Reading Program For the Next Several Months (or so)
A lazy post
Alright, look, I’ll be honest. I kinda blew my wad the last couple weeks with some reasonably effortful effort-posts, and then I wound up paying too much attention to electoral politics for this week (it happens to the best of us), and thus I can’t bring myself to say anything that matches the typically high standards I try to impose on myself. I don’t have any American presidential election 2024 celebrations, analyses, or post-mortems to offer the world. There’s nothing I could say that hasn’t been better said elsewhere.
So what that means is, it’s time to relax. Time to take a breather. I’ll do that by giving you all a sneak peak — a teaser, if you will — into what I’m looking to explore for the foreseeable future, maybe the next full year and beyond. What will follow is a list of books I’m intending to get around to reading eventually. I’ll offer helpful annotations when and where possible so as to demonstrate why I’m interested in them, and whether or not they’ll factor directly into my writing or merely stand as potentially useful reference points to keep on the back burner. This will also probably not be an exhaustive list, as I regularly add new books to them and jumble my reading order about somewhat haphazardly, often discovering and reading something on a whim within a single week.
Literature
For the most part, I don’t read classic works of literature to have anything in particular to write about. I read them because they’re good! And there are a whole bunch of classic works that I haven’t read. These days, I like working on the novels and other works of literature that were quite popular from the baroque period up to the eighteenth century, and some of them are massively long. Again, don’t expect book reviews for these. At most, they make for interesting reference points, but they’re really just for my own personal edification.
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
I started this one recently, and I’m about a quarter of the way through it. It’s a gigantic tome, about 1,400 pages. This was the one that massively influenced Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, one of my favorite novels, and Northrop Frye saw as it the premier example of the Menippean satire, though this classification has been disputed (as all things are in literary criticism).
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1748)
The Anatomy of Melancholy is long, but Clarissa is yet somehow longer, totaling about 1,500 pages. It’s the sequel to his breakout hit Pamela, which was the most popular book of the entire eighteenth century. I’ve read that one, and it’s not bad, though you get a sense of how peculiar the British sense of human psychology was during this time. In Pamela, you’ve got a perverted and lustful aristocrat who keeps trying to have sex with his maidservant, often going to absurd and outrageous lengths to “seal the deal” while she virtuously strives to spurn his advances over and over, and then all of a sudden he does a complete 180 and decides to marry her with complete and utter sincerity and gentility. His personality change comes fast enough to give the reader whiplash. For that reason, the first half is unfortunately much more fun than the second, although some fun and scandalous stuff happens towards the end (I suppose because Richardson realized he couldn’t just fill the entire second half of his book with blathering conversations about the proper role of the husband and wife in the bonds of matrimony). Anyways, Clarissa should be an amusing book if only for the half-formed sense of the human psyche that pervaded novels during that time (you can blame empiricist philosophy partly for that).
Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)
I’ve been looking forward to reading this one for a while. Fielding was a funny guy. After Pamela came out, he quickly wrote and published a satire of it called Shamela (1741), which is quite short, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. If you read Pamela and hated it, you deserve to read Shamela to get the lingering taste out of your mouth. Think of it as a heaping help of ice cream after a dinner consisting of brussels sprouts and liverwurst. Anyways, Tom Jones was his major breakthrough success, and its length is much more forgiving than the first two books, at around 800 pages. It also broke away from the constricting form of the epistolary novel (in which one person writes a letter to the other over and over), opting instead for a third-person omniscient narrative form more similar to what we expect from novels today. Some readers have said that there’s a good belly laugh every couple pages. We’ll see, I suppose.
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782)
This one is a 400-page epistolary novel that in some sense helps explain the tensions between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie leading to the French revolution, along with Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers (1781). But Dangerous Liaisons is much better-remembered than The Robbers, having been adapted into many different kinds of media over and over through the ages. It’s a libertine novel. It’s scandalous. Should be enjoyable.
Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what this one is about or why I should read it. But it’s supposedly one of those major novels of the eighteenth century. So I’m reading it. Let’s move onto the next section.
Strict Philosophy
In this area, I’m mostly interested in the nominalism vs. realism debate. There are a few reasons for this. One is that I’ve often seen it held as a mainstay of online “Trad” types that William of Ockham’s particular contribution to nominalism had a terrible effect on Western Civilization and set the stage for a major philosophical decline, which then helped decay all of society. The main promoter of this theory is Richard Weaver, whose book Ideas Have Consequences I’ve actually read (it’s quite bad, and he doesn’t even discuss Ockham much at all). I’m skeptical of this perspective, and in fact, I’d argue that appropriating nominalism not so much as a philosophical viewpoint but rather as a soft way of thinking is often helpful in making sense of today’s society, where a rather large amount of concepts people discuss are in themselves poorly defined, needlessly abstract, seemingly worthless, and, in a word, fake. Max Stirner understood this.
