The Girl and the Philosopher is about a girl named Christine who is
compelled by a tragic revelation to flee her old life in part to make sense of
it. When she serendipitously encounters a mysterious old fisherman who becomes
her philosopher, her escape becomes an intellectual and spiritual journey that
leads to enlightenment. She is drawn to him because she is lonely and she trusts
the old man, and also being a very intuitive she suspects that the old man is
much more than he appears to be. And seeing the old man fishing alone at night
on a pier above the sea, she thinks he might be a little lonely and in need of
company because that is how she feels. What she will discover is that the old
man is like a magic carpet that is able to transport her through the
intellectual galaxies of art, philosophy, science, history and religion. He is
a source of wisdom acquired from other wise men and women. Christine possesses
her own wisdom that intuitive and feminine.
During her journey Christine encounters other characters, men and women
young and old, whose lives have also been journeys like her own filled with
happiness, sadness, and tragedy. Through them she begins to realize that life
involves suffering that all people experience in various ways. With the help of
the philosopher who becomes her friend, she learns that each life is mysterious
and unique and that there is no such thing as an ordinary life. Every life is
unique, extraordinary, and mysterious.
The old philosopher’s magic carpet is made of words that explore art,
philosophy, science, history and religion—each discipline a constellation of
ideas and meanings that are mostly hidden from view in everyday life. Most of
the topics and books addressed in the story are listed below. Many of the books
on academic topics are mentioned because the old philosopher, Mr. Rieneau, and
the equally old seller of used books, Mr. Sage, introduce endless books to the
girl causing her to feel terribly ignorant yet inspiring in her an ambition to
read every book mentioned to her by the two old bibliophiles. She even goes so
far as to record titles on a notepad given to her by the bookseller.
The girl is clearly super bright
with a remarkable memory, but her intelligence is most likely not the result of
her DNA but because of her solitary nature, which resulted from her being raped
as a young girl. The man who raped her stole her trust of people she does not
know well. From that time on she became an observer of life rather than a
participant. The only exception is when she is with her half-sister Ruth, whose
mother is a Mohave Indian. Ruth lives in two worlds. The first is that of the various
Indian tribes of New Mexico and Arizona unified by a common history and by the
desire resist the corrupting influence of white culture. The second is the wild
lands of nature where she disappears for days at a time. Until Christine’s
departure from New Mexico, Ruth’s interaction with the world of the white man was
limited to Christine, her half-sister, and the artist father they share. To
Christine, Ruth’s understanding of life remains a mystery unavailable to her
because she and Ruth live in different worlds.
The Feminine Worldview
One goal of The Girl and the Philosopher is the exploration the
feminine worldview, which is fundamentally different from the masculine
worldview, though the two can be expressed by both men and women—an idea taken
from Carl Jung’s notion that the anima and the animus exist in both men and
women (discussed in the story). Though the feminine worldview is inherently
important, it is presented in the story as a counterbalance to the inherent
aggressiveness of masculinity. The feminine worldview is difficult to explain
because it is rooted in feminine sensibility, intuition, and emotion. Mr.
Rieneau, the fisherman philosopher, represents a masculine philosophical
worldview that—unlike the feminine—must be achieve because it is not intuitive.
It differs from the inbred feminine worldview by being more analytical and conceptual
than intuitive.
However, there is an inbred
worldview of masculinity that is contrary to that of the feminine because it is
inherently aggressive, whereas the feminine worldview is inherently
appreciative. Thus, the appreciative feminine worldview that comes to women
naturally or organically is antithetical to the aggressive worldview that comes
naturally to men. Certainly, Christine and her sister represent the feminine
worldview. And the old philosopher and the bookseller refer to the expression
of the feminine worldview by women writers of novels. The yin-yang of the
masculine worldview is express between the difference between inherent
masculine aggression and thoughtful, intellectual men who reject immoral,
dull-minded thinking and behaving.
This rejection is clearly expressed
in the life of Jesus. The feminine side of Jesus is as a caregiver. He is a man
but transcend the aggressive masculine tendencies that define masculinity. He is like a combat medic who chooses to save
lives rather than take them, even the lives of the enemy. His dislike for
violence is illustrated in a passage from the gospel of Matthew that describes
the arrest of Jesus. The men who arrest Jesus are “large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the
chief priests and the elders of the people” (Matthew 26:47). The
passage illustrates that the men serve an ideology created from a mentality of aggressive
masculinity, the ideology of the Old Testament. What is described next reveals
that Jesus has rejected the masculine aggression of traditional Judaism and
MAGA’s Old-Testament Christianity, which is a corruption of the altruistic,
ethics-based religion of Jesus. The old philosopher explains that the genius of
Jesus is how he illustrated by his own life that the spiritual life can be
achieved through altruistic ethics. He explains that Jesus’s spiritual
philosophy is similar to Buddha’s concern for human suffering, but improves
Buddha’s ethical philosophy by adding to it active remedial altruism.
Then says Matthew, “the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him.
With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and
struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. ‘Put your sword
back in its place,’ Jesus said to him” (Matthew 26:50-52).
Jesus’s words are a rejection of masculine aggression that gave birth to
Judaism, a religion that deified masculine aggression that eventually killed
Jesus.
The old fisherman philosopher
argues that Apostle Paul created the Christ Cult and its Christian ideology.
Why? Paul had an epiphany after the death of Jesus that said he could take
Jesus’s place. It was a career move. Describing his epiphany Paul (known as
Saul before the epiphany) says that “He fell
to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute
me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’
he replied. ‘Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you
must do.’” Paul knew what to do, which is what he wanted to
do—to replace Jesus’s religion with his own, and by doing so became the founder
of the Christ Cult and the Christian religion. That the event was only imagined
by Paul is verified by the text, which says, “The
men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did
not see anyone.”
He is called Saint Paul for his
role in the founding of the Christian religion, especially in terms of his
influence on the development of Christian ideology. Britannica Dictionary
says that Augustine is “perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after
St. Paul. Augustine’s adaptation of classical thought to Christian teaching
created a theological system of great power and lasting influence.” In other
words, those two men, rather than Jesus, are the composers of Christian
ideology. Paul’s influence is revealed by the fact that of the 27 books in the
New Testament, 13 or 14 are traditionally attributed to Paul, that is almost
50%. Augustine’s most influential book on the creation of Christian doctrine is
The City of God. Perhaps its most influential idea is the concept that
world history guided by Divine Providence in a universal
war between God and the Devil. That there is a cosmic war
occurring between the supernatural forces of evil led by a fallen angel, which
is by the way God’s creation, is an expression of reality reflecting the aggressive
thinking of men. And why did Satan and his followers rebel against the
oppressive masculine deity? Representing free will, they refused to be his
slaves. And that is why Satan advised Eve to act freely and go for the brain
boost. And she was punished just as Jesus and Hypatia were. Religious and
secular ideologies oppress freedom of thought.
