Maybe the guy had a point after all

I'm slowly very slowly reading the short book on history of philosophy I was taking about. And although I havent reached Kant yet (already in the XVIIth century, a hundred years and fifty pages to go), I've figured maybe the guy had a point after all.

Let's see, in this little book there's the ancient Greek, the theistic of the Middle Ages, and lots of modern thinkers: Hobbes, Decartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz where I am today. All of them were asking themselves metaphysical questions, were trying to rationalize the real essence of the nature and the world and god if they were believers. And they were giving complete new systems of knowledge, rational explanations backed by hard work of studying and developing. But then, even if it is difficult to criticise any aspect of their sound and so-well-based theories, and there has been long debates about some of their arguments, the truth is that their explanations about the world and everything are pretty different.

Maybe the guy had a point and there's no way to give a rationalistic answer to such questions. At least, for sure there's no way to agree with the answers.

However the questions remain; maybe they just make no sense, and it's better to answer them with myths or parables, or fables or even short stories. If you don't like them you will have to make your own. (Will you reach anywhere if you make up the stories on your own? Well, it's one of the few ways to get there, only try not to go too fast.)

As for others' stories, don't take them too literally, don't make a fuss about every single word in them. Either you understand it or not. You probably will, if they tell you something you already know.

(By the way, maybe I am going too fast; I haven't finished reading the book yet.)

Books nobody has read

There's one of those in a lot of languages: Cervantes' "Don Quijote" in Spanish, Joyce's "Ulyses" in English, Proust's "A la recherche..." in French; in their countries, everybody would claim they are the best books ever written in their long literary traditions, but if you ask who has actually read them, I'd bet there are very few people.

"Don Quijote" is not very difficult, it's quite amusing, clever and funny, but it is long very long, gigantic. So long it is not mandatory at school. Besides it's in movies, at TV, even cartoons, some of the chapters are well-known. Who feels in need of reading it?

"Ulyses" is very hard to read, it's written in a kind of own English with a mixture of French, German and Dutch. Not mandatory at school, how could it be, since it is so demanding and arduous. However, lots of British people have the book at home.

"A la recherche..." is probably marvellous and well written, but somehow pedantic, arrogant and pompous. Also very long, but 100 pages are enough to bore you to death. Who has read it in France, I don't know.


Similarly, there's philosophers hardly anybody has read. Kant has been such an influential thinker in the modern West, after him nobody dares to discuss about metaphisics anymore (that is, from a phylosophical point of view). Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus, which nobody understands, and nowadays it is mentioned even in a recent movie, a thriller.

Maybe common people like me, more or less educated, are simply not able to grasp such a complex stuff. It would be as if somebody with no technical background wanted to understand let's say how a nuclear bomb is build. And the bomb has changed the world also, the way people think.

Another possibility is that some good ideas overwhelm us, the arguments backing them being so sound and clever, and we can only repeat them and repeat them again. And I guess it's ok. I feel so lost I'm reading a book on history of philosophy these days, as if I was going to find somebody telling me Kant was not right. As if I was going to find somebody say "El Quijote" is not such a good book.