For years the debate in my head was Orwell v Huxley, who got it most right? Then I read Lewis’s ransom trilogy this year and it was almost too accurate. Frighteningly so. What’s worse, that our world has gone crazy, or that its craziness is such a predictable end product of its starting assumptions decades ago that a logical observer saw it all coming so precisely? And how do you think someone like Lewis felt when his skeptical colleagues undoubtedly told him to calm down and stop exaggerating?
The other book that hit me like That Hideous Strength this past year was Demons, or The Possessed, whatever it’s called, by Dostoevsky. Not a coincidence that both he and Lewis take the demonic very very seriously.
Feel free to disagree and mock me, but I find free online courses/lectures about books you read very helpful. Hillsdale has one on Aristotle, I’m sure others do too, and there’s tons of top notch free or near free college level lectures on Lewis out there.
Very intruiging list of books, especially as you describe them. I'm looking forward to reading some of these and to exercising my brain! Thank you for sharing!
Also, completely agree re reading fiction as non-fiction. 25 years ago my Phil 101 professor (Dr. Taiwo - I'll never forget him. . . he was a Lutheran from Nigeria) used fiction to teach the class how to think philosophically. He had us sort through the different works to figure out the author's worldview, or at least the worldview purported by the stories and their characters. After his class I was hooked, and ended-up majoring in Philosophy (and English Lit.). His approach made Philosophy accessible. He taught us how to think philosophically about even the most mundane elements of daily life. If I have any critical thinking skills it's because he helped wake them up and develop them.
Also, 100% agree re Lewis' That Hideous Strength - it's downright prophetic. I think Lewis, because he was a Christian (and because of the way in which he came to be a Christian), had an astonishingly accurate sense of human character, particularly as it played-out in higher ed.
Don't mean to self promote, but this great list of books sets it up nicely. I recently launched an app called CommonPlace (link to follow) that enables readers to save their favorite quotes and annotations and post to a reddit / twitter style platform to interact with other readers (apple.co/3Cgs4YV). Would love for people on this substack to post their favorite passages from erudite books.
It's only available for iPhones right now but a website should be live in February and hopefully an android app by March. Goodreads is a pretty terrible product and only covers book reviews, we are trying to be the centralized community for people to discuss the contents and ideas of book. The idea came from reading 'After Virtue' by Alasdair MacIntyre. We would find specific paragraphs that seemed really important but I had a hard time finding targeted commentary without going to rogue blogs.
It can also be leveraged to host digital book clubs, bible studies, and classrooms. Reach out if you have any questions by emailing me at admin@commonplaceapp.com. Cheers and happy New Year!
I read about 75-90 books, mostly novels (totally agree about author’s worldview etc), and listen to about 40 audiobooks a year. I can’t even fathom not reading and am suspicious of people who don’t!
I read Aristotle this summer on your recommendation from Twitter earlier in the year; thank you, I'm very happy I did. Have you read/recommend his Politics? He left off Ethics on a cliff-hanger. That Hideous Strength has been on my radar...have you read/do you recommend the first two books?
On Mike's list, the book that stood out for me was: Positive Disintegration. It's a tough read, with a lot of jargon, but I could totally relate. In the chapter, Psychopathy and Psychoneurosis, the sentence that stands out for me is: "Without feelings of nervousness, psychoneuroses, and feelings of inferiority, there is no positive disintegration, and without positive disintegration, there is no development." So, yeah, all that teenage angst and obsession with goth music and heavy metal was actually necessary, and good for me. Also, the book helped me to see what my "gifted" 17-year old son has gone through the last 4 years. Feelings of inferiority come with the territory.
If we want to know the truest expression of something as old as the Christian Church, we need to go back to the source, and see what the earliest practitioners and leaders believed, taught, and wrote. Those who knew Jesus, those who learned at the feet of the Apostles, and those who governed the Church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries would not agree that the Orthodox Church was the truest expression of Christianity.
I read “Portable Jung” a couple of years ago. What a great book to introduce yourself to Jung and depth psychology. It was compiled by Joseph Campbell. I believe he also wrote the foreword. The Portable Jung (Portable Library) https://a.co/d/4kVXcDd
In The Undiscovered Self (1957), Jung knew: "You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return. The leaders of the mass State cannot avoid being deified, and wherever crudities of this kind have not yet been put over by force, obsesive factors arise in their stead, charged with demonic energy...Hence it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in..."