However, the idea that a cosmic war
is raging between God and his followers and the Devil and his followers was not
part of Jesus’s thinking. It came from Manichaeism, which taught an elaborate
dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between the good spiritual world of
light and the evil material world of darkness. Augustine of Hippo converted to
Christianity from Manichaeism in the year 387. It too was a career move. He
became an Old Testament Christian, a follower of Apostle Paul as Augustine
explains in his Confessions. And it should be pointed out that Paul’s
religion is rooted in Plato’s religious philosophy, which is rooted in the
religious philosophy of Pythagoras, who doctrine of reincarnation of the soul
after death was learned from Egyptian priests. So, the idea of the resurrection
of the dead came from Paul, not Jesus. It was an alien notion to Western
rationality imported from the East. The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
is a guidebook that enable a person to achieve immortality. Under Apostle
Paul’s influence the New Testament became a similar book that focuses on death,
resurrection, and eternal life, which is contrary to Jesus’s focus on living a
spiritual life in the here and now. Not only that, Apostle Paul’s Christianity
rejected the value of humanity’s material earthly life, totally unlike the wise
man Kohelet’s celebration of humanity’s earthly life in Ecclesiastes (the
wisest book in the Bible).
Why is that important? It’s
important because whereas Jesus was interested in creating a worldly paradise
based on altruistic ethics, the paradise of Paul’s Christianity exists in the
postmortem realm of the resurrected dead. Thus, Paul’s Christianity shift away
from Jesus’s focus on devoting one’s life to helping others, as he did, to
benefitting oneself by simply converting to Christianity and by doing so
achieving eternal existence in the postmortem. Paul’s Christianity is a
narcissistic religion that is all about benefitting the self. The ethical
religion of Jesus required becoming other-centered rather than self-centered. The
difference is between living like the Good Samaritan who sacrifices time and
money to benefit a person in need or living like Judas who betrayed Jesus in
exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Judas cowardly unleased masculine
aggression against Jesus, the man who wanted to overcome the mindset of
masculine aggression and illustrated by his own life how it can be done.
However, most consequential about
Judas’s narcissistic greed is its nihilism. That Judas betrayed a man who had devoted
his life to saving people who are poor, sick, oppressed, or threatened by
violence but also to saving his people spiritually reveals that narcissistic
greed is a form of nihilism. To Judas no one has value except himself, not even
Jesus. And it’s important to note that Judas’s narcissistic greed leads to
Jesus being tortured and murdered. Who are men like Judas today? Well, Putin, Netanyahu,
and Trump have shown nothing and no one has value that interferes with their
political or financial ambitions—that includes their own people. Each man has
sacrificed thousands of lives in order to achieve his ambitions. All value is
conditional. That which serves their ambitions has value to them; that which
doesn’t serve their ambitions lacks value. To such men, nothing, including
people, has inherent value. This denial of value of others, which includes moral
value, is the central characteristic of nihilism.
Masculine aggression is a central
concern of The
Girl and the Philosopher and is discussed often by Mr. Rieneau and Christine. As noted,
when she was a young girl Christine was raped. To the rapist she had only use
value, no value as a human being and clearly no moral value, thus no moral
rights. After the rape she was sent away to have an abortion. Both incidents
made the papers, so she was sent for a summer to live in northern New Mexico
with her half-sister Ruth. Both the old fisherman and bookseller served in
World War II, and the Vietnam War ended in the decade (1975) preceding the
story. And as most people know, masculine aggression made a horror show of the
20th century and continues to do so today.
War and Women’s Voices
Writers discussed in the context of
war are Homer, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Virginia Woolf (including her
magnificent anti-war novel Mrs Dalloway).
Of course, there have been many other great anti-war novels such as Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises (mentioned in the
story) and Farewell to Arms.
Important here is that Homer lived in the 8th century BC and Woolf lived almost
three thousand years later and yet wars continue as they always have. Thus, in
spite of the many wise men who have condemned war, war continues to result from
masculine aggression as a form of masculine recreation. So, unless the feminine
worldview plays a greater role in influencing human affairs, masculine
aggression will continue to threaten another catastrophic global war—perhaps a
nuclear war since there are approximately13,000 nuclear weapons in the world
today.
That there is no easy solution is
why as many women as possible must become philosophers with their own
philosophical worldview. Such a worldview is expressed in Virginia Woolf’s
novels but is not easily accessible to most readers and must be retrieved and
explained philosophically. Would men really listen to a chorus of women
philosophers, young and old? Men who are wise would. These women would be
mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers, cousins, and girlfriends. The
feminine influence is enormous and cherished by most men and could be a means
of restraining destructive masculine aggression by making masculinity more
appreciative of values associated with femininity.
Again, this new paradigm is
illustrated by Jesus. He protects an adulterous woman threatened by the
masculine aggression of Pharasees and their Old-Testament masculine religious
ideology. Their inherent aggression would have the woman stoned to death. What
is lacking in their masculine mindset is feminine compassion, which is, of
course, a cornerstone of Jesus’s altruistic ethics-based religion.
Women have a greater voice today
than they had just a couple decades ago. During the Vietnam War there were few
if any women commentators in news media. Today, there are many. Here are a few:
Susan Glasser
Rachel Ellehuus
Rachel Maddow
Kaitlan Collins
Kate Gerbeau
Jo Crawford
Bethany Elliott
Heather Cox Richardson
Zoya Sheftalovich
Diane Francis
Anne Applebaum: It is interesting that the Applebaum warned America precisely what would happen if Trump was reelected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-d9g-EMpSI
But being a woman, she was ignored, perhaps because MAGA
wanted a dictator, though Biden had used plenty of executive orders in
dictatorial fashion. Or perhaps she was ignored because America is an Old
Testament Christian nation that pays heed to that woman hating unwise founder
of Old Testament Christianity Apostle Paul, who said,
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)
The Internet gets a lot of credit for allowing independent
voices of wise women to push back against unwise men. However, to be truly
effective these media women need the support of a very large audience of young female
intellectuals with some grounding in a philosophy grounded not in an ideology
but in multiple disciplines. I am thinking a tidal wave of young female
philosophers. This project is much larger than that of feminism, which focuses
on the rights of women.
