard time not being partial). And as you mention in your original post, it’s also a matter of where the metaphysical considerations enter in the system. You can cut Leibniz out, but it would be weird to have humanity’s canon without Kant, or Hume, or Averoes. For the same reasons, I think, an Indic canon can be without most of the orthodox schools, but Nyaya’s influence is of major importance, not just in philosophy but also in law. (Here’s what Peter Adamson has to say about Gangesa “Use of his new method, which was called Navya-Nyaya, spread to all intellectual disciplines. It was to prove particularly influential in the field of jurisprudence.” Classical Indian Philosophy, p. 343). This system’s influence has been to far ranging to just ignore.
The same goes for Dignaga. Most orthodox’s school of hindu philosophy developed as a reaction to his works. He’s kind of like Kant or Plato. So I can’t see how he can’t be on the list.Tagore’s translation I really liked was the one by William Radice, publish by Penguin. I can’t seem to find it on amazon. But you can find it on z-lib or libgen. It also has a very nice introduction on the original translation of the Gitanjali and the composition of the work.
Radice has also translated other works of Tagore (poems and novels) for Penguin.
I posted a comparison of the Gitanjali’s original translation beside Radice’s transaltion on my substack. (Here’s an example : https://niespika.substack.com/p/reading-the-greats-8 )Hi Maanas. Thx for the feedback.
There are things that can be improved on my list, for sure. I’m still a bit unsure about some of the choices I’ve made.
1) Should the Vedas be put on the list? Should I “cheat” and add the RgVeda beside the Upanishads ?
2) Should I give more space to classical south indian lit. More tamil ? Something in Kannada ?
3) Does Bhavabutti really deserve a spot ?
4) Even though i’m fairly happy with the philosophy part of the list, maybe it could be improved upon by adding Ramanuja which I took out from Greer’s list.
5) Is 2 spots enough for the Bhakti poets ?
6) I decided to add Biharilal because he offers something lacking in the second part of my list, and is quite famous. But maybe I should take him out and add Premchand.Mostly, the considerations that went into my list were following the same guidelines setup by Greer in his original post.
a) Authors put on the list should have produced works of immense beauty
b) They should offer deep insight in the human condition
c) They should be the embodiment of a certain tradition or ethos.
d) The works they produced should be influential, that is they set up a tradition people followed.It’s possible to set up a very different list based on different criteria. But these were the ones I decided to follow. And given the constraints I gave myself, I just don’t see how Gandhi has a place on it. As you mention in your answer. His mastery of language is not incredible (Tagore’s is). He doesn’t offer really great insight into the human condition (Tagore is more interesting). He certainly does embody a certain ethos, but so does Tagore. He was very influential, but to a lesser extant, so was Tagore. Tagore just fits the bill better.
Apologies for the typos etc. English is not my first language and I’m dead tired.
Also this “Gandhi is an interesting suggestion from Tanner, but I just do see him as a writer but as a political activist who also wrote.” should actually read “Gandhi is an interesting suggestion from Tanner, but I just don’t see him as a writer but as a political activist who also wrote.”I’m still not really finished with the indic canon, I still have some things I need to research a bit more, I should have a list ready sometime next week I think.
I also find my list weak on the law side, but, and this is something I’ve debated for a while in the context of the whole canon project, I wonder if law should have place on such a list. I know the Manusmriti are on the indic canon, but there is nothing really equivalent in the western or chinese canon. For sure there are people that have had a profound influence on law on these two lists, but they aren’t known primarily for their contribution to that field. I would then refrain from adding somebody solely based on the fact that they have made a contribution to law. And that is one of the arguments that led me to not add Bukhari on the list.
About your suggestion for the modernist spot. It’s an interesting suggestion, and I think it helps me better understand your reasoning behind the addition of Gandhi on your lists. It seems to me that your understanding of what makes a writer great in the modernist and “contact” period for the non western lists, is at least based on the political influence that writer has had. I think it’s a totally valid point of view, but I’m not sure I share it. I have a more “restrictive” understanding of what makes a great writer. For the same reason, I wouldn’t add somebody who made purely scientific contributions (hence no Darwin) and I would also reject somebody who only made contribution to law, I don’t think a purely religious or political activist would have a spot on my list, if that person is not also highly regarded as a writer and has what the french call “a plume”. It is possible I’m completely wrong, as I confess to never having heard of Qutb before today.
