Monday morning, at 6 AM, Susie was operated on for a torn rotator cuff in her right shoulder. She is now in the skilled nursing facility here at Carolina Meadows. I have been pretty much straight out either at the hospital, driving back and forth, or trying to get a little sleep. At times like this my attention narrows until it is all I can do to remember to feed the cat. The world will survive without my comments for a while, I trust. Talk among yourselves.
I wish a speedy recovery for your wife and all the best for you both.
ReplyDeleteI second what Achim Kriechel says above.
ReplyDeleteMay your wife recover soon, and may you and your family continue to prosper.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, the world will go on. Your wife will recover and you will be back sharing your wisdom. But please remember to feed your little feline friend.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to your wife and it is good to hear from you.
ReplyDeleteWE all wish Susan a full recovery.
ReplyDeleteI join with the chorus of well wishes for Suzie. May she have a speedy recovery. By the way, the cat will remind you if you have missed something.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to you and your wife, and I hope she gets well soon.
ReplyDeleteDitto the above.
ReplyDeleteSince Prof. Wolff has encouraged us to talk among ourselves while he attends to the medical needs of Susan, I have a question about the difference between cats and dogs. My wife and I have adopted our daughter’s cat, which she brought home during the pandemic and did not want to stay alone in her apartment. When she returned to her apartment, she left Kvoth (the name she selected) with us. Kvoth and I have become fast friends, but, as Mulvaney states, when he is hungry, he lets us know in no uncertain terms. I have a friend who advised that if a natural disaster were to occur which prevented us from obtaining food to feed Kvoth, that he would become feral and attack us for food. This, he claimed, was a difference between cats and dogs. Under the same circumstances, he claims, a family dog would not become lupine and attack its owners. Is there any truth to what he says?
ReplyDeleteMy best wishes too. Old age, I'm finding out, is not all fun. It's a process of giving up one thing after another (I used to take long walks too) and dealing with something new and unfortunate almost every day. But there is still time and energy to interact with others, as we do on this blog, and that contributes to making life worth living. Thanks very much for stimulating us and giving us all the chance to communicate on your blog. Hurry back.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, David, there "something new and unfortunate almost every day".
ReplyDeleteI spend more time googling various health conditions and medications than I do the news. And I didn't do that previously, I wasn't obsessed with my health when I was younger.
AA, cats are mid-level predators who are naturally wary of creatures that are larger then their normal prey animals. They are natural born killers - one of the cats used to catch several rodents a day, (I do have a picture of one of the cats stalking an eight point buck just because). Cats hereabouts have to kinda worry about foxes, bobcats, and raccoons - I doubt a cougar or bear would bother calorie wise. The local cats are wary of my chickens and would be no match for the roosters. There seems to be an understanding with the skunks. True feral cats usually remain wary of humans (scaredy cats) but may warm up to a person(s) who feeds them. This can take months or years. Cats seem to calculate and make decisions. A stray who was abandoned/dumped spent several weeks sizing me up from a distance and then one day adopted me and became an inside cat so he clearly knew that humans could be useful. A hungry cat with no other options might munch on an already dead human but attacking a healthy adult human for food, not so much.
ReplyDeleteaaall,
ReplyDeleteThank your for that information. It is reassuring to know that Kvoth will not be seeing me as a food source as long as I stay alive.
I want to echo everyone's well-wishes for Prof. Wolff and his loved ones.
ReplyDeleteSince it's a slow Saturday afternoon (in quarantine, no less), I also want to take up the invitation to chatter amongst ourselves. I don't have anything original to offer in the way of conversation-starters, so I'll just settle for: "Any good reading/viewing lately?" Here's mine:
READING: Just slogging through some Plato and Plato commentary. He might well be the most amazing philosopher of all time. Nothing against Kant - certainly a very strong case could be made for him, but my personal selection would most likely be a toss-up between Plato and Aristotle. Still, it's a slog; amazement is not the same as enjoyment.
At one point I also realized that I should spend some time with Sextus Empiricus.
