.
Showing posts with label great conversation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label great conversation. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, August 15, 2009
NEW SITE
Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
Briunt Norton
I have launched a new website called The Chinese Jar. It will be completely nonpolitical. Its goal:
“The goal of this site is to read some of the great books and write about them. I am interested in the reactions of others to these books and to what I write about them. I intend to post some lists of the great books. I also want to post links to other sites about these books.
“The great books are the books that have made major contributions to the great conversation. And that conversation is the ongoing discussion through the centuries of the major issues that have occupied mankind. Here are some of those questions. What does it mean to be human? What are good and evil? Is there a God? What is the nature of God? What is the best way to organize a government? How much can we know about the world? What is the nature of beauty? How should I behave towards my fellow men?”
I have begun with a post about ‘The Sisters’ which is the first short story in James Joyce’s collection titled ‘Dubliners.’ I will soon write and post something about ‘Picture This’ by Joseph Heller and Joyce’s story ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room.’
This is new tome and I welcome input and advice on how I might be able to make the new site more user friendly.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Bill Bennett on the Founding Documents and Huckleberry Finn
Bill Bennett on The Great Books: Founding Documents (4 of 5)
Bill Bennett on The Great Books: Huckleberry Finn (5 of 5)
Bill Bennett on The Great Books: Huckleberry Finn (5 of 5)
Monday, March 23, 2009
New Site Coming For Discussion Of Classic Books
Some time in the next few weeks I will be launching a new and different site. It will be concerned with the reading and discussion of the great books. There are many lists of the great books. There are links to a few of them. here, here, here and here. This link is to a site where it is easy to download ebooks of many of the greats. I mean by great books the works of such writers as Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Cicero, Cervantes, Milton, Dickens, Joyce and the like. These books are characterized by their participation in the long standing discussion of important ideas such as freedom, government, man. God, law, truth and beauty. These are the writers and books that have laid out the most influential insights about these ideas.
I encourage input on how to best go about the discussion of these books. And also input as to which books to choose. I have a loose plan to begin with but I'm anxious to modify it in any way that will encourage more discussion and more participation.
I have just finished reading Dostoevsky's Demons and will start the whole thing off with a post about it. I then plan to reread John Milton's Areopagitica and write an analysis of that classic defense of freedom of the press. After that I'd like to discuss some stories from Joyce‘s Dubliners. From that collection I have chosen to write about ‘The Sisters,’ ‘Ivy Day In the Committee Room’ and ‘The Dead.’ I just read these stories again and look forward to writing about them and discussing them After that I'd like to do Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. But we'll see what happens with the initial offerings and decide how to proceed.
I plan to cross post my larger posts here and see if that has any effect on insomnia in cyber-space.
Pundit and Pundette had a post over the weekend about lists of the best books. I like to go to their site because its design is imaginative and comfortable (you‘ll love it if you love old movies). And their content is worth the trip since they aren’t always writing about the same stuff everyone else on the web is harping on. They write about important things but not necessarily the absolute latest thing that I probably won’t care about in a week. Recently they had pieces about what Barack Obama’s sense of humor tell us about him, Michelle Obama’s home economics advise, Jon Hamm from ‘Mad Men,’ the enduring popularity of John Wayne, what’s wrong with schools becoming purveyors of self-esteem and a round up of evaluations of Obama’s performance as president so far (I, personally, really would like to give Obama six month or a year before becoming very critical; but he has done too much is a short time and I am convinced that no president has ever caused America so much harm in a comparable period of time. It is almost as if the destruction of the Republic is his goal. But it is difficult to assess how much of a factor total incompetence has been.)
Here are two relevant videos.
I encourage input on how to best go about the discussion of these books. And also input as to which books to choose. I have a loose plan to begin with but I'm anxious to modify it in any way that will encourage more discussion and more participation.
I have just finished reading Dostoevsky's Demons and will start the whole thing off with a post about it. I then plan to reread John Milton's Areopagitica and write an analysis of that classic defense of freedom of the press. After that I'd like to discuss some stories from Joyce‘s Dubliners. From that collection I have chosen to write about ‘The Sisters,’ ‘Ivy Day In the Committee Room’ and ‘The Dead.’ I just read these stories again and look forward to writing about them and discussing them After that I'd like to do Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. But we'll see what happens with the initial offerings and decide how to proceed.
I plan to cross post my larger posts here and see if that has any effect on insomnia in cyber-space.
Pundit and Pundette had a post over the weekend about lists of the best books. I like to go to their site because its design is imaginative and comfortable (you‘ll love it if you love old movies). And their content is worth the trip since they aren’t always writing about the same stuff everyone else on the web is harping on. They write about important things but not necessarily the absolute latest thing that I probably won’t care about in a week. Recently they had pieces about what Barack Obama’s sense of humor tell us about him, Michelle Obama’s home economics advise, Jon Hamm from ‘Mad Men,’ the enduring popularity of John Wayne, what’s wrong with schools becoming purveyors of self-esteem and a round up of evaluations of Obama’s performance as president so far (I, personally, really would like to give Obama six month or a year before becoming very critical; but he has done too much is a short time and I am convinced that no president has ever caused America so much harm in a comparable period of time. It is almost as if the destruction of the Republic is his goal. But it is difficult to assess how much of a factor total incompetence has been.)