I think this bias explains why my least consists mainly of philosophers and poets. I’m surprised at the lack of drama and novels of world importance, but again, maybe I didn’t look enough.One question for you Tanner. I would be interested to know if there was any particular reason why Ibn Sina wasn’t on your list.
I find his liking for Bergson and rejection of Camus and Sartre intriguing. Sartre hated Bergson, and rejected all of what Bergson stood for. This fits with what you say about his sensibilities having been formed in the 20’s and just before, as this was the heyday of Bergson’s influence.
I think your description is pretty accurate. It fits with what I have read elsewhere, notably, S. Levy’s Hackers
I went into teaching, because i’m lucky. Had I not been that lucky I would have not gotten in education or would have quit.
Before I go on i need to give you a bit of context about where I teach. I know nothing about the American context. I teach philosophy in Quebec. I do that in a french highschool. French not as in “french speaking from Quebec” but as in “french from France”. France has a pretty big network of school out of France (Canada, US, Mexico, India, China, etc.). All these schools follow the french educational system.
I also taught ethics in an engineering school for 4 years.
That being said I think there are three main problems with teaching (and I’m lucky because I’m not really affected by either) :
– The pay is crap : it is a demanding job, and with the same set of skills you can get a better pay elsewhere.
– The parents are insane : You have no idea the level of intensity some parents have. Like their kids is the 8th wonder of the world. And as a teacher you are always the one to blame. And administration never have your back.
– Kids don’t care : Caplan is right i think. The current incentive structure put in place is that a school only provide the paper of the diploma. So they don’t really have to do anything. Only to do what is required. No more no less. Kids don’t want to learn, they only want to be given the information needed to pass the exam (that’s why they cheat).I will probably have to think a bit more about substack to have something meaningful to add to the conversation ( I do find it easy to use both as a publisher and subscriber).
But I really want to comment on this :
“For example, sometimes I’m in the middle of reading one of your posts and I get interrupted by your newsletter popup covering what I’m trying to read, which I find annoying.”
Yes, 100% agree, it is very annoying !Totally agree with your views on reading groups.
I get more out of the texts, I remember more, and I get the reading done. Prior to starting that whole reading project, I had attempted to read In search of lost time twice. I had never gone further than half of the 3rd volume. Too daunting, too hard, no real pleasure.
Without my reading group, I don’t think I would have been able to go through Tanner’s list. And I’m no light reader.I wonder if the modern way of reading hasn’t killed reading, in a way. It seems to me that because there were fewer books published in the past, people were reading more or less the same kind of things and everybody must have been able to actually talk about what they were reading with everybody, as everyone sort of knew what was happening in the books. So it must have been the case that there always was the possibility of a reading group happening, even when you weren’t actually reading a book at the same time with everybody else.
I rarely read the same thing my wife reads, so we never really talk about our books. When I mention them she has no idea what I’m talking about so it makes for a weird conversation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the disappearance of social reading (the fact that everybody knew what was happening in a book enough that you could talk about it even when other people were not reading it) explains the type of books we get nowadays.Here are the constraints I think applies when reading in group :
– Ease with which a book can be read: super easy novel, harder for philosophy, and poetry falls in between
– Time each member has for reading
– Ease with which each member can read the text
– Amount of information to be discussed during each meeting
– Depth of discussion during meetingsWith my friend, we are reading around 150 pages each week (a bit less if we read poetry or philosophy). We always read 3 books at a time. It’s feasible because we read fast and we have the time.
If we were only reading 1 book, the number of pages would depend on what we would be reading. With philosophy, we’d go for a max of 50 pages. It’s hard to read more philosophy than that in a week (on top of everything else), and it provides enough material for a good evening of discussion. With poetry, we’d probably read 20 to 30 poems. For novels, we’d read 100 pages at a time.
This works for us given the type of discussion we have. But it could be frustrating for someone wanting to go really in-depth with all cultural references. etc.With Journey clocking at around 2000 pages, that would make a good 20 weeks of reading. It would be feasible for us, given the parameters of our group.