VIEWING: I'm not much of a movie person, but I rewatched Best in Show for the first time since it came out some 20 years ago. It seems pretty well-known, but if you aren't aware, it's a dog show mockumentary. I laughed all the way through.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteAs you know there are right around 1 gazillion books and articles on Plato. I'd like to seize the opportunity to recommend the one that in my experience best captures and explicates Plato as a philosopher-cum-literary artist: G. R. F. Ferrari's book on the Phaedrus, Listening to Cicadas.--There is one poem of Aristotle's that survives, yet it's hard to extrapolate imaginatively and make sense of Cicero's description of the Stagirite's prose as "a flowing river of gold."
Just read in the NYT today about the passing of Professor Wolff's friend Todd Gitlin. While it is impossible (and foolish) to reduce the breadth of Gitlin's life and work to mere generalization, he is often perceived of as a leftist who grew inpatient over time with the Utopian tendencies of the far left -- tendencies which at times might serve to hamper constructive social change. One of my favorite quotes from him comes from the mid 1980s and goes something like this: "The Right controls the White House while the Left struggles for control of the English Department."
ReplyDelete-- Jim
I am sure Professor Wolff will share some interesting stories about Todd.
ReplyDeleteSomeone passed along to me recent obituaries for Yale Kamisar, a noted legal scholar, and Jason Epstein. And now (from Jim's comments) I learn about Todd Gitlin. I've only read short pieces of his, not his books.
ReplyDeleteRe Plato (see above): I. Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals has a lot to say about Plato. I read it some yrs ago b/c I like (some of) her novels, but I'm not sure I'd recommend the book to someone who isn't already interested in her work. (Or at least, I wdn't recommend reading it straight through.) C.D.C. Reeve, ed., Plato on Love (Hackett Publishing Co., 2006), has the relevant dialogues and a long introductory essay (which I've only glanced at).
I'm still slowly making my way through Menand's The Free World. Not really even at the midpoint yet.
P.s. There are some very good aspects of The Free World, and I'm definitely learning a fair amount just in terms of factual information alone, but it takes a lot of self-assurance to write a book of more than 700 pages, not counting endnotes, which ends without a conclusion and makes few gestures at tying things together (some remarks he makes in the preface notwithstanding).
ReplyDeleteI haven’t read any philosophy for some—more than a year. Instead, I’ve been reading a lot of history and some literature. currently Euripides Trojan Women, Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism and King’s God’s of the Upper Air—all for reading groups I attend from time to time. It’s unusual for them to bunch up as much as they have now.
ReplyDeleteMy early pandemic reading was the entirety of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon has been superseded by later scholarship so no one reads him for historical content anymore, but he is very entertaining. Some samples:
“M. de Voltaire… unsupported by either fact or probability, has generously bestowed the Canary Islands on the Roman empire.”
“The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.”
“To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly.”
“The books of jurisprudence were interesting to few and entertaining to none.”
“It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.”
“Besieging Rome by land and water, he thrice entered the gates as a barbarian conqueror; profaned the altars, violated the virgins, pillaged the merchants, performed his devotions at St. Peter’s, and left a garrison at the castle of St. Angelo.”
You can get most of the best of Iris Murdoch on Plato from the thin volume The Fire and the Sun; I'm sorry to say that Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals is probably only for us besotted Murdochians. Other interesting books on Plato that you might not stumble on are the sociologist Alvin Gouldner's Enter Plato, which emphasizes Plato's thought within Greek agonism, and Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato, which treats Plato's thought as emerging from criticism of inherited and previously authoritative poetic modes of communication.
ReplyDeleteUnder the heading of viewing: I saw Joel Coen's 'Macbeth' this evening. On the whole I liked it, but it's too late to say anything else rt now.
ReplyDeleteI purchased the following book the 1st of January. It is one of the most blessed books Athena can bestow on a man.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Plato-Complete-Works/dp/0872203492/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3B993EW0JEX7I&keywords=plato+complete+works+hackett&qid=1644125743&sprefix=plato+complete+works%2Caps%2C241&sr=8-3
^Having all of Plato in a single book is a tricky proposition, unless your preferred reading position is to be seated at a desk. :) I like to be able to prop the book up gently on my belly while I lean back or lie down, despite the risk of falling asleep.
