So, I Finally Read Ulysses by Duncan Stuart (The Hobbyhorse)

Around when I met Duncan, when I first moved to New York City after undegrad (plus a pandemic buffer year), he was writing bold and original essays, such as On Not Reading James Joyce. But those naive, revolutionary years are behind him. He has sold out to BIG Literature, and read James Joyce. Even worse, his reflections on reading James Joyce are being published, the machine must sustain itself. I kid. Duncan originally wrote some essays on not reading Joyce (we are currently reading Being and Time together, maybe the act of not reading is in a Heideggerian nothingness vein). Before we read a book, especially certain books, there are ways we have encountered the book already. It may be that you have heard something about Ahab in Moby Dick (which Duncan has wrote about not reading as well). Or you have encountered something about Hegel's Geist on Twitter, or Nietzsche in the NYRB, or Marx in the Financial Times, who knows. You may have seen and quoted quotes of books you haven't read (such as me with Foucault last week). During the summer I met Duncan, there were various readings of Finnegan's Wage happening around parks in the city, he went to a talk on the editing and publication of the book, he also purchased the book in Vienna sometime ago. But now Duncan has read some Joyce, Ulysses, and his not reading has been united with his reading, along with the readings of Tóibín and Ranciére.

The Case for Disqualification by Sean Wilentz (The New York Review of Books)

America is supposedly ruled by law, not by a person, not by a people. The military has been emphasizing this basic value of American life. When we talk about how bad Iran, Russian, China, and North Korea are, we tell ourselves and the world that we are governed by a higher, juster code, something that is above any individual, any ideology, any party, or any creed. The Supreme Court is one of the branches of American political life that has tried its best to adhere to this, but in recent time it has failed. With a 6-3 conservative-picked majority, three of which were picked by the President they will decide to rule in favor or against, there is no non-political action to be taken here in terms of consequences. The only way out for the court is through legal arguments. Wilentz argues that the legal arguments, precedent, and the conservative "originalist" interpretation all point to an obvious ruling in favor of Colorado. The President is not a King, so they hold an office that is in service to the constitution.

A New Environmental Canon by Emily Raboteau (The New York Review of Books)

When reading the history of environmental and nature writing, a lot of reads like white dudes going out in their own, getting away from the hustle and bustle. Raboteau is reviewing two books they read back to back, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy, and The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, that brings a correction to the writing on nature. The relation of a mother in regard to nature, especially a black American mother, are going to look a lot different than Muir or Emerson. When nature has been colonized, polluted, and destroyed, primarily by white men (which, much of nature from birds to Antarctic ice is named after), a different relation to nature is long overdue.

Rebel Without a Cause by Larry Wolff (The New York Review of Books)

In 1752-1754 in France, there was a great cultural battle between the old and the young around the future of opera known as Querelle des Bouffons. An Italian intermezzo was performed on August 1st, which spawned a great controversy among the literati and nobility for the next two years. One of the people who caught a stray bullet in the battle was Rousseau. It is not that Rousseau was innocent, he was part of the querelle, siding with the Italians. However, Rousseau was actually in quite great standing in high society before this. In the same year before the Italian intermezzo, Rousseau composed The Village Soothsayer and had it performed for King Louis XV. The King enjoyed it immensely and offered him a lifelong pension. Also at the time, Rousseau was well known for his famous essays and also being close with Diderot. Everything was going good for him until the intermezzo incident. Rousseau thought of his opera as a hybrid of French and Italian (he was influenced by Italian opera from his time working for the government down there), but because of the intermezzo played not long after, Rousseau was seen as sort of "priming" the youth to the Italian poison. Not long after, Rousseau was essentially banned from Europe, justifications were given due to his more recent political essays, but he did not believe it, since his political essays were no more radical before or after 1752. I don't really know anything about opera or the history about it. Wolff references Nietzche's love for the 'Mediterranean' opera, similar to Rousseau, in this case Bizet's Carmen, which he saw performed around twenty times. Wolff's essay is not so much about philosophy, especially nothing of Rousseau, but there is a last laugh Rousseau and the pro-Italian literati in France might have if they were to read this essay in praise of the lively Carmen.

