What is Enlightenment?

This essay by Immanuel Kant, written in 1784 at the height of the Enlightenment, is the most famous answer provided to Zöllner's open question of what was going on. It's very short (seven pages, six if you don't care about footnotes) and can be summed up with its opening quote - "Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity," said immaturity being the inability to use one's own reason to move meaningfully through the world without the guidance of others.* Such an exit occurs when people are granted intellectual & spiritual freedom, though Kant also brings this into dialogue with obedience to the law, making the somewhat perplexing point that "a lesser degree of civil freedom... creates the room for spiritual freedom to spread to its full capacity." Historically this is a very influential essay, and certainly roundedly answers its title question, but if you're genuinely interested in seeing the answer unpacked I would instead recommend you read Fichte's The Vocation of the Scholar, which treads very similar ground but with much more useful & insightful depth.

* Concerningly I think there is a good case to be made that as of the 2020s we are entering a period of disenlightenment, in which independent "mature" thinking persons are increasingly outsourcing their own critical reasoning skills to the likes of ChatGPT... but that's a whole 'nother thing I won't pick apart thoroughly here.

the Monsters and the Critics

This essay (available for free online from that link) by J.R.R. Tolkien* is arguably the landmark work in scholarship on Beowulf, the most famous surviving example of Old English poetic diction and potentially fragment of insight into pre-Christian English mythology. As such, it has been poked & picked at by academics for centuries, digging for clues into this large blank space in our historical memory - but, argues the Professor, in doing so, we have neglected, to our loss, to consider how to & why should we approach & appreciate Beowulf as what it is - a poem, to be enjoyed. I won't provide a summary of his arguments here or give much reflection on it as everything I would be likely to say has been articulated excellently by Gavin the medievalist on YouTube, so check that out - but if you're interested in seeing how Tolkien's mind worked on an academic** rather than creative level, this essay is essential reading; if you're interested in Old English culture and literature & somehow haven't read this essay where the heck have you been - and in any case it will certainly give you much food for thought in how we are to understand (and enjoy!) texts from distant times. For an academic essay it's incredibly readable*** and rather short (I finished the whole thing in a ninety-minute sitting) so go have a look.

* People remember him for his hobby, which was writing his own mythology, but often fail to remember him for his job, which was teaching about the history of language and literature - his essay on fairy-stories is another great example of his powerful scholarship, and is just as readable as this one.

** The appendix is much more linguistics-focused and digs into technical specifics rather than more readably making a broader argument, but I loved them for the depth of rigour Tolkien showed in his passion for the scholarship.

*** Not surprising for a writer of Tolkien's calibre: I particularly loved his early allegory (and yes, while he cordially disliked the form didn't mean he couldn't write a damn good one when called to) of the man who built a tower out of old stones.

the Vocation of the Scholar

This book [available from that link online for free] by Enlightenment-era German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte* is a rigorous examination of its title theme, as presented in a series of five lectures. They proceed as follows:

1. the vocation of man - in a general sense, being the harmonisation of the Ego so that it can intellectually & sensibly apprehend things in the world & also promote their harmonisation.
2. the vocation of man in society - expanding on the first lecture in application to the reality that all Ego finds itself in world where other free & rational beings exist: this being society, which through coordination of diversity & resultant cooperation leads us to mutual perfection.
3. the distinction of classes in society - a relatively convoluted attempt to discern the cause of social inequalities between free rational beings, followed by a moral exhortation that overcoming such is the chief end of society.**
4. the vocation of the scholar - a specific examination of the unique vocation of scholarship in promoting the cultural unity & moral perfection of humankind through progressive development & communication of knowledge in pursuit of truth.
5. a repudiation of Rousseau's doctrine that mankind's greatest good would be found in the state of nature rather than a developed culture.

   I found Fichte remarkably easy to read, many thanks to the translator - and overall this is a very stimulating & edifying book urging anyone engaged in the human vocation of scholarship to take seriously the responsibilities of their intellectual activity. Worth checking out if that sounds interesting to you, it's pretty short.

* He wins the prize for Most German Name of Enlightenment philosophers I have yet read.

** Karl Marx read Fichte, & it shows.

On Liberty

This book is a long essay by John Stuart Mill about the moral, social, political and psychological elements of liberty. It wasn't a particularly tricky read but I would struggle to summarise his ideas beyond: liberty is good for both the individual and their society; liberty of the individual in terms of their capacity to hold their own opinions free of coercion and to do what they will insofar as this harms no others is of profound value to the stability and ethical virtue of a society and these rights should be protected politically. He obviously says more than this but it all boils down to over-verbose circlings rhetorically of this core notion. Despite being written in the Victorian era the vigour of his argumentation feels astoundingly contemporary - indeed Mill as a philosopher of liberty still has much still to hope for in the 21st century, when such basic political assumptions as are enshrined in this text are losing that enshrinement when it comes to our basic political institutions. This isn't a particularly practical book, but neither is it an abstract series of obtuse or irrelevant speculations - Mill doesn't tell us where liberty comes from or how it is best used, he simply makes the case, in great detail and using very long sentences, for its being a personal and communal value and practice of profound importance to human flourishing. 

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.

Compelling Reason

This book is a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia series and perhaps the most famous 20th-century British Christian apologist. The essays range in subject matter from ethics, theology, aesthetics, cultural concerns, and vaguer trains of thought. I will give each essay a brief outline critique before offering my thoughts on the collection as a whole.