What is needed is a feminine philosophical
movement that presents a feminine worldview that is contrary to aggressive
masculinity that is the greatest source of suffering in the world today—as
illustrated by Putin’s war against Ukraine that has caused 500,000 to 600,000
deaths, both soldiers and civilians and perhaps as many physically and
psychologically injured; Netanyahu’s war that has killed over 72,000
Palestinians and looks very much like genocide; and Trump’s unprovoked war on
Iran that has killed 3,540 people since the war began, including 1,616
civilians. The cause of these wars and all others is unrestrained masculine
aggression, which includes Hamas terrorists who on October 7 murdered 828
civilians, including 36 children. And it should not be forgotten that the
statistics represent individual men, women, and children, each a unique person
with friends and loved ones. The murder of a single person is deplorable; the
murder of thousands is monstrous.
What is needed is a coherent philosophical
feminine worldview to directly or indirectly transform the attitudes of
societies dominated by the thinking of aggressive masculinity that is presently
causing so much harm to humanity. Philosophically trained women are needed to
offer astute criticisms of the destructive and hurtful idiocies of men such as
Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump and their alpha-male
supporters and shameless adoring female groupies.
The Need for a Multitude of Women Philosophers
Can Christine’s story save the day
by creating a multitude of young female philosophers? Could it have a
beneficial butterfly effect? As a pessimist, I doubt it, but I believe Christine’s
story had to be told. What I do know is that the situation has spun out of
control in the U.S. and that there is a lot of right-wing turbulence in Europe—masculine
aggression embodied in national ideologies. My story occurs during the 1980s so
doesn’t address what is occurring today. But it is critical of us-versus-them
religious and secular ideologies that encourage hatred and conflict. (Discussed
by Jason Stanley in How Fascism Works.)
The threat of aggressive
masculinity has always sought a home in ideologies because such ideologies have
always been created by men. Today, however, because of a few megalomaniacal men
the world is on the cusp of disaster. What journalist Susan B. Glasser calls “the big, fat, naked emperor in the room” and his
posse of wrathful, dull-minded men (and their alpha-male loving groupies) have
wrecked the U.S. that was once the world’s valiant knight known for its courage,
honor, justice, mercy, generosity, faith, and nobility and transformed the U.S.
into a nation used by a Judas to serve only himself. The maniacal Netanyahu believes his God
Yahweh condones the carnage he is committing: “However,
in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance,
do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them”
(Deuteronomy 20:16). A truly ugly masculine mindset. One must keep in mind that
Yahweh is the deification of aggressive masculinity. And interestingly his
first encounter with a human involves the bullying of a girl wanting to become educated.
And then there’s Putin, a demented narcissistic
man (they’re all narcissists) who keeps the Bible bedside and has destroyed the
nation of Ukraine with his drones, missiles, and army of human androids and who
has other European nations (where my grandkids live) in his crosshairs. The
president of China seeks to ravage Taiwan but hopefully will listen to the wise
words of Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without
fighting.” China should be Taiwan’s guardian, not its adversary. And all four
men control most of the 12,331 nuclear warheads that threaten global society.
That is hardly reassuring.
It seems that if disaster is to be
avoided, women—young ordinary, everyday girls, not only politicians—must become
philosophers and express themselves spunkily. The focus of my book is on the
younger generation. The older generation serves ossified values and belief
systems or simply serve themselves in Washington, D.C. If the American nation
is to be rebooted, it must be accomplished by young Americans. I am not
offering a new belief system or an ideology, just a composite worldview based
on art, philosophy, science, history and non-ideological religions (Zen,
Taoism, Buddhism, and the philosophies of the two wise men in the Bible Kohelet
and Jesus (not Christ). There are more admirable and wise women in the Bible
than there are admirable and wise men. These would include Ruth and Naomi,
Job’s wife (not Job), Mary mother of Jesus, and Mary of Bethany. Compare the
Book of Ruth with the Book of Joshua and you will see how the feminine
worldview differs from the masculine.
Profoundly revealing is the Canaanite
mother who begs Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter who suffers
terribly. She kneels before him, and cries, “Lord, help me!” Jesus responds with an
insult: “It is not right to take the
children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” The Canaanite mother
proves herself morally superior to the biblical Jesus who allowed religious
ideology to dictate his response to her (unlike in the parable of the Good
Samaritan). Her love is the unconditional love of a mother. He helps the woman
only after she grovels before him demonstrating her faith in his ability to save
her daughter, in other words, the ideology the Biblical Jesus represents. His
motivation is not to heal a suffering non-Jewish child. So then how can Jesus
be a wise man? Because that man wasn’t the historical Jesus, the existential
Jesus who preached the parable of the Good Samaritan. He is an invention, a
construct used by the writers of the New Testament who never knew Jesus but
used him as a figurehead of the hateful Christ-Cult religion invented by them
and Apostle Paul.
Their Christ ideology is filled
with masculine aggression and has little to do with the ethical altruism-based
religion of Jesus illustrated by his defense of an adulterous woman, his
healing of the sick, and his preference for peace, saying “all who live by the sword, shall die by the sword,”
which is ignored by Old Testament Christians such a MAGA Christians, in
particular J.D. Vance, a big admirer of the theologian Augustine of Hippo, who
said that God “actively punishes as a form of
showing love,” and “the slave
is a slave because God wishes him punished,” and “every
other form of learning had to be subordinated to the scriptures,”
and about God’s punishment he says, “he
persecutes new born children; he hands over babes to eternal flames because of
their bad wills,” and he accepted coerced conversion because “God himself had shown the way,” and
finally “Augustine’s rationale for persecution was to be used to justify
slaughter (as of the Cathars or the native people of America)”
(The Closing of the Western Mind, Charles Freeman 284-300).
The attitude of Old Testament Christians toward Native Americans is reflected in the words of William Bradford, one of the leading members of the congregation of pilgrims who came to North America aboard the Mayflower. Tim Flannery tells us in his The Eternal Frontier that "In 1634 a violent epidemic broke out among the Pequots living inland along the Connecticut River. 'It pleased God,' William Bradford wrote, 'to visit these Indians with a great sickness and such a mortality that a thousand, above nine and a half hundred of them died, and many of them did rot above the ground for want of burial'" (303). That attitude reflects the thinking of J.D. Vance's favorite theologian—Augustine of Hippo.
