11/19/2004|||110086850930543661||||||

RECOMMENDED READING

Some books are so wise and profound that you feel bereft after finishing them, as if you have lost an old friend. I'm a great fan of Richard Pipes' books on Russian history, but have only just got round to reading "Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger", a wonderfully vivid account of his journey from pre-war Poland to Harvard and Washington. There are so many memorable observations that I'll probably drop a few more into this blog in the coming days.
Here he is on the pitfalls of philosophy. I'm humbled to think that he wrote this diary entry when he was barely 22 years old:

"I have always had a tendency to be attracted by subjects and ideas which I thought to be the least common. When I was younger and more naive, this inclination made me an avid follower of Nietzsche's philosophy: his attacks on the common concepts of 'good', 'sympathy', 'happiness', appealed to me because I thought [the latter concepts] prevalent and vulgar. Since then I have learned that they are among the rarest encountered in the world. I was misled by books that praised them into thinking that they are widely accepted - they were, moreover, so logical and self-evident! Now I know they are the most difficult to find."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/recommended-reading-some-books-are-so.html|||11/19/2004 01:25:00 pm|||||||||

|||