Philosophy and Literature Blog

     Wittgenstein goes on and on about inexact vs. exact. On and on and then writes: "Logic lay, it seemed, at the bottom of all the sciences. -- For logical investigation explores the nature of all things. It seeks to see to the bottom of things and is not meant to concern itself whether what actually happens is this or that --- It takes its rise ... from an urge to understand the basis, or essence, of everything empirical."(Wittgenstein, Section 89) Later he writes, remember he is talking about things he really rejects: "...we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we are moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation."(Wittgenstein, Section 91) But I take it from all the subjunctive and conditional statements and so on that he is rejecting the program of seeing past rough, inexact language, like the broad strokes in a Van Gogh (ha

"F.P. Ramsey once emphasized in conversation with me that logic was a 'normative science'. I do not know exactly what he had in mind, but it was doubtless closely related to what only dawned on me later: namely, that in philosophy we often compare the use of words with games and calculi which have fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game. -- But if you say that our languages only approximate to such calculi you are standing on the very brink of a misunderstanding. For then it may look as if what we were talking about were an ideal language."(Wittgenstein, Section 81) So, in philosophy perhaps philosophers 'correct' common sense usage or notions, referring to such as the language or thought of 'the vulgar'. But it sounds like Wittgenstein is saying that ordinary usage is its own thing. "logic does not treat of language -- or of thought -- in the sense in which a natural science treats of a n

     While Wittgenstein is talking about whether the boundary between game and non-game is blurry, he picks up the topic of "seeing what is common". You know, this problem is famous in Plato/Socrates. This is the oldest arrow in Socrates' quiver: "No, tell me what all these things have in common". So this is real philosophy, though sometimes it doesn't feel like it to me.  He talks about different ways of showing someone the color 'yellow ochre' or 'blue', and 'leaf'. He circles back around to wondering about what's in the mind of the user -- we've been here before in the Investigations, but now we have seemingly digressed from games back to this topic, but he's not really, he is applying these thoughts to the notion of game. He says: "What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it mean, to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it we

"Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations.--For someone might object against me:'You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language.' And this is true.-- Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, -- but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all 'language'. I will try to explain this."(Wittgenstein, section 65).      Well,

     A long time ago I read Parmenides, who talks about how there is the 'way of Being' and the 'way of non-Being', but the way of non-Being is not there to be discussed, so you can't go that way. But what is Being? Well, it's not anything that has a not or non in front of it. Being ends up an infinitely dense sphere, like a black hole, no hair, no nothing. Contemporary thinkers tend not to go this way in their analysis of being, or Being. They look at the place a term has in language, like Quine's "To Be is to be the value of a variable". Wittgenstein references his and Russell's early work. Language, according to this earlier analysis, is decomposable into simples, 'individuals' or 'objects'. Wittgenstein quotes Plato's Theaetetus talking about how simples don't have 'definitions', only names. You name that which is simple, like 'red', but you don't define it, per say.      Wittgenstein worries ov

"The word 'Excalibur', say, is a proper name in the ordinary sense. The sword Excalibur consists of parts combined in a particular way. If they are combined differently Excalibur does not exist. But it is clear that "Excalibur has a sharp blade" makes sense whether Excalibur is still whole or is broken up. But if "Excalibur" is the name of an object, this object no longer exists when Excalibur is broken in pieces; and as no object would then correspond to the name it would have no meaning. But then the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp  blade" would contain a word that had no meaning, and hence the sentence would be nonsense. But it does make sense; so there must always be something corresponding to the words of which it consists. So the word "Excalibur" must disappear when the sense is analyzed and its place be taken by words which name simples. It will be reasonable to call these words the real names." (Wittgenstein, section 39)

    After I got my undergrad in philosophy I spent the summer working on a horse farm -- I was part of the 'maintenance' team, they didn't let me near the horses!  -- and I had this boss who would bark commands at me like "Go over there get that thing and take it over there!" while pointing in arbitrary directions. He would get madder and madder as I didn't perform whatever task he had in mind. This, combined with me constantly wrecking his utility truck, backing tractors into it, running it into gates and so on, made for a long summer. One thing's for sure, I never mastered whatever the language game was, but at least I had the good sense not to mention Wittgenstein.      The point is, when someone points at something by way of definition, the person being shown whatever it is has to know what is being pointed at: a shape, a color, and object, a number or whatever. How is it that the learner knows what specifically is being pointed at? How does the teach