The Talented Mr. Santos by Andrew O'Hagan (The New York Review of Books)

George Santos's punishment shows that we don't live in a postmodern, post-truth world just yet, sorry anti-wokesters. If anything, the postmodernism is coming from inside the anti-postmodernist house. I am surprised that no one has made any essays on this, comparing the 'hallucinations' that everyone loves to talk about with LLMs to George Santos. Trump's fraud case is fundamentally different than Santos. Trump stretched his net worth, whereas Santos made up his worth. However, Trump's attachment to fiction could be said to have spawned copy cats, but Santos is not the first Republican O'Hagan finds the saddest part about all this is that Santos had a more noble personal history that he could have built himself on. In his lineage, there was a pianist and a martyr, while his parents were as hard working immigrants as one could imagine. Instead of doing the hard work like his parents, or making a name for himself through deed like his ancestors, he lied and stole his way, most likely to prison.

Why Historical Analogy Matters by Peter E. Gordon (The New York Review of Books)

The Holocaust has become an atemporal event, according to Gordon. Support for this has come from theorists and philosophers who argue that there indeed are non-continuous histories, that not everything is connected, and importantly, not everything is part of one grand narrative of progress for humanity. Gordon repeats Arendt's worries that by describing the Nazi's as not just human evil, but somehow superhuman or demonic evil, we stop ourselves from appreciating the true horror of it. This "depoliticization" of the Holocaust makes it such that past human evils, before or after the Holocaust that is, cannot be similar to it. This problem has resurfaced since this essay due to October 7th, and so it is as good a time as any to revisit the Holocaust, genocide, and the relation of politics to history.

The Long Reach of the Satanic Verses by Malise Ruthven (The New York Review of Books)

Continuing with the Rushdie theme, Ruthven traces the origins of Rushdie's novel to the early origins of Islam. Ruthven charges the conservative and Orthodox strands of Islam, notably Iran, with straying from the spirit of Islam, just as Hitchen's associates Rushdie with Luther. In a a more scholarly presentation than Rushdie, Ruthven exposes us to the work of Shahab Ahmed, who unpacked and dug into the origins of the Satanic Verses. He published his work in 2017, _Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam, which shows that Islam, from 600-800, actually universally accepted the Satanic Verses as part of the canon, which from 800 on has become universally denied or hotly contested.

Tune Out & Lean in by Gregory Hays (The New York Review of Books)

In 2010, Britain added Stoicism as a protected belief, akin to a religious belief. The case was prompted by a defense from a grocery worker who called an Asian "greasy", saying his Stoicism means he must express himself honestly, regardless if he looks like an asshole or if anyone asked in the first place. Gregory Hays is a classics professor, also a translator of Aurelius's Meditations who finds the recent surge in popularity of Stoicism a sign that society is deeply unhappy. Some of the lessons of Stoicism are banal, and people have indeed been helped immensely by Stoicism. Some may also point to the former slave turned Stoic philosopher Epectitus. Even the red-pill incels, Hays argues, would most "misogynistic ghouls with or without Marcus Aurelius". "And yet", Hays states. And yet, it is entirely one-sided, as Hegel similarly argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit. When should one accept one's place, but also, when should one pause and say "no", "this shit is fucked up", "I don't want to do this anymore"?

Israel’s Controlled Demolitions Are Razing Neighborhoods in Gaza (The New York Times)

We won't really know what really is happening in Israel for a long time, at least the "why", but we can see the videos and the damage at least. Justifications given cannot be trusted, there are too many contradictions between word and deed. News pours out every week, and I suspect this particular piece of reporting to end up in future ICJ trials.