1. "Why I am not a pacifist" - an impassioned, largely balanced, pragmatic argumentation against pacifism, which I think just about succeeds on its own merits even though it barely delves deep enough into moral philosophy to make its point well. Certainly a filibusterous failure from my point of view.
2. "Bulverism" - a study into a plague of modern thinking, which is how people will oftentimes approach an argument by showing why their opponent must be wrong before demonstrating that they are wrong. An original and genuinely compellingly insightful essay.
3. "First and second things" - a pretty bland reflection on myth, cultural memory, and authenticity.
4. "Equality" - a rather kneejerk if you ask me take on egalitarianism, which wears its complete lack of engagement with political philosophy almost proudly on its sleeve.
5. "Three Kinds of Men" - a mercifully short and horribly shallow categorisation of all of humanity into the eponymous trio of camps. Not helpful.
6. "Horrid Red Things" - an intriguingly original reflection on assumption, truth, pragmatic value, and shared understanding: robustly common-sense & widely applicable.
7. "Democratic Education" - makes a couple of interesting-sounding points but overall falls at the same hurdle as [4]; largely comes across, especially to a 21st-century reader, as unsympathetic elitist huff.
8. "A Dream" - anecdotal recount of a dream about the Home Guard; I honestly struggled to see what point if any this one was trying to make.
9. "Is English Doomed?" - a despairing take on the decline of academic English studies which is largely, if not utterly, disproven by historical educational trends since.
10. "Meditation in a Toolshed" - an original and pleasurably-imaginative musing on how to best balance objectivity and subjectivity in one's perspective.
11. "Hedonics" - another highly original and entertaining reflection on the nature of pleasure, and the deplorable lacuna in intellectualism of studying it for its own sake so that it can be better propagated.
12. "Christian Apologetics" - originally read to an audience of Anglican priests and youth leaders in the Church of Wales, this is a robust and engaging and open sketch of the challenges and opportunities of its title matter.
13. "The Decline of Religion" - a level-headed take on the secularisation of British society that had started to rear its head in Lewis's lifetime to the shock of the religious establishment, even though it was merely, as he argues, the manifestation of trends that had been bubbling away for centuries.
14. "Religion Without Dogma" - for my money the best essay in the book: Lewis, with zero philosophical academic weight but a wealth of common sharp logic, strips the concept of religion of everything it can bear to lose while still being worthy of the name to discover if there is an acceptably universal minimal form of it. His rigour in this endeavour paired with actual scholarly study could fill an entire series of theology books, but ultimately for his conclusion that Christianity suffices the lowest-common-denominator middle-ground seems to me well made.
15. "Vivisection" - a fairly utilitarian anthropocentric reflection on the topic, that if you ask me bares the underdevelopment of Lewis's thinking on animal being and rights (not simply because I disagree with him - I don't, in places, but rather that he uses them as a springboard into human concerns with a clear lack of having landed on a satisfactory understanding of them in themselves.)
16. "Modern Translations of the Bible" - a sane and uncontroversial (nowadays at least, unless you're one of those KJV-only purist nutjobs) take on alternate English versions of scripture: all points in here are completely justified by the proliferation and worth of such translations in the years since this was written.
17. "On Living in an Atomic Age" - weirdly jovial in its Christian nihilism; Lewis here pays no attention to international relations or ecology and merely goes off on a sprawling tangent about the value of purposeful life over mere survival (as if the two were wholly disconnected concepts) and lands at a conclusion that I understand but think is morally entitled and politically bankrupt.
18. "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" - a two-parter in which first the essay and then a response to two critiques of aforesaid essay lay out Lewis's (oh, how shall I say) interesting perspective on the nature of crime and punishment. From a purely moral standpoint I understand his perspective but on a pragmatic level I think he completely fails to grapple with any serious philosophical notion of justice and on a social level he makes "logical" leaps into un-contextualised territories to make his points that left me simply scratching my head at his paranoia.
19. "The Pains of Animals" - this one opens with a letter by a Dr. Joad, critiquing the chapter in Lewis's book The Problem of Pain on this essay's topic, and then follows with Lewis's reply. We already know Lewis's grasp of animals [see 15] is weak to put it mildly, so even though respectably he does admit that his points here are "speculative", the fact that he would have devoted a chapter in one of his books to this subject is intellectually sloppy and from an apologetic standpoint even irresponsible (especially considering what he said in [12] about the responsibilities of apologetics).
20. "Is Theism Important?" - a brief but cogent dissection of the line between intellectual faith and spiritual or personal faith, and how these are or aren't bridged.
21. "Xmas and Christmas" - not even an essay, just a prolonged whinge about the secularisation of the holiday. Zero intellectual content but a fun[ish] read.
22. "Prudery and Philology" - the least consequential thing in the whole book; this is basically just a spiralling diatribe about how problematic it is or isn't that words for genitals are often rude.
23. "Is History Bunk?" - a fairly interesting look into the nature of historical study and where exactly judgement or critique comes into it; I struggle to see any meaningful application of these ideas anywhere they aren't already being wholeheartedly engaged with though.
24. "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" - the half-baked political thinking Lewis proudly showed off in [4] and [7] is now applied on a global level, with zero economic understanding displayed and zero substantive philosophy utilised, to draw us into an alarmist sketch of global future dystopia under the guise of universal wellbeing.