     "If you do not keep the multiplicity of language-games in view you will perhaps be inclined to ask questions like: "What is a question?" -- Is it the statement that I do not know such-and-such, or the statement that I with the other person would tell me....? Or is it the description of my mental state of uncertainty? -- And is the cry "Help!" such a description?"(Wittgenstein, pg. 10) I'm going to try to think this out -- feel free to help me here. So, it seems to me that he is saying something like: when we forget there are all these different games with their own purview, we start puzzling over meta-problems, asking self-referential questions or making self-referential statements. This is a take on why self-referential statements should be avoided: it is not to avoid paradoxes, per say, but because they betray a forgetting that language is actually a collection of games. Paradoxes are a hazard of this forgetting.      "The significance o

     If we follow through on what Wittgenstein is saying, we get some more multi-culti inferences. Rather than consciousness having a universal character, if there are all these language games, and these games define how you interact with yourself and the world, then consciousness is relative to the games you are playing. This is culturally relative and changes over time in your own life as you play different games.      Augustine's theory of language has a naughty youngster using language to get what he wants prior to the game. With Wittgenstein's view, the point may be that the game defines what is wantable; there is no primordial want.      All of this is, you know, hackneyed or whatever by now, but that's where I think this is going. Now, I also think there's a fundamental way in which this has to be wrong.  I have a strong feeling that there are meta-rules out there, determined by our DNA, that determine the set of possible games. But I know better than to think

     In paragraph 23 Wittgenstein lists a number of language games: "Giving orders, and obeying them-- Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements-- Constructing an object from a description(a drawing)-- Reporting and event-- Speculating about an event-- Forming and testing a hypothesis-- Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams-- Making up a story; and reading it-- Play-acting-- Singing catches-- Guessing riddles-- Making a joke; telling it-- Solving a problem in practical arithmetic-- Translating from one language to another-- Requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying."(Wittgenstein pg. 11)      I take it this list is not supposed to be exhaustive. Wittgenstein associates a 'Form of Life', a Lebensform, with each language-game. So, what's a Lebensform? Well, its a way of interacting with other people and the world, I guess. I suppose this is a good word for it. Rather than a single way of deali

     The first 20 paragraphs are broad reflections on the nature of language itself, how it is learned, the uses to which it is put etc... Wittgenstein begins with a quotation from Augustine's Confessions about how he learned language by imitating what adults said. I always feel, even reading this passage, that somehow Augustine is being naughty, seeking advantage, being a little rascal by imitating adults to get what he wants, but maybe that's just me projecting my own guilt. Another thing I can't help mentioning is the influence of Chomsky, that language acquisition involves much more than mere imitation, there's complicated structures under the hood -- this seems much less naughty.      One might be tempted to ask: "why the obsession with linguistics, isn't that a science now?" So, I should say some things about the relationship between our theories regarding language and the problems of philosophy. Philosophy has these 'problems': what's

     As some of you know, the title of the Tractatus was suggested by G.E. Moore as a reference to Spinoza's Tractatus, a work that proved the impossibility of miracles. Wittgenstein's Tractatus reads like one of the hyper-geometric set of axioms a-la the Ethics, with lots of numbers and sections, giving it the sense of a long proof, though whether or not it was meant to be one is at least questionable.     Unlike the Tractatus, the Investigations is a set of sentences, paragraphs, numbered, perhaps reminiscent of Nietzsche's  aphorisms, though much more explicated and logical. As Wittgenstein opens the Preface: "The thoughts which I publish in what follows are the precipitate of philosophical investigations which have occupied me for the last sixteen years. They concern many subjects: the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things." He laments that he was unable t