In other words, Apostle Paul, the writers of the Gospels, and Augustine transform
the ethical religion of Jesus into an aggressive us-versus-them masculine
ideology based on Old Testament theology with Paul’s addition of the
resurrection of the dead in refurbished spiritual bodies so they can live
forever in Heaven or Hell (the “carrot and stick” option to motivate conversion
to the Christian ideology).
One book publisher said it was
saving the world one book at a time. I’m afraid that a piecemeal collection of sentimental,
quirky, heartfelt stories won’t do the trick. My contribution provides a
rational framework for a culture, thus a society, based on a feminine
philosophy of life. This has been attempted before. One example is Marge Piercy’s
feminist science fiction cautionary tale Woman on the Edge of Time.
The story argues that humanity will end catastrophically unless it rejects
masculine aggression and embraces a worldview based feminine values and a
feminine understanding of what is the ideal life based not on a feminist
ideology or myth but on a feminine worldview. However, her story doesn’t
develop the feminine worldview with facts and ideas offered by art, philosophy,
science, history and religion. Piercy simply relies on feminine
commonsense—which men, the guys presently ruining the world—are immune to.
Paganism Said Yes to Female Philosophers/Christianity Said No
A chauvinist like most Greek men at
the time, Plato, nevertheless, believed that women are capable of becoming
philosophers and even philosopher “kings.” Why would chauvinistic Plato think
that? Because even as a chauvinist (not a misogynist), he ignored his feelings
(as he believed philosophers should) and followed reason. And reason told him
that women are as intellectually capable as men, and he accepted female
students. (And the Winter Olympic Games showed they are in most cases
physically equal to men, though the goal here is to encourage girls to become
Eves or Marie Curies rather than Schwarzeneggers.) Other Greek philosophers
such as Pythagoras and Epicurus shared Plato’s view of women’s intellectual
ability and accepted female students. In Plato’s words:
Women and men, then, have the
same nature in respect to the guardianship of the state, save that one is
[physically] weaker the other stronger…. For the production of a female
guardian [chief of state], then, our education will not be one thing for men and
another for women, especially since the [intellectual] nature which we hand
over to it is the same (Republic v).
How does this compare to
Augustine’s image of women? He says,
God,
then, made man in His own image. For He created for him a soul endowed with
reason and intelligence…. He made also a wife for him, to aid him in the work
of generating his kind, and her He formed from a bone taken out of the man’s
side.
In other words, Eve was not made in
God’s image but cloned from one of Adam’s ribs. Thus, she lacked “a soul
endowed with reason and intelligence,” which made her susceptible to being
deceived by the Serpent. Augustine says, “Adam
was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
Thus, unlike Plato, Vice President Vance’s champion of Christianity Augustine would
believe it unthinkable to allow a woman to be a guardian of a state. His view
is the basis for the religious and societal ideology of the Catholic Church:
men rule, women serve. This view is based on Genesis, which says, “But for Adam no suitable helper was found [from the
animal kingdom].” So, Eve was created to be his helper and baby
generator. This view of women as one-dimensional creatures one step above
animal companions is the view of Old Testament Christianity.
Unlike Old
Testament Christians such as Augustine, Jesus believed women were smart enough
to be his disciples:
After this, Jesus traveled about
from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom
of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of
evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had
come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna;
and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their
own means.
These women participated in the work of Jesus and were more loyal to him than his male disciples: Judas betrayed him (Luke 22: 4-6), Peter denied him (Luke 22:58), and the entire group abandoned him (Mark 14:50). So why were women excluded by the Catholic Church? Because the Catholic Church was the creation of Old Testament Christianity that reflects the thinking of Augustine who, along with his intellectual mentor Apostle Paul, created the Old Testament Christianity that became the ideological framework of the Catholic Church.
Essentially, it became a religion
that rejected the ethics-based religion created by Jesus that was
compassionate, merciful, and benevolent, all illustrated by how he lived his
life—helping and healing people in need. In that sense, there is a feminine
(compassionate, nurturing, caregiving) quality to his philosophy of life,
perhaps inherited from his glorious mother Mary and even his protective father
Joseph—certainly not the God who abandoned him when he was dying on the cross,
whereas “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the
wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25).
All three of the Abrahamic religion
are masculine creations and are characterized by masculine aggression. Unlike
what Plato had in mind for women, the role of women in these religions is passive.
Apostle Paul, founder of Christianity explains the Christian role of women,
which is essentially passivity and silence:
“As
in all the congregations of the Lord’s people. Women should remain silent in
the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the
law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own
husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church” (1 Corinthians 14:33–35). When it comes to women,
Paul sums up the view of women in masculine Christianity. This view toward
women is expressed in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, where God denies
the first woman, Eve, the pursuit of knowledge. Paul echoes that view by saying
that if women want to inquire about something, they should ask their husbands
at home.
Hypatia
What happened to mathematician,
astronomer, and philosopher Hypatia illustrates the effect that
masculine-centered Old Testament Christianity has had on the lives of real
women. A fanatical Christian mob led by a church reader named Peter dragged
Hypatia from her chariot. They stripped her and scraped her skin with sharp
shells until she died. They then dismembered her body and burned it to ashes.
That will teach women not to pursue knowledge as Plato and other pagan
philosophers such as Pythagoras and Epicurus thought they should. Was this
prevention of women from pursuing knowledge influenced by the story of Eve in
Genesis and the teachings of Apostle Paul? Of course it was. Women in the Christian
world would have to wait about eighteen centuries until the state separated
itself from the Church and allowed women access to higher education (rather
than just home economics).
Ideologies: Wreckers of Worlds
Yes, each culture and its society
is a lifeworld—in both senses of Husserl’s Lebenswelt and Wittgenstein’s
lebensform since such worlds are created from language—discussed in the
story). Somewhere in sands of the desert (Yeats) the first ideology was created—like
Victor Frankenstein’s monster—and with it the first terrible totalitarianism was
released upon the world. And since then, the consequences of ideologies of
masculine aggression have been cultural destruction, oppression, and death.
Important here is that ideologies
matter and usually in negative ways as both Jesus and Hypatia found out. Ideologies
have destroyed cultures and societies that grew organically and replace them
with artificial totalitarian monstrosities. This first occurred in Canaan, as
described in the Old Testament, and then spread throughout the globe beginning
with the cultural destruction of our Greco-Roman heritage as describe by
Charles Freeman in The Closing of the Western Mind, and by Ramsay
MacMullen in Christianizing the Roman Empire, and most famously by Catherine
Nixey in The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World,
the world that was the birthplace of western civilization. Western Civilization
was infected by an alien masculine ideology that grew out of resentment
(explained by Nietzsche) and eventually was destroyed by it. And masculine
ideologies would continue to destroy cultures and societies around the world by
first destroying the minds of their citizens (usually by forced conversion). In
a grotesque way, ideologies acquire greater power from what they destroy. With the conquest of the Roman Empire the Catholic Church became an all-powerful totalitarian institution that initiated the violently oppressive Dark
Ages.