   Overall I think this is a pretty hit-and-miss collection. Some, like [2], [11] and [14], are definitely worth a read and are original and robust. Many others just smack of rather bland conservative cynicism from a man whose position as a public intellectual privileges him to talk about anything he wants regardless of how much he actually understands the complexities or nuances or the topic (or fields of study entire) at hand. Readers looking for a whole book's-worth of biting, truly compelling argument as Lewis is known for in his Christian writings will only find perhaps 30-40% of such a books-worth here, but anyone interested in his way of thinking should still find this an interesting read.

On Fairy-Stories

This book (available free online from that link) is a long essay, well - originally lecture, by J.R.R. Tolkien, regarding the fairy story and fantastical fiction in general. It is widely known as a key touchstone for thinkers in and around the genre on how to do it well, and as I am currently working on my own series of fantasy novels (as well as being generally interested in how the father of the modern genre approached it) I thought it would be well worth a read* - and I was not disappointed. Tolkien begins with a broad attempt to define the fairy story, before delving into the historical and cultural origins of the genre; he then considers the stereotypical association of the fairy story as being intended for and only enjoyable by children (a proposition he roundly rejects) and then goes on to develop a definitional theory of what precisely "fantasy" is - this is the meatiest part of the whole essay - as being a genre that should ideally provide recovery, escape, and consolation (it is in this part that he coins the term "eucatastrophe" to describe the inexplicable, unpredictable, yet inevitable happy ending of all true fairy stories***), and finally concluding with a statement about art's essential nature to human flourishing under God in consideration of our relationship to truth and imagination. This is a deeply stimulating essay, and whether you're active in writing fantasy yourself or you're simply an enjoyer of the genre who wants to take a thorough stare at the nuts and bolts of what makes it so vibrant and long-enduring as a form of human expression, you will find a great deal of food for thought here. Well worth a read - especially if you're a fan of Tolkien's fictional works, as this essentially provides the manifesto statement of how he approached all of his writings of the fantastical ilk.

* Although if you're interested in the ideas talked about in this post but don't have the attention span to read a forty-page essay,** assuming you still have the attention span to watch a forty-minute video essay, Jess of the Shire has you covered.

** In which case, what the heck are you doing on this blog?

*** Key example in point - at the culmination of The Lord of the Rings (spoiler alert), the ring is destroyed not by intent but by accident: Frodo caves to its power at the very last step of his journey, and Middle-earth is saved only by Gollum slipping into the lava having bitten off poor Mr. Baggins's finger to finally reclaim his precious. Textbook eucatastrophe.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

This book is an Extinction Rebellion handbook - part manifesto for the cause, part instruction manual on being involved. I should have read it years ago, though for my money I was already involved with the movement by the time it came out - I was prompted to read it now having just finished another book about the mass extinction humans are causing.

   The first half of the book is "Tell the Truth"; a collection of essays about the stark reality of the ecological crisis we face, with contributions from a variety of scientists & activists on various facets of the challenge. The second half is "Act Now"; further essays on, among other things, the model of civil resistance XR pioneered by Roger Hallam (one of the movement's founders), the political dimensions of the challenge & opportunity from Caroline Lucas & Clive Lewis, and the need for an overhaul of our economic thinking by Kate Raworth. The book ends on a hopeful note with an afterword by Rowan Williams.*

   This book may be a bit past its sell-by date, since XR as a movement has lost much of the momentum it had in that first year & activity is winding down, but this is still an insightful & compelling read on the enormity of the crisis & practical ways we can be responding to it.

* The ex-Archbishop of Canterbury; it is Williams's influence that got me involved with XR in the first place back in 2018, as I was working for Church Army at the time & he was its president, so, already being deeply concerned about the ecological crisis, when Williams released a statement in support of XR, basically I took that as a direct order to put myself on the frontline. I was arrested alongside several dozen others for blocking Lambeth Bridge, and I slept like a baby in the police cell. Head down, eyes closed, mind utterly at rest, no dreams. A salved conscience will do that to you.

Union with Christ

This book is a collection of essays by the Puritan thinker Thomas Boston, on a theme which the title probably makes clear enough. I've been reading this through with my dad and have found the experience soundly edifying and an effective mode of discipleship, intellectually and spiritually. Boston's prose, though old, is not archaic, and thus relatively easy to read and interpret. The points he makes are very gospel-grounded; I don't think anything in this book would be at all controversial to most orthodox Christians, and I do think that much of what is in here would be of great help to those same in the deepening of their conviction as regards their union with Christ, as is the gist of the New Testament.

Zen in the Art of Writing

This book is a collection of essays by Ray Bradbury on the art of writing. He was an exceptionally prolific and deeply skilled writer so it goes without saying that this is a very readable text. Moreover the nature of the thoughts and insights he has on the writing process, from the quandaries of inspiration to the mechanics of typing, are incredibly useful - I read this as I am suffering from somewhat of a creative slump in my own writing activities, but I have to say I found Ray's words here to be immensely liberating, empowering, and so forth. If you're already a fan of Bradbury's work you might find this an interesting insight into his process, but really the main bulk of potential audience I would recommend this to is creative writers themselves. Take good advice from an expert.

