Coming Soon! Reading & the Good Life
Best of Reading & the Good Life (26 Apr at Noon EST)
Reading & the Good Life
Join us for a special “Best of Reading & the Good Life” this Friday (26 Apr) at Noon EST (Register here). Reading & the Good Life is a casual space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living.
This Friday, we’ll revisit some of our favorite passages and reflect on what we’ve learned about the good life. Next month, we'll transition to the practice of solitude through Stephen Batchelor's The Art of Solitude.
The Art of Reading Well
What can we learn about the art of living from the words of others? Should we even think about books as portals to the good life? Or, are books just another distraction from being with our own thoughts?
Many great thinkers throughout history have stressed the importance of reading. One of my favorite quotes on the subject is from the American philosopher Mortimer Adler, “The point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
For Adler, reading was a path to deeper understanding. In his classic How to Read a Book, Adler called a good book something that can teach us about the world and ourselves. He continued,
You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable - books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.
Similarly, the French philosopher Rene Descartes suggested,
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries.
However, the Stoic philosopher Seneca warned against reading too widely in a letter to Lucilius. He stressed,
Be careful not to read many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. To read well is to stay with a limited number of writers and be fed by them if one hopes to derive anything that will dwell reliably within us.
Since starting Reading & the Good Life, we’ve explored around 18 books. Although we’ve read widely — we’ve attempted to read well — focusing on philosophical and spiritual traditions.
Selected Passages
Join us for a special “Best of Reading & the Good Life” this Friday (26 Apr) at Noon EST (Register here). The following passages cover many topics, from happiness to suffering, existence to free will, and much more.
After reading each passage, consider reflecting on the following questions:
(1) How could you begin to embody these lessons in daily life?
(2) What might make it challenging to implement these ideas?
(3) How can the following insights help you to live the good life?
1. The Philosophy of Existence
Philosophers before Kierkegaard had speculated about the proposition ‘I exist,’ but it was he who observed the crucial fact they had forgotten: namely, that my own existence is not at all a matter of speculation to me, but a reality in which I am personally and passionately involved. I do not find this existence reflected in the mirror of the mind, I encounter it in life; it is my life, a current flowing invisibly around all my mental mirrors. But if existence is not mirrored as a concept in the mind, where then do we really come to grips with it? For Kierkegaard this decisive encounter with the Self lies in the Either/Or of choice. […]
Source: Irrational Man by William Barrett
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2. The Law of Human Nature
Since I can see no answer to these questions, I draw the following conclusions. This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. […]
Source: The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
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3. The Wisdom of William James
Falling in love and believing in free will are not all that different. Both are radical, life-altering, working hypotheses, verified or disproved in experience. Both involve the type of belief that one must assent to in an initial act of (basically blind) faith. As a friend once said to me, falling in love, at first, entails no small amount of self-deception, a willingness to act as if you have ‘all the facts’ about your beloved, when in fact you don’t. […]
Source: Sick Souls, Healthy Minds by John Kaag
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4. The Intentional Life
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. … The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. […]
Source: Walden by Henry David Thoreau
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5. The Art of Happiness
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. […]
Source: Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
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6. The Art of Suffering
One of the most difficult things for us to accept is that there is no realm where there’s only happiness and there’s no suffering. This doesn’t mean that we should despair. Suffering can be transformed. As soon as we open our mouth to say ‘suffering,’ we know that the opposite of suffering is already there as well. Where there is suffering, there is happiness. […]
Source: No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh
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7. Learning to Love
And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power—almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. […]
Source: The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
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8. On Both/And Thinking
Thus, those who say that they would have right without its correlate, wrong, or good government without its correlate, misrule do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. One might as well talk of the existence of Heaven without that of Earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly impossible. Yet people keep on discussing it without stop; such people must either be fools or knaves.
Source: Chuang-tzu, via Tao: The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts
If you’re available this Friday, please join us for a special “Best of Reading & the Good Life” (Register here). It’s a casual space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living!
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W. Bertolotti
P.S. As always, feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future reads!