Tag: philosophy

The Boss

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You can’t study philosophy without dipping your toes into a little morality, or shall we say moralaki. Likely it’ll end up being a lot of morality but the Greek diminutive will make easing in a little less intense. Perhaps ‘The Boss‘ is not the ideal title either; sticking with the Greek theme the boss of western philosophy would likely be Plato or his invention Socrates were a poll ever conducted, and even from a contemporary stance it may not be the man in the picture either, but while reading him now it feels there could only ever be one god of philosophy and it must be Nietzsche. Yet to describe him as such would suggest totally missing the point of his ideas, and while Übermensch – a higher person – would make more sense he never saw himself as one of his own creations, which leaves us with some kind of depressed and insane rock star. Let’s just say he’s a big deal around these parts. So module two, Nietzsche and more precisely his Genealogy of Morality.

It’s early days and I’m just getting my head around some of his concepts. Seemingly he’s not a massive fan of Judeo-Christian morality. It gives power to the slave morality by putting a flawed value on weak concepts likes meekness. He believed this type of morality had a detrimental effect upon the advancement of the the higher person as it thwarted the development of human excellence. Too much focus was put on uplifting the weak herd at the expense of the potential of the higher person. In a sense the need to live by the rules of a morality which pushed empathy, selflessness and equality risked the higher person not fulfilling their potential, as they were forced to reign in their natural instincts. Think of some people who we class as great people, innovative genius’ perhaps, and without a doubt there will be an aspect of them and their single minded drive that falls foul of our sense of the good. Nietzsche’s point is seemingly that we shouldn’t force them to live by our own moral code, this universal moral code of good and evil, because people are quite clearly not universally the same. On the surface it is pretty clear to see why people dislike his non-egalitarian beliefs but it’s not a stretch to say there is an argument to be had for it. How much will become clear as I go through the module.

The influence of the great thinkers throughout history can only really become clear when you see which ideals of theirs have become commonplace within our general thinking. How many times have people reassuringly told themselves or others that if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, well Nietzsche came up with that. He believed in the importance of the journey, especially if it involved a little suffering, and undoubtable saw little value in just being given the answer without having to work on it. Much of his life revolved around suffering, at the age of four he watched his Lutheran pastor father die from a devastating brain disease, and it was in these moments of suffering throughout his life he did much of his best work. It can’t be a coincidence that considering his own experience he believed moralities that held suffering to be a bad thing, to be so deeply flawed. Suffering for Nietzsche was a good and he put it to the test enough times.

He said without doubt his work would be misused in the future and seemingly the Nazi’s proved him right. They had a little help from his sister who edited and published some of his notebooks after his death to make him look as equally anti-Semitic and nationalistic as she was. While she may have been an old lady at the time she was a total Adolf fan-girl and he was more than happy to warp Nietzsche’s words to justify some Aryan master race bullshit. The truth was that Nietzsche hated nationalism as much as religion, yet spent the first half of the twentieth century mis-represented as a Nazi. Yet that’s the issue, as I said earlier he is very much open to interpretation to the point one esteemed Nietzsche expert will say he was anti-Semitic and other that he wasn’t. Who am I to know really after a few papers and a couple of podcasts.

Nietzsche spent the last eleven years of his life completely insane and died in 1900. In the late 1880’s just before being committed he wrote much of his best work. He wrote ferociously at this point almost as if he knew what was coming and just wanted to get his words and ideas out before it was too late. It isn’t a stretch to suggest there is a fine line between genius and crazy and seemingly Nietzsche lost that battle. He seems interesting though and while I have already made far more notes that this little introductory ramble would suggest, I look forward to attempting to really form an opinion on him as right now I’m likely just to be repeating the words of others if I try to make sense of the man. I’ll come back next time with something a little more detailed and philosophical, or at least an attempt at such.

The Emotions

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The emotions eh, who’d have them. Well most people actually. The suffering and torment of cognitive and physiological reactions that make no sense to us what so ever. More learned people than I am believe similar to me and equally more learned people think differently to me. When something makes little sense trying to form your own argument while being aware of such varied and different ideas simply makes the head spin further. Yet this is philosophy, finding a (temporary) point when you think you get it and being able to bask in your own glorious comprehension gives the self doubt it’s own value and makes it all worth it. And doubt I did, and momentarily bask a little too but only a little of course.

