Miracles

This book by C.S. Lewis is a pull-no-punches logical apologetic about, as the title suggests, miracles. Often claimed by the non-religious as the most egregiously unbelievable aspect of religion, miracles are a philosophical sticking-point for many explorers of faiths that involve them. However - as Lewis argues - this is a misapprehension, applying assumptions of natural science to phenomena that are essentially supernatural. This is the crux of his argument throughout the book, the discontinuity between nature and "supernature", which having defined he goes on to explore and prod the logical interrelations between these two levels of reality for how knowable, probable, and believable they are. I won't do a full chapter-by-chapter breakdown for this book - simply conclude by saying that here is a book that is dazzlingly well-argued and difficult to refute without relying on unproveable assumptions that have nothing to do with science and everything to do with metaphysical faith. A great enlightening read for Christians who want to robustify their intellectual flexibility, and surely a challenging thought-provoker for those readers of no religion.

Tales of Earthsea

This book by Ursula K. Le Guin is the fifth in the Earthsea series, so it technically comes before The Other Wind, but I've already read and blogged that one, so this post culminates the series and therefore I'll be making my reflections here.

   This book comprises five short stories and an essay - I will deal with each in turn.

• First up we have The Finder, in which a young sorcerer called Medra (also known as Otter or Tern at points in his life) grows in power and wisdom and ends up founding the wizard school on Roke. This longish short story is a brilliant view into the dim hazy past of the world Le Guin has created, and lends a potent depth to the reader's understanding of the interrelations between magic and wisdom necessary to be a good wizard.
• Next is Darkrose and Diamond, in which a young sorcerer called Diamond falls in love with a young witch called Rose, and forgoes life as a wizard to pursue this romance. This is a delicate, lovely little story.
• Then we move onto The Bones of the Earth, in which a young Ogion (the sorcerer who initially trained Ged in the first book) teams up with his tutor in the hope of preventing a catastrophic earthquake. Strong themes of trust and humility.
• Next we have On the High Marsh, in which we are treated to a glimpse of Ged at the height of his career as Archmage - only he isn't doing grand world-saving stuff, he's on a remote island curing cattle. Again, strong themes of humility, as well as kindness, and power.
• Finally, Dragonfly - in which Irian (who you may remember from the sixth book) visits the school of wizards on Roke to provocatively question the masters of magic why such learning is forbidden to women and girls. This story provides a perfect stepping stone into the final book in the series.

   Finally, the essay at the end of the book goes into elucidatory detail about the peoples, languages, history and magic system of Earthsea - for me it didn't really add a huge amount of insight into the books, as I've read all six so closely together and so had much of the lore in my medium-term memory pretty well already, but for people reading the books more spaced out it would be a really helpful appendix. Not to mention it simply shows a masterclass in thoughtful worldbuilding, much like Tolkien's appendices.

   All five stories in the book are moving, thought-provoking, immersive, deceptively simple, and immaculately well-written. If you have read any of the other Earthsea books and enjoyed them this is an addition you can't leave out - in fact, just read the whole series. Speaking of the six as a whole, I think anyone who appreciates good fantasy will absolutely love them - I do in actual fact think these books seriously rival The Lord of the Rings as my favourite fantasy literature now, though it's hard to compare as the writing styles are so different and thematically and in scope the works are trying to achieve very different things. Good job I don't have to pick favourites on this blog.

   I said I'd be making reflections on the series as a whole - the fact is I don't have much to say. I just loved the experience of reading these superb stories, and know I will definitely be revisiting them for a re-read in the future, probably many times. The characters are well-drawn enough to be believable and lovable or hateable as the plot intends and each realised with psychological complexities of their own; the themes are deep to the point of profundity and are perfectly entwined and expressed through character and plot; the world is obviously immensely well-developed and lived-in; and the overall story arc across these six books is hugely satisfying while never feeling like an ultimate solution - the story ends on a note of potential and promise rather than a statically final resolution. If J.R.R. Tolkien can make you dream wistfully of being a hobbit, Ursula K. Le Guin will show you dizzying visions of being a dragon.

Perpetual Peace

This book (available from that link as a .pdf online for free) is a 1794* essay by Immanuel Kant on the possibility of ending war between sovereign nations. He basically argues that we need to seek to establish an international federation of co-dependent nations under a singular representative state. Pretty modern ideas for the 18th-century, but then, this is Kant we're talking about. His arguments are largely pragmatic and don't veer too much into philosophy** and should be generally digestible by a majority of readers. As stated repeatedly throughout the text, this is NOT a manifesto - I don't think Kant believed that any single state of policy would be able to even kickstart the move towards a perfectly peaceable world - but by holding out these plausibilities as ideals, he makes a very convincing case that establishing such a world is not beyond possibility even within a cynical grasp of reality, and so the main thrust of this test stands on its own two feet. Recommended reading for anyone whom this theme strikes curiosity into, but if you somehow happen to be a person of international political influence who reads this blog, I specifically implore you to read this and think of how Kantian your rationality as regards your work is.