      I've been thinking for some time about starting a, probably very, very long, series of entries on the Philosophical Investigations. Now, I am NOT an expert on Wittgenstein. I've read the Tractatus and Blue and Brown Books, but it's been a while. Of course, if someone who knows about Wittgenstein wants to opine about how I'm wrong, please do so.       Wittgenstein is obviously a fascinating figure: I remember being intrigued by him when I was a teenager reading accounts of his personality by Russell. He seemed an wild foil to Russell's self-control -- it was later I read about Russell's letters with D.H. Lawrence.       Be prepared for idiosyncratic digressions. I'll start now...      A few years ago I read a book called Naming Infinity, by Graham and Kantor. This book is about the development of modern analysis in France and Russia, with an emphasis on the mystical devotion of Luzin,  Egorov and Florensky. The notion that to name something is to cr

    The few of you who occasionally read this blog may know that I do not write about current events; that's not what this blog is about -- usually. But a recent confluence of events have reached critical mass inside the confines of my cerebral cortex, necessitating a relief of pressure -- I think of the old Simpsons episode where Homer is working at home and is repeatedly asked by his computer whether to vent radioactive gas. I perceive myself as an excessively agreeable person, and I admit that friends/acquaintances of  mine may think I agree with them when I don't, with the exception of anything having to do with Ayn Rand's philosophy, which I openly despise.       The Zimmerman trial brings out a number of issues I had hoped to leave behind me when I left my old neighborhood in Kentucky, the state represented by Rand Paul. So, what's the problem? Well, we just had this big thing with gun control...         Being a member, or even the head, of a neighborhood watch

     The book takes a number of interesting turns, talking about everyone from a Biden fundraiser to the great short story writer Raymond Carver. The book is affectingly written, but I'm not sure I know exactly all he's getting at. I get that he's a liberal chronicling the demise of the Great Society, but I feel like I'm missing something. Jonathan Alter, who has been pushing his book on the 2012 election, 'The Center Holds', says that the last election was the most important in a long time because it reaffirmed our commitment to the Great Society. It seems to me that the last several elections have been about this -- even the Clinton years had welfare reform. But the U.S. did not go the way of Europe after WW 2. The predominance of socialist parties from 1945 until Thatcher didn't happen here. I'm not necessarily saying it *could* happen here, either. The U.S. occupies a specific place in the world, like it or no. I sometimes think we were saddled with

    Well, I read up through the section on Oprah. The author sets the reader up to dislike Oprah by telling a very sad story about a Steel town in Ohio where all the jobs left. I had no sooner thought 'this sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song' when he turned around and quoted one! The book is purportedly about the dismantling of the safety net and so on. He hasn't gotten around to doing much of that yet. But he seems to be circling around the stories so there will likely be more of this later.      I found myself wondering how much of a safety net has there actually been, and for how long, in the U.S.? It's true that especially after LBJ there was more of a safety net -- for a while. But for, say, most of the 19th Century there wasn't much, and many of FDR's and Truman's efforts(right after WW 2, Truman sent a New Dealesque paper to Congress) were blocked by republicans and conservative democrats. And, while there are a lot of things to like about Eisenhow

     So I'm going to start reading Packer's The Unwinding. It looks like a series of portraits of people both famous and not famous. It's about the decline of collective behavior in America. Interesting that I read in a biography of Truman that his first letter to congress was a continuation of the New Deal, and added a proposal for universal health care, after WW 2. This was, evidently, a bit of a surprise to many in congress, and was vehemently opposed by republicans and conservative democrats in congress. Sound familiar?     So, next time I will start with some reactions to 'The Unwinding'.  Oh, and just to upset a bunch of people, I agree with Bill Maher's recent assessment of Reagan. Everybody, including democrats, seem to be lining up to say how great he was, but he WASN'T. Thanks, Bill -- even though sometimes I  think you've lost your keen edge because you've smoked so much dope[I'm kidding, I'm kidding!], you got that one right.

     I finished reading Inferno this morning. I have to say it was well-written and enjoyable to read. Two big concepts running through the book are 'transhumanism' and the overpopulation, but the main thing I enjoyed about the book was the tour through Florence, Venice and Istanbul. I know, I could get a travel guide, but it was actually more fun to read it with all the storyline and stuff.      There were things I hadn't known about, like the beaky plague masks doctors wore when they were exposed to the infected. The book also made me aware of an industry that just has to exist in some form: the alibi industry. These are companies that provide you with fake work numbers, fake addresses, passports etc.. for a variety of purposes. Brown claims at the beginning that 'The Consortium', an extreme company of this type, is real -- well, I cannot overmuch believe that, but you never know I guess.      The bad news is that overpopulation is a problem and humanity will ei

