osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2025-06-18 08:17 am
osprey_archer) wrote2025-06-18 08:17 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Lo these many years ago, after my grandma died, I helped sort out her bookshelves, which held books all the way back from her book-loving aunts and uncles in the early 1900s. As I was at the time in a graduate program, staring down a Ph.D. thesis set roughly in that era, I took a few books that seemed representative, including George Barr McCutcheon’s The Alternative, as McCutcheon was a famous Hoosier humorist of the time period.
So was Booth Tarkington, whose work is still very funny, so I approached McCutcheon’s book with high hopes. However, this is perhaps not the place to start with McCutcheon, as it’s a bit of weightless romantic Christmas fluff that barely cracks one hundred pages despite largish type and beautiful green leafy borders around each page.
Beautifully printed, though. I might keep it just as a lovely example of the printer’s trade.
I’m not usually a bit audiobook person, but whentroisoiseaux told me that Michael Schur (showrunner for, among other things, The Good Place) read his own audiobook WITH THE CAST OF THE GOOD PLACE, of course I had to listen to it. A fun romp through the history of moral philosophy, focusing most heavily on Aristotelian virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant.
Schur is good at amusing descriptions of different moral approaches to problems, but less strong when he wanders off the beaten path to discuss, say, what moral philosophy has to say about engaging with the art of terrible people (or chicken sandwiches made by chicken sandwich companies with politics you abhor, etc.). He ultimately comes down on the side of “I guess you gotta decide for yourself,” which isn’t really guidance, especially after he’s just run through why he thinks virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative suggest that you should give up that literal or metaphorical chicken sandwich. Have some guts, man! Either stand by your moral reasoning, or offer a counterargument why actually it’s FINE if we all chow down on some Chik-Fil-A.
What I’m Reading Now
Padraic Colum’s The Big Tree of Bunlahy: Stories of My Own Countryside. Colum won a couple of other Newbery Honors, both of which I felt were dry and dull, but apparently all Colum needed was the inspiration of writing about his very own corner of Ireland to blossom into a fascinating storyteller. I’m doling the book out one tale a night and it’s still going to end far too soon.
What I Plan to Read Next
Evelina has arrived!
Lo these many years ago, after my grandma died, I helped sort out her bookshelves, which held books all the way back from her book-loving aunts and uncles in the early 1900s. As I was at the time in a graduate program, staring down a Ph.D. thesis set roughly in that era, I took a few books that seemed representative, including George Barr McCutcheon’s The Alternative, as McCutcheon was a famous Hoosier humorist of the time period.
So was Booth Tarkington, whose work is still very funny, so I approached McCutcheon’s book with high hopes. However, this is perhaps not the place to start with McCutcheon, as it’s a bit of weightless romantic Christmas fluff that barely cracks one hundred pages despite largish type and beautiful green leafy borders around each page.
Beautifully printed, though. I might keep it just as a lovely example of the printer’s trade.
I’m not usually a bit audiobook person, but when
troisoiseaux told me that Michael Schur (showrunner for, among other things, The Good Place) read his own audiobook WITH THE CAST OF THE GOOD PLACE, of course I had to listen to it. A fun romp through the history of moral philosophy, focusing most heavily on Aristotelian virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant. Schur is good at amusing descriptions of different moral approaches to problems, but less strong when he wanders off the beaten path to discuss, say, what moral philosophy has to say about engaging with the art of terrible people (or chicken sandwiches made by chicken sandwich companies with politics you abhor, etc.). He ultimately comes down on the side of “I guess you gotta decide for yourself,” which isn’t really guidance, especially after he’s just run through why he thinks virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative suggest that you should give up that literal or metaphorical chicken sandwich. Have some guts, man! Either stand by your moral reasoning, or offer a counterargument why actually it’s FINE if we all chow down on some Chik-Fil-A.
What I’m Reading Now
Padraic Colum’s The Big Tree of Bunlahy: Stories of My Own Countryside. Colum won a couple of other Newbery Honors, both of which I felt were dry and dull, but apparently all Colum needed was the inspiration of writing about his very own corner of Ireland to blossom into a fascinating storyteller. I’m doling the book out one tale a night and it’s still going to end far too soon.
What I Plan to Read Next
Evelina has arrived!
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I found this a feature rather than a bug, as it were— despite the tongue-in-cheek title of "How To Be Perfect", I liked that the overall message was "there's no right answer and you have to figure out your own worldview and priorities, but here are some ways that people have tried to answer the question in the past." I mean, murder is bad and we probably shouldn't be giving money to Chik-fil-A if we know it's funding anti-LGBT advocacy, but like. Other than those things!
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Semi-related, at the library this afternoon I saw a book by Todd May (Michael Schur's philosopher friend), with a forward by Michael Schur: Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times. (Speaking of moral guidance that people will ignore even if they can find no rational reason to oppose it! Going extinct is even less fun than giving up really good chicken sandwiches.) I did not feel up to grappling with this philosophical question, but I did give the authors a nod of recognition.
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capitalismoptimizers and statisticians. (Upon reflection, it's not particularly capitalist at all--more communist, if anything, but mainly: numbers oriented.) GAH.I think philosophy as an endeavor suffers from the desire to come up with a one true approach. --Saying this doesn't mean I'm a relativist! Not at all. But It's the creation of hammers and then seeing everything as nails. That's not the world we live in.
And kind of like Newtonian physics work for our daily life but Einstein's physics apply for the Really Huge or the Really Small, so too, even though I abhor utilitarianism as a rule for life, I think it's fine for (for example) choosing which movie to see.
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Anyway, by exploring all these different moral systems, Schur is trying to give us a whole toolbox rather than just a hammer, as it were.
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That does make me feel better!
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*whispers* But I'd still like to ban utilitarianism