The module is now complete and while there was a lack of posts in here on my progress, or as a means to achieve progress, it feels right before moving on to the next module to cover a little of what I think I learnt. I won’t necessarily give an overview of the Philosophy of Emotions as that is too much of a task and there is not enough space or I suspect appetite for it, mine mainly, but will go over the question I answered for the assignment.

‘Being horrified by the events of the Rwandan genocide or Jewish holocaust justifies you in believing that those events were horrendous atrocities.’ Discuss.

Seems pretty straightforward I hear you say but what if you were to reframe the question using kittens instead as the object. It doesn’t seem quite so justified then, they’re only kittens and kittens are cute, genocide is quite clearly not. Ultimately the question is one of whether our emotions can justify our beliefs. For better or worse I argued not. They may influence our beliefs and help us to understand our beliefs, or help us understand whether our beliefs need deeper contemplation, but they’re on the whole too unreliable to justify what we believe about something. We form our beliefs, I argued, through a continually evolving conscious and unconscious process of reflection. Arguably this would be a form of conditioning, but it also comes down to experience and knowledge amongst other things. As our emotional intelligence and maturity increases, if it does, then we can trust our emotions more. Paradoxically, and this is a new thought, the more they were to increase surely the less likely we would be to trust our emotions as we became more aware of their unreliability and the importance of reasoned reflection. Our ability to use reason is important, and while our reasoning may be flawed for whatever reason it is still integral for the formation of our beliefs. Ultimately I believe kittens to be adorable and genocide horrendous because having learnt about them, what they are as conceptual objects, as well as the conceptual attributes of adorability and horrific, my reasoning relates each object with their corresponding attributing value.

There’s likely more but seeing as I’m not emotionally strong enough to torture myself by reading though my rushed and muddled assignment, whatever other points I made have seemingly drifted off into the ether. Having taken an eternity to get my head around the topic, there wasn’t a great deal of time to complete the essay and while I haven’t got the mark back yet, I’m not one for thinking and telling everyone I’ve done poorly while getting a good result. The most frustrating thing, although it’s also a real positive, is that I know I can do better and don’t believe I did myself justice. We use this and make sure we do better the next time but at the very least appreciate the fact it wasn’t as an unconquerable field of philosophic thought as it felt. In a perverse kind of way, I think I actually kind of enjoyed it in the end. Or at the very least had some kind of an emotional reaction that helped me form such a belief, or perhaps I will after a little more reflection.

What then is an emotion?

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It turns out that emotions are not straight forward things. Perhaps instinctively we imagine them to be such things as anger, sadness, happiness, fear, joy et al. And it turns out likely that would be an acceptable initial if somewhat abstract understanding. Acceptable that is until you discover there is always a beyond the obvious.

For the eighteenth and early nineteenth century empiricists like Hume and Locke, the mind was a single field of thought and feeling, fully conscious and transparent to itself. This mind was made up of visual, auditory, and tactile impressions, and distinct ideas which were the product of these impressions. Or as Hume put it, “like players in a theatre who successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations”. These early ideas were later dismissed. The suggestion emotions were just these pure and simple things floating around waiting to come together before dissipating again was deemed flawed. It missed the point that emotions are not stand alone boxable feelings but unique and unrepeatable; the mind, the body, the moment are never twice the same. A unique amalgamation of everything if you wish.

From the late nineteenth century a philosophising psychologist called William James decided, and incidentally this is apparently still a respected idea in the psychology world, a statement that needs checking and confirming beyond one verbal source, that emotions were the result of bodily physiological sensations. What this means is that were we to see a bear in a forest, our body would react, for example our legs might go weak and our hearts beat wildly, and this would trigger the emotion of fear within us. While undoubtedly reactions on a physical level play a role in emotions, to claim those bodily feelings create the emotions doesn’t hold up when challenged with the fact our legs feel weak and our heart beat increases when we go for a run. In that circumstance the feeling of fear is generally not the emotion people feel. The fact physically you feel the same feelings when you experience love, fear and exercise explains why this stance in itself is not widely held in contemporary thought.

