Tag: philosophy

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Chronicle and personal epic. A major work by this leading Japanese contemporary writer. 607 pages of an individuals journey in detail, vaguely chronological, as this is a work of imagination, emotion, violence, philosophy and surreal/dream/ghostly journeying through crisis.

Toro Okada is the first person narrator and protagonist. He lives a very normal life in suburban Tokyo, with his wife Kumiko, sister of the powerful and strange Noboru Wataya. They are introduced by her family to Mr Honda deaf psychic and war veteran, in a comic first meeting. Then their cat disappears…

Another disappearance and a festering dislike are the starting points for an increasingly disparate narrative. An abandoned neighbouring house and a young neighbour, May Kasahara, haunt and challenge Toro. His life becomes a lonely search to solve a puzzle which becomes larger and more complex and irrational. His journey becomes unreal.

That’s enough narrative! The reader like Toru becomes surrounded by separate stories which Murakami keeps developing, switching from one to the other, keeping the tension and mystery drawing you on. There is much to take in, a lot of risks are being taken, thankfully the story telling and descriptions are more than equal to it.

I think it would be inadequate to call this book just a mystery, or fantasy. The novel deals with big themes of loneliness, loss and desire, individuality versus conformity. Duality and pairs feature, especially in Matla and Creta Kano and Nutmeg and Cinnamon Alaska. Power and control personal, political and criminal loom. History, in the very powerful memoirs from Japanese involvement in Manchuria, is faced. Big questions about identity, self, others, fate and prediction are explored. Reality versus the power of imagination and the role of unreality and dream are extensively explored. How do our minds work, where do we go in there, how do we get there?

A normal, passive even, main character engages in feats of free thought, fights for an escape from conformity is challenged by the forms of life in his own odyssey. Read this for a roller coaster ride not of fantasy, but of life!

Human Kind by Rutger Bregman

A wide review of human nature and motivation by this Dutch historian and journalist, who has gained a reputation as a “young thinker”. The book contains 463 pages including notes and index. The multi-disciplined approach could be dry and obscure, but is written in an approachable and engaging way.

The book concentrates on the deconstruction of widely held assumptions about human nature and the philosophies that are based on those assumptions, which are held as broadly accepted truths. Bregman focuses on the influence of Hobbes’s selfish nature of mankind and its influence on the enlightenment and modern society, with Rousseau as an opposing voice.

He then follows how these assumptions were reinforced by brutal experiences, especially in World War Two. Following the war psychiatrists, such as Zimbardo and Milgram seemed to add scientific weight to the selfish orientation of human kind view. He then exposes some the major flaws in these (overexposed) experiments.

Contrary evidence is based on the assumption that humans as hunter gathers were not selfish and not particularly warlike. Indeed that our basic instincts are cooperative and indeed social. The idea that civilisation is only a thin veneer is disputed as a front for power structures and ideologies which require conformity, division and resignation and crowd out other philosophies, which become marginalised.

Bregman asserts that as individuals and societies we are all prey to a “faulty self-image”, which stifles our “intrinsic motivation”. Despite everything “humans have evolved to be fundamentally sociable”. This means there is enormous scope for doing things in improved and better ways, examples are discussed.

This is a broad brush and possibly wide-eyed analysis, some of the realisations about human nature seem a bit egocentric in tone; this is an ancient and crowded discussion: there is a wider context to all these questions and the spectrum of answers which humans have always debated. There is also a lot of thought and practicality in the book too. Of Bregman’s target, Montaigne in his essay, “Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law” (1572-4) says, “Is there any worse kind of vices than those which attack our conscience and our understanding of one another?”

The book is a much needed counter to pessimism, negativity and resignation. After all, voices which offer a philosophy of positivism and optimism are, at a society and individual level, surely needed.

Time of the Magicians: The Invention of Modern Thought by Wolfram Eilenberger

The post world war one modernism of the nineteen-twenties featured famous writers such as, Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway and T.S. Eliot. Music and art were developing in new ways too. Not least in philosophy, established systems of thinking were changing and re-forming, with huge implications for human society.

The author Wolfram Eilenberger is a philosophy insider, he has been a teacher, writer and magazine editor. The book has been a bestseller in Germany, Spain and Italy. The four hundred and eighteen pages include notes, bibliography and index.

Eilenberger focuses on the story through four pivotal philosophers chosen for their range of thought and impact then and later. They are: Ludwid Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer and Walter Benjamin. The book follows a duel biographical and philosophical route developing the themes chronologically.

It is important to say the philosophical passages, by there very nature, are difficult (for novices like me), but of course thought provoking. The book can be read and enjoyed though, as it is supported by the fascinating life stories of each philosopher. Also, Eilenberger recognises this and divides each chapter into short sub-chapters, with bold headings. This eases the progress of the philosophical propositions and links them to biographical content. The historical context brings to life important developments, particularly in the precarious journey of the Weimar Republic in Germany.

The four characters were highly driven and each capable of being misunderstood professionally and personally. Eccentricity and feet of clay seem to have seem to have been part of the job description of philosopher. They also alternated between isolation and engagement academically, socially and politically. Politically, their influence stretches from extreme right through liberal to extreme left, though this is probably not an ideal analogy. Though they can be highly egocentric, didactic and slippery, they can also be attractive, tragic and human. There is a fascination in the lives.

It is pertinent to observe how rapidly very contradictory positions developed in a period of crisis, when centrifugal forces challenged propositions which were liberal in there implications. Wittgenstein’s “God-like” challenges, Heidegger’s search for “authenticity”, Cassirer’s studies of cultures and symbols and Benjamin’s Writings on modern culture and media, all contributed to the rush of ideas.

Yes the book can be difficult, but, if you are philosophic about the philosophy, very rewarding. Also, Eilenberger employs a wry humour which leavens the tone. You can decide who the heroes and villains are!