An ambitious plan

Robert Paul Wolff made a list of twenty-five philosophical books for grad students to read. Since I’m something of an eternal first-year grad student, I intend to get through all of these books – including those I’ve already read – and twenty-five more because, as Wolff acknowledges, the list includes too little from the Middle Ages and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; besides, I want to tackle a few “non-essentials” like Butler’s Analogy of Religion (recently reissued).

Having begun with Plato’s shorter dialogs, I’m now breezing through Robin Waterfield’s Oxford World’s Classics translation of the Republic. Why isn’t this version assigned more often? It’s cheap, it’s helpfully annotated, and it’s got the smoothest and most propulsive prose of any English Republic I’ve looked at. Yet I don’t remember my grad school teachers or classmates reading it. (I do see that one teacher has endorsed Waterfield’s new translation of Marcus Aurelius.)

Two quirks of this Republic. (1) As a reviewer points out, Waterfield writes “morality” instead of “justice” for dikaiosyne, as well as “type” instead of “form” or “idea” for idea/eidos. I am not put off. I can juggle a few conspicuous word changes. These don’t feel as strange as when my beloved Good News Translation of the Bible says “Covenant Box” instead of “Ark” or “Sudanese” instead of “Ethiopian.” (2) Traditionally, the Republic is divided rather arbitrarily into ten “books”; Waterfield divides it thematically into fourteen “chapters.” For an amateur reader, this change is welcome. For a long time now, my aim has been to read at least one philosophical article or chapter each day. It’s harder than you’d think. So, the shorter the chapters are, the better.

I wonder if the general neglect of Waterfield is due to ignoble prejudices. He is self-employed. He has written shameless potboilers – for children. At this stage of my life, these things only endear an author to me.

Textbook hunting

I’ve been looking for a cheap, relatively short (400 pp., not 800 pp.) single-volume anthology of philosophical classics for use in an Introduction to Philosophy course.

That is, something along the lines of Robert Paul Wolff’s Ten Great Works of Philosophy (Signet Classics, $8.95), which includes:

Plato’s Apology and Crito, and selections from his Phaedo;

Aristotle’s Poetics;

Various proofs of God’s existence, due to Anselm and Aquinas;

Descartes’s Meditations;

Hume’s first Inquiry;

Kant’s Prolegomena;

Mill’s Utilitarianism; and

James’s Will to Believe.

(No women or non-Westerners, alas.)

All these works are usable, I think, except those by Aristotle and Kant. And perhaps even some parts of them are usable.

As for editorial guidance, there is none, except for some brief and sweeping historical commentary.

On the very far other end of the spectrum, at over a thousand pages and many tens of dollars, the book I like is the new edition of the Norton Introduction to Philosophy, which has minutely pruned excerpts of many, many readings, along with several newly commissioned essays, study questions, and loads of very clear editorial help (which students will be tempted to ignore).

Most other introductory collections are like the Norton one, though not nearly as well executed (and, often, more expensive).

So, I’m wondering: Is there anything in between? In particular, is there anything like Wolff’s collection, but with some recent articles to go along with the classics?

Nigel Warburton has a quirky collection out with Routledge, and I don’t hate it, but I think I’d go with Wolff’s book or the Norton book instead.

Walter Ayoví

I’ve been trying to find out what some other philosophers think of the case of Mr. Edward Snowden (future refugee in Ecuador?). One philosopher I consulted was Robert Paul Wolff, more politically outspoken than most. Alas, he had little to offer beyond a few snarky comments about the NSA. But he did say quite a lot about how well he liked his own writing. Which was fine. In this merciless discipline, some light self-appreciation is refreshing.

The concluding paragraph really hits it:

Far and away the greatest contemporary cellist is Yo Yo Ma. He has so completely mastered the ferociously difficult technique of the cello that when he plays, he looks as though he is not so much producing the music as listening to it. There is something about the way he holds the cello, leaning back away from it as though it were playing itself, that communicates that he need no longer even think about the fingerings and bowings that absorb the attention of lesser cellists. The great Russian cellist Rostropovich used to play in much the same manner. God knows, I do not think of myself as a satirist in the same world as Jonathan Swift, say, but there are times when I feel like Fast Eddy Felsen, moving around the pool table with an animal grace, secure in the knowledge that he cannot miss.

Whom I kept thinking of was Walter Ayoví. Walter Ayoví.

I wondered if there were any good YouTube videos of Walter Ayoví “moving around … with an animal grace, secure in the knowledge that he [could not] miss.” Probably not, I thought. How many other people are there who sit around thinking of the animal grace of Walter Ayoví.

And then I found this video commentary by some Mexican dude. Here was someone who understood. Thank heaven for small mercies.

Listen to the commentator say: Siempre desmarcado.

If you don’t know Spanish, I feel sorry for you.