Classic and the right amount

A reading group started with friends in 2022, and the memorable first book was On Reading by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) (Iwanami Bunko, translated by Shinobu Saito).

Based on my awareness of the problems of the previous entry, I decided to start with a classic that I could read in the time available.

This book is approximately 108 pages including footnotes.

The whole of this book, including the footnotes, is approximately 108 pages, of which the text entitled “On Reading” is about 15 pages, so there is little chance of not being able to read it in the time available. It is also appropriate for the purpose of the meeting to consider the act of “reading” itself.

The books were selected in consultation with the partners. About one month was set aside between deciding on the books and holding the reading session.

 

Outline of this book

02-1Background
The author, Schopenhauer, was a 19th century philosopher whose work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation, 1819.) is probably more famous than this book, On Reading.

Inheriting the idealism prevailing in Germany at the time, he developed a worldview in which the world we perceive is an expression of an underlying ‘will’. In the world, the various wills of human beings are in conflict and fight each other over the right to take the initiative. The will that loses the struggle suffers, and so long as it has the will, suffering cannot be removed from human life, according to Schopenhauer.

The philosophy that our life and suffering are inseparable gives the impression of a seemingly hopeless and pessimistic world. For this reason, Schopenhauer was regarded by some as a pessimistic philosopher.

However, in his book he draws the conclusion that the path to liberation from the suffering of life through the struggle of wills is to deny that we have a will. Here we can see an affinity with the ‘liberation’ of Buddhism and Indian philosophy, which aims at liberation from the suffering of this life by renouncing desire.

Because of this background, there seems to be a reputation for Schopenhauer as a philosopher of ‘life’ who sees things from a different perspective to traditional Western thought and the Christian worldview.

02-2Contents of this book
The book discussed here, On Reading, was not exactly published as a book.
It was extracted from Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), published some 30 years after the main work, The World as Will and Representation, and published independently in Japan.

The title suggests that it is meant to supplement the contents of the main work, but from what I have read, it seems to have enough content to be more than just an appendix.

While taking up the form of a criticism of the reading habits of the intellectual classes of the time, we can glimpse some aspects of his philosophy through this criticism, and the contents are truly appropriate for the first meeting of this society.

This book consists of three papers, ‘Thoughts’, ‘Writings and Style’ and ‘On Reading’, but the arguments are consistently concise.

It is the assertion that borrowing the ideas of others, or speaking the words of something as if they were one’s own thoughts, is false speculation, and that what one thinks and writes for oneself is of true value.

According to him, in reading we should not concentrate only on reading books. For it is only through contemplation that one becomes a real intellectual, and merely reading and being satisfied with it is mere imitation. Schopenhauer’s criticism is harsh.

However, in the publishing world of his time, ‘bad books’, disguised in rhetorical passages or emphasising the author’s social position in order to attract readers, were published in great numbers for money and prestige.
As our time is limited, he advises that we should try to avoid reading such ‘bad books’ as much as possible.

As criteria for judging “bad” and “good” books, Schopenhauer says to look at author and style. He believes that style in particular is the face of thought, and is the most revealing of the author’s spirit.

What should be grasped in reading is not what the author “thought about” but “how he thought”, and not his personal circumstances but the traces of his thoughts. Authors should be careful to represent them in their writings, and readers should be trained to read them from the style.

To write down the thoughts produced by one’s own contemplation, and to discover and preserve such good books for posterity. He defines this as a ‘history of literature and art’ (‘history of the intellect’), as distinct from a ‘political history’ centred on power and insecurity.
The book closes with the idea of a “history of literature as tragedy”.

 

[Impressions]The depth of philosophical practice through reading criticism.

03-1A historical-philosophical perspective against the background of dialectics</p

The essays in this book consist of short sentences that capture the propositions in a concise manner. It is therefore not necessary to follow the logical structure in sequence as in the thesis.

For example, “The condition for reading a good book is not to read a bad book. For life is short, and time and strength are limited” (p96), which alone gives us a reminder to reflect on our everyday world.
One of the charms of this book is that you can read it in such a way as to look for sentences that appeal to your own senses as you turn the pages.

