Hello guys. i recently started reading the classics again. and it was a pleasant experience, revisiting the reasons why i adored the classics while growing up. reading iliad for example brought me back to the kind of poignant heroism of achilles. truth be told, i find it hard to watch Troy again. it’s one of those unrepeatables, all because of the PAIN that the viewer must face too in processing the choices that the heroes faced. hector was the ideal but was doomed to stand up for an ill-decision not of his own making. achilles craved for glory but could only gain it through a tragic death and in it, find his humanity. if you go further down the line of the great writings of the greeks, you’ll discover the tragedies and commentaries that answer what makes civilization? now jump a bit to another hemisphere and you find the russians tolstoy and dostoevsky who were decidedly un-western. read further and you discover what tolstoy has in common with augustine and rousseau! they all wrote confessions! augustine wrote his The Confessions while rousseau wrote his Confession and tolstoy wrote A Confession. as to the content… most insteresting is rousseau’s because he is TOTALLY RIDICULOUS. how’s that for an enlightenment thinker! enlightenment in his context is an absolute misnomer. now you will not be surprised why the french revolution was the way it was.
–The Fool
Greetings from a reader of the classics (Part 1)
Published October 21, 2008 Literature 2 CommentsTags: achilles, Augustine, civilization, classics, Dostoevsky, enlightenment, French Revolution, greek, greeks, Rousseau, Tolstoy, troy movie
I too am rediscovering the classics. They are never the same when read again, specially after so many years. It was actually my interest in the philosophers (not so much the literary giants but the sophists and the greek triad are exceptions) ignited late in college, particularly and amusingly the political thinkers of the times like those who sparked the French Revolution. I liked to dislike their thoughts and I am ever reminded that it’s how you live that defines you more than your ideas. Reading about how they began and how they ended makes me empathize with them but not with most of what they said. And like you fool, I am not surprised at how the Revolution ended.
I am also amused with what Kant wrote about. Reading Schaffer ofcourse has exposed Kant more than what I thought I knew, I still find his idealism a bit close to home. But then the danger with some of these thinkers and classic writers is what they are really thinking. And that’s when life testament really counts.
I’m currently reading “Heretics of Dune”, a science fiction classic book. I’m planning to read “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens or “King Solomon’s Mines” by H. Rider Haggard.
Hopefully I can finish them all by the end of the year…
soo much to read… I hope Earth has 25 hours a day. That extra hour I can spend for reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeading or rummaging on books!