A Thinking Reed

VI Bookshelf

Written by

Lee M.

in

The other day Eric Lee (in his triumphant return to semi-regular blogging) posted an image of the books on his “to read” list (pretty ambitious there, Eric!).

Not having access to such fancy-pants technology, I must remain content with just listing those titles that I’m either currently reading or have on deck.

Currently reading:

  • George Grant, Technology and Justice Grant is a fascinating figure; he was probably Canada’s premier philosopher (can you name another Canadian philosopher?). He was a staunch nationalist and conservative who resented his country’s being drawn into the orbit of American power. He was also a pacifist and something of a socialist, but strongly opposed legal euthanasia and abortion. Grant is probably best described philosophically as a Christian Platonist – his two biggest influences were Plato and Simone Weil. He was also deeply impressed by Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society. T&J is a series of essays discussing how our drive for technological mastery have affected our sense of justice. Highly recommended.

On deck:

  • Carl Von Clausewitz, War, Politics, and Power Selections from the master theoretician of war (thanks, Josh!)
  • Frank Herbert, Dune: Messiah Second book in the Dune chronicles. Read the first book a couple of months ago and loved it. I’m looking forward to reading the whole series.
  • William Appleman Williams, Contours of American History Revisionist history on the interrelation between economic and foreign policy. Williams was a staunch anti-imperialist and democratic socialist.
  • Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Found this one in a used bookstore for sixty-five cents! I’d seen a number of Lutheran theologians refer to this book as providing a penetrating analysis of the human condition. Hard to pass up at that price!
  • John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (abridged) This was another used bookstore gem. In pristine condition for about half the cover price. Unfortunately, for this abridged edition all the angry tirades against papists and anabaptists seem to have been edited out (love those Reformation polemics!)

That oughtta keep me busy…

Comments

10 responses to “VI Bookshelf”

  1. Marcus

    Are you retired? Independently wealthy? Or just a speed reader?

    Reply
  2. jack perry

    If you read the entire Dune series, I’ll give you the same admonition I received from a friend, and have passed on to others: you’ll regret reading the last Dune book. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it does. The horror is that the Dune series gets set up for something truly spectacular… and Frank Herbert goes and dies.

    How terribly inconvenient. 😦

    Reply
  3. Joshie

    Despite our theological differences I have always admired Calvin’s thorough intellect and his excellent writing style.

    Your comments about the polemics against papists and anabaptists remind me of Athanasius. Half the first book of his Orations Against the Arians is spent calling Arius and his followers pussies, more or less. It’s a hoot.

    Reply
  4. Lee

    Sadly, neither retired nor independently wealthy! 🙂

    I do read a pretty good clip, though.

    Reply
  5. Eric Lee

    Woo hoo! 🙂

    I’m glad you have some fiction in there. I think I will have to intersperse some of my unread fiction in my reading, too, just to keep me sane.

    I read about 3 or 4 books on theodicy a few years back (nothing bums you out like that!) and it really helped me lift my spirits up by reading Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings series for the first time.

    Did you see my friend Charlie’s stack of books? He’s more insane than I am 😛

    Reply
  6. Russell Arben Fox

    Another Canadian philosopher? Charles Taylor, obviously.

    Reply
  7. Lee

    Curses! Foiled again!

    p.s. Russell, have you read Grant? He is the left-traditionalist communitarian par excellence! He put the “Red” in “Red Tory”! (And the “Tory”!)

    Reply
  8. Joshie

    For some good Canadian theology I might reccomend Douglas John Hall’s _____ing the Faith series.. I’ve only read Confessing the Faith and he makes some very good points about the cultural dissestablishment of the church in the West being actually good for the church. Very long books but very well written and thought-provoking.

    Reply
  9. Russell Arben Fox

    I’m a big fan of Grant, actually, though I haven’t read as much of him as I have Taylor. I’m very sympathetic to much of Grant’s perspective, particularly as on display in Lament for a Nation. Taylor is moderately more sympathetic to modernity though, seeing something more to it than the instantiation of a kind of secularism.

    Reply
  10. Lee

    I’ve been working my way through the Grant Reader, and he seems to get much more pessimistic as time goes on. I think it’s b/c he increasingly saw technology as exerting all all-pervasive, almost deterministic, control on social, cultural, & political life. He seems to have seen it as something that has to play itself out before we’ll be able to start anew. He strikes me as following Ellul pretty closely in that respect.

    Personally, I’m wary of such quasi-monocausal explanations for the state of society. But an extremely stimulating thinker nonetheless.

    Reply

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