From here we move into more accepted ideas of emotions, the main two being judgements and perceptions. They state that we see the bear, make an evaluative judgement of the situation, feel the emotion and have a suitable physical response, or that after seeing the bear we have an emotional and physical response based upon how we perceive the situation to be. This being philosophy neither are fool proof. If we were to be standing behind guard rails looking over the edge of a cliff we may still feel fear despite the fact we have made the rational judgement that we are not in danger of falling over. We have a contradictory emotional response to how we have assessed the situation. This argument could be used for fear of household British spiders too. It is important to mention though that evaluative judgements are ever forming and not just made in the moment. Proponents in the perceptual model would suggest we feel fear as we look over the precipice because we can perceive the inherent danger, an argument which frankly holds up a lot better. Unlike the judgemental model which deals with the rational and irrational, the perceptual approach is arational. When they have to explain non-human animal and infant human emotions both struggle to justify their positions as neither beasts nor babies have the required language to make evaluative judgements nor, and this is very debatable, the cognitive abilities to have an instinctive perceptual reaction. This point definitely needs further investigation though.

Two thoughts that came up after todays seminar were whether we can have an unconscious emotion, for example feelings of pain in the neck or ache in the head are symptoms of the emotion of stress, yet we may be completely unaware we’re stressed or anxious about anything. Are we unconscious in that moment of the emotion or just unaware of it from a cognitive perspective. Is this emotion a physical feeling only. If we’re unaware of this emotion then it stands to say we’re not consciously aware of it and so unconscious of it, yet unconscious seems like too strong a word.

The second thought was whether perception is just an evaluation or judgement made at an earlier time. Do we perceive danger in the bear because long ago we made the judgement that bears are dangerous. We may make the judgement in the moment that the bear on the other side of the valley could do us harm but likely won’t and so we’re in little to no danger, yet we still feel the emotion of fear. We arguably perceive the possibility of danger, the danger we judged bears can inflict when we learnt bears as dangerous. My dog would likely also feel this danger but it’s doubtable a baby would, and arguably neither would a puppy.

This is as far as week one has really got. There was also mention of something called the Common Sense Theory which is that you see the bear, something cognitive happens, you feel the suitable emotion and have a bodily physiological reaction. Unfortunately in philosophy common sense seems to infer not suitably complicated and therefore deeply flawed so this theory only ever seems to be granted a couple of sentences at most. There has been a bit regarding recalcitrant emotions, which are emotions that conflict with judgements and likely perceptions but these will be the focus of the material in weeks two and three. Their existence was touched upon but just to bring an awareness to something that appears to sow difficulties in all the theories. This will become clear. As will hopefully a further and clearer understanding of what is very much a base and slightly confused understanding of the few concepts so far. Seemingly the philosophy of emotions is yet to find a generally held coherent argument. Arguably there’s something in all the perspectives and undoubtedly emotions consist of a combination of sensations, experiences, perceptions and judgements. Perhaps the truth simply lies in some as yet undiscovered or unmeasurable perspective and understanding. As yet of course.

The Snake Pit of Certainties

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It appears that time when an audience is required for some personal thing this author is going through has returned. That may have appeared an unnecessarily formed sentence but that is because this author is finally, after a five year hiatus, undertaking the second and final year of his Philosophy MA with The Open University. When previously completing my one year of daily writings an audience was required for inspiration, my ego and to ensure standards never slipped to the point of producing nothing. Now it’s about having a space to publicly mull over and attempt to express with the written word my understanding, or more concisely misunderstanding, of whatever is currently hiding behind the wall of confusion and ignorance in front of me.

In the previous writings there were times I attempted to write about philosophy and it felt evident it was far harder than writing about some inane thing I was getting up to or having a rant about corrupt politicians. I need you to help me become better at what I’m trying to do. As I said I am using you.

Our new journey will start with the philosophy of emotions, moving on to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Foucault and Arendt’s take on Power, finally politics and morality in the sense of Dirty Hands, before finishing on whatever my dissertation will be. Trust me when I say that is some great subject matter and I hope I am capable of persuading you of this. How often anything will be published is open, it won’t be daily like previously.

