Three Books

Recently, I had the opportunity to see again the 1960 film version of H.G. Wells’ classic science fiction work, The Time Machine. The film starred Rod Taylor as the time traveler, H. George Wells, and in the final scene, after George disappears from his home and returns to an era in the distant future where he had discovered that civilization had lapsed, one of his friends who he left behind discovers that he has taken three books with him. It is unclear which books he has chosen, and the friend wonders aloud to his housekeeper which three books they would have selected, had the choice been theirs to make.

It is an interesting question, not unlike the one that I posed in my very first blog entry one year ago, when I wondered what lessons our own civilization might like to leave behind to some other civilization in the distant future – one perhaps coming out of a dark age, having either just a dim memory, or no recollection at all, of this one that preceded it.

As I watched that concluding scene of The Time Machine, I couldn’t resist wondering what three books I might have chosen, to serve as a legacy and a lesson to some people where civilization had lapsed. It brought to mind a life project that I embarked upon as a young man when, while in college, I came across a list of the two hundred greatest philosophy books ever written. I kept that list, and set for myself the goal of reading those books during the course of my remaining life, believing that if anything came close to comprising the collected wisdom of our civilization, then this must be it.

I must confess that, in the decades since setting that goal, I have fallen far short of it, having only read fifty-one of the two hundred books on that list. And I also have to confess that I don’t think that the ones that I have read have made me a better, or even a wiser, person than anyone who may have never read a philosophy book in his or her entire life. Still, the experience, at times, was an exhilarating one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a really great work of philosophy is one that quickens the mind of the reader, enticing it to consider new and different ways of looking at the world, and existence, and of one’s role and place in the universe. Sadly, only a small number of the books that I encountered had this effect, while many had the opposite effect, with their pedantry actually dulling the mind, rather than exciting it. But the good ones made the entire venture worthwhile, and I have never regretted the time that I devoted to it.

Of the great ones that I encountered – the ones that quickened the mind, and opened entirely new vistas – I would include the following: Plato’s Republic, in which the legendary Socrates attempts to make a case for why a person should act justly, rather than otherwise, which is not based on fear of divine or human punishment. Although he was not completely successful in this attempt, the questions that he poses (in classic Socratic fashion) to his youthful audience, and the stories that he weaves, are profound and enlightening. The Republic also touched on the issue of how a society and government should be ordered, and Aristotle, in his Politics, addresses this issue as well, in a more systematic, but equally illuminating, manner. The works of Plato and Aristotle really do constitute a golden age of philosophy, and I have never come across any by these authors that is not worth reading and contemplating. It seems that, in the centuries following theirs, philosophy descended into a sort of dark ages of its own, with writers engaging in tendentious debates about inconsequential things, until its revival in the Age of Enlightenment. This renaissance began with writers like Hume and Berkeley, but to me it is the works of Rene Descartes – his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy – that kick-started philosophy in the modern age in a very exciting and refreshing way, as he attempted to resurrect the search for ultimate truth from the ground up, relying upon first principles derived from reason and simple, direct introspection. The rebirth of philosophy in the modern age found its greatest light, however, in the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a man who has been called – and very deservedly so, I think – the greatest philosopher since Aristotle. In the debate that had been raging in his time over whether ultimate reality rested in mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), Kant’s unique and revolutionary insight – in his Critique of Pure Reason – was that while there might be an ultimate “something” out there, we can never know what that “something” is, since our minds play an active role in mediating how external reality is presented to us and becomes a part of our perceived awareness. Reading Kant’s Critique was a dizzying experience: I – like most readers of it, I suspect, in my time as well as his – was not able to completely comprehend it, but still had a sense on every single page that something very profound, very important, and very exciting was being presented. Someone once said that all philosophy is a commentary to Plato: it seems to me that all philosophy in the past two centuries has been a commentary to Kant. Building on Kant’s insights, Arthur Schopenhauer, in his World as Will and Idea, attempted to build a bridge between these and the wisdom of Eastern schools of thought. Schopenhauer is often branded as a philosopher of pessimism, but his pessimism is really no different than that embraced in the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: that in existence there is suffering.

Sadly, it seems that since that second golden age of the nineteenth century, philosophy has been descending again into pedantic, arid controversies that dull the mind rather than quicken it, but there are a few lights in the twentieth century that were a joy to read, or at least inspired awe. One such awe-inspiring work was Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality, which represented a herculean attempt, and perhaps a successful one (as with Kant’s Critique, I have to admit that my capacity for understanding the work was limited), to create a systematic, holistic model of existence that incorporated the most important insights of all of the great philosophers who preceded him. A more accessible, but equally inspiring, writer of the twentieth century was the French philosopher Albert Camus, who in such works as The Rebel, The Stranger, The Plague, and the Myth of Sisyphus (it was the first of these which had been on the list, but all are worthy rivals for a place on it), addressed the challenge, the burden, and the tragedy of contending with existential freedom. And, finally, the most recent of the works that made it on that list of two hundred, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, presented a novel approach to designing a just society, by envisioning a thought experiment in which its architects, while crafting its rules, were unaware of what their stations in life (rich, poor, male, female, etc.) would be after the project was completed. A book that did not make the list, but which constitutes an ingenious critique of and counterpoint to Rawls’ conclusions, is Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. The two should really be read together. I am glad that I did. (And I believe that Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations really deserved a place on the list of two hundred as well. Its final section, on the meaning of life, is one of the most insightful, profound, and provocative treatments of that subject that I have ever read.)