Here are two relevant videos.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
New Site Launch
Some time in the newt few weeks I will be launching a new and different site. It will be concerned with the reading and discussion of the great books. There are many lists of the great books. There are links to a few of them. here, here, here and here. This link is to a site where it is easy to download ebooks of many of the greats. I mean by great books the works of such writers as Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Cicero, Cervantes, Milton, Dickens, Joyce and the like. These books are characterized by their participation in the long standing discussion of important ideas such as freedom, government, man. God, law, truth and beauty. These are the writers and books that have laid out the most influential insights about these ideas.
I encourage input on how to best go about the discussion of these books. And also in put as to which books to choose. I have a loose plan to begin with but I'm anxious to modify it in any way that will encourage more discussion and more participation.
I am just now finishing Dostoevsky's Demons and will start the whole thing off with a post about it. I then plan to reread John Milton's Areopagitica and write an analysis of that classic defense of freedom of the press. After that I'd like to do something with a couple of the stories from James Joyce's Dubliners. After that I'd like to do Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. But we'll see what happens with the initial offerings and decide how to procede.
I plan to cross post my larger posts here and see if that has any effect on insomnia in cyber-space.
Here are two relevant videos.
I encourage input on how to best go about the discussion of these books. And also in put as to which books to choose. I have a loose plan to begin with but I'm anxious to modify it in any way that will encourage more discussion and more participation.
I am just now finishing Dostoevsky's Demons and will start the whole thing off with a post about it. I then plan to reread John Milton's Areopagitica and write an analysis of that classic defense of freedom of the press. After that I'd like to do something with a couple of the stories from James Joyce's Dubliners. After that I'd like to do Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. But we'll see what happens with the initial offerings and decide how to procede.
I plan to cross post my larger posts here and see if that has any effect on insomnia in cyber-space.
Here are two relevant videos.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Hellenistic Age
The Hellenistic Age is the name of a book by Peter Green I just finished reading. It’s a history and cultural overview. It quickly marches through the history from 334 to 31 B.C. in 130 pages with the cultural themes pulled in at appropriate points as the history moves briskly along. It opens with Alexander’s conquests, the wars among his successors and the emergence of his three strongest successors. These three, Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Syria and Turkey and Antigonus in Greece founded kingdoms that lasted until Rome triumphed. In 31 B.C. Egypt, the final remaining kingdom, was defeated by the man who was to become Augustus Caesar. But a good piece of the book is taken up with the wars among these three kingdoms as well as revolts, dynastic squabbles, divorces, incestuous marriages, and assassinations. And many of the rulers chronicled were gluttons, drunks or given to excessive sexuality.
Intellectual life was to a great degree taken up with the study and preservation of the great works of the glorious Greek past such as Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, the Pre-Socratic’s, Plato, and so on. Scholars minutely listed and classified these older works. There were good writers during this time but none that are essential to the great conversation of the Western tradition.
The dominating philosophical systems of this period were Stoicism, cynicism and Epicureanism. They have been characterized as useful in assisting one in accepting and fitting into a world in which the individual has reduced control over his own life and no control over political systems . Loss of power was their dilemma and their answer was to focus on self and seek the most happiness possible under the circumstances.
For the past couple of years I have been drawn to the Hellenistic age and the last century of Habsburg rule. I sense that this is because I feel some affinity between these times and our present world. I see an unmoored emptiness in the present day: so many things, so few values. Tens of millions of Americans have a knee jerk hatred of America. Scientology makes sense to millions. Keith Olberman and Geraldo Rivera can make decent livings just being themselves: what kind of weird world is that?
That’s this week’s book report
Something unrelated that some might find as interesting as I did. In my reading about the Habsburgs I came across something I hadn’t known about Ludwig Wittgenstein. I had always thought of L. W. as a part of the 20th century tradition of English philosophy. But I came across a writer who saw him as a Kantian. He was motivated not to make Moore or Russell or whoever happy but rather to solve some of the puzzles Kant had left floating around the Continent.
Intellectual life was to a great degree taken up with the study and preservation of the great works of the glorious Greek past such as Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, the Pre-Socratic’s, Plato, and so on. Scholars minutely listed and classified these older works. There were good writers during this time but none that are essential to the great conversation of the Western tradition.
The dominating philosophical systems of this period were Stoicism, cynicism and Epicureanism. They have been characterized as useful in assisting one in accepting and fitting into a world in which the individual has reduced control over his own life and no control over political systems . Loss of power was their dilemma and their answer was to focus on self and seek the most happiness possible under the circumstances.
For the past couple of years I have been drawn to the Hellenistic age and the last century of Habsburg rule. I sense that this is because I feel some affinity between these times and our present world. I see an unmoored emptiness in the present day: so many things, so few values. Tens of millions of Americans have a knee jerk hatred of America. Scientology makes sense to millions. Keith Olberman and Geraldo Rivera can make decent livings just being themselves: what kind of weird world is that?
That’s this week’s book report
Something unrelated that some might find as interesting as I did. In my reading about the Habsburgs I came across something I hadn’t known about Ludwig Wittgenstein. I had always thought of L. W. as a part of the 20th century tradition of English philosophy. But I came across a writer who saw him as a Kantian. He was motivated not to make Moore or Russell or whoever happy but rather to solve some of the puzzles Kant had left floating around the Continent.
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