Judging by the introductory day I just attended you may be experiencing far more of my misunderstandings than observations, yet I will start with the observation that attempting to understand Nietzsche is like diving into a snake pit of your own eternal ever evolving misunderstanding. It turns out we know nothing for sure, although not nothing in the sense of totality as there are no absolute certainties, what I think, and we need to be careful there with both the ‘I’ and the ‘think’, is like that snake pit and ever evolving. Rolls eyes. What fun we’re going to have.

The Sweetest Of Nihilists

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Not long now. This is my third last piece and I’m becoming acutely aware of making the most of what’s left. I love starting things and while I certainly don’t finish everything, I do also enjoy that rounded feeling of completion. There are times I overplay the ceremonial nature of the last night, or the last time, or the last whatever and have learnt over the years it is slightly unnecessary. Sometimes you just have to get on with things, be the stone cold killer who calls time. Let’s see how I do on Saturday then, stone cold or the more familiar sentimental killer. Enough of that though, save it for another time.

Now then, to make the most of what’s left – stares blankly at the white wall in front, searching for something in what is ultimately nothing – but really does it matter. Does it change anything if this piece is nonsense and doesn’t discuss something deep and meaningful, virtuous or god forbid political. I’ve given up on politics, well on here at least. I enjoy it but it can end but being a judgemental one sided screaming match and nobody needs that in their lives. I said goodbye with Trump, the British stuff is so entangled in it’s own bullshit it’ll never end. Which leaves me with a few things but all I have is this blank wall. As I said though, it doesn’t really matter. Without doubt their is a nihilist within me and I let him out from time to time. Rational and irrational go to war over who can push the nihilist back in his box, the box of pointless nothing. The stone cold serial killer as nihilist? No, I miss the point of my own nihilism. And there’s always a point.

It’s my birthday today. I don’t know how I feel about that. One year older. It doesn’t really bother me in an excitable way but there will always be a bit that enjoys it. I can understand why people stop being fussed about celebrating them as they get older though. For some it’s a denial of their own decay yet sometimes you just don’t give a shit. There can be a lot of bravado involved at times like this, and we all love a bit of attention and fussing as the dog enjoys their belly rubbed, but really it is just another day. Yet it isn’t, it’s a day that reminds you that despite almost impossible odds, that after over four billion years of the earths existence, everything in that time fell into place and your consciousness, whatever the hell that is, became real. Perhaps it was always real and will always be, but whatever it is, the odds against us are staggering and we’re still here to be aware of it. We’re still here despite everything. And with that we continue to defy the odds. That’s probably worth celebrating. Marvel at the beauty of life not the self-absorbed indulgence of decay. Get back in thy box sweet nihilist.

Philosophy Now’s Question Of The Month

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In the earliest days of this daily thing I’m doing, this experiment shall we say, I made suggestions for things I would write about. One suggestion was to answer a question from a magazine I subscribe to and don’t read enough of, Philosophy Now. It involves an evil and confusing question roughly every two issues which means four months and I think I may have answered one at some point on here although I think I didn’t give much of a shit to make it decent as I knew I had missed the deadline for entering. This one though I’m going to enter. I’ll still write it on here in my usual half arsed and rushed way first though just aware that I’ll be sending it in too.

Does History Progress? If so, to what?

Time certainly progresses. I feel slightly older today than I did yesterday. Of this I am fairly sure, or at least I have convinced myself of this truth. In that case yesterday is now history and the day before yesterday is older history. Yesterday though, the day before wasn’t as old as it is now. However is that history progressing, it still feels the same now as it did yesterday just a little fuzzier. Perhaps it’s evolving but that’s my memory that’s evolving not necessarily history itself.

What is history though if not just a series of memories. Even the version we write down only captures one take on events and that is open to interpretation. What happens when this version loses it’s appeal, the fashions of the modern age deciding they don’t like the historical narrative and give an event a new one. Surely then it has progressed to something new. Again it has evolved, but does that mean it has progressed. We must looked then at our understanding of the meaning of progress. To advance, to go forward. These are positive notions surely but histories changes don’t always feel positive, advanced or even evolved sometimes. What happens when they go sideways or backwards. Hitler made changes to the history of his country while he was in power, did they progress? For him they did, but now history would suggest otherwise.

