How can 'optimism' be 'inhumane'? — Amity

One example, at the personal and interpersonal level, is toxic positivty.

Otherwise, a few times on TPF I've made use of Terry Eagleton's distinction between hope and optimism. The way I see it, optimism, particularly with respect to society and history, has a tendency to disregard or minimize bad stuff, whereas hope does not.

I have plenty of experience with toxic positivity, and I've noticed that it is humourless. So my tentative scheme is like this: on one side we have optimism, humourlessness, and inhumanity--a lack of attention to real people and real experience--and on the other side we have hope and humour, where humour is often if not always built on an attention to misfortune.

I tried to write a Gothic once and everyone in it turned nice by Chapter 3, so I had to throw it away and start another project. — Vera Mont

:lol:

Sometimes it's all in the style, tone, or approach, rather than the theme. The theme can be serious or dark while the tone is light, playful, or optimistic. As a reader it's not themes I find life-affirming and intellectually or emotionally energizing; rather it's in the creativity itself. Sometimes it's obvious that the writer is having fun even when writing a tragedy. — Jamal

There's a deeper layer here too. Optimism is in a sense inhumane (it's hope that is humane), and there is no humour in success and contentedness

I'm trying very hard to find a light, humorous, optimistic theme. — Vera Mont

Sometimes it's all in the style, tone, or approach, rather than the theme. The theme can be serious or dark while the tone is light, playful, or optimistic. As a reader it's not themes I find life-affirming and intellectually or emotionally energizing; rather it's in the creativity itself. Sometimes it's obvious that the writer is having fun even when writing a tragedy.

Echoes of Gogol continue to rebound. I just read Kafka's Metamorphosis for the first time since I was a nipper. Back then I found it frustrating, but now I love it. Very reminiscent of stories like "The Nose" and "The Overcoat", with a similar humour and creative joy.

It is difficult to meet an Iberian neighbour on the Internet, by the way. — javi2541997

On the other hand, there is a plethora of venomous far right keyboard warriors on the internet.

In what thread did this happen? — ssu

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/945354

@Lionino was banned for homophobia and racism.

He won't mind too much:

Unsurprisingly, this website is still a waste of time. — Lionino

I can't explain why this track is so good.

I tried it myself from a different email address and it worked for me, and I can't find any blocks relating to your email address, so I don't know what's up.

Sorry I didn't reply, Christoffer. I haven't had any similar reports; I think lots of people get notifications by email, and nobody has told me that's not working. I'll look into it though. Could be your email address is blocked or something.

We have now been upgraded to the medium plan, so this shouldn't happen again.

The Reefs of Earth by R. A. Lafferty — Jamal

Now a new favourite author. Very odd and very entertaining. Writing that appears at first to be sloppy but is actually masterful. Fun on multiple levels. Superior to most books you see on top 10 science fiction of all time lists, and maybe could be classified as fabulist literary fiction. Also short enough to read in a day.

EDIT: Also, in a spooky coincidence, there's a scam going on in the novel perpetrated by someone described as a Pavel Ivanovich, a reference to Gogol's Dead Souls.

Yes, you remembered it correctly! — javi2541997

That is a relief.

Nice.

The title is tricky — javi2541997

Yes. When I read it I thought, why didn't they translate it as "Morel's Invention," since that is the surface meaning. Then I realized it has a double meaning: Morel as he appears has been invented too, in a sense (am I remembering it correctly?).

It's not a crowd-pleaser, but it's strangely engrossing. — SophistiCat

My kind of book!

I get why you say it is non-nihilistic but it changed the shape of my nightmares forever. — Paine

Aye, it's no picnic.

You make a good point. I never felt that War and Peace quite fit the mold of "Russian literature," either. Anna Karenina and the Death of Ivan Iylich do more. Master and the Margarita is another one that, while dark in some ways, breaks the "mold" in being quite playful at times. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep.

The bleakest work of Russian literature I've read is probably Life and Fate by Grossman. Or maybe it's harrowing, rather than bleak, since it's fundamentally optimistic and non-nihilistic. Anyway, it's great.

Viktor Pelavin — Count Timothy von Icarus

Cool, I hadn't heard of him.

I found this analysis of German "guilt pride" fascinating. Moeller applies his concept of profilicity — which I've had my doubts about (probably because I'm stuck in the age of authenticity) — to good effect, I think.

Next, probably one of these:

• The Reefs of Earth by R. A. Lafferty
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley
• Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux

One of my favorite! — Count Timothy von Icarus

As you can see above, I have mixed feelings about it. I like the Petersburg stories a lot more.

The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso — SophistiCat

Looks interesting. How is it?

All of the above I suspect. But I should give it time; I sometimes misjudge a book in its immediate aftermath.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol — Jamal

I really think Penguin have done a disservice to Gogol with this cover. It perfectly aligns with the stereotype of Russian literature so often thrown around by people who have read none of it (or have read one or two Dostoevsky novels and feel qualified to speak about the rest). The title, and covers like this, were enough to put me off for a long time.