the Politics of Newspeak

This book, or rather an appendix to the novel 1984 by George Orwell (not one in any edition I've ever seen - available as a free .pdf on the link above) is a pretty apt corollary to his essay Politics and the English Language, as it details his application of his political thinking as regards language to the fictionalized totalitarian mode of English, or IngSoc, that is used in aforementioned novel. He walks us through a rough overview of the vocabulary amputations that are made to English in order to achieve the mental effectiveness of Big Brother's totalitarian regime, explaining as he goes the thinking between the removal of certain words and the curtailing of others' meanings to the absolute minimum. The overall effect of which, by distorting language, is to reduce the capacity for abstract thought among a population to only modes which are conducive to the continuance of the regime. It's a powerful and insightful reflection on both the power of language to shape thought and the power of politics to shape language - and IngSoc is a perfect example, if admittedly fictional, of this taken to deliberate extremes. Following the discussions of vocabulary and grammars permitted or disallowed there is a fairly extensive dictionary of IngSoc terms used in 1984 with explanations as to their meanings under Big Brother - with their actual meanings to us living under liberal democracy arguable. Overall this is a really interesting take on how to fictionalise language, as Orwell here isn't making up a new interpretation of dialect or inventing a new language, but butchering an existing one for political purposes. Anyone interested in how politics and linguistics intersect would get a kick out of reading this, and it will certainly add a new layer of intrigue to the novel it derives from.

Politics and the English Language

This book - well, rather a long essay - by George Orwell, has become something of a talking-point across the political spectrum in recent years, for interesting reasons. The right seem to think that it upholds their stance against "politically correct" speech policing, while the left seem to feel it upholds their idea that all too often vague populistic and non-committal speech is supplanting public honesty. Exactly where Orwell himself would have lain in this argument we will never know, as he's been dead for seventy years, but still people on all sides of all political spectrums love to claim this man who fought for an anarchist army against Spanish fascists is on their side.

   I'll quit rambling. This is an essay about vagueness; the ways in which the English language can be made flimsy, indeterminate, in order to couch the political ambitions and goals of the speaker - regardless of their ideology. Some of the most insidious ways in which this happens are dying metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words. If these terms mean nothing to you then I suggest you click on the link at the very start of this post and read the free-online .pdf of this very essay so that Orwell himself can elucidate you. After explicating the ways in which these linguistic tactics can be used to obfuscate and befuddle, Orwell goes on to retranslate a passage he had quoted "in political language" earlier into normal, honest English - and the differences are quite startling. Even as someone who was a keen student of linguistics at college, I was startled at how much of a difference can be made pragmatically to the same semantic statement through a handful of minor tweaks. But all of this is moot. The world has moved on a great deal since Orwell passed on; we have been living in the "post-truth" era for about eight years now, and I dread to think what George would make of the political-linguistic landscape if he could see it today.

   Read this if you want for historical curiosity. It's a somewhat interesting insight into the past evolution of populist propaganda-speech. But it won't help you all that much in navigating the shitshow that is how politicians use language today. Unless, that is, you trust them, in which case, God help you.

Charles Spurgeon's sermons on Proverbs

This isn't so much a book as it is a collection (available from that link as a pdf - free) of sermons, by the great Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon, on the biblical wisdom book of Proverbs; I've been devotionally reading it one sermon at a time along with my dad for over a year. Rather than working meticulously through the whole book, Spurgeon selects one or two proverbs from each chapter and reflectively spins these out into biblically-rich, theologically-sound and spiritually-edifying sermons. He manages to walk a fine line incredibly well indeed - both developing the inner concepts of the proverbs to demonstrate their wisdom, and extrapolating from them ways that such wisdom can and should lead us deeper into the realities of the gospel. He was very clearly an amazing preacher and thus is in my view deserving of his reputation; erudite in his speech yet accessible to common language and sensibility. The "Victorian-ness" of the prose is a minor gripe but read aloud, as me and my dad did, this evaporates; you are left with Spurgeon in all his intellectual heft weaving points and leading you into Christian exhortation. While I can't definitively say so, I strongly suspect most of his other sermons to be of equal value, and loads of them are online - so check them out. If you're particularly interested in the gospel-centred application of Solomonic wisdom, check this one out specifically.

the Shaking of the Foundations

This book is a collection of sermons from Paul Tillich, the renowned 20th-century existential theologian and teacher. They are extremely wide-ranging in topic and theme, also varying considerably in terms of length & layperson-accessibility (as there are several sermons in here that feel more like transcripts of philosophy lectures); but all have in common Tillich's holistic approach to Christian teaching, which draws on everything from contemporary science to the horrors and promises of modern history to make its points. His writing style is engaging and lucid and I would've loved to hear the man preach live, as there is also a strong undercurrent of emotive heft to his written teachings to the Church - which needs thinkers and leaders like him, given modernity's "shaking the foundations" of ecclesial assumptions. Of course, the title is double-edged - alongside the meaning just noted it also hints at the "shaking the foundations" of the whole modern order by means of God's revelation and Christ's activity in the redemptive power of the Christian worldview. A highly interesting and thought-provoking read: I'd strongly recommend this to readers who are believers that it may challenge and hone their own theology, as well as a tentative recommendation to non-believers, as I think Tillich's arguments stand up pretty darn well on philosophical grounds and therefore could function quite well as apologetics.

Notes on 'Camp'

This book is a Penguin Modern re-publication of two essays by Susan Sontag, the titular Notes on 'Camp' and One Culture and the New Sensibility; both are densely thought-provoking but quite readable and very short (I read both in one go while babysitting for my younger brothers). It's difficult to summarise what she's talking about without being grossly reductive: both are very broad and deep essays, and though their main focus is the nature of consumed creative-cultural content, the ways in which this has notably changed through history is discussed with a deftness and nuance that is hugely enriching given the wealth of social, political, economic, technological and psychological trends and concepts which she brings to bear on this infuriatingly intangibly unanswerable question - that of, what is art for? And therefore what constitutes good taste?