So history can make subjective progress? Again that’s a version of an event. Objective history on the other hand cannot, but then we can’t say there is such a thing as objective history. It is only ever a story and someone must always be around to tell that story. So subjectively history progresses, but to what? I guess that depends on whatever the subject decides they want it to. Or we just accept it will always change into an infinite amount of possibilities and the change itself can subjectively be called progress. Not in the moving forward sense of course but in the something other than it was five minutes ago sense.

And that is my answer. I find them quite challenging if that’s not clear by now. I’m sure the one I did before was a little bit of a ramble with too many rhetorical questions too. I suspect rhetorical questions are not always a good thing, or at least too many of them. The other approach is to make it dry and over explain but you’ve only got a maximum of four hundred words and the other answers people tend to send in are not formed in that way. Like everything it is simply practise, everything is always practise.

The Elusive Secrets Of Writing

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Writing really is an art form once you get into it and understand it’s intricacies. What I am doing now is writing, that is surely obvious and it is one particular style of writing. I’m not entirely sure what style and while I hope that isn’t me exposing how little I understand of writing intricacies, I’m going to go with it being hard to explain and label your own style. That is probably just me making excuses of course as I’m self-conscious of describing my writing, especially if I get it wrong in the eyes of those who know. The reason I go into this is that I have started reading For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I mentioned a few days ago when finishing The Old Man & The Sea that his writing style is very simple but that he manages to purvey a deeper meaning and understanding. While some write in technically complicated and convoluted ways he manages to get an equally deeper understanding across without turning the reader in circles first.

This is an art form in itself. For anyone who has ever written anything or appreciated others writing, getting deeper meaning and mood across is a challenging art. As I read this latest book though it does make me think of authors who write in similar simple prose yet write really badly. His writing is so simple but he does in it such a way that it is both accessible and with depth in the same moment. I’m not entirely sure how he does it though, it can’t just be short sentences. It is one of those books they teach children in school and it is clear to see why. Deeper meaning and accessible is a winner. There is a reason he won the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Fiction after all.

I mentioned earlier about long and convoluted sentences. Here I must hold my hands up and confess my guilt. In my defence I learnt how to write like this when studying part of my philosophy degree in that you need to make sure every angle of meaning is covered. The problem here is that it doesn’t allow the reader to form any interpretation for themselves and such long sentences can be both hard to follow and boring. There’s a website called The Hemingway App in which you can upload your work and see what reading age and grade it would be. It also gives advice on shortening sentences, whether sentences are hard or very hard to read and such things like excessive use of adverbs, passive voice or when simpler words would be better suited. I use too many adverbs for example and too many of my sentences are ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’ to read. My ego would like to think hard or very hard to read simply means they are written to a very high standard and level but my ego can miss the point sometimes. Up to this moment this piece is a Grade Nine which would be 14-15 year old’s. I rarely use this app but when I first discovered it did check out a few of my pieces for curiosity’s sake. I had a Grade Fourteen which I was very happy with myself over but generally they vary between Grades Eight to Eleven. Apparently we should aim for eight to nine if we want maximum reach. I don’t really know whether I want maximum reach but a fool would dismiss the importance of such knowledge. I hope not to be a fool forever.

Final Mark – Grade Eight

To Endure The Discipline

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There are probably a few things wrong with this blog. Firstly it’s a blog and I know blogs are not always viewed upon in the most appreciated of lights, I assume this is because of the potential for a little self-indulgence and self-aggrandising. I don’t dismiss that, and while I try to avoid doing this I know I am probably guilty sometimes, especially the self-indulgence. The fact I write from the first perspective quite often probably doesn’t help. There is something else about this particular blog though I know definitely doesn’t lead to ease of anything.

Because I write every single day, there are numerous days in which I force myself to find both the energy and the subject matter to write about. I doubt anyone has read every piece I have written, I wouldn’t blame you for not as there have been a lot and I know I wouldn’t have kept up were it someone else’s project. One thing that is clear though if you have read a few is that there are a lot of pieces in which I have written just about anything to complete the task of writing something every day. Not that that isn’t a problem because ultimately the first and really only priority was to write each and every day, after that writing well and about interesting things could only ever be a secondary. I don’t doubt there have been days in which I can be proud of both my writing and the content but there are too some which are quite the opposite.