ReplyDelete(Another quirk of mine is that I never mark a book with pen/pencil or highlighter; I want my books kept as pristine as possible. This horrified one of my professors, whose personal copy of the assigned reading had decades of wear and markings throughout.)
But anyway, if you have to have all of Plato in a single book, it looks like the Hackett edition is more highly regarded than the one edited by Hamilton and Cairns, so that was probably a good choice. (Though I'm hardly so advanced in my Plato studies that I'd be able to tell the difference myself!)
And thank you once again, John. I've added some Ferrari (Listening to Cicadas) and Murdoch (Existentialists and Mystics) to my list.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteWhat is the quality of the paper in the Hackett ediion? Some of their books use the equivalent of newsprint, and I wouldn't want that. But I am in the process of downsizing my library (moving from a large house to a small apartment necessitates such things) and if I could get Plato from half a shelf to one volume that would help.
I don't anticipate reading any Plato in the near future--too many other things on my reading plate. But I like to have such works nearby because references to them come up constantly in other reading. Just this morning, while reading Euripides' Trojan Women for a Zoom book discussion group tomorrow night, I hit upon the phrase "Oxen of the Sun." Well, that is the name of the 16th episode of James Joyce's Ulysses. The name of Book 12 of the Odyssey in the Fagles translation is "Cattle of the Sun," the Oxen-Cattle difference probably being nothing more than a translator's preference. One of the joys of reading, for me, is when something I'm reading unexpectedly connects with something else I've read.
Re quality of paper in Hackett: it seems perfectly adequate in the C.D.C. Reeve, ed., Plato on Love, that is published by Hackett and that I mentioned earlier. Don't know about their editions of other things but if relatively recent, my guess is it's prob ok.
ReplyDeleteMichael - Existentialists and Mystics, as you prob know, is an essay collection - I'm not sure exactly which of her pieces are in it, but I think it was published posthumously, edited and put together by someone (maybe P. Conradi, I'm not looking it up). But it's likely not a bad way to see if you like her (non-fiction) work.
ReplyDeleteDavid Palmeter,
ReplyDeleteI believe the type of paper in Plato Complete Works is India paper. It's tough, but it reminds me of rice paper. The great thing about Plato Complete Works is it has everything Plato wrote according to the ancients. Besides letters there is a book called Definitions amongst others that I never knew even existed! A Plato Reader is another Hackett book I own that has paper like newsprint but not sturdy rice-like paper. It's understandable since it only has 575 pages, unlike Plato Complete Works which is composed of 1,810 pages total.
At my age what worries me the most is the size of the print. I can't imagine that you can fit the complete works of Plato, including the Laws, in one volume without a print which is too small for me to read comfortably.
ReplyDeleteIt's a luxury, but for 30 years or so I've found it enormously helpful to have big volumes of the complete or at least major works of Plato, Aristotle, and Shakespeare, and then lots of small individual volumes to carry around to libraries, cafes, and supermarket lines. These small volumes often enough also contain enormously helpful notes, as with Cornford's edition of the Timaeus (published as Plato's Cosmology), Irwin's edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, or any Arden volume of Shakespeare. I keep the collected works clean, and heavily underline and mark up the individual works.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading from Ackermann's book, Heterogenieties,Race, Gender,Class,Nation,and State
ReplyDeleteHeri Bergson LAUGHER, Jeremy Barris,God and Plastic Surgery Marx,Nietzsche,Freud and the obvious.And I was reading The Genealogy of Morals, By Nietzsche.
I'm also keeping a notebook, notes to myself or how to keep my brain from madness in the sense of overwhelming anxiety.
Barris's book requires much concentration on my part but he brings up many of the things I find important. Justice, honestly communicating with others and being honest with ones self. It fits in with my motivation or desire to see philosophy as having something important for ones life. Philosophy as a professional discipline,is beyond me, in that i am not much of a reader. I need to read, what I do, these texts over and over, before they make sense. And stating what others find obvious or taken for granted is the importance of reading the introduction.
I'll stop there not saying anything about the other three books.But if one is into what makes comedy comedy looking at Bergson's Essay on the meaning of the comic is a good read. I like it cause I often think of myself as a sort of comic. And its always rewarding when one can relate to what the book is saying or telling us, this makes me feel an enhances sense of self.
s.w.