At the same time, however, C.S. Peirce made the excellent point that realism is the only valid position since concepts must be understood as real, i.e. ontologically valid, insofar as they occur in the experience of “thirdness” — i.e. the triadic structure of meaning divided between representamen, object, and interpretant — which is an inextricable part of all cognition and language-derived communication. In fact, Peirce’s concern with semiotics stemmed principally from his opposition to metaphysical nominalism, and he anticipated (the much dimmer) Richard Weaver’s thesis, claiming occasionally that nominalism is a serious threat to civilization and the advancement of the sciences.
To make matters even more interesting, Charles William Morris, a later semiotician, wound up completely ripping off C.S. Peirce’s semiotic categories and terminology, reappropriating them for a nominalist approach mutatis mutandis. This is an interesting topic in itself, and despite some criticisms I have of Peirce, I suspect Peirce has the superior approach (Morris relies on the developmental psychology of George Herbert Mead, whereas Peirce tries to situate his semiotics in formal logic, which he considers fundamentally prior to psychology). Anyways, here are the two nominalism-related books I’m working on. They’re both about William of Ockham. Cartesian nominalism will have to come later.
Armand Maurer, The Philosophy of William of Ockham: In The Light of Its Principles (1999)
This one is a sizable, well-researched, and well-written monograph on William of Ockham, and I’m about halfway through it. It’s making me realize that I need to spend more time understanding Duns Scotus as well.
Marilyn Adams, William Ockham (1987). This is a gigantic, two-volume, 1,400-page work on William of Ockham. Adams wanted him to be renamed “William Ockham” in the same way that Thomas Aquinas isn’t “Thomas of Aquino.” Taking out the “of” from someone’s name is apparently some sort of grand honorific for medievals. Anyways, I’ve put a dent in this one, and so far, so good. Adams’s approach is somewhat unique, and it’s not easy reading at all. She mainly just goes through Ockham’s arguments individually, one by one, breaking them down and logically analyzing them, often comparing them to ideas from modern analytics such as Quine, and then she evaluates them herself. It’s a pretty admirable scholarly project, and the book has been very well-received in its field. It has caused me to realize that William of Ockham’s nominalism is not nearly as straightforward as people present it as being, and he really wasn’t a “pure nominalist,” if such a thing can even truly exist.
Media Ecology
John Durham Peeters, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (2015)
I’ve remarked on this book before, and remains a book I’m interested in. The author is clearly taking the idea of media studies and expanding it far beyond its original intent, which I’m perfectly fine with. Given that I’m somewhat familiar with the author’s argument, I’ve already ran over in my head various objections I suspect I’ll have, as well as how I’d prefer to define “medium,” so as not to make it excessively obtuse.
Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone (1863)
This one might better belong in the “semiotics” section, I’m not really sure. But it’s a scientific analysis of how the brain perceives sound, and the author argues that much of Western music theory comes from naturally derived properties of acoustics, meaning it isn’t just a collection of arbitrary rules. Although this book is quite heavy on the science, it was actually written for a popular audience, strangely enough, which means I’ll probably enjoy reading it. At times, this book supposedly gets a bit psychedelic in its implications, as the author focuses quite extensively on the concept of overtones (think of the way Tuvan throat singers can produce two notes at once), and he therefore must explore questions like, “When does a bunch of noise start to take on the property of a distinct tone?” This book had a marked influence on a number of 20th century classical musicians, as well as the free jazz drummer Milford Graves.
David R. Olson, The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading (1994)
This is just another book arguing for and developing what’s now called “the literacy hypothesis.” According to this hypothesis, the creation of literacy changed the way people’s brains work and made certain kinds of thinking possible to scale up in ways that hadn’t been available before. This theory is a cornerstone of McLuhan-style media ecology, and it has been attacked pretty from just about all angles by various anthropologists, most notably Ruth Finnegan (whose books are worth reading). One of the main proponents of this theory was Jack Goody, and he was willing to engage with the hostile scholarship, carefully reformulating his ideas, taking their criticisms into consideration, and yet still retaining the same central premise. I have no clue as to how David Olson approaches the topic, and this book was written late in the scholarly debate (I believe the Finnegan types had pretty much won the argument in the academic mainstream by that point). So I have no idea if Olson says anything new here, or if he’s just reiterating old arguments, preaching to the choir.