The Glorious
Feminine Presence of Classical Culture
This minority view of women by
great philosophers might have caught on had it not been interrupted. The life
and death of Hypatia illustrates what happened. And what Catherine Nixey describes
is the destruction of the feminine in classical civilization—in part by
defacing or destroy statues of female goddesses. In ancient Greece there were 67
female goddesses and female priestesses. Pythia was the high priestess of the
Temple of Apollo at Delphi. She served as its oracle and was known as the
Oracle of Delphi. Thus, the ancient pagan Greeks—like many other pagan
cultures—venerated femininity. Why? Because as the yin-yang symbol expresses,
reality has two sides—feminine and masculine—both of equal importance. The
importance of the feminine-masculine yin-yang balance is illustrated in the
novel. In the ancient classical world the protectors of nature were goddesses,
unlike the masculine Yahweh who once destroys nature and uses nature’s plagues and fire and
brimstone to destroy societies and kill humans (along with all the animals
caught in the murder spree as when Yahweh uses plagues against Egypt in the
book of Exodus).
Books and Ideas Matter
The story reveals to the reader why
ideas and books matter. They are sources of revelations and a bulwark against
aggressive ideologies. My journey as a gypsy scholar—which lasted almost a
decade—was motivated by the desire to read books and acquire ideas that would
be left unread and unknown if I didn’t attend colleges. The journey began in
California and took me to towns in New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado surrounded
by the great outdoors. The places—wild lands and farm lands—mattered as much as
did the books. As a high school teacher of literature, I learned that most
students find reading to be a chore rather than a pleasure. I understand. I was
once a teenager whose interests were girls, cars, and sports, not books. Also,
I found that when teaching poems, plays, and novels, students took a greater
interest if I could reveal ideas (philosophical, psychological, feminist,
sociological, etc.) that they considered relevant to their lives.
The advantage
of my book over Will Durant’s very readable The
Story of Philosophy is that my book is a story, not a textbook. The ideas
and books are interwoven with a meaningful narrative. Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World was perhaps first to
offer a narrative introduction to philosophy, but his story seems geared to a
younger audience and is more playful. There is no rape, abortion, attempted
suicide, cancer, or death. The Girl and the Philosopher is a drama about a young woman just out of
college who leaves home because of her mother’s malicious revelation that
unknowingly Christine had fallen romantically in love with her half-sister. The
result was Christine’s life fell apart. In addition, her life and the lives of
the other characters reveal the relevance to everyday life of the ideas and
books discussed.
The Felt Meaning of Ideas
Ideas matter beyond their rational
content. A goal of The Girl and the
Philosopher is to explore
their felt meaning along with their rational meaning. Ideas can be sublimely
meaningful but also terrifying. They can cause happiness, anxiety, and dread.
Works of art—literature, painting, sculpture, and film—do a wonderful job of
expressing those aspects of ideas. One only has to compare the art of Pierre-Auguste
Renoir with that of Edvard Munch. Both artists describe the yin-yang sides of
reality. But for most audiences, readers, and spectators ideas must be
philosophically revealed to bring to light the deeper meaning of the work of
art. The reality expressed by the second law of thermodynamics (discussed in
the story) is rationally true but emotionally disturbing. On the other hand, Alfred
North Whitehead tells us that our senses give the rose its scent, the bird its
song, and the sun its radiance, all the qualities that we so admire. That makes
us and our relationship to the world really amazing (this too discussed in the
story). Christine has always found the world mysterious and amazing, which is
the reason she became an artist. Yet, until she met the philosopher, she didn’t
understand rationally why she felt that way.
Ethics and Marginalized Populations
Ethics are an important theme in
the story. Christine was raped and sent to the mountain hideaway to live with
her half-sister Ruth and her father, an artist who had brief affair with
Christine’s mother. Only the mother knew that Ruth’s father was also
Christine’s father. During the years of exploring the wilds of nature together,
Ruth and Christine became playful lovers. Resenting the joy Christine expressed
at the prospect of escaping to that mountain hideaway to be with her
half-sister, Christine’s mother maliciously revealed to Christine that Ruth’s
father was also her father and Ruth was her half-sister. Devastated by that
revelation, Christine fled to San Diego, where after a time she falls in love
with a nurse named Candice.
Feeling guilty about her
relationships with these two women, she goes to the fisherman philosopher, Mr.
Rieneau, to confess that she is feeling guilty about her relationship with
Candice and wants to know whether or not the relationship is immoral. Old
Testament ethics would have male homosexuals put to death (Leviticus 20:13), so
one can assume the same rule applies to women given what the Old Testament says
about adultery: “If a man commits adultery
with another man's wife, even with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer
and adulteress must be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). Mr.
Rieneau introduces Christine to Immanuel Kant’s principle of autonomy, the
foundational principle of rational morality. It is a simple yet profoundly
important principle. Combined with Jesus’ altruism and Buddha’s desire to
minimize suffering, it offers a recipe for a moral utopia. It says that people’s
autonomy is to be respected and that violating a person’s autonomy is immoral
or unethical. Most crimes (robbery, assault, rape, etc.) violate the autonomy
of their victims. Key here is that ethics prohibit one person from violating
another person’s autonomy against the will of that person. The benefit of the
principle is twofold: it prevents suffering and harm and maintains social
harmony by minimizing conflict. The
principle of autonomy is not violated by two people who voluntarily enter into
a relationship. Mr. Rieneau adds that relationships motivated by mutual love
should be encouraged rather than prohibited.
In addition, prohibiting sexual
orientation or sexual identity also violates a person’s autonomy. Kant believed that
because humans are rational they, unlike animals, have the ability to decide
how to live thus they—not others—should be allowed to decide their way of life
and to decide how to live their lives. And because they naturally have rational
ability, to deny its expression is to violate who they are as rational beings. In
other words, people’s lives shouldn’t be interfered with as long as they don’t
interfere with other people’s lives. Would Kant have agreed to same-sex
marriage? Living in the 18th century, probably not. Nevertheless, the
logic of his principle of autonomy says that preventing two women or two men
from marrying would not only violate their autonomy and by doing so would also
cause them suffering. Thus, to do so would violate two moral principles. This
is where Mr. Rieneau brings in Buddha’s ethical view that humans should
minimize causing suffering (even for non-human creatures).
