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2021-12-31 - readings from 2021

i don't read books often, but i read some books from 2021. here are short reflections on each one.

2021-05-25 - the republic book 1

i finished reading book 1 of the republic by plato. i'm going to try to summarize it based on my notes and recollection.

the republic takes place in piraeus, the prominent south western port of ancient and modern athens. socrates travels there with his friend glaucon to visit a festival. as they were leaving, the son of an old friend catches a glimpse of socrates and asks him to stay. socrates goes to his friends house and they start a conversation.

socrates and his old friend, cephalus, began talking about how they haven't seen each other in a while. socrates noticed that his friend is getting old and asked what life is like when a man gets older. cephalus replies that many men think old age is a curse, but he thinks it's a blessing because he isn't tempted by the lusts of youth and can instead focus on repaying his debts to men and gods so that he doesn't have to worry about justice that may be served to him in the afterlife. this statement leads the conversation into what becomes the main topic for the rest of the book. specifically, what is justice?

cephalus has to go, so his son, polemarchus, continues the conversation. polemarchus agrees with his dad that justice must be the repayment of debts. as socrates does throught the entire conversation, he begins to use logic, reasoning, and analogies to come to an agreement of whether a theory is true or not.

the types of questions that are posed throughout the conversation between socrates and polemarchus include the following:

after coming to a conclusion that justice is not what they initially thought, another man in the room, thrasymachus, angrily accused socrates for not trying hard enough to come up with a definition of justice. thrasymachus' definition of justice was that justice is simply the benefit of the stronger. socrates reasoned with thrasymachus for the rest of book 1.

besides the occasionaly insults that thrasymachus directed at socrates, some of the topics they went over in their dialogue include:

the argument, and the end of book 1, ended with thrasymachus blushing because he lost his argument. as well as socrates' still remaining unsatisfied because his initial question was still unanswered. what is justice?

2021-05-26 - the apology

i read the apology by plato at the beginning of this year. here's what i wrote about it at that time:

in the apology, socrates said that he went to the various different people to see if they were wise. master poets wrote beautiful poetry, but when asked why they wrote something, they couldn't help but brag about themselves. master artisans knew many things that socrates was ignorant of, because they had mastery in one area, they thought they understood many things that were higher than them though. unfortunately, i am sometimes like the master poets and artisans and fail to realize that i don't actually know that much.

2021-06-03 - crito

i read crito by plato earlier this year. here is what i wrote about it then.

socrates brought up the same question to crito two times. should we care about the opinion of the many? or should we care about the opinion of good men? socrates related this to a gymnastic coach. if you want to improve, should you listen to your coach, or other people who do not know your situation as well? socrates believes that you should listen to your coach.

the internet makes it easier to listen to people who lack expertise or authority. it's too easy to try to find an answer you like instead of an answer that's correct. i need to give more attention to the various "coaches" i have in my life.

2021-06-04 - the clouds

i read the clouds by aristophanes a few months ago. here were my thoughts about it.

it was pretty funny. aristophanes was a contemporary of socrates. so he made socrates a key character in his play. i think it's similar to how americans have saturday night live.

the story goes like this. socrates and chaerephon were running a school. they believed that the clouds, chaos, and the tongue were the only gods. the olympus gods didn't exist. they were able to figure out many useless things through reasoning, such as:

strepsiades was the main character. he owed a lot of money to various creditors, because his son and wife always needed money. he went to socrates to try to learn how to speak well so he could convince his creditors that he didn't need to pay them. socrates deemed strepsiades as a fool and kicked him out. strepsiades then told his son phidippides to study in his stead, so his son could argue with his creditors for him.

phidippides learned how to win arguments in unjust ways. when phidippides was finished, he started beating his father and was convincing his father that it was right for him to beat his father. strepsiades then realized that he had been tricked by socrates. so strepsiades burnt down the school. and that's how the play ended.

though it is meant to be a comedy, i think the play does have a moral to it. you need to be careful if you decide to give up on the culture you grew up with. if what you ditched your culture for turns out to be bad, you may regret it.

of course there are other things i thought about that play. for example, i'm not impressed with the character of aristophanes (or many comedians) for portraying a good man in such a ridiculous way. i respect socrates much more than aristophanes.

in the apology, socrates actually mentions this play, the clouds. he may have seen it (or plato saw it), and i could sense that he wasn't angry that someone had portrayed him in such a malicious way. in that sense, after actually reading this play, i kind of admire socrates for not making a big deal of this work, even though it is meant to be very offensive towards him.

if i could be half the man socrates was, i would be in a good position.

