The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson

Thanks to Emma of Book Around The Corner and Guy of His Futile Preoccupations. This was one of their Bah  - Humbook recommendations for me.

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson is a novel that was first published in 1759. This is a philosophical but also dynamic and fun book.

Rasselas is the young prince of an Abyssinian Kingdom. He and other royal youths are by tradition sequestered in a paradisiacal valley where they wait to be called into monarchal positions.

Rasselas finds himself extremely unhappy in the placid and pleasant but unchallenging universe of the “happy valley”. After several failed attempts he, along with his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah, and the philosophical minded poet Imlac, manages to escape the confines of the valley.

The remainder of the narrative concerns itself with the question of the elusiveness of human happiness. Faced with dissatisfaction in the Eden-like valley, the group ponders if any situation, lifestyle or philosophy can lead to true contentment. From the beginning, Imlac contends that genuine bliss is impossible. Rasselas initially seems more open-minded and leads his friends on a quest to determine the answer.

As the four travel the region, they sample a variety of lifestyles and encounter a host of characters, each of who advocates various belief systems. Paths of sensualism, gaiety, piousness, mercantilism, political advancement, asceticism, stoicism, scientific curiosity and exploration, marriage, bachelorhood and more are explored. 

All these life courses are found to be lacking in long term fulfillment and do not lead to happiness. Sometimes contentment is possible for short stretches of time, but it ultimately fades into dissatisfaction, frustration or disillusionment.

A surprising turn of events occurs when our protagonists visit a supposedly wise and spiritually fulfilled hermit. They are shocked when they discover that he is miserable,

“I have been for some time   unsettled and distracted: my mind is disturbed with a thousand perplexities of doubt and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, because I have no opportunities of relaxation or diversion.  I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion into solitude.  My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament that I have lost so much, and have gained so little.  In solitude, if I escape the example of bad men, I want likewise the counsel and conversation of the good.  I have been long comparing the evils with the advantages of society, and resolve to return into the world to-morrow.  The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.”  

For all the novel’s negativity, I do not believe that the ultimate message here is despair or nihilism. At times, an underlying current manifests itself in the text.  Though infrequent, there are passages that point to the idea that while life is often difficult and true long term happiness may be impossible to find in this world, one must strive to behave virtuously and morally. 

At one point Nekayah comments, 

“Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness this world will never afford an opportunity of deciding.  But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue.  All natural and almost all political evils are incident alike to the bad and good; they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together in a tempest and are driven together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that patience must oppose pain.” 

Ethical behavior may not pay off in this life, but there is a promise of immortality and reward in an afterlife. 

After visiting catacombs filled the mummified remains of the dead, Imlac through a chain of reasoning, “proves” that the soul is immortal.

Later Nekayah concludes,

“To me the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.”  

Hence, I believe this to be a work that at its heart champions a moral existence.

In my opinion, Johnson’s message, at least in regards to human satisfaction, is too simplistic. It is true that many people do find it impossible to find fulfillment, even when living in a materially secure state. However, this is not the case with everyone. There is an entire spectrum of happiness as well as unhappiness that is manifested in a wide variety of belief systems and lifestyles. I do believe, however, that the author does tap into the deep frustration and, at times, despair of a large percentage of humanity who cannot find peace, even when they live in somewhat benign environments.

In addition to the philosophical and ethical musings, Johnson’s work is entertaining. The adventures of the group are often interesting and sometimes very funny.  The four main characters are intelligent and lively, and each expresses their own well thought out philosophies and conclusions throughout the text.

This is highly recommended for anyone who likes a thoughtful exploration of human emotions. The philosophical musings are presented in a relative straightforward way and can be understood by almost anyone. For all the time spent concerning unhappy people and situations, this book is not a downer but actually an amusing and thought provoking read.

Blog of The Year

Thanks so much to Caroline at Beauty is a Sleeping Cat for selecting Babbling Books for the prestigious Blog of the Year 2012 award! I am honored beyond belief.  As I posted for The Beautiful Blogger Award, winners should under no circumstances feel obligated to post or pass along. Only do so if you really want to.

The rules of this award are as follows.

1.   Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award.

2.   Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.

3.   Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award at The Thought Palette and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)

4.   Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them.

5.   You can now also join the Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience.

6.   As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

My choice of winners are as follows:

Books For Me - Vibina reviews both classics and popular fiction. Her blog is engaging and especially fun to read!

Gently Mad – Sharon covers an eclectic mix of books including history and fiction. Her perspective is both intelligent and original.

A Night's Dream of Books – Maria’s blog is not just one