In this context, he also refers to
Plato’s view that humans have the ability to realize themselves physically,
emotionally, and intellectually (Plato’s tripart soul). And Mr. Rieneau refers
to Sartre’s existentialism to explain that humans are unique in that again
unlike animals they come into the world as pure potentiality and must decide
how they will realize their potential. (As noted in the story, slaves are
prevented from self-realization, i.e., realizing their potential, thus are
haunted by the nothingness of not being the person they want to be.) And as
Plato illustrates, the possibilities for self-realization are infinite because
the intellect, body, and emotions can be realized in unlimited ways and even
interwoven. (Discussed in the story.) In the Old Testament God tells Eve that
she cannot acquire knowledge. Thus, the masculine God interferes with her intellectual
self-realization and by doing so violates not only her autonomy but her
humanity. Fortunately, Satan comes along and tells her to ignore the divine masculine
bully and go for the brain boost.
What is amazing about ethics is
that their application and efficacy are very simple if only respected.
Situations are complicated by men who demand to decide how other people should
live, such as the writers of the Old Testament who claimed homosexuals should
be executed and women should not engage in acquiring knowledge, men such as
Apostle Paul who says, “Women should
remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in
submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they
should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to
speak in the church” (1
Corinthians 14:34-35). This is a society based a masculine ideology that
excludes the wisdom of feminine voices, something history has proven to be drastically
needed to counter the cruel, oppressive, and hateful tendencies of masculine
aggression.
And then there is Paul’s support of
slavery: “Slaves,
obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is
on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for
the Lord” (Colossians 3:22).
(Discussed in the story.) Clearly, slavery is a violation of Kant’s principle
of autonomy that imposes restraints on masculine aggression, but men who place an
ideology that represents and benefits them above the welfare of humans don’t
care. And let’s be clear that in the book of Genesis the masculine God seeks to
make a slave of the feminine by keeping women in a state of obedient ignorance.
About the opinions of the Bible, the
old philosopher says they can be ignored for three reasons. First, there is no
logical or empirical evidence that their claims about God and other
supernatural elements are true. In other words, there is no evidence that God
exists, and the Bible is full of claims for which there is no extra-biblical evidence.
For example, meticulous Egyptian historians make no mention of the biblical
exodus. The Bible is mostly a self-serving speculation composed by men who knew
nothing of art, philosophy, science, or history—and rejected other religions
morally superior to Judaism (not all religious myths are hateful), though their
supernatural claims are also false. Second, even if God existed, there is no
reason to believe the writers of the Bible knew anything about God’s plan for
humanity or even if such a plan existed. It’s been over 3000 years since God
spoke to a human being, supposedly Moses. It’s been 2000 years since Christ-God
promised to return to the generation of his day. Third, the most immoral
character in the Bible is God. He flooded the world killing all life but a
boatload, destroyed cities, hated everyone but his followers and often hated
them as well, and encouraged wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide—which his
people continue today. Therefore, he must be disqualified as a moral authority.
Reevaluation of
Beliefs and Values
It’s time for a reset of beliefs
and values in the U.S., presently under the rule of Donald Trump—king of toxic
masculinity—and his MAGA court of self-serving fools. Reset means to adjust again after an initial failure. Since my
birth during World War II, America has spent more time fighting wars than
living in peace. I lived during Civil Rights Movement and the hippy celebration
of life. I was optimistic then. No longer. Today, America has started one war
and threatens more, the government is a racist autocracy, in the world’s
wealthiest nation the poor, sick, desperate, and abandoned are denied relief,
and hatred divides the nation. (I want to believe good people are still in the
majority, but I’m not sure.) The American experiment has failed. Its democracy
has been compromised by aggressive masculinity. Perhaps not surprising given
the nation began with slavery, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, unbridled greed,
destructive exploitation of nature, and vicious racism. The invaders were Old
Testament Christians like the MAGA cult who ignored Jesus’s rejection of Old
Testament theology and his desire to create a humane society based on altruistic
ethics. Like today, the settlers had wise men and women, but they were ignored.
Today though, many simply remain silent.
This reevaluation offered in The Girl and the Philosopher is not
based on my opinions but on the thinking of artists, philosophers, scientists,
historians and religious philosophers such as Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), Jesus,
Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Bodhidharma (founder of Zen Buddhism). In a sense, the
book does what philosopher Edmund Husserl suggests doing: suspending
(bracketing) judgments and beliefs in order to rebuild a new worldview based on
facts that are logically and empirically verifiable. Not all unverifiable ideas
should be rejected, such aesthetics, ethical, and other value judgments if they
are unharmful, meaningful, and beneficial. The Good Samaritan altruistic
principle is logically unproveable yet is a beneficial ethical ideal. Nevertheless,
their epistemological (truth value) status must be judged and evaluated.
(Discussed in the story.) For example, condemnation and hatred of a people
because of their color, race, or ethnicity is based on emotion and false value
judgments. The only difference between black cats and white cats is color. The character
of people is determined not by color but by culture. Russians, Israelis, and
Americans can be condemned and hated for starting wars and committing acts of
mass murder, but such condemnation and hatred are based on actions, not race or
ethnicity. Following Buddha and Lao Tzu, beliefs that cause suffering and
disharmony should be rejected as toxic, that is, unnecessarily causing
suffering and disorder.
Below are topics discussed in the
story and some of the books used to develop topics related to art, philosophy,
science, history and religion. Many are mentioned in novel. The Girl and the
Philosopher interweaves
life, books, and ideas:
Topics and Books
A History of Greek
Religion—Martin Nilsson
Jesus, Interrupted—Bart
Ehrman
Jesus before the
Gospels—Ehrman
Who Wrote the Bible?
—Richard Friedman
The Jesus Myth—G.A.
Wells
The Historical Figure
of Jesus—E.P. Sanders
The Rise of
Christianity—W.H.C. Frend
The Making of the
Messiah—Robert Sheaffer
Jesus: A Life—A.N.