          So far I've enjoyed the novel, though I have a feeling that the plot -- don't worry, I won't guess on this blog, so no need for a spoiler alert, yet -- is going to be a bit disappointing after all. But I want to talk about what seems to be the main connection to Dante...           The crowded visions of hell, "So many, I had not thought death had undone so many"[both in Dante's Inferno and The Wasteland] is matched by a Malthusian vision of overpopulation and attendant violence etc... The above line is stated by Dante when Virgil shows them the souls of those who have neither done great evil or great good; these are those who have led conformist lives of quiet desperation. There is also a possible reference in this section of the Inferno to Pope Celestine(I think V) who gave up the papacy -- he is referred to as "he who made the great refusal". The notion that hell, and the Earth, is clogged with do-nothings is not a pleasant thought, but

     So, I've read about a third of the book. It is engagingly written and has lots of references to Florentine Palaces, Museums, etc... I think I should look around the internet and see the sights. Look at the below: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boboli_Gardens 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Vecchio 3. https://www.google.com/search?q=battle+of+marciano+painting&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=U1KZUfSHE6T54APlsIDIAw&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1093&bih=498 4. http://en.comune.fi.it/municipality/rooms_pv/hall_500.htm 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasari_Corridor I don't have any comments yet about these...

     OK, so the Consolation of Philosophy thing didn't work. I just couldn't get into it, sorry. Consolation as defined in the time of Boethius doesn't seem to do it for me. I know he was all important, but I just couldn't read a book because I'm supposed to. Maybe someone out there can tell me why I should have liked it.      Not that I dislike Medieval Philosophy. There are some interesting things there in the foundations of modern thought. You know, the Universals stuff is interesting to think about for awhile. Also, I often feel that underlying modern science are mental reflexes that are Medieval in character: there is a kind of Medieval 'first principle' feel to the Higgs Boson(the particle goo that bequeths mass, think about the beginning of The Paradiso: "The glory of the One who moves all things permeates the universe and glows in one part more and in another less."[Mandelbaum Translation] ) and the Quantum Field of which all matter/e

     When I think of Consolation I think of the Stoics, in particular Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism has a very consolatory side. Tom Wolfe, of  'The Right Stuff' fame, wrote 'A Man in Full', a novel in which the main character's life is changed by reading the works of Epictetus. But the consolation of Stoicism does not seem the same as that of Christianity, which has an afterlife. Stoicism is not really like that. For stoicism, one puts things in perspective, stops the mind from catastrophizing when things don't go our way, asserts a kind of immanent God, and an ultimately rational universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchiridion_of_Epictetus There is a stoic tendency in modern therapy, particularly starting in the work of Albert Ellis:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis To me there are also similar threads in the Tao Te Ching, though without stoicism's heavy emphasis on rationality or a god of some kind(for the stoics it was Zeus).

     Well, I've been looking more at Watts' introduction. It looks like he's doing a very good job summarizing Boethius' work. The problem is that Boethius combines two traditions I almost entirely reject: Neoplatonism and Christianity. They've made for some nice poetry and art, but they ultimately do not yield credible consolation for me. I'm going to continue and read the book anyway, pointing out what I think is interesting, but I don't anticipate being consoled by it in any way. Watts basically admits that the modern reader would find a lot of Boethius' arguments unsatisfactory. It's too bad, but there it is.

     It appears this introduction was written in the year of my birth, 1967. Watts mentions the obvious importance of the goddess 'Fortuna' in the Consolation and the rest of the middle ages. I know in The Inferno, Virgil talks about 'fortune' as some kind of sub-diety that has control over the fortunes of mortals. We change places with one another in 'rapid permutation'(The Pinsky Translation).  Too often, Virgil says, Fortune is blamed when she should be thanked. Throughout the middle ages and Renaissance Fortune recurs, specifically the since debased 'Wheel of Fortune'. There's a famous line in Hamlet when he's talking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where they claim to be in the 'mid' section of fortune, you know, a typical renaissance bawdy reference.      Boethius had an ambitious plan to translate all of Aristotle and Plato into Latin, but you know, he was executed before he could finish the Plato part -- easy come easy go. Joking

     Well, here's a huge, glaring gap in my education.  That's right, I've never read this book. So, I will attempt to read the copy that's been sitting on the shelf for a really long time. I'll start out by reading the introduction. I've read a lot of philosophy in my time, much of it worthless. By popular acclaim this is one of the most worthwhile books in all of Western letters and I've never read it. We'll see if I can make it through it. I'll try to get the introduction by V.E. Watts next time.