   'Camp' may be rudely described as that which is 'so bad it's good', but only raises more questions about what good meant in the first place, and therefore how something might be perceived as bad, and ways in which ironic or detached (yet still wholehearted, more-or-less) enjoyment of such a bad thing might make it be perceived as a sort-of-good thing, but when others then try to emulate what makes these bad/(good?) things bad/(good?) it either comes across as pretentious or it lowers the bar. Either way, for all the surgical meditations on the user's aesthetic experience which Sontag lays out here, the questions underpinning both essays are far from settled philosophically - and given the rapidity with which culture and our technological means of consuming or engaging with it continue to change,* I'm not sure there is much more than a few grains of truth about these painfully convoluted realms of intersubjectivity to be found throughout this essay. That's not to say it isn't a thoroughly interesting springboard into the basic outlines of these as things to think about though.

   Anyway, the second essay is much more objective - instead of trying to lay out clear guidelines for what constitutes 'camp' taste, she here explores the shifting role that art plays in affluent post-industrial societies with mass communication technology. The brute accessibility of pretty much everything has broken down the barriers between 'high' and 'low' culture, argues Sontag, leading to a frenzy of experimentation with forms and media that see art increasingly calling itself into question through its very self, in a combination of content, style, and context; things are no longer created as timeless artifacts for the proven taste of aristocratic norm-wranglers, but are fluid, self-aware, daring - in ways which mirror the development of science as a continual force progressing by learning from and building upon itself, so art is increasingly created not only as singular entities but as ongoing collective ruminations on meaning, ever being deconstructed and reconstructed afresh for new audiences or in response to new events or to take opportunity of a new means of creating a particular thing...

   I will end here, as this is a topic I could probably spool on about almost indefinitely, and at the very least I don't want to write a post longer than the book it's about.

* An amusing testament to this is that most of the pop-culture references she makes, being from the early sixties at the latest, went straight over my head. Which, in fairness, is likely part of why I didn't find her range of points as comprehensively convincing as I might have.

Being Messy, Being Church

This book, edited by Ian Paul, is a collection of essays exploring Messy Church, and was another of the books I've finished as part of ongoing reflective reading in my job at Church Army's research team. My personal reflections on it all tie in strongly with other reading about church and discipleship and stuff so if you're interested have a peruse of other posts - I've also been condensing my applied reflections from each chapter into note forms which are all in my desk at work, and I'm writing this at home (weirdly, I've not yet asked if they'd mind me taking an hour or so every time I finish reading something at work to then write a blog post about, so) - thus this post will, in thorough contravention of its title and themes, be straightforward, simplistic, neat, and will not invite collaboration or participation from or with any of my other thoughts on any other books. In fact, it barely constitutes more than a copy of the contents of the Contents page.

• A foreword by Lucy Moore (who founded the Messy Church [MC] movement).
• An introduction by Ian Paul about the ongoing vitality of the MC vision.
• Karen Rooms on MC in different contexts.
• Isabelle Hamley on teamwork and developing team members' faith in MC.
• Greg Ross on common challenges and pitfalls to MCs.
• Jean Pienaar on making sacred spaces in MC.
• Philip North on MCs and the sacraments.
• Sabrina Muller on MCs' appropriacy for the postmodern world.
• Mark Rylands on the conversation between MCs and 'traditional' Sunday churches.
• Judyth Roberts on MCs' playfulness.
• Irene Smale on the pastoral implications in a MC.
• Tim Sanderson on evangelism in MCs.
• Stephen Kuhrt on the challenge on discipleship in MCs.
• Tim Dakin on missional structures for missional outcomes (applied to MCs).

   To close this dishearteningly* boiler-plate post, I will add that despite the lack of depth with which I have discussed them here, these essays are deeply insightful and thought-provoking, and I would hold this book up in recommendation for anyone involved in church leadership or organisation - especially churches that look a bit like, or that you feel God is telling you could or maybe should look more like, Messy Churches.

* At least, I dare to presume that someone might have found it so, if they happen to both (or either) be a follower of this blog or an enthusiast for Messy ecclesiology/missiology in pursuit of online resources to find out more about these - well for one, I'm hazarding on the assumption that these two circles maybe don't overlap much (especially given that the first, if the people in it are real at all, is tiny) and maybe the secondary assumption that if there is such an overlap then whoever's in it probably wouldn't be that disheartened if I flappingly apologised for the uselessness of this post knowing full well that it isn't useless properly if it points them toward a relevant book.

Multiplying Churches

This book, edited by Steve Timmis, is a short and readable collection of essays on the broad theme of church-planting. My church is very much a church-planting church by its nature and intentionality, and so everyone in it was given a copy of this a few months ago to help us generally think and talk and pray through corporately how to go ahead with an upcoming pair of new church-plants. I can say straight-up that it's a great book for this; each chapter is accessible, jargon-free, biblically-grounded, and thoroughly proactive and exhortational in style - I won't discuss it in much depth here, because I'm currently also reading another book more centrally focused on a holistic exploration of biblical theology of church, and I'll save reflections for the post on that.

   But yes - the chapters:

• Tim Chester - church planting as the work of spreading Christ's light
• Henri Blocher - church planting as the work of a renewed humanity in Creation
• Steve Timmis - church planting as the work of God's people witnessing to Him
• Matt Chandler - the motive of grace
• Reuben Hunter - the method of Word-centredness
• Matt Chandler - the means of empowerment by the Holy Spirit
• One Mokgatle - how churches can/should transcend ethno-cultural boundaries
• Steve Timmis - men's role in church planting
• Ruth Woodrow - women's role in church planting

   Overall, a great book to work through in church communities facing upcoming plants (or not - yet it might even inspire one!)