2021-08-09 - crime and punishment

saturday morning i was listening to a book review of "crime and punishment" on bbc. the book sounded very intriguing, so i read/listened to it the past few days.

read on project gutenberg

listen on librivox

crime and punishment, by fryodor dostoyevsky, is about a poor university student in russia who murders and robs an old woman then has to face the guilt of what he had done as he interacts with family, friends, strangers, and police. by the end of the book, he confesses to his murder, makes amends to his friends and family, and turns himself into the police.

to me the book described a person who thought he could depend soley on himself, but once he had done something very wrong, he realizes that he too needs to depend on people. i felt like i could relate to the main character, because i've had similar experiences happen to me a few times in my life. the other takeaway i had was that suffering can be a good thing. if a person feels that they have done something terribly wrong, suffering the consequence is one of the best actions to take for healing.

overall, it was a great book that i recommend you read too. i had never heard of this book until the other day. apparently some high school and college courses have it as a required reading. i guess i wouldn't have appreciated it if i was in high school though. listening to the librivox recordings were much more enjoyable for me, though reading the actual text was somewhat enjoyable too.

2021-09-10 - gargantua and pantagruel book 1

i recently finished listening to the librivox recording for this book and it was mostly rough. getting through the book was rough because of bad recordings but also because the vocabulary used in the translation isn't very familiar to me. for the most part, i didn't understand much of the plot until i read a summary of the book afterwards. if i had to describe the plot before reading the summary, it would go like this:

gargantua was born. he grew up. there was a war. friar john is cool. many really dirty jokes are made throughout his life.

though i didn't get a good understanding of the plot until afterwards, i did understand many of the dirty jokes and similar silly things... lol, i don't think that's a good thing though. here are some of the things i remember:

i probably would have gotten more from the book if i had read it instead of listening to it since the language is already difficult, but listening to books allows me to multitask with driving, cleaning, and other mindless tasks. i'll keep listening to these books even if it's difficult to understand at times.

after finishing the book, these links helped me make more sense of what i had read.

a summary of gargantua and pantagruel

good blogpost about gargantua and pantagruel

wikipedia article of gargantua and pantagruel

2021-09-11 - hamlet

though hamlet is such a famous play by shakespeare, i had never learned about it in school or watched the play before. i finished listening to the librivox recording a few days ago though. it was fairly easy for me to understand too.

hamlet is a prince of denmark. his father had recently died and appears to hamlet as a ghost. the ghost says he was murdered by hamlet's uncle claudius and asks hamlet to exact revenge on his uncle. hamlet doesn't tell anyone what happened so people think he went mad. hamlet stages a play about a man who kills his brother for the throne to show claudius, to watch claudius's reaction and know whether or not the ghost was speaking the truth. the conclusion is that claudius was definitely the murderer. hamlet sees claudius praying afterwards and decides not to kill him at that time because if he dies while praying, he may be sent straight to heaven. hamlet later talk with his mom and kills his lover's father, thinking it was claudius. claudius tries to have hamlet executed in england, but hamlet escapes that attempt. hamlet's lover then possibly commits suicide after being so sad that her father is dead. hamlet's lover's brother returns to denmark from france and is very angry at hamlet. the story ends with claudius trying to trick hamlet into getting poisoned. but the scheme backfires and four people, including: hamlet, his mother, claudius, and his lover's brother die. since the entire royal family is now dead, the throne is given to the neighboring kingdom of norway.

when i got to act 5, i really wondered how the play would end, because claudius and hamlet were still alive. i was suprised at how many people died from the poison in the last few minutes of the play. it was a bit sad. that said, hamlet was a nice read.

2021-12-31 - lycurgus

lycurgus was an ancient spartan lawmaker. he ended up as a temporary ruler until his nephew grew up. people thought he would steal the throne from the young child though, so he left sparta until his nephew was an adult. while gone, lycurgus travelled around greece, crete, and possibly egypt and asia too. he learned of many cultures during his travels, which influenced the spartan society he helped shape later in life.

lycurgus eventually returned to sparta, not as a ruler, but as a lawmaker. he convinced his nephew, the king, that sparta needed to completely redo their society. there were many changes including:

i'm sure lycurgus had many reasons for his laws. here are some of those reasons:

the laws lycurgus created were memorized instead of written down, forcing citizens to know the laws by heart. the culture lycurgus created also emphasized pragmatism. artisans could spend their time innovating useful items like cups instead of useless pieces of art.

once he felt confident with his new laws, lycurgus left sparta once more making the people and rulers of sparta promise not to change any of his laws until he came back. he never came back though, so the spartans kept his laws for long after lycurgus died.

yeah, that's lycurgus for you. what a great guy. most of this information was taken from an english translation of plutarch's parallel lives.