The lives and thoughts of Spinoza and Leibniz

Baruch de Spinoza (1632 - 1677) is another philosopher I've known about but not known, which is why I read The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart. I didn't care about Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ((1646–1716), but with two intellectual giants in one book, how can you go wrong?

Spinoza, of Portuguese-Jewish origin, was born and lived in the Dutch Republic and lucky for him that he did. Given the religious conflicts within Europe at the time, his philosophy could have meant his death. 

He received a traditional Jewish education, learning Hebrew and studying sacred texts within the Portuguese Jewish community, where his father was a prominent merchant. As a young man, Spinoza challenged rabbinic authority and questioned Jewish doctrines which led the rabbis to expel him from the community in 1656 when he was 23 years old. He never married but devoted himself to philosophy and supported himself by grinding lenses (and the glass dust probably contributed to his early death). Despite being a non-person in Jewish eyes and a Jew in Christian, Spinoza was able to find a wide circle of friends and diciples.

Leibniz, a German polymath, was active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist, and diplomat. He created calculus independently—but 10 years after Newton. He was active in many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics. He's been called the "last universal genius" due to his expertise in many fields. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. He met Spinoza briefly in 1676.

Spinoza argued (among other things) that nature is God and God is nature. Leibniz argued that the God of the Bible is God and that Spinoza was an atheist. Because Leibniz believed that God would not—could not—create a flawed or imperfect world, this is the best of all possible worlds. (Voltaire satirized him in Candide.) After meeting Spinoza, Leibniz spent considerable time and thought refuting the older man's philosophy.

The Courtier and the Heretic tells general readers the outlines of their lives (with an excellent bibliography if you want to know more), their philosophies, and the worlds in which they lived. I am not enough of a scholar or specialist to tell whether Matthew Stewart has omitted key biographic or philosophic information. For me, his book fascinating and satisfying. What more can you want?

A disappointing introduction to Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623–62 )is one of those intellectual figures I think I should know more about than his famous wager so when I saw Blaise Pascal: Miracles and Reason by Mary Ann Caws on sale I bought a copy.

"Pascal's Wager" is the argument that it's in your best interest to believe in the existence of God, because it's a rational assumption and does no harm, whereas disbelieving risks the possibility of eternal punishment in hell. It assumes of course both the existence of God and the existence of hell, and if you don't believe in God and his heaven, why would you still believe in hell?

Blaise Pascal: Miracles and Reason is a handsome book. Attractively designed and printed on heavy paper, it fits neatly in the hand and is well-illustrated with color and black-and-white plates. It includes notes, bibliography, and index.

I'll let the publisher describe the contents: Mary Ann Caws "takes us back to Pascal’s youth, when he was a child prodigy first engaging mathematics through the works of mathematicians such as Father Mersenne. She describes his early scientific experiments and his construction of mechanical calculating machines; she looks at his correspondence with important thinkers such as René Descartes and Pierre de Fermat; she surveys his many inventions, such as the first means of public transportation in Paris; and she considers his later religious exaltations in works such as the 'Memorial.' Along the way, Caws examines Pascal’s various modes of writing—whether he is arguing with the strict puritanical modes of church politics, assuming the personality of a naïve provincial trying to understand the Jesuitical approach, offering pithy aphorisms in the Pensées, or meditating on thinking about thinking itself."

Unfortunately, from the unreadable Preface by Harvard professor Tom Conley to the ponderous text by Caws the book is a disappointment. One small example, Pascal supported the tenets of Jansenism in their conflict with the Jesuits but it is not clear what they were or why Jansenism was an issue in 17th century Catholicism.

Caws is clearly fascinated by Pascal, his life and times, but she does not show the non-specialist reader for whom Blaise Pascal seems intended why we should care. Although one reviewer writes "I'd happily present this book to anyone getting acquainted with Pascal as a fine introduction to the man and his life that will usefully as well as pleasurably inflect reading and considering him," I'd suggest looking for something more comprehensive and accessible..

John Green reviews the era in which we live

I was familiar with John Green for his best-selling novel, The Fault in Our Stars, which if you have not read I recommend. Today, however, I will write about The Anthropocene Reviewed, his collection of essays adapted and expanded from his podcast. 

The anthropocene is defined as "the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment," that is, right now. Green reviews and rates different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale as if they were restaurants—everything from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and the penguins of Madagascar.

He talked about the book in a New York Times interview in which David Marchese. the interviewer, noted that in the book Green gave the internet three stars and at the end asked a bunch of rhetorical questions, including: “What does it mean to have my way of thinking, and my way of being, so profoundly shaped by machine logic? What does it mean that, having been part of the internet for so long, the internet is also part of me?” 

Green's response: "The easy answer is that when the internet becomes part of you, you cede a certain amount of your overall sense of self to online experience, which can be wonderful in some ways. This is going to surprise you, David, but I was a big nerd when I was a kid. I would have loved to be able to connect with young people the way that young people can connect with each other now across time and space around shared interests. It would have been amazing for me to have a relationship with other people who were obsessed with collecting every version of the 1986 Chicago Cubs baseball cards. The internet has facilitated communication in lots of really beautiful ways. And then there is the cost." The cost he says without saying is that people in their posts can be ugly, vicious, and nasty.

Most of the 48 essays are short—four or five pages—and most include some history or background on the topic: first recognition that Halley's Comet was a comet (worth 4,5 stars), discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings (4,5), why teddy bears (2.5), air conditioning (3.0), staphylococcus aureus (1.0). 

