Friday, April 23, 2010

Hard Reading

I've just gotten a copy of the philosopher Robert Solomon's book, "True to our Feelings". (Ronald deSousa, another philosopher who writes about the emotions, recommended it as the best of Solomon's books.)

It is very amusing to see what Solomon says in his annotated bibliography.
For example, Keith Oatley's "Best Laid Schemes" is described as "difficult".
I've been reading Oatley, and I never noticed that it is a difficult book. Rather, I would describe it as a feast.

By contrast, Solomon, a specialist in French existentialism, does not say that Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" is difficult, but describes it a "One of the great books in phenomenology and the central text of French existentialism."

Recently I tried to read "Being and Nothingness." It is not easy reading. I would say it is harder than Oatley. Sartre has a special vocabulary that one needs to keep track of. I tried reading it during my bus ride, but quickly found it impossible. I would have needed to jot down somewhere a list of his special vocabulary, impossible to do in the bouncy bus. I think that if I did so I would be able to appreciate the book. I do admit that I jumped in at the section about "bad faith" after reading only a little of the first chapter, but I don't think that's the source of the problem. Sartre ends up saying things that sound very paradoxical, and even contradictory if one doesn't keep very close tabs on the technical language he is introducing. I could keep up with him for a while, but in the end i just needed a memory aid.

I haven't tried reading Oatley's book on the bus, but I also haven't found myself needing to keep notes of his special vocabulary.

So you see, the jumpy buses of the El Paso bus system have stopped me from reading Sartre..... Someday when I am in a stable situation I shall return to reading Sartre...

And why read Sartre or Solomon now? I am doing research for an essay on Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness". I plan to present two interpretations of the love between Tereza and Tomas: one existentialist and one Socratic. Kundera himself seems at various points to encourage the existentialist reading, but I think it is possible to go beyond that. I set for myself the task of allowing the principle that all desire is for the good can survive even if we allow for the very particularity or historicity of individual lives. Chance and freedom as principles versus the principle that we always do whatever we do aiming to make ourselves better, starting from where we are now--and some would like to say, starting from where we happen to be now....

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