     I often say to people that I'm fortunate that I've failed in a lot of places because I would be stuck there if I'd succeeded. You know, I failed miserably in middle school and fitting in with the kids in my old neighborhood, so that worked out well for me. If I'd succeeded there I'd be dipping 'baccr and listening to that idiot Ted Nugent(and perhaps pretending my face is a Maserati) as I write. My middle school teachers were just about as stupid as the neighborhood thugs they were prepping for today's "mills and processing facilities"(line taken from Superintendent Chalmers). At the time I saw myself as a rebel, a wimpy rebel, but a rebel nonetheless.       Other people rebel in the sense of rising up. And it makes sense for many people to do so. As for me, I'm a poser. When I acted like a rebel it was because I knew I was not going to succeed according to the rules, so... If you real rebels are out there trying to bring about the end of

     This is the kind of combination you'll only find on my blog, congratulations. Camus launches into a summary of Hegel's Phenomenology and the history of consciousness through the development of mutual recognition of humanity. First there is the Master/Slave relation, then there's penitent/God, then there's citizen/citizen, etc... History ends with the full recognition of humanity.  Our recognition of ourselves as human is dependent on the recognition we get from others. History, up through Hegel's time(corresponding to the era of Napoleon), is an evolution of self-consciousness as the transcendental Idea unfolds.      Left-wing Hegelians, such as Marx, materialize this, leading to the workers' revolution. For the Hegelians, rebellion is part of the divine development; I should think that for orthodox Hegelians no rebel, anarchist or otherwise, does anything other than forward this development. For Marxists, there can be counter-revolutionaries who have to b

     Now I've really gone off. I got a whole bunch of Plato on Audio CD: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, The Republic, and The Symposium. I've listened to all of it except for the end of The Phaedo -- oh, man, I think Socrates is in trouble... Plato makes a big point of disallowing poets, in particular Homer, from The Republic. It has been pointed out with tiresome frequency that the dialogues are themselves art, with the attendant questioning as to whether Plato is a hypocrite and with the answer that since his art is in the service of dialectic, it is not subject to the same objections as Homer. Plato has specific problems with Homer.  First, Homer represents unstable personalities in a heroic way. Homer's poetry does not do what the dialogues do, instruct. So is Plato agrees with Camus that Homer is a poetical rebel.      The question is, what is the status of Socrates? Camus would likely say that Socrates was not a Rebel. In fact, Socrates' prime foe, embodied b

     Alright, I know what you're saying, Camus was killed in a car accident in 1960, he couldn't have mentioned Jim Morrison. Well, I read the little section on Rimbaud and the surrealists and decided to write about Jim Morrison instead. Morrison styled himself a poet and seems to have had an affinity for Rimbaud. He was obviously a rebel -- I recently read a good biography of Morrison -- and he took bits and pieces of poetry and Nietzsche to help define the counterculture.      At first, while reading the biography I felt very sorry for Morrison, but as the book progressed I felt increasingly sorry for the people who came into contact with him. In some ways Morrison was the perfect embodiment of Camus' and Nietzsche's rebel, in other ways he was a silly caricature. Interesting though his life was, he does not really present in any way a heroic life I would want to emulate. I know what I'm saying is heresy to a great number of people. Sorry.      I've enjoyed

     Camus moves from Nietzsche's assault on Christianity to his assault on socialism. Unfortunately, his assault on socialism bears some superficial commonality with the attitudes of the Randians. But Nietzsche was anything but some capitalist. He had Homeric heroes in mind, not dull boardrooms. "Socialism is only a degenerate form of Christianity. In fact, it preserves a belief in the finality of history which betrays life and nature, which substitutes ideal ends for real ends, and contributes to enervating both the will and the imagination. Socialism is nihilistic, in the henceforth precise sense that Nietzsche confers on the word. A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists. In this sense, all forms of socialism are manifestations, degraded once again, of Christian decadence."(pg. 69) Socialism is committed to values of equality which ultimately derive from a religious root. It is therefore just as nihilistic. But Nie