   Regular readers (ahahahahaha who?) may suspect, rightly, that I do have some thoughts on the last pair of chapters which I haven't divulged in this post - and that's because, to put it quite honestly, I have been convicted in recent months about the extent to which my social/political consciousness is allowed priority over my life in Christ (which then necessarily entails a degree of accountability and humility toward the body of Christ which is the church) to determine my opinions and reactions to things. And that's not to say that I'm still far from in agreement with many of the senior leadership (in both my church and the wider Acts 29 network of which it is a part) on the issue of gender roles (the thoughts I laid out here are still basically what I think), but I recognise that such arguments aren't as neat as I'd've liked to think. My uptake of support for feminism was rooted in hearing and reading the experiences and reflections of women, talking about the oppressions they faced; and while I'm not convinced the church isn't complicit in this to a significant degree (especially considered historically), I also have to recognise that there are many wise and socially-conscious women in the church who accept the seniors' position on gender roles (in a nutshell - complementarianism, so men-only-leaders), and that doesn't end the argument, but in humility creates new space for constructive discussions about where to go from there. I don't know. We're in an interesting period of political and cultural shift regarding gender norms, as we also are regarding the role of traditionally hegemonic religion: my personal opinions aren't as important as the wider attempts by the church to seek unity for all in Christ, which won't be overly aided if the whole church is busy arguing internally about the finer shades of theological nuance in this or that egalitarian theory, or where we draw the line between being subversive in a Spirit/grace-led sense and just being downright subversive. I wish I could explore these avenues further because trust me I've got views - but so what? Maybe some day there will come a time and a place for these conversations between the secular, the philosophical, and the church to take place, with all degrees of no-holds-barred criticality alongside an earnest intention to find workable common ground: and if or when that day comes, I will spring into action and try to help radical feminists and complementarian church leaders realise where their concerns overlap - or whatever else may come about. But until such hypothetical scenarios arise, I am not complacent, but merely refraining from unhelpful or divisive arguments.
   Let dialectics get on with themselves.
   You just get on with being.

Optimism over Despair

This book is a collation of interviews by C. J. Polychroniou with Noam Chomsky about the state of the world in 2017 - and boy, lemme tell you, it's bleak going. I got it chiefly because I hoped from the title that Noam was going to slice through the despair-inducing series of global events and trends dominating the headlines of this past year with a knife made of pure hope, but no, it's basically just a thorough, concise, and horrifyingly well-informed exploration of just how fucked we are, but of course resorting to despair will only make us get more fucked, and so the only morally or politically viable course for all those with progressive agendas to maintain as an attitude is a resigned, stoic, optimism.*

   Throughout, C. J. and Noam discuss:

• Collapsing American hegemony
• Unravelling European integration
• The new phase of the global 'war on terror'
• ISIS, NATO, Russia, and the shitstorm in the Middle-East
• Inequality and unsustainability in the plutocratic model of post-neoliberal 'really existing capitalism'
• Trump and the decline of American civil society
• Republicans (the most dangerous group of people on the planet) and global warming
• US meddling in other countries' elections/societies/etc
• Religion's dogged resistance to separating from politics
• Utter failures of US healthcare and education systems
• The potential of anarcho-socialist democratic change when all these trends/events are placed with optimistic consideration in their historical context

   It is very scary stuff. To be honest, with the level of detail and insight Noam brings to each of these broad fields of discussion, one is left with an overbearing sense of dread at the state of the world far moreso from reading this book than if one had read separate books on each issue or even a potent digest of leftist critique-responses to most of the actual news items comprising these larger problems over the past year. I'd recommend it as an oh-shit-inspirational text for progressive activists, but really most of those already know to a large degree just how fucked we are on all the fronts discussed herein, and so this book effectively just serves as an educational reinforcement from that raspy old prophet of contemporary western anarchism. You would probably learn a lot from this book, especially historical blips of detail that often elude mainstream narratives on these big issues - but overall I don't feel there is as much to be gained from reading this as there is by simply reading the news and maintaining one's dedication to taking action, if one is politically inclined similarly to Chomsky or myself, which if you're thinking of reading this you probably are. But yeh. It lives up to the title in prose conclusion only.

* That's not to say good things aren't happening, because they are. Just nowhere near big or fast enough to substantively offset some of the bigger and more pressing factors in why we're fucked.

the Cultural Impact of Kanye West

This book, a collection of essays about [you should be able to guess what from the title] edited by Julius Bailey, was, far from the vacuous pop-culture-dissection pseudo-academia that people seemed to expect of it when I mentioned that it was on my currently-being-read-shelf, actually one of the most interesting books I've read so far this year.