* And the translation, by one M. Campbell Smith, was published in 1903 - so even the Very Lengthy (as in, longer than the translated text it was the introduction to) Introduction recounting the history of ideas around the core topic of this essay came too early to be able to speak of anything regarding such institutions as NATO, the EU or UN even, which might have quite substantively reshaped Smith's introductory commentary on the ideas herein.

** Except for the pair of appendices, where he first considers the disagreements between proper moral ethics and political reality, and then secondly looks at the singular overlap point between proper moral ethics and political reality - that being the idea of a public right.

the Problem of Pain

This book by C.S. Lewis is a short but punchy apologetic for that ever-irksome question to the Christian - you know the one I mean, the theodicy, that is: "if God is perfectly good and totally powerful, why is there suffering?" His method of argument here is not theological in any meaningful sense; in fact he draws on existing Christian thought very little throughout, relying instead on rigorous resolute logical application and dissection of the concepts themselves as the appear at face value. This makes his points dazzlingly original, divorced as they are from the aggregated accumulation of two millennia of Christian philosophizing, and thoroughly compelling, as his arguments stand on their own two feet without dependence on a reader's acceptance or rejection of any particular orthodoxy (not to say that the theological implications of this book aren't in line with orthodox theology, but that simply isn't the line of argument taken).

   The first two chapters deal, in turn, with divine omnipotence and divine goodness; as stated there is very little here that could be described as serious or systematic theology, but Lewis's grasp of the logical implications around these concepts is on full display as he makes the case that neither of these presumed facts about God necessarily demand or even imply the total absence of suffering in said God's creation. In the following two chapters he discusses human wickedness (as a logically necessary possibility in a created order in which we assume human freedom, and as the source of much suffering) and the fallen nature of humankind (this is probably the most theological chapter of the book as it relies on The Fall as an existing theological framework - however, much to my surprise, this chapter also devotes considerable attention to the question of humanity's evolutionary history, and what a pre-Fall prehistoric homo sapiens may have been like in its relation to itself, God, and nature more widely). Then there is a pair of chapters about human pain (which largely consists of pretty basic logical inductions from the previous chapters) and the pain of animals (which I wasn't expecting much from given my critique of its related essay in this collection, but I take back my assumptions from that post that this probably wouldn't be a very strong chapter as I have to admit Lewis does actually have a nuanced and well-developed model of animal nature). This leads us up to a concluding pair of chapters in which we consider the eternal dimensions that lend either meaninglessness or meaningfulness to whatever degree of experienced pain the human life serves up - that is, Heaven and Hell. The Hell chapter walked territory that was very familiar to the concepts of Christianity that I've grown up with (much moreso than the universalism angled towards in Moltmann's theological system, even if I prefer that now) with a few key fresh insights - most especially, the notion that Hell is not imposed but chosen: its doors, Lewis states flatly, are locked from the inside. The Heaven chapter is reasonably speculative, as it is bound to have to be, but the picture he paints of eternal communion between God and His redeemed human creatures is devastatingly beautiful: the glorification of the Holy Trinity and the fulness of expressed and embodied freedom of people are one and the same thing, every unique individual who has ever lived and been brought into God's Kingdom finding their deepest and most everlasting joy in expressing their personal relationship to God in a way that only they could ever precisely manage, thus involving to the ultimate realness the diversity and unity of personhood. Finally there is an appendix wherein we are given a brief scientific overview of what physical and mental pain is understood to be; this adds virtually nothing to the arguments Lewis has been making, but it's nice to have for the possible reader who has, like the pre-enlightened Buddha, never experienced meaningful suffering.

   Overall this is an eminently readable and powerful intellectual-yet-accessible book about one of the thorniest issues in all of religion. Christian readers will find their faith sharpened and their apologetic capacities given a major leg-up; and non-Christians who rely on the issue of suffering to bolster their own rejection of the faith should find in here, if not absolutely guaranteed-to-be-convincing points, at least much challenging food for thought that should give even the most ardent atheist some humbling pause.

[one final thing I will say, that has nothing to do with the text of this book in itself - if you're going to read this, I would strongly recommend trying to find a physical version, as the Kindle version that I read it through (and that is linked above) is quite poorly formatted, with certain sections where there seem to be chunks missing, and them being missing means there could only have been a few words or perhaps whole pages that I didn't get included in the edition I read; it still held together as a book, but it would have been nice, having bought a book, to get the whole text]