These are just some of the more memorable works that I encountered, as I worked my way through the list, randomly selecting titles, and I am sure that there are many others, which I may someday read, or may never get to, that have the same potential to awe and to enlighten. But would any of these be included among the three books that I would select, to be preserved after the memory of this civilization has faded?

There are other books that would be of more practical value. As an extreme case, I think of the many books that have been written to provide advice on personal success. I have a shelf full of these, such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Robert Collier’s The Secret of the Ages. Most of these books begin with the promise that by following the insights and principles contained within them, one can transform one’s life, and find success in both the personal and professional sphere. But I cannot think of a single one of them that affected my life in a profound, transformational, and permanent way, with perhaps one exception. This was a little book entitled The Richest Man in Babylon, by George Clason. Written in the form of an extended parable, it contains some very simple maxims on how to manage one’s money. I took them to heart, and put them into practice, and have always appreciated the wisdom embodied in them. Still, I couldn’t possibly imagine including even this book as one of the three written legacies to be left behind by this civilization to serve as a guiding light to another.

There are so many other types of works to consider – great novels, romances, poetry, works of religion – which might serve as a testament to our civilization, and provide an echo of its greatest moments. But in the end, my choices were still guided by pragmatism, more than anything else. What, I asked myself, would be of most practical benefit to some future age, where our own civilization had been forgotten?

My first selection would be a book on general science that contains the foundational principles and discoveries of biology and physics, and, ideally, some rudimentary mathematics as well. Now I am cheating here a bit, since I don’t actually have such a book, and so wouldn’t be able to take it off of my shelf, if, like George Wells in the movie, I was about to embark on my final one-way trip to the distant future in a time machine. I believe I still have my college physics textbook, which was pretty comprehensive in scope, so in a pinch I would probably take that. But a quick search on Amazon.com tells me that I could buy a book on general science and have it delivered to me in three days, so only a moderate delay would be required to have this book available.

My second selection would be a one-volume edition of world history, because in my opinion one of the most important legacies to be left behind by any civilization is a complete record of both its triumphs and its failures. There is much truth, I believe, in the familiar quotation that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Here, I would be better prepared, as in my personal collection I have at least two one-volume histories of the world: one that was published in 1906 (which I referred to in my last blog entry, “Time’s Arrow”), and a Columbia History of the World published in 1981, which, while more recent, is by now also a little dated. I even have a book conveniently titled The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant, but it is rather short in length, and therefore light on actual history. And so here, too, I might be tempted to delay my selection of an actual book until I can find one that brings the story of world history a little more up to date.

My third and final selection, and one that I actually have in my possession, is a one-volume collection of the complete works of Plato. This would seem to be the least practical of my three choices, and, for that reason, might appear to be the weakest. But I believe that there is a need for philosophy in civilization, and that it is essential that certain fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of our existence be asked. Plato, and in Plato’s works, Socrates, raised the most important of these questions, and addressed each of them with a depth of insight and lack of prejudice that continues to be unrivaled by any other great thinker before or since. And because of the foundational nature of the questions addressed, a study of Plato, in some distant future civilization, would provide fertile soil for the growth of other great ideas, germinating in future great minds, perhaps rivaling or even surpassing those that had graced our own civilization.

One book that many – at least many living in the western hemisphere – might find to be conspicuous in its absence is the Bible. I know that others would consider this to be an essential – perhaps the most essential – book to be included as part of our legacy to the future. I disagree. And I won’t defend my omission by resorting to the charge made by many agnostics and atheists: that religion has done more harm than good in the world, or that, at the very least, it has been responsible for much of the mischief (wars, pogroms, repressions, and resistance to scientific advances) that has permeated our history. Rather, I contend that the search for God, and for a relationship with God, is one that is dynamic, and defined by the person, or the culture, that is engaged in it. If our Bible, and the other great religious works that have appeared among the extant and recorded civilizations of our planet, truly represent the inspired word of God, then I have to believe that any future civilization, with no memory of ours, will have their own prophets and channels for receiving God’s inspired words. And these words will be expressed in their language, and in the context of their own unique history, culture, and development. It will speak to them in ways that our own never possibly could. Similarly, if the great poems, dramas, romances, songs, and collective dreams of our people must someday be forgotten, we can take some consolation in the fact that if there is a future age, then it will produce great poets, dramatists, composers, dreamers, and prophets that will move and inspire their audiences in ways that our own works perhaps never could.

It would be a great consolation to know that we will leave at least some of our words as a legacy for that future age, but whatever words we leave behind for the inhabitants of that civilization, I have every confidence that they will be able to provide the music, at least as unique, as inspired, and as beautiful, as any that we ever produced.