In fact, Dead Souls is a comic novel, mostly bouncy and light in tone, not ponderous and depressing. The descriptions and similes are exuberantly weird. I particularly liked the apparently undisciplined digressions into irrelevant detail, which would these days be called maximalism. Also fascinating is Gogol's metafictional defence of his own literary style and motivations, within the narration itself. Sometimes it seems that he is writing about writing as much as about the Russian countryside, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, etc.

Ultimately though — and this is where personal taste comes in — I found the sarcasm heavy-handed, the satire obvious, the hyperbole awkward, the characters merely sketched, and the lengthy rhapsodic evocation of "Rus" tedious (even when ironic). This is partly because of the anticlimactic fifty pages of narration after Chichikov has already left town, and partly because much is lost in translation. I expect to come back around to liking it down the line, when I might try a different translation.

:blush:

I'm dealing with Thrasymachus, but have been distracted by some novels. I don't know if I'll be posting anything here anyway.

Haven't heard anything from Jamal or any previous participants for a while. — Amity

I'm working through the Republic but I'm still on book 1. I read the whole thing in my youth, and again a few weeks ago, but I'm not thinking about book 10 at the moment. I can't do everything at once, no matter how much you badger me.

:up:

Let us know what you think of it when you're finished.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol.

Good stuff. I may say more when I've read it again.

@Amity

My statement that Book 10 is weird is based on my own experience with it, and so far this is a quite vague impression. My comment that some people have a low opinion of it is based on my secondary readings (including some of those referred to in your quotation from that dissertation). I am on my second and more thorough read through the Republic after having read it a few weeks ago, and I don't have a stable view either way. But certainly, Book 10 feels different from what has gone before.

It was a stellar performance so I'll brook no apologies.

I was fooled.

I decided I will start a thread on book 10, commenting as I go along. — Fooloso4

Great :up:

I think it is the idea of Simonides as an 'ideal poet' in contrast with Homer that I don't understand. — Amity

Cool. The first and third paragraphs in the mixed up quotation are about that. Here they are in order, with the quotations from the Republic removed:

I came across another interesting interpretation in a paper entitled "Socrates on Poetry and the Wisdom of Simonides." The idea is that Plato is not interested in Simonides as a historical figure but is rather making him stand as his ideal poet. This is in contrast to Homer, who by this point in the the conversation with Polemarchus has already been mentioned dismissively

[...]

Again, the crucial thing is that the real Simonides is unimportant. The new element is that because of this he can function as a blank canvas onto which Plato can project his ideal poet, in contrast with Homer, who is problematic. This is quite compelling, and it's actually sort of compatible with the first interpretation, although it does bring the ascription of irony into question (or it would make it an even more complex kind of irony). It doesn't matter what the real Simonides might have said, but it does matter what Homer said, because Homer loomed so large in the culture, and comes in for direct criticism later in the Republic.

This is the alternative, or further developed, interpretation that I mentioned in my post, which I got from this:

Futter, Dylan. (2021). SOCRATES ON POETRY AND THE WISDOM OF SIMONIDES. Akroterion. 65

So it's not my idea and I'm not committed to it, although I do find it quite persuasive. If you're particularly interested in it have a look at that paper, otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.

You've mixed up the order of the paragraphs, which is important. Maybe that's why you're confused :grin:

Female circumcision in Muslim countries - is this an expression of their religion or their culture? Or both? Muslim apologists in the West will frequently argue that this phenomenon is not a part of Islam, but a cultural phenomenon. I wonder how easy it is to separate culture from religion. Is American evangelical Christianity a form of Christianity? Or is it an American cultural phenomenon? Or both - a religion reimagined through a cultural milieu. — Tom Storm

Religion is normally thought to be part of culture.

@schopenhauer1 (and in deference to @T Clark): It might be useful to define our terms. Culture is that which...

provides its members with meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres. — SEP: Culture

Or...

the sum total of a given people's beliefs, customs, knowledge and technology. These are learned and constitute a dynamic system. This system exists outside the body and is not inherited through biology. — The Royal Anthropological Institute

But @schopenhauer1 is using it more specifically to mean the cultures of minority groups:

So there are various factors one can attribute the behavior of a subgroup of people within a population. This can be any subgroup- geographic, ethnic, political, religious, etc. — schopenhauer1

Anyway, @Tom Storm, to say that female circumcision is not a part of Islam, but a cultural phenomenon, is probably to say that its status with regard to the religion as such (rather than to actually existing religion as practiced in that local culture) is contested, and varies between cultures that share the same majority religion. The local culture where it is practised is such that Islam in that culture allows or encourages it --- but there is no necessary connection. Which seems obviously true.

The "books" of the Republic are the chapters, basically. They all belong together and they're all important, although book 10 is weird and some would say adds nothing of much value to the whole work's argument.

I've been enjoying Jamal's discussion and the discovery of 'literary easter eggs'. A different approach or angle to reading the Republic, Book 1. I'm in two minds about it. — Amity

I think the problem with applying the idea of literary Easter eggs is that it usually refers to something inessential, a bonus for certain readers. Symbolic name choices are an example. They're not centrally significant.

But the allusions or allegories in Book 1 of the Republic are woven in with the central themes of the work and contain everything that's to come in microcosm.