ReplyDeleteActually, the font size in Plato Complete Works is not bad. I would say it is 1 point down from The Republic for Penguin Classics. Plus, it's dark print which makes it easier for me to read.
Michael Llenos,
ReplyDeleteThanks. You sized me up well: I own the Penguin Classics edition of The Republic.
s.w.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome.
BTW,
ReplyDeleteThe print is as dark as the The Republic by Penguin Classics. It's just that Plato Complete Works looks darker since P.C.W. has a whiter background.
I'm reading from Ackermann's book, Heterogenieties,Race, Gender,Class,Nation,and State
ReplyDeleteHeri Bergson LAUGHER, Jeremy Barris,God and Plastic Surgery Marx,Nietzsche,Freud and the obvious.And I was reading The Genealogy of Morals, By Nietzsche.
I'm also keeping a notebook, notes to myself or how to keep my brain from madness in the sense of overwhelming anxiety.
Barris's book requires much concentration on my part but he brings up many of the things I find important. Justice, honestly communicating with others and being honest with ones self. It fits in with my motivation or desire to see philosophy as having something important for ones life. Philosophy as a professional discipline,is beyond me in that i am not much of a reader. I need to read what I do, these texts over and over, before they make sense.
I'll stop there not saying anything about the other three books.But if one is into what makes comedy comedy looking at Bergson's Essay on the meaning of the comic is a good read. I like it cause I often think of myself as a sort of comic.
^Never heard of Ackermann or his work, so thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteCharles L.,
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff. Some of my favorite professional funny persons (no one too obscure, e.g. Larry David, George Carlin) strike me as very close relatives of the philosopher. I'd definitely be interested to get a better sense of what's going on there - in what ways do the two projects/personalities overlap or resemble one another? So, thanks for the reminder to check out Bergson on laughter.
I'm also intrigued by the mental health journal - any insights you can share from working on that? If that's too personal to elaborate on, I understand.
I occasionally jot some things down myself, in an effort to unburden myself of bad thoughts, and get clearer on some philosophical/psychological confusions. In one entry, for example, I did some reflecting on this passage from Kierkegaard (though I broke it off abruptly, without really getting anywhere) -
If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or do not marry, you will regret both; Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it, weep over them, you will also regret that; laugh at the world's follies or weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world's follies or weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it, believe her not, you will also regret that; believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both; whether you believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both. Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret that; hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy. (More concisely, You make love, you break love; it's all the same: Jimi Hendrix.)
Wittgenstein remarked that a serious and good work of philosophy might consist entirely of jokes, but he gave no indication of what this might be like. Schopenhauer is hilarious in his vituperation of Hegel, and Nietzsche is occasionally funny, though perhaps not as much as he thinks he is. The one remark by a philosopher that always makes me laugh is from The Analects (roughly, from memory): A disciple says to Confucius: "Master, so-and-so always thinks three times before acting. Is that not meritorious?" Confucius: "Twice is enough."
ReplyDeleteWoody Allen and Steve Martin were both philosophy majors.
ReplyDeleteDitto Matt Groening!
ReplyDeleteLFC, Robert J. Ackermann, taught at UMass Amherst. Professor Wolff definitely knows about him, he was a colleague and friend with Ackermann. His last book was Heterogeneities,Race,Gender,Class,Nation and world system. He wrote many others, Popper, Wittgenstein's city, Nietzsche A Frenzied look. And more.
ReplyDeleteHe referred to me as Umass's gypsy scholar,since on numerable occasions I asked if I could sit in the many classes he taught. He always obliged.
I take LFC is Michael,but I sense there is more than one Michael here. Yes, I am open to talking about my notes to myself. I just wanted to acknowledge that you asked me.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I am not sure this is the place to do so since it is Professor Wolff's blog
Sounds good, Charles. I'm not the same commenter as LFC; I'm one of a few Michaels who comment here. Normally I just go by my first name, but once or twice I've authored a comment as "Michael No. 2" or something, to avoid confusion with other Michaels. I just prefer (quasi-)anonymity.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it'd be inappropriate if you felt like sharing any general observations or insights from your experience. A lot of us already do that in one way or another, on any variety of topics. But it's also fine if you'd rather pass.