On the other hand, if you read carefully, you will find that each essay proceeds with its own particular logical form.
It is a “dialectical” logic, in which contrasting concepts are arranged from within a single subject, and conclusions are drawn through mutual contradictions.

For example, the book is full of opposing concepts, such as “the ignorant rich” and “poverty and destitution” at the beginning, “having others think for you” and “the ability to think for yourself” (p 91), “bad books” and “good books” (p 96), “history of the will” and “history of the intellect” (p 100).

These opposing concepts are in some respects of an opposite nature, but their occurrence is a common concept.
For example, ‘bad book’ and ‘good book’ are opposing concepts, the counterfeit of imitation and the genuine idea, but they arise from the same word ‘book’.
The ‘having others think for you’ and the ‘ability to think for yourself’ are likewise conceived from the same single act of ‘reading’.

This is different from the optimistic and simplistic thinking that things can easily be replaced for the better if the content in question is discarded.

For example, just because we should avoid “asking others to think for us”, it is not a simple matter to say that everything will be solved if we quit “reading” altogether. The ability to think for oneself is also born from the same ‘reading’.

Therefore, we refine “reading” through extracting and practising the positive elements of the act of “reading” while partially criticising it.
And it follows that we make the history of the world in which we live through the repeated contestation and integration of these opposing concepts.

This can be said to be a characteristic of the Dialectic, as typified by the dialogical method of Socrates and Plato in ancient times.

What is important is that it tries to depict the process of the making of history by the accumulation of our actions as a logical necessity by which the history of the world is made.

It can be said that this is an attempt to capture the movement that the way of being of the human subject leads to the history of the world as a universal law that transcends the boundaries of countries, languages and cultures.

This is what makes this book not just a book of secular criticism, but a historical philosophy book.

03-2Cautions from the perspective of the contemporary media environment
On the other hand, however, there are certain limitations to this book based on the background of the time it was published.

For example, the anonymity mentioned in Writings and Styles.
Schopenhauer points out that in the publishing situation of his time, it was his responsibility as an author to write books based on his real name and signature, while criticising authors who wrote books that may or may not be true in order to create a buzz.
However, in the 2020s, when it has become possible to trace various personal information from names, and the risk of ‘flames’ and the like arising from information that is not necessarily true has increased, it is certain that there is violence that can be avoided by remaining anonymous.

Also, we should not overlook the change in media from the 19th century, when books referred to publications on paper, to the diversification of means of information transmission and reception.
With social networking services such as Youtube and tiktok becoming the main means of information gathering for people in their teens and twenties, is it possible that our reasoning and sensibilities have changed significantly since then?

With the generalisation of web media, the boundary between ‘author’ (sender of information) and ‘reader’ (receiver of information) has become blurred and information is communicated in excess and inevitably. It has become extremely difficult to create an environment in which we can avoid “bad books” and extract and read only “good books” in the midst of increasingly complex information communication.

Real-time interactive information communication is becoming faster and faster. New information emerges before we have time to distinguish between “bad books” and “good books”, forcing us to make choices.
At such speed, with no time to check the quality of information, the current situation in which loud and assertive opinions wield power seems to be leading to the ‘political history’ of fear and anxiety predicted by Schopenhauer.

In reading this book, published in the 19th century, we are also asked whether our attitude is ‘self-reflective’, whether we read the classics as classics, or whether we seek to backlight contemporary issues from a post-20th century perspective.

 

Why Schopenhauer now: the rebirth of universal philosophy.

Nietzsche, who read Schopenhauer as a young man and who himself said he was greatly influenced by him, referred to the modern age as the age in which “God is dead”. Christianity, the absolute standard of values, has lost its power, and those who have lost something to believe in despair. He predicted an “age of nihilism” in which people would lose the will to participate in society and relate to others, and would live with the flow, feeling powerless.

