Reading Midgley, Again

 The Little Free Library at Midgley Corner yielded Man and Beast: The Roots of Human Nature some weeks back. I have by now read through it, and am grateful to have done so. Some of the book I had previously read in The Essential Mary Midgley, selections from various of her works. Most was new to me.

Broadly, the themes of Man and Beast are those of The Essential Mary Midgley. There is a great deal more about animal behavior: the mental abilities of primates, the family bonds of such as wolves and wild dogs. She quotes Kant, but also Konrad Lorenz and Jane Goodall, and others working in ethology, and also, with respect but with considerable reservations, Edward O. Wilson.

I have always liked books that suggest or compel more reading. I can tell from Man and Beast that I really should read Wilson, Lorenz, Goodall, and Bishop Butler. But I think that the others will have to wait on Butler, though for his sermons I will probably have to go to Alibris. They may also have to wait on Anthony Powell, since Midgley quotes from novels of his I haven't read.

Translated From the German

 Having just finished a book stated to have been translated from the German, I find myself with the question that occurred to me on page 4: from the German, into what?

For Adorno, this turbulent panorama [of the Gulf of Naples], imbued with a diffuse revolutionary bent, was distilled into a core group of thinkers ignited by Naples's atmosphere, where everyday life spurred even the most pensive of participants to train their gaze on the superficial elements of their era and discern the potential in those elements.

 The way that "imbued", "bent", "distilled", "ignited" have come unstuck from any original meaning bothers me. And why should "even" the most pensive of the participants pay special attention? My best guess at the author's meaning is

Naples had many more or less leftist foreign visitors, and Adorno collected around himself those that most interested him. The quality of  everyday life in Naples was such as to impress itself even on the most introverted and blinkered visitor, and to offer scope for over-interpretation of minor details.

(The last clause may have more to do with my temper, and less with the author's intention. But in fairness to me, I read through 140 pages of this.)

 There is also the odd phrases, within quotation marks,

eccentric structure of this landscape, in which every point is equidistant from the center

In a plane, a figure with every point equidistant from a center is a circle; in three dimensions, a sphere. But a landscape with every point equidistant from the center is simply unimaginable. And how "eccentric"?

 

Production Values

 Yale University Press publishes a series named "Rethinking the Western Tradition". The bulk of a volume will be some classic of the Western tradition, followed by essays by scholars now active. The usual proportion of classic to commentary seems to be between two to one and three to one. I first noticed the series for its edition of Newman's The Idea of a University, in which I thought that some of the essays could have been spared for more Newman.

 I have just finished reading the series edition of Leviathan. Here the first essay I read was definitely worth the time, an attempt to emphasize Hobbes's reliance on natural law. I don't know that the author made his case. But I will have a look at other essays when time allows.

Hobbes will occasionally occasionally give a term in Greek, mostly later in the book. Here in a few places the production process let Yale down. There are a couple of sigmas where omicrons should be, and a nu replaces an upsilon. These are not especially important, but they introduce a doubt: how accurately rendered are the four hundred pages of 17th Century English, with different spellings, capitalization, and punctuation? Cross-checking against an old Pelican paperback edition shows that the Pelican edition does not have these particular errors.

 Well, I bought the book in part to encourage Kramerbooks to carry more works of philosophy. I see in looking at the Yale series that we bought another volume in it last year to give to a friend at Christmas, a collection of Hume's essays.

Equal Distribution

 When looking into Leviathan again, I noticed a quotation that was familiar:

 And as to the faculties of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born with us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat els,) I find yet a greater equality amongst men, than that of strength. For Prudence, is but Experience; which equall time, equally bestowes on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceipt of ones owne wisdome, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the Vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equall, than unequall. For there is not ordinarily a greater signe of the equall distribution of any thing, than that every man is contented with his share.

(Chapter XIII) 

I have written about my perplexity about a similar argument in Descartes, though Descartes uses the term "good sense" rather than wisdom.

Did Hobbes really consider that he had no greater wisdom than the Vulgar? I have no particularly high estimate of my own wisdom. But I have worked with men of at least average education whose judgments on this and that, expressed in casual conversation, made me think of Learned Hand's statement that in his worst nightmares he was the defendant in a trial by jury.

 The truth may simply be that Hobbes does not wish to acknowledge anything that will tend to dilute the power of sovereignty in possession. Anything that argues against the sovereign at a given time tends to impair the sovereign's power, and open the way to civil war. 

The Yellow Pages

 Yesterday there turned up at our house The Real Yellow Pages, a publication of Verizon. It has been a while since we had a phone book around the house, so I was curious to see what this one had. It is much smaller, of course than the Yellow Pages I remember from the days before Google. It does have many listings, some misleading

Under Book Stores, I was surprised to see Books-a-Million, which has been gone for some time from Dupont Circle. I was more surprised to see a couple of entries for Borders, which has been gone for a dozen years. Among the used book stores, Kultura is definitely gone, and I think that Books for America is, too.

The listing of churches is odd as well. Among Churches-Catholic, the first entry is Archbishop Carroll, which is a high school. There is an entry for St. Anselm's Abbey, with the correct telephone number, but a curiously wrong address, about five and a half miles away from abbey's actual location..

 Among restaurants, I see Equinox, closed for some years now. Mari Vanna is closed, replaced by a Persian restaurant. Naan and Beyond, a lunch counter and carryout at 17th and L is long gone. The Wendy's that contributed the name to Dave Thomas Circle is gone but still listed.

 Schools-Universities & Colleges-Academic is a mix. It includes secondary schools, and a couple of colleges that are associations of medical doctors--pathologists and surgeons--and an MD or two. A church or two find their way into the listings. Many of the listings are for distant universities that maintain a building or two in Washington. At first I thought this odd, but then who ever looked for universities in the Yellow Pages?

 It is possible that the Yellow Pages of my youth and middle age were just as bad. I suspect that they were somewhat better.  

Don't Mention It

 While going through old files at work, I found my self-assessment for 1999. I read or at least skimmed it a couple of times. I saw no mention of Y2K--the effect of moving from the 1900s to the 2000s--which was in everyone's thoughts that year, and preparing for which occupied some portion of my time. I guess that I did not mention this because my assessment responded to the goals that I had set down at the beginning of the year, when the attention to Y2K was slightly less.

By the fall we were thinking about the transition a good deal more. There was a weekend on which quite a few of Accounting and Information Technology departments came in to ensure that we would be able to run payroll, pay vendors, and (I suppose) run membership lists in the New Year. The tests ran smoothly, though also long, for I failed to retrieve my car from the garage before it closed, and required a ride from a co-worker. And when January came, the payrolls still ran, and work went on as usual.

Idling

 In Anthony Kenny's translation of Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, Book II, Chapter 1 I noticed the clause

in sleep the soul is not active but idling.

I think of idling as something that an automobile motor does at traffic lights. The OED shows that the verb "to idle" was in use long before it was applied to motors, in "idle over". Still, having driven a lot, it is hard for me to separate "idling" from the automotive sense. I think of The Waste Land, the violet hour when "the human engine waits/Like a taxi, throbbing, waiting." (I think that mechanics might call the throbbing a rough idle and prescribe some adjustments.)

The Perseus Project shows that the word that Kenny renders as  "idling" is "ἀργία", which Liddell and Scott do give as "idle". I suppose that "idling" is preferable here to "idle", as implying that the sleeping soul is doing something, for example dreaming.