For years the debate in my head was Orwell v Huxley, who got it most right? Then I read Lewis’s ransom trilogy this year and it was almost too accurate. Frighteningly so. What’s worse, that our world has gone crazy, or that its craziness is such a predictable end product of its starting assumptions decades ago that a logical observer saw it all coming so precisely? And how do you think someone like Lewis felt when his skeptical colleagues undoubtedly told him to calm down and stop exaggerating?
The other book that hit me like That Hideous Strength this past year was Demons, or The Possessed, whatever it’s called, by Dostoevsky. Not a coincidence that both he and Lewis take the demonic very very seriously.
Feel free to disagree and mock me, but I find free online courses/lectures about books you read very helpful. Hillsdale has one on Aristotle, I’m sure others do too, and there’s tons of top notch free or near free college level lectures on Lewis out there.
Very intruiging list of books, especially as you describe them. I'm looking forward to reading some of these and to exercising my brain! Thank you for sharing!
Also, completely agree re reading fiction as non-fiction. 25 years ago my Phil 101 professor (Dr. Taiwo - I'll never forget him. . . he was a Lutheran from Nigeria) used fiction to teach the class how to think philosophically. He had us sort through the different works to figure out the author's worldview, or at least the worldview purported by the stories and their characters. After his class I was hooked, and ended-up majoring in Philosophy (and English Lit.). His approach made Philosophy accessible. He taught us how to think philosophically about even the most mundane elements of daily life. If I have any critical thinking skills it's because he helped wake them up and develop them.
Also, 100% agree re Lewis' That Hideous Strength - it's downright prophetic. I think Lewis, because he was a Christian (and because of the way in which he came to be a Christian), had an astonishingly accurate sense of human character, particularly as it played-out in higher ed.
Don't mean to self promote, but this great list of books sets it up nicely. I recently launched an app called CommonPlace (link to follow) that enables readers to save their favorite quotes and annotations and post to a reddit / twitter style platform to interact with other readers (apple.co/3Cgs4YV). Would love for people on this substack to post their favorite passages from erudite books.
It's only available for iPhones right now but a website should be live in February and hopefully an android app by March. Goodreads is a pretty terrible product and only covers book reviews, we are trying to be the centralized community for people to discuss the contents and ideas of book. The idea came from reading 'After Virtue' by Alasdair MacIntyre. We would find specific paragraphs that seemed really important but I had a hard time finding targeted commentary without going to rogue blogs.
It can also be leveraged to host digital book clubs, bible studies, and classrooms. Reach out if you have any questions by emailing me at admin@commonplaceapp.com. Cheers and happy New Year!
I read about 75-90 books, mostly novels (totally agree about author’s worldview etc), and listen to about 40 audiobooks a year. I can’t even fathom not reading and am suspicious of people who don’t!
I read Aristotle this summer on your recommendation from Twitter earlier in the year; thank you, I'm very happy I did. Have you read/recommend his Politics? He left off Ethics on a cliff-hanger. That Hideous Strength has been on my radar...have you read/do you recommend the first two books?
On Mike's list, the book that stood out for me was: Positive Disintegration. It's a tough read, with a lot of jargon, but I could totally relate. In the chapter, Psychopathy and Psychoneurosis, the sentence that stands out for me is: "Without feelings of nervousness, psychoneuroses, and feelings of inferiority, there is no positive disintegration, and without positive disintegration, there is no development." So, yeah, all that teenage angst and obsession with goth music and heavy metal was actually necessary, and good for me. Also, the book helped me to see what my "gifted" 17-year old son has gone through the last 4 years. Feelings of inferiority come with the territory.
If we want to know the truest expression of something as old as the Christian Church, we need to go back to the source, and see what the earliest practitioners and leaders believed, taught, and wrote. Those who knew Jesus, those who learned at the feet of the Apostles, and those who governed the Church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries would not agree that the Orthodox Church was the truest expression of Christianity.
https://www.hprweb.com/2012/01/confronting-the-claim-of-eastern-orthodoxy-to-be-the-true-church/
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-i-am-not-eastern-orthodox
I read “Portable Jung” a couple of years ago. What a great book to introduce yourself to Jung and depth psychology. It was compiled by Joseph Campbell. I believe he also wrote the foreword. The Portable Jung (Portable Library) https://a.co/d/4kVXcDd
In The Undiscovered Self (1957), Jung knew: "You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return. The leaders of the mass State cannot avoid being deified, and wherever crudities of this kind have not yet been put over by force, obsesive factors arise in their stead, charged with demonic energy...Hence it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in..."