   I acquired it in February, following an evening in which I had my eyes (ears) opened to Kanye properly for the first time, having never properly listened to his music, when my housemate Adam (a longtime fan of Mr West) proposed that we watch the livestream of his new album (The Life of Pablo) launch from Madison Square Garden. So we did: in a flurry of egoism and the launch of not only his seventh solo album but his new fashion range (more or less loads of people dressed as [refugees?] stood unsmiling unmoving on a series of platforms throughout the launch), Mr West proceeded to press 'play' on a laptop and so commence the world's first public hearing of an album that he'd changed the name of four times, still hadn't decided on the final tracklist for, even months after this launch hadn't made publicly available except on Jay-Z's failing-small-fish-in-a-heavily-monopolised-pond streaming service Tidal, and had described as 'the best album of all time' - so, expectations were high. And to be fair, while we'll allow his ego to gloss over his hyperbolic hype, it actually was a really good album. So over the next two days I decided to give his other music a try, listening to all six of his previous solo albums with Adam (yeh, February was not a busy month for our house) at least once (I think I listened to Yeezus and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy thrice each), and it suffices to say that I became an unshakeable admirer of Kanye West as an artist. Which left me in something of a quandary. Having never properly listened to his music before, I'd always presumed* he was 'just an alright rapper' with a penchant for ridiculous egotistical outbursts, aggressive outspoken narcissism, a god complex, whatever you want to call it - a bit delusional and a bit of a dickhead. But there was a deep creativity to his music and intellectual weight to his lyrics, even if they did so often dip into the stereotypical 'misogyny and materialistic boasting' tropes of rap, it did so with a self-awareness and political consciousness that signifies a lot more thought behind the craft than I suspect is the case with much stereotypical rap.** Whatever the case, I was curious how he maintained such a controversial and seemingly high-risk public character at the same time as not being an out-and-out loon but a fully-fledged genius. So I bought this. And then couldn't read it until about two months ago because my housemate Chris was writing a dissertation about hiphop (yes, actually) so he borrowed it.

   Anyway.

   I wasn't exactly sure what kind of questions I wanted answered or which ones this book would answer, but needless to say, each of the essays contained in here was deeply engaging, relatively readable (though some of them are pretty steeped in liberal-academia-babble and/or cultural studies jargon), and highly educational about something I didn't know that much about. Kanye as a person, a male, a black person, a constructed persona, an artist, an ego, and a philosopher-by-implication is discussed in-depth, as is his work, all placed and explored carefully in a range of contexts - hiphop culture in wider American music, issues of race and gender, media responses to celebrity actions, and so on. I've not really got many major personal reflections on this book, I just found the essays really stimulating and educational, but since a far-too-large chunk of this post hasn't been about the book at all, I'll flesh it out with a bullet-pointed list of the essays and try to give a rough description [not summary] of their content/gist.

• 'Now I Ain't Sayin' He's a Crate Digger': Kanye West, 'Community Theatres', and the Soul Archive
• Mark Anthony Neal explores Kanye's prolific habit of sampling classic soul tracks, and how this has deepened and developed racial-cultural links to the history of African-American music.
• Kanye West: Asterisk Genius?
• Akil Houston examines what constitutes a 'genius' in a creative sense, and tries to determine whether, by placing his work in its artistic context, Kanye is one, as Kanye himself certainly seems to think.
• Afrofuturism: the Digital Turn and the Visual Art of Kanye West
• Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings look at how Kanye's music videos, album artwork, fashion designs, and other visual media convey a distinctly 'black' interpretation of futuristic post-modern forms.
• You Got Kanyed: Seen But Not Heard
• David J. Leonard examines how Kanye's occasional 'public outbursts' (e.g. "Taylor I'ma let you finish" or that time he slammed George W. Bush for failing after Katrina) have their generally not-too-well-put but politically salient points ignored by the media, which instead reduces his actions to those of a [rich and famous but still] black man stepping out of line.
• An Examination of Kanye West's Higher Education Trilogy
• Heidi R. Lewis looks at the sociopolitical implications, of which there are myriad, embedded in the artistic choices and lyrical content of his first three albums.
• 'By Any Means Necessary': Kanye West and the Hypermasculine Construct
• Sha'Dawn Battle discusses how hiphop culture's misogyny may be a socio-politico-cultural vent in response to the systemic dehumanisation of black men in a racist society (i.e. oppressed black males seek to affirm their personhood by affirming their manhood, and so heterosexual conquest becomes a demographic keystone of status).
• Kanye West's Sonic [Hip-Hop] Cosmopolitanism
• Regina N. Bradley examines how the musical stylistic choices Kanye makes may reflect his aims to transcend and break down certain social boundaries.
• 'Hard to Get Straight': Kanye West, Masculine Anxiety, Dis-identification
• Tim'm West looks at a similar issue to Sha'Dawn Battle's above essay, though here examining hiphop's attitudes to homosexuality, and how Kanye has rocked the boat in this regard by not voicing prevalent prejudices.
• 'You Can't Stand the Nigger I See!': Kanye West's Analysis of Anti-Black Death
• Tommy Curry explores very similar issues to Sha'Dawn Battle's above essay, with an emphasis on the racist oppression and sexualisation of black men, and how Kanye both embraces and shatters these prejudices in his lyrics and constructed persona.
• When Apollo and Dionysus Clash: a Nietzschean Perspective on the Work of Kanye West
• Julius Bailey (the book's editor), in what I feel is the best-titled but one of the least rewarding essays of the lot, explores Nietzsche's concept structures of aesthetics, and how aspects of Apollo (ordered rationalism) and Dionysus (embodied emotivism) are blended together by Kanye to generate art that provokes interested thought and raw base feeling from very closely-bound aspects of his work.
• God of the New Slaves or Slave to the Ideas of Religion and God?
• Monica R. Miller examines the religious concepts that recur in Kanye's work, particularly focusing on his adoption of the name/persona 'Yeezus' as a means of making points about his socioeconomic status as a black man framed in terminology and imagery derived from Christian traditions, whether this could be considered blasphemous, and whether Kanye's own beliefs are relevant.
• Trimalchio from Chicago: Flashing Lights and the Great Kanye in West Egg
• A. D. Carson sketches the parallels between Kanye's pursuit of true hiphop and the core character drive of Jay Gatsby in what is frankly a pretty weird essay.
• Confidently [Non]cognizant of Neoliberalism: Kanye West and the Interruption of Taylor Swift
• Nicholas D. Krebs outlines neoliberalism's propensity for upholding certain inequalities while simultaneously co-opting other socio-politico-cultural movements or trends, in this case hiphop, a music derived from black people's experience (the oppressive nature of which is unchallenged by neoliberal order) which has become highly profitable in neoliberal consumer societies so long as it doesn't seek to call out the messed-up racist structures underpinning the whole spectacle. Kanye however will persistently rap about structural racism, make loads of money from it, and then feel empowered enough as an influential artist to speak out against Taylor Swift's trumping Beyoncé on the grounds that her whiteness had validated her as the winner even if she was otherwise less deserving. The racist neoliberal system did not respond kindly (see also David J. Leonard's above essay on similar topic).
• Kanye Omari West: Visions of Modernity
• Dawn Boeck tracks three phases in Kanye's artistic development, and the implications within each phase for his vision of modernity and his place within it as an influential rich famous black creative genius. Chock-full of excellent thought-provoking stuff, this one.