Wilson
Paul and Jesus—James
Tabor
Natural Theology—William
Paley
The Darkening Age: The
Christian Destruction of the Classical World—Catherine Nixey
Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age— Antonia
Tripolitis
The Harvest of
Hellenism—F.E. Peters
Gibbon on Christianity—Edward
Gibbon
The Incoherence of the
Philosophers—al-Ghazali:
Books referred to in the discussions of Eastern philosophy
Zen Buddhism—D.T. Suzuki
Basho and His
Interpreters—Makoto Ueda
Oriental Philosophies—John
Koller
Tao Te Ching—Lao
Tzu
The Narrow Road to the
Deep North and Other Travel Sketches—Matsuo Basho
Christmas Humphreys Zen Buddhism
Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen: An Introduction to their
Meaning and their Arts—Nancy Wilson Ross
Books referred to in the discussions of Islam
The Quran—Muhammad
Muhammad: Prophet and
Statesman—Montgomery Watt
Islam—Alfred
Guillaume
Muhammad and the
Origins of Islam—F.E. Peters
Books referred to in the discussions of science
The Universe: A
Biography—John Gribbin
Almost Everyone’s
Guide to Science—John Gribbin
Atom in the History of
human Thought—Bernard Pullman
The Ascent of Science—Brian
Silver
Seven Brief Lessons on
Physics—Carlo Rovelli.
A brief History of
Time—Stephen Hawking
The Universe in a
Nutshell– Stephen Hawking
Early Greek Science:
Thales to Aristotle – G. E. R. Lloyd
A Universe from Nothing—Lawrence Krauss
Epic of Evolution:
Seven Ages of the Cosmos—Eric Chaisson
The Cosmic Landscape—Leonard
Susskind
The Essence of Chaos—Edward
Lorenz
In the Wake of Chaos—Stephen
Kellert
Chaos: The Amazing
Science of the Unpredictable—James Gleick
Chaos: Making a New
Science – James Gleick
Topics, Quotations, and Books Addressed in The Girl and
the Philosopher:
Philosophy & Science
Ethics
Logic
Induction
Deduction
Philosophy of Language
Ontology, Cosmology, and Metaphysics
Epistemology
Philosophy of Language
Aesthetics
Pierre-Simon Laplace: nebular hypothesis of the formation of
the Solar System
Evolution of the Universe
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Feminism
Chaos Theory
Nihilism
Philosophers
Thales
Democritus
Thrasymachus
Anaximander
Anaximenes
Heraclitus
Empedocles
Anaxagoras
Philip Wheelwright: The
Presocratics
Philo of Alexandria
Plato
Aristotle
Stoics
Epicurus
Ockham
Blaise Pascal: Pensées
Immanuel Kant: Critique
of Aesthetic Judgment (the sublime)
Edmund Burke: Sublime
and Beautiful
Thomas Hobbes
Francis Bacon
John Locke: tabula
rasa
David Hume
Machiavelli
René Descartes: Méditations
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
A. J. Ayer’s Language,
Truth and Logic
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Emerson
Thoreau
John Stuart Mill: The Subjection of Women
Epicureanism
Transcendentalism
Romanticism
Existentialism
Nihilism
Phenomenology
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Edmund Husserl
Martin Heidegger
Arthur Schopenhauer
Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism is a Humanism and What Is Literature?
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals, The Antichrist, and Thus
Spoke Zarathustra
G.W. Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Philosophy of History, Early
Theological Writings
Henri Bergson
Alfred North Whitehead
D.T. Suzuki
Abraham
Kaplan: The New World of Philosophy
Carolyn
Merchant: The
Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution
Psychology
Sigmund Freud
Id, Ego, Superego, sublimation, displacement, defense
mechanism
Carl Jung: anima and animus
William James: tender-minded versus tough-minded.
Cognitive Psychology
Erich Fromm: Having & Being Modes of Existence
Escape from Freedom
Authoritarian Personality
Karen Horney: Real self and ideal self
David Riesman: The
lonely crowd
Harry Harlow: Consequences of maternal separation and
isolation
Victor Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning
Ernest Becker: The
Denial of Death
Socially constructed reality (John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality, 1995.)
Religion
Old Testament
New Testament
Judaism
Book of Ruth
Ecclesiastes
Christianity
Islam
Zoroastrianism
Manicheanism
Gnosticism
Buddhism
Zen Buddhism
Taoism
Transcendentalism
Jesus, teacher spiritual ethics (contra supernatural Christ)
Apostle Paul
Augustine of Hippo
Puritan John Cotton
Reinhold Niebuhr: Serenity Prayer
Buddha
Lao Tzu
Freud: Moses and
Monotheism
Rudolph Otto: mysterium
tremendum
Gilbert Murray: Five
Stages of Greek Religion
James Frazer:
Paul Tillich
Rudolf Bultmann
Karl Barth
Karl Jaspers
Gabriel Marcel
Friedrich Schleiermacher: Philosophy of Religion
Science Books
Victor Weisskopf:
Knowledge and Wonder by
Thomas S. Kuhn: The Copernican
Revolution, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
E.A. Burtt: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science
Bertrand Russell: The Scientific
Outlook
Stephen Toulmin: Early
Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle
Stephen Mason: A
History of the Sciences
Fiction
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle
Tom’s Cabin
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Charles Perrault: Little
Red Riding Hood
Emily Brontë: Wuthering
Heights
Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park
Charles Dickens: Hard
Times
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle
E.M. Forster: A
Passage to India
William Golding: Lord
of the Flies
Aldous Huxley: Brave
New World
Elizabeth Gaskell: Mary
Barton
Thomas Hardy: Tess of
the D’Urbervilles.