Semiotics/Linguistics
Vyvyan Evans, The Language Myth (1994)
This one is a fairly straightforward takedown of the Chomskyan/Pinkerian theory of language as an evolved, instinctive adaptation that the brain acquired through natural selection, as evinced through a universal grammar discernible through the study of syntax. I already know the major arguments against both Chomsky and Pinker, but I’m interested to see what this guy says. He also includes a section arguing that the various Chomskyan attacks on Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf are overstated, partially defending their ideas. Could be promising.
John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The first Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (2001)
I’m about halfway through this one, a 750-page survey of all western philosophy from the standpoint of Peircean semiotics. I’m about to get to Descartes and the moderns. Deely believes that the French postmodernists were actually just modernists striking a quasi-nihilist pose almost as a sort of seasoning, essentially taking on the well-worn assumptions of Cartesian and Kantian idealism but repackaging them for snobby postwar intellectuals. No arguments from me there. But then he says that semioticians should start calling themselves the real postmodernists, and that’s about where he loses me. I see no need for this kind of semantical jibjab. Anyways, so far, there are tons of interesting ideas in this book, though I have to admit I can’t really accept it as a good history of philosophy so much as a guide to what Deely himself thinks of the philosophical tradition. For instance, there’s an extended section in which Deely excoriates pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite for being a forger and con artist, refusing to accept his legitimacy in the history of Catholic theology. I can admire the passion here, but I have to admit I don’t buy Deely’s claim that the only reason medieval theologians embraced pseudo-Dionysius’s ideas so strongly was solely because of him claiming to be the actual Dionysius. I think they just simply were more receptive to Neoplatonic ideas at that time, which Deely really, really doesn’t like.
Brian Kemple, The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (2019)
Before this book was available online on academic book piracy websites, I contacted the author asking for a free pdf so I could read it and not pay the bloated price that academic publishers typically charge (they always price-gouge because they know a certain number of university libraries will feel obligated to purchase them). He was gracious enough to send me one. This was maybe four or five years ago, and I wound up putting it down after the first fifty pages or so for an extended period of time, deciding that I’d need to familiarize myself with Deely better before going further into his work. So far, so good, though.
Daniel Heller-Roazen, Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language (2005).
This one was a recommendation from a mutual pal on social media. It’s short, and it looks pretty fun. And it seems to bear some connection to various works I’ve read on mnemotechnics and the art of memory.
Aesthetics
I’ll freely admit that I’m not interested in becoming a great philosopher of aesthetics. In fact, I think the philosophy of aesthetics is a complete mess, at least judging by how it’s reproduced at the level of popular discourse. Most people say the word “aesthetics” when they simply mean “style,” and the debates as to whether artists should strive for “the beautiful” or use their art to reproduce the ugliness of society grow tiresome, fast. I also regularly encounter discussions on Kantian or Burkean aesthetics that are just simply wrong and try to say more than is really permissible.
What I’m mainly interested in from this area are works on aesthetics that a) specifically deal with the arts, but b) precede Kant, because I believe that in pre-modern aesthetic treatises, there’s more of a sensitivity to how the meaning and value of an artistic work emerges during the interplay between the audience and the object of contemplation (be it theater, music, or whatever). In modern discussions on aesthetics, this awareness seems to diminish, and people instead focus specifically on what makes a work of art “good” or “bad” without concern for how an audience member should calibrate himself to make it valuable. Essentially, I’m interested in perspectives on art that have nothing to do with the modern ideal of “art for the sake of art,” which attempts to raise art to the level of a surrogate religion. I suspect there’s more wisdom to be gleaned from figures like pseudo-Longinus, et al. than in most modern work.
Somewhat relevant to my interests is the German art movement Der Neue Sachlichkeit (“the new objectivity”), whose representatives sometimes shamelessly encouraged people to use art for specific purposes, or during specific tasks — part of their broader rejection of expressionism. But I haven’t yet found a good overview on them that I’m confident about reading.
Kailash Pati Misrha, Aesthetic Philosophy of Abhinavagupta (2006).
Abhinavagupta was a 10th-11th century Shaivist philosopher from Kashmir, and he’s mostly known for uniting various disparate schools of non-dualist Shaivism, bringing them together to form a coherent doctrine that we now call “Tantra.” Kashmir was a trade city during his time, and it was quite cosmopolitan for that period, and so there were lots of theatrical productions. Abhinavagupta thus wrote quite a bit on the experience of watching the theater, and he made some serious contributions to the field of aesthetics. Anyway, this is a book that I believe summarizes his ideas, and it’s the only one I know of, so I’m going to read it.
Zeami, On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami (1983)
This is an edited collection of primary sources from Zeami Motokiyo (c. 1363 – c. 1443), the son of the creator of “modern” Japanese Nō Theater. He wrote quite a bit on what makes a play work correctly. Much like Abhinavagupta, he’s interested in the interplay between the audience and the production.