It turns out it’s quite difficult to write something on a daily basis and I’m impressed that some professionals manage it so proficiently when they do. Admittedly being professionals they make the time but still it is an achievement I am recognising more as this year has progressed. I struggle because not being a professional writer means I have to be a professional something else and for me that is making pizzas in the evening and delivering bread in the early morning. I wasn’t expecting to drive tomorrow but events have allowed such a scenario to happen, so having finished pizzas I know I need to be awake in about four hours. When you throw in the lack of desire to talk politics, the lack of brain energy to talk philosophy not that I do on here very often despite my original desire to do so, and really a lack of desire to talk about anything, I find myself writing pieces like this. Now this could appeal to the people who write about writing blogs, and what I am doing is a great experiment in blog writing I’m sure, but it’s not the kind of thing that would garner great attention and back slaps.

I would love to pretend I am above back slaps but let’s be honest if I’m willing to publish this every day it’s not just because doing this publicly helps force the discipline to continue. We all love being told we’re doing something well etcetera etcetera. I have mentioned before that when the year is up I’ll perhaps write one or two pieces a week but hopefully make them really interesting and thought out. In a way that is even more challenging in a disciplined sense and also sometimes I feel my best pieces come out in those late at night forced moments. It’s strange like that. Writing this has so far been a very interesting experience and I know I’ll elaborate more as the days tick down towards the full year. Thankfully though that is more than enough of a piece for tonight and I hope someone somewhere managed to appreciate just slightly the insight into the life of someone who is enduring a blog. Enduring sounds perfect as my eyes begin to close.

Aeon

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Now feels like a good time to plug a favourite website of mine. Aeon is all about ideas and when you read though the titles of the different articles they publish, the mind illuminates with excitement. They generally publish essays and short videos. The essays are usually three to four thousand words and of a high enough level not to be considered light reading. For this reason I can get a bit lazy as I know it will involve a certain amount of mind effort to read one. It is things like this that allow me to realise that my use of the internet doesn’t go much further than looking at football, politics, buying things and generally killing time and shutting off my brain. The internet is the greatest invention and has the potential to revolutionise society on scale not obvious since the printing press and I use it to kill time and shut my brain off. I know I’m not alone in this. Humans are ridiculous.

Aeon then involves a little effort, if you’re me, but it is well worth it. They used to also publish Ideas that were usually around the one thousand word mark which my short attention span was more suited to but they unfortunately seem to have done away with them recently. They publish essays on philosophy, science, history, psychology, law, nature, education and every sub category within.

For example this is an article on Ashoka Maurya who was an Indian Emperor over two thousand years ago. Seeing first hand the horror of warfare he creating ‘an infrastructure of goodness’ which also included the spread of the teachings of Siddhattha Gotama – the Buddha – and changed the face of the Indian continent in the process.

This is an article on the spread of pathogens throughout history, from The Black Death to polio, and how they’re generally spread silently by the seemingly healthy.

This article discusses free will and determinism, using our understanding of the sometime random actions of molecules to give some answers to this age old argument.

This is an essay on the concept of ‘hysterical women’, how women’s pain is often medically overlooked and undertreated but that ‘believing all women’ is not necessarily the answer and oversimplifies the issue.

This discusses how not only is privatising public services bad economics but also how it undermines our social and political bonds as a community.

And finally this is an article about how fish are nothing at all like us but that they are sentient beings and that they finally deserve a real place in our moral community.

Ultimately these are just a few examples of articles they publish and even then they’re only the ones I’m drawn to. There’s a little of everything for everyone. I mention Aeon because they’re not a massive publishing or news company, they don’t have adverts all over their website and they produce really interesting work. It’s online magazines like this that people need to be made aware of in these times of sensationalism and factual inaccuracy.

Just because I can I’m attaching a video of sea life in the Ningaloo Canyons off Western Australia. The video is on YouTube but is from Aeon, or at least that’s were I found it. There is also a video on the creation of the police force by Robert Peel in 1829 and what that has meant for society up to the present day. Enjoy the fish for now though.

BR#5 – Frankenstein

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From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.