     I figure it will take me more than one entry to handle what Camus says about Nietzsche in this section of the book(still 'Metaphysical Rebellion'). In the popular mind Nietzsche is a god killer who went crazy; others try to turn Nietzsche into a thinker with political views commensurate with contemporary liberalism. The main thing to understand about Nietzsche is that he accuses Western culture of being nihilistic -- he's not a proponent of  nihilistic resignation, he is a diagnostician.  Camus writes: "Nietzsche never thought except in terms of an apocalypse to come, not in order to extol it, for he guessed the sordid and calculating aspect that this apocalypse would finally assume, but in order to avoid it and to transform it into a renaissance. He recognized nihilism for what it was and examined it as a clinical fact...He said of himself that he was the first complete nihilist of Europe.  Not by choice, but by condition, and because he was too great to refuse

"You're a rebellious soul in a good-looking body." -- my first therapist, c. 1986      Well, I'm not as good looking as I used to be... which brings me to Camus' presentation of the Marquis De Sade. I am not familiar with the writings of Sade and I think I'm going to keep it that way.  Apparently Sade spent many years in prison and had time to dream up all kinds of wacky fantasies. Mainly, Camus is giving Sade as an example of complete negation. In his imagination Sade wants to dominate and then destroy the universe, or something. Sadism sounds exhausting.      Camus portrays Sade's work as ending with all the victims dead and the executioners are left to turn on each other: "The most powerful, the one who will survive, is the solitary, the Unique, whose glorification Sade has undertaken -- in other words, himself...He is in fact alone, imprisoned in a bloodstained Bastille, entirely constructed around a still unsatisfied, and henceforth undirec

     Camus begins his 'Metaphysical Rebellion' section, first by saying that the rebellion he is describing does not predate the enlightenment, then by saying intimations of it are to be found in the ancient tragedies.  Obviously, Prometheus is the first case that comes to mind.  He is in rebellion to the Gods and is heavily punished for it.  In a certain sense, bringing fire to humans can be taken as a rebellion against the inequality between humans and gods.  But Camus goes deeper into the Greek notion of Fate.  I can't help at this point quoting  Greenberg in his lectures on Beethoven, when Beethoven began the romantic movement in science Greenberg says he assumes his new 'artistic self image, that of a hero, battling, and finally triumphing, over Fate itself.'  I heartily recommend any of Greenberg's lectures from the Teaching Company, especially those on Beethoven.           Metaphysical rebellion is characterized by a rebellion against the human conditio

     The title of the short first part of The Rebel is, called, well, 'The Rebel'.  He deals with rebellion in the forms it took since the 18th Century, where some group demanded its rights.  Camus argues that in a society that holds a sacred view of the world and social order, there is not the same type of rebellion.  He says: "The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality  conceals great factual inequalities.  The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society."(pg. 20) I think that he, well, equates Western society with certain notions of human equality.  In a society whose view of reality denies this, there is not the same potential for rebellion in the sense Camus is describing.  What is interesting to me is that it is against this very society that some are rebelling for the sake of returning to a 'sacred' world(I used to belong to a religious group that possessing this type of

     Well, the Sandel book was not all that interesting, and I think I've grown strong enough to take a chance again at reading this book by Camus. Albert Camus is one of my favorite authors. I first read Camus as a teenager and found that among 20th-Century writers he was the one who spoke to me the most.  I put Camus' writings in the category of the works that have set the agenda(or non-agenda) for much of my mental life.  One can ask which direction the causality went: did my tendency to be deeply morose come first and cause my resonance with certain works, such as Ecclesiastes, or did this exposure cause my tendency.  I'm certain now that the causality ran in the first direction. But, once I read Ecclesiastes, it was done. Then came Macbeth, then Camus.  Camus is, for me, far more affecting than, say Sartre, with whom he is, I think unfortunately, connected.       As a philosopher, Camus is uninterested in the usual problems of epistemology.  This is possibly why he is