Tomas Kulka, Kitsch and Art (1994)
This is outside of my main interest in aesthetics, but I’m nonetheless curious about what it has to say. I’m a longstanding defender of kitsch. I appreciate that it has absolutely nothing to say and yet somehow manages to infuriate killjoys and no-fun-niks everywhere from both the political left and the political right.
Kulchur
Adam Whybray, The Art of Czech Animation: A History of Political Dissent and Allegory (2020)
An academic study on Czech animators, focusing on some of my favorites. I’m not that interested in their political views, but whatever.
Jan Baetens, Rebuilding Story Worlds: The Obscure Cities by Schuiten and Peeters (2020)
The fact that “comics studies” exists in academia is ridiculous on its face, but I’m nonetheless curious if it can occasionally yield some decent work. Schuiten and Peeters are excellent comic creators, and their Obscure Cities series is one of the greatest achievements in comic book history.
Edward Braun, Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre (1979)
I already announced my intention to study Meyerhold in this post, since he was a major innovator in acting styles that eschew psychological realism, something I strongly advocate for as an artistic approach that’s truer to the digital era.
Christopher Innes, Edward Gordon Craig: A Vision of the Theater (1998)
Again, Edward Gordon Craig was another innovator in theater production who held strong skepticism toward “acting” rather similar to Meyerhold, and therefore he’s got my attention. Although Edward Gordon Craig is pretty interesting in his own right. He was simpatico with the Italian futurists and seemed to have a pretty right-wing sensibility. I’m surprised he hasn’t been discussed more extensively by the art-focused white nationalists and other segments of the non-mainstream right.
Evolution / Biology
Nessa Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance (2011)
A book directed for a popular audience covering the research in epigenetics up to the 2010s. Epigenetics is one of those subjects I’ve been ambivalent about for quite some time, because while on the one hand, I’ve always been skeptical about the Neodarwinism perhaps best exemplified by Richard Dawkins, I’ve also been skeptical about epigenetics on the other hand, since it has been discussed quite irresponsibly. People who can’t handle the possibility of racial/ethnic/sexual differences at the biological level want to use epigenetics to run away from uncomfortable truths. People who have fallen prey to the nonsense of the therapy industry want to use epigenetics as a way of reifying psychological trauma, treating it as a disease that can be passed down from generation to generation. Woo-woo new-age types talk about epigenetics to justify all sorts of nonsense. But clearly, despite these various bozos, there is something there. That Nessa Carey has been careful not to endorse some of the dumber claims surrounding epigenetics that I’ve seen floating around has been encouraging to me.
Anton Markoš, Jana Švorcová; Epigenetic Processes and the Evolution of Life (2019)
This is an attempt to explain the role that epigenetics plays in the evolutionary development of all life, with what seems like a biosemiotic bent, since it emphasizes common communication protocols between organisms as a necessary condition for their development (I think so, anyways. The descriptions I’ve seen have been somewhat murky.)
Jesper Hoffmeyer, Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs (2009)
This is one of those major texts of biosemiotics that I’ve read plenty about yet haven’t actually bothered to read. It’s pretty essential for what I’m interested in, so I suppose I have no excuse!
Claus Emmeche, The Garden in the Machine: The Emerging Science of Artificial Life (1994)
This study, from what I gather, acts as a summary of approaches from various scientific fields to the question of how one might use computers to generate life artificially. The author goes into great detail demonstrating what researchers consider to be the most salient differences between biological life and computer simulations of life processes. If this turns out to be a crappy book, I can at least consider it useful as a time capsule of what people were saying in the mid-90s.
Terrence Deacon, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter (2011)
I was strongly impressed with Deacon’s Symbolic Species from 1997, and his continued research into the origins of human language acquisition have been quite illuminating/clarifying. But whereas Symbolic Species dealt strictly with the development of human language, this book deals more abstractly with the development of semiosis in general, ultimately suggesting that the origin of consciousness and the origin of all biological life are inextricably connected.
Alright, that’s enough. If any of you lovely people have suggestions for things I ought to read connected to these topics of intellectual inquiry, feel free to leave them in the comments. This is also definitely not an exhaustive list, as there are some essential works on semiotics that I’m going through and yet didn’t mention here, partly because I just don’t have much to say about them and they seem to function mostly as padding.
I’m one of those people who endlessly adds books to my already-bloated list of books to read, downloading .pdfs and putting them into folders I’ll never open, purchasing paperbacks and letting the pages yellow and rot away in my bookshelves… that’s the lifestyle. Feel free to weigh in on any of these if you’ve read them or can think of a better selection.