   So, that's the book. Anyone just expecting a low-key easy-read book about Kanye will be taken aback by how riotously scholarly the bulk of these essays are. That said, anyone interested in Kanye, to any extent, will probably find themselves learning a lot from this - and anyone interested in race, music, culture, and celebrities in the media, will probably gain a lot from reading it too. My one gripe with the book isn't a legitimate gripe, I'm just slightly annoyed that it came out in 2014, two years before The Life of Pablo, and having relistened to his full discography a few times since February (especially his seventh album which is a strong contender for my favourite), I feel like Pablo's attitude, content, and style develop certain threads explored in this book further in extremely interesting ways (especially the essays of Monica R. Miller, Akil Houston, and Dawn Boeck), and I'd have loved to read about that. But alas. Maybe I could write my own thoughts and reflections?

   Nah. Now, where are my damn croissants?

* This implies that I was completely ignorant of him, but even before having listened to his music, for several years I've had a weird fascination with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, simply for how powerfully they seem to exemplify something about individualism and fame in modern Western society. They both flaunt deep-rooted egoism alongside extremely adept control of their own personas in the public eye, Kim through empowered-patriarchal-female use of and complete reclamation of her sexualised image, Kanye through empowered-patriarchal-male use of his work and words, even [especially?] when it grates people.

** I have never felt like such a White Boy, writing that sentence.

[Edit - May 2018: in light of Kanye's quasi-racist-apologetic stunt of what I'd like to think is a risky but (obviously ego-spotlight-flauntatious regardless) calculatedly subversive bomb of outlandishly controversial performance art mixed with an actually-quite-constructive way of gaining influence on those in power without alienating them from the off - although any such not-really-that-unreasonable-in-the-development-of-West-as-a-creative/-celebrity-personality suggestions hitherto are taken kindly by the assembled masses of the online commentariat, which is not known for its general capacity to handle nuance or feel a whiff of cognitive dissonance on a good day, let alone be expected to respond aright to a deliberately-obtuse political about-turn from a figure increasingly regarded as having transmorphed from benign self-obsessed maniac genius into an ever-further obtuse and evasive figure as to whose real inner life it has become utterly fatuous to speculate about, so far has he himself deliberatedly deconstructed the lines between his frictional frontline celebrity life and the artwork that keeps him in it? I get the vague impression that most of his audience have given up trying to know what to think, as also I should probably apologise herewith for the previous sentence. (And I'm not even sure why it ends with a question mark but there we go.) Well, and especially, when out of the tumult of this media/social-media cacophony of outrage, apologistic speculations, further outrage at the apologistic speculations, which prompted polite responses which after a few more million back-and-forths of this across the internet eventually, obviously, was to descend into what always happens in these situations which is that every echo chamber involved hastily cobbles an ad hoc 'line' and everyone rapidly (unless already having said something about it, in which case they're either an influencer (vague strokes of common opinion between them determining the line), a tentative follower (who may then edit what they said if the line comes out different later on), or an opinionated outcast without enough followers to care about in this birds-eye view anyway) adheres to it. It is fair to say that arguments about Kanye West were happening. Then he dropped a pair of new songs, the latter of which is a lyrically-potent dialogue about his new political stance and his relationship with Donald Trump called Ye vs. the People (with the people here being represented in rap form by T.I.), and the former a two-minute old-skool-brick-phone-ringtone-kinda-vibe moonburst called Lift Yourself, the extremely-pre-hyped final verse to which comprised Kanye saying the absolute most he possibly could have packed into a single verse at this exact moment in his drift across the public gaze: gibberish. (Okay it was more like an extended scat-like thing more-or-less just rejiggling the components of the profound syllables "woop diddy scoop, poopty de doop" - the point is, now people are still just as, if not more confused, by the whole debacle, which has maintained a high degree of online discussion about it, including this now that I'm looking back at it extremely long addition to a blogpost almost two years old which might not ever be read by anyone but me as this is quite an old one and who reads this anyway? so but only goes further to show how effective a self-perpetuating incorrigible unfathomable character of celebrity and controversy and creativity Kanye West is, such that he's been all over my feeds that much I felt compelled to wonder what the authors of the above essays would make of it, and, well, then, I can't think of any dignifed way to end this horrendous post-script.]