What about the present time in which we live?
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where there have been countless revelations of corruption both before and after the Games, the Corona disaster, which shows no sign of abating, the earthquake and nuclear power plant…… seem to have brought temporary change to the stagnant social situation, but it was not the democratic process of elections, but the violence of individual shootings. The only thing that seemed to have brought about a temporary change in the stagnant social situation was not the democratic process of elections, but the violence of individual shootings.

The present situation, in which ideals have lost their power and stronger power and violence control society, may be a nihilism more seriously aggravated than Nietzsche predicted.

Democracy, which aims at self-rule by the reason of citizens, certainly seems to be dysfunctional in the face of these events.
In such circumstances, what is the point of reading Schopenhauer’s philosophy now?

The idea that agreements and universal values shared by members of society have lost their value, and that the importance is placed on the perceptions and values of each individual standpoint, is one of the philosophical positions known as ‘relativism’.
In the 20th century, a more sophisticated form of relativism was developed in the ‘post-modern’ philosophy, which thoroughly criticised the validity of universal principles of modern society such as freedom, equality and justice. The idea of “postmodernism”, which thoroughly criticises the legitimacy of universal principles of modern society such as freedom, equality and justice, became popular.

“The truth is different for everyone”, “People are people, I am me”, “Honest feelings are important, not pretexts”, “Strong, not right”, “Believe, not true” ……, these mottoes may indeed coincide with our sense of the times. Many of these mottoes may indeed be in line with our sense of the times.

However, does this relativism deprive us of the opportunity to accept different values and to talk about the universal shape that society should take?

From these reflections we can draw a hypothesis.

The excesses of relativism and postmodern philosophy have not been effective against contemporary nihilism. Rather, through its scepticism of universal values, it has actively promoted the dismantling of the basic principles of modern society.

If this is the case, then what is needed now is to revisit pre-postmodern philosophy and reappraise it in a form suited to the present, and on that basis, can we not once again regenerate the universal values that have been dismantled?
This seems to be connected to a project of renewal not only in philosophy, but in the humanities as a whole.

Schopenhauer’s philosophy is founded on the universal value system that a ‘true literary history’ is created by our actions and deeds. In this sense, it is distinct from extreme relativist philosophy.
If the above project were possible, then through Schopenhauer we would have access to one of its precursor works.
This book contains great suggestions as a gateway to that philosophy.

 

Remarks as a reading group.

This reading group started with two of us, but as mentioned above, Schopenhauer’s On Reading contains very contemporary suggestions.

While some of the expressions and contents of the book, if we try to accept the text as it is, we feel the limitations of the times, the macroscopic viewpoint that our actions through reading are connected to the larger history was on a scale that is only possible with classical philosophy.

While some may argue that it is a metaphysics biased towards ideas in view of the concrete, local, empirical methods found in analytic philosophy and social science since the 20th century, the integrated perspective that tries to see the world as a single history seemed rather fresh to me.

It was a great experience to share these impressions. On the other hand, the greatest value of the reading group was that we were given perspectives and opinions that we could not have obtained by reading alone.

In particular, we could not have talked about the distance of chronological restrictions without the perspective of our partners.
They mentioned the ideas of Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) in terms of the relationship between media and people, and Paul Virilio (1932-2018) in terms of the impact of these accelerating changes on people.
Haruki Murakami (1949-), Paul Auster (1947-) and others were also mentioned as examples of contemporary solitude due to postmodernity.
These broadened the discussion and deepened the theme of postmodern and classical philosophy.

In terms of learning about new books, not just in the field of specialised philosophy, and gaining perspectives that I would not have noticed on my own, once again book clubs are truly meaningful and enjoyable. I would like to continue it with great care.

Next time, we plan to read The Origin of Human Inequality (Rousseau, translated by Kiyoharu Honda and Noboru Hiraoka, Iwanami Bunko).

Reference
On Reading (Schopenhauer, translated by Shinobu Saito, Iwanami Bunko)
Schopenhauer (Kota Umeda, Kodansha Gendai Shinsho)
What kind of science is dialectics (Tsutomu Miura, Kodansha Gendai Shinsho)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Philosophy(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/#6)