You mentioned anxiety as one of the main items you explore in your notes. I deal with a lot of that myself - mainly social anxiety; and it can be of general philosophical interest to talk about anxiety anyway, in order to get some clarity on what it is, or what it means; on when it is and isn't "normal" or "healthy"; and on what one might be able to do about it. What "story" does it make sense to tell ourselves about anxiety? (If anything, Prof. Wolff fondly quotes Kierkegaard sometimes, and Kierkegaard wrote a whole book on anxiety! Haha.)
I'm vaguely aware that some writers (e.g. Kierkegaard) characterize anxiety as a sort of object-less fear, as a pervasive mood lacking any specific focus or "trigger" other than the general thought or prospect of one's nothingness or annihilation. (Maybe that's slightly off.) I'm not sure what to make of this. The bit about anxiety lacking an object, or having "nothing" as its object, strikes me as somewhat fishy, because it seems that no one hesitates to use the word "anxiety" for things that do involve more-or-less specific "triggers," e.g. social anxiety, performance anxiety. It's possible I'm being misled by the usual ways of speaking.
As for the management of one's anxiety, I don't have much there, either, apart from some pretty obvious strategies I occasionally find helpful. The goal is to recognize it as a passing, unpleasant, relatively insignificant feeling - comparable to the way in which bad weather is passing and insignificant. Getting there can be very difficult, though. I mostly find myself trying to recollect all the times in the past that my "freakouts" proved to be massively unfounded or exaggerated (by far the majority!). Plus I'll rehearse any number of variants on, "This time tomorrow, it won't even matter."
charles L.,
ReplyDeleteI think you may be relatively new to posting here, and perhaps, though I don't know, to blogs in general. So let me just repeat what Michael already said. I am not Michael; I am LFC. I only ever comment on blogs under my initials (LFC) or my full name (or, on one particular blog, under my first name). I never comment under someone's else name, nor do I comment on the same blog under more than one "handle." Doing so is highly questionable, at best, and I think it's unethical.
I'm sorry if this comment sounds stern, as I'm sure you did not mean any harm by what you said, but suggesting that someone is commenting at the same site under more than one name (or more than one set of initials, or more than one pseudonym, etc.) is actually an allegation of misconduct. And no one here does it, as far as I know.
Oops, think I mixed up Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. From a review of Tillich's Courage to Be:
ReplyDeleteTillich pursues an ontology of anxiety, starting with an analysis of nonbeing, recognizing it as the necessary balance to an exploration of being. It "is not a concept like others. It is the negation of every concept" (34). But nonbeing is a part of being, just as destruction is a part of creation. "Being 'embraces' itself and nonbeing" (34); "there could be no negation if there were no preceding affirmation to be negated" (40). Enter anxiety: "the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing" (35). Tillich differentiates anxiety from fear in that fear has a definite object which can be faced and attacked, endured or conquered, whereas anxiety has no object and "therefore participation, struggle, and love with respect to it are impossible" (36). Without an object or a tactic to defeat it, anxiety surfaces as the pain of impotence, negation and disempowerment. But the power of being stirs deeply beneath anxiety; nonbeing strives toward being when "anxiety strives to become fear, because fear can be met by courage" (39).
Tillich distinguishes three types of anxiety: that of fate and death (ontological); that of emptiness and loss of meaning (spiritual); and that of guilt and condemnation (moral) (41). Tillich discusses these forms of existential anxiety as realities in individual life, "then with their social manifestations in special periods of Western history" (ibid.).
Yeah, at first sight, the things I alluded to earlier (e.g. performance anxiety, social anxiety, public speaking anxiety) are pretty mundane in comparison. Though it may feel like a stretch, I guess you could argue that these are actually more specific, surface-level expressions of what Tillich describes here, which sounds like a primal response to something that threatens our "being" (taken loosely enough to include our sense of self, sense of belonging and purpose, self-respect, etc.).
I think that comes from Heidegger unless it was Tillich who influenced Heidegger.
ReplyDeleteS.Wallerstein, your first thought that Heidegger was the one who had an influence on Tillich, is the correct one.
ReplyDelete