Some readers may disagree with Green's ratings. Some may argue that you can't rate something like the internet at all. Three stars compared to what? Smoke signals? The telephone? No one can argue with the variety and discernment of Green's essays. An entertaining, interesting, and useful collection. 

Women and orgasm

It was a confluence of items: a spam offer, a book review, and a book, all concerned with women and orgasm, which my online dictionary defines as "a climax of sexual excitement, characterized by feelings of pleasure centered in the genitals and (in men) experienced as an accompaniment to ejaculation." 

The offer in my spam filter promised "She’ll Be Shaking & Begging — Tonight, Make her scream your name." It is not offering a vibrator, but a product that promises to give men an erection that will give a woman an orgasm. Here we are, fifty years after The Hite Report was published and the myth lives on that way to orgasm is via a male erection.

A couple weeks ago, in a review of a new book about Shere Hite and her best selling book, The New Yorker reviewer Margaret Talbot writes, "[The book's] main takeaway was the the  startling revelation that most women achieved orgasm not by means of vaginal intercourse alone—or what Hite, to the sniggering discomfort of many audiences, often referred to penile' thrusting'—but through manual or oral stimulation of the clitoris." (The New Yorker, 3926, p68)

The narrator of Miranda July's popular novel All Fours doesn't need an erect penis—or a male lover for that matter—to enjoy multiple orgasms, although she has nothing against men and their erections. The publisher says, "All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman."

One reviewer called All Fours a female Portnoy's Complaint, which is not fair, but may prepare unsuspecting readers for the reading experience. I remain saddened that there are enough misinformed men apparently that spams like the one I cite can find customers. I'm sorry for the men, sorry for their partners.

Outline your fiction or no?

Maybe it's the difference between creating genre fiction—mystery, thriller, romance, fantasy—and literary fiction.

Jesse Q. Sutanto

Jesse Q Sutanto who has a degree in creative writing from Oxford University, writes YA rom-coms, YA thrillers, and adult contemporary fiction. She told a Writer’s Digest interviewer “I outline my books before I start writing. But I never know what the character is going to be like until I actually start writing. Then their voice kind of comes out onto the page. When I first started writing, my first ever book was totally pantsed. I didn’t know how to outline and so I think the first three books I wrote, I pantsed them"—i.e., she wrote them by the seat of her pants (if you can visualize that).

But it was not working "because I was getting stuck all the time. Even after I finished the draft, it would be a hot mess. I would have to rewrite a lot of it. So, when I first started outlining, I only outlined about half of the book, and things would surprise me. There was a lot more flexibility.” She says that by her eighteenth book her outlines had become meticulous. “My outlines listen to me because my characters are scared of me. They know not to surprise me. My outlines, they have no chill, you know? They’re chapter by chapter. They tend to be 12 pages long, and they’re quite detailed.” (https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/the-wd-interview-jesse-q-sutanto)

Roger Rosenblatt

Roger Rosenblatt has written 22 books, six off-Broadway plays, and has taught creative writing. In his book Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing he says he tells writing students because they ask that they should never outline. "The trouble with using an outline is that you'll follow it . . .You'll cover everything you've put down in one portion of your outline, all the while aiming for what you've put in the following portion. All you'll be doing is reading a road map. You'll never surprise yourself with a sudden turn."

A student asks if an outline will keep the story orderly so that it's clear to the reader. "Don't worry about the reader," says Rosenblatt. "Worry about the story. Your story will determine its own orderliness without your planning it out step by step." (p. 34)

Maybe this writing game is more complicated than putting words on paper.

How does she do it?

I don't know how to review—let alone critique—Elizabeth MeCracken's short story collection The Souvenir Museum. 

A dozen stories. Individual characters—individuals—in every one. Domestic and international settings: Ireland, Scotland, somewhere in the midwest (Illinois? Indiana?), London, Rotterdam, Swampscott, Galveston, Austin, Boston, Denmark, Amsterdam.

Which is not to mention an original—or interesting—situation in every one but I'll mention some anyway: A wedding in rural Ireland. An affair between a directionless young woman who drinks Jim Beam and a much older radio advice doctor. A young man and an older ventriloquist who takes him into her bed. Two fathers take their son to a waterpark. A middle-age couple enjoy a honeymoon on a moored Amsterdam canal boat.

Aside from character, setting, and situation the language of the stories is worth the price of admission. Here are some examples literally taken at random:

—It was his eyes that confused things, so joltingly blue they seemed to hold every emotion and its opposite.

—Then, helped by a dozen hands, as in a child's séance, they were lifted up and the cave was filled with applause, genuine, sarcastic, dutiful.

—New Year's Eve in a Rotterdam garret, the whole block blacked out, bottle rockets rattling the casements: Mistress Mickle, villainess of the children's game show Barnaby Grudge, off duty and far from home, ate a cold canned hot dog in the dark and pronounced it delicious.

—She's basically a hermit, Sadie had told him, and Jack had imagined a lady lighthouse keeper, a kind of nun—not a nun nun, since Linda was Jewish, but a woman of the book, devoted to reading.

Unlike the writing I often find in literary magazines McCracken's English is not so rich wuth metaphor and fine words it is almost cloying. She'll create a word if necessary—"joltingly"—but it does not call attention to itself for interrupt the flow. The Souvenir Museum is amazing. I wish I could tell you how she does it. I can only suggest you see for yourself.