H.G. Wells: The Time
Machine
James Hilton: Lost
Horizon
James Joyce: A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Stephen Crane: The
Open Boat
Jack London: To Build
a Fire
James Fenimore Cooper: The
Pioneers
A.B. Guthrie’s The Big
Sky
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The
Scarlet Letter, The Maypole at Merry
Mount
Kate Chopin: The
Awakening
Willa Cather: O
Pioneers! & The Professor's House
Virginia Woolf: Mrs
Dalloway
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
Emile Zola: La Bête Humaine
Nathalie
Sarraute: Tropismes
Theodore Dreiser:
Sister Carrie
Robert Penn Warren: All
the King’s Men
Frank Norris: The
Octopus
Ernest Hemingway: The
Sun Also Rises, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”
George Orwell: Nineteen
Eighty-Four
Ken Kesey: One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Edward Abbey: The
Brave Cowboy
Somerset Maugham: Of Human
Bondage.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev: Smoke, Fathers and Sons
Leo Tolstoy: Anna
Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime
and Punishment
Franz
Kafka: The Trial and The Castle
André Malraux: La Condition Humaine, Les Voix du
Silence
Hermann
Hesse: Siddhartha
Thomas
Mann: The Magic Mountain
John
Fowles: The Collector
Mark Twain: Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, Noble Red Man,
Mysterious Stranger
Voltaire: Candide
Albert Camus: The
Plague
Playrights
Sophocles: King
Oedipus
Euripides: The Trojan
Women, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Bacchae
Shakespeare: Othello,
Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice,
The Tempest
Christopher
Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
Nonfiction
Ramsay MacMullen’s Christianizing
the Roman Empire
Ernest Renan: The Life
of Jesus
Charles Freeman: Closing
of the Western Mind,
A New History of
Early Christianity
Theodora Kroeber: Yahi
Indian titled Ishi, Last of His Tribe
Will Durant: Story of
Civilization
Martin
Hengel: Jews, Greeks and Barbarians
C.M. Bowra: The Greek
Experience, Primitive Song
Edith Hamilton: The
Greek Way
Werner Jaeger: Paideia:
The Ideals of Greek Culture
Mr. & Mrs. Frankfort: Before Philosophy
Lev Vygotsky: Thought
and Language
Benjamin Whorf: Language, Thought, and Reality
Mary Austin: The Land
of Little Rain
Frederick Douglass: “Self-Made Men”
Susan Fenimore Cooper: Rural
Hours
Michael Novak:
The Experience of Nothingness
Joseph Wood Krutch: The Modern Temper
Richard
Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in
American Life
Jack Kerouac: Lonesome
Traveler, Vanity o Duluoz
Oswald Spengler: The
Decline of the West
Richard Drinnon: Facing
West:
The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building
Langdon Winner: Autonomous Technology
Ted Trainer:
Abandon Affluence!
Vernon Parrington:
Main Currents in American Thought
John Muir: My First
Summer in the Sierra
Lloyd Goodrich: Winslow
Homer
Native Americans
Howard Russell: Indian
New England before the Mayflower
Vernon Kinietz: The
Indians of the Western Great Lakes 1615-1760
Gene Weltfish (woman author): The Lost Universe. Pawnee Life and Culture
Ella Cara Deloria: Waterlily
Frank Waters: The Man Who Killed the Deer
Oliver La Farge: Laughing
Boy
Ruth Underhill: Red
Man’s America
Poetry
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Beowulf
Homer: Iliad and Odyssey
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
Virgil: Eclogues
and Georgics
Matsuo Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North
William Blake, various
William Wordsworth: “The Solitary Reaper,” “The Old
Cumberland Beggar”
Percy Shelley
John Keats: La Belle
Dame san Merci
Lord Byron: “The Dying Gladiator”
Robert Burns: “To a mouse”
Goethe:
Faust
Friedrich Schiller: The
Gods of Greece (stanza)
Thomas Hardy: “The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknown God.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Æolian Harp,” “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner”
Alfred Tennyson: In
Memoriam
Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach,” “Stanzas from the Grande
Chartreuse,”
“The Buried Life”
Alexander Pope’s poem Essay
on Man
William Butler Yeats: “The Second Coming”
William Cullen Bryant: “Forest Hymn,” “Prairies”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Emily Dickinson: “A bird came down the walk”
Walt Whitman: Leaves
of Grass
Painters
Hudson River
School
Paul Gauguin
Édouard Manet
Claude Monet
Paul Cézanne
Berthe Morisot
Puvis de
Chavannes
Jules Eugène
Lenepveu
Leonardo da Vinci
Raphael
Botticelli
Michelangelo
Nicolas Poussin
Caravaggio
Caspar David Friedrich
Edvard Munch
Francis Bacon
Caspar Friedrich
Salvador Dali
Alberto Giacometti
George Catlin
John Mix Stanley
Seth Eastman
Thomas Cole
George Caleb Bingham
John Singer Sargent
Frank Benson
Mary Stevenson Cassatt
Elizabeth Nourse
Albert Bierstadt
Frederic Remington
Georgia O’Keeffe
Winslow Homer
Edward Hopper
Stephen Lowry
Renoir
Cezanne
Claude Monet
Van Gogh
Picasso
Photographers
Edward Curtis
Andreas Feininger
Movies
Our Town
Lost Horizon
My Darling Clementine
Shane
On the Waterfront
War of the Worlds (1953)
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest
Koyaanisqatsi
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Friedrich Murnau:
Faust
Declaration of
Independence from Toxic Masculinity
Toxic masculinity expressed in the
Old Testament: “In the cities of the nations
the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
Completely destroy them. Put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women,
the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these
as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives
you from your enemies.” (Deuteronomy) And who are their enemies?
People who believe differently and are therefore hated by the biblical God who
is a projection of his creators.
Because the world has been a
horrific place under the influence of masculine aggression and its ideologies
that threaten doom in the near future, perhaps it’s time to allow greater
influence from the feminine worldview. For this to be accomplish as many women
as possible must become philosophers with their own philosophical worldview.
And they will need masculine allies like the historical Jesus who was wise and
brave and willing to die to promote his life-respecting way of life. Evil men
driven by their ideology of repressive intolerance killed him. Ignoring the
wisdom of his wife, Pontius Pilate kowtow to the mob representing masculine aggression
and its first ideology. Now is time to listen to the wisdom of the feminine
worldview.
The Purpose of Philosophy
There is no single purpose, but its overall purpose is to keep us intellectually honest. Philosophy has many uses—two of which are the evaluation of truth claim (epistemology) and the determination of the moral status of actions (morality). Philosophy is the only discipline capable of dealing with moral issues. Allowing religion to do so has been disastrous for humanity. And by the way, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and Taoism are useful to moral investigations and judgments, but only as philosophies. Because of unleased toxic masculinity, today intellectual mayhem rules in the U.S. White House and in the Republican Congress and Senate. The voices of intelligent women trained in philosophy are needed now more than ever to stem the deluge of toxic masculinity—not only in the U.S. but in other nations as well. We need the voices of young women, including those in high school and college. It is time for women to accept the mantle of responsibility as Lysistrata does when toxic men bring destruction down upon not only themselves but upon women and children and their society.
In The Girl and the Philosopher are good men, bad men, and one evil man. The
ideal men who serve as allies to Christine are her two fathers, her brother, a
young man who befriends her when she needed a friend most, the old bibliophile
Mr. Sage who befriends her and guides her budding interest in books, and the
old fisherman philosopher who cherish her company and curiosity.
I am an American expatriate who has lived for 12 years with my wife
Brigitte on the side of a mountain in French Alps.
Print length: 1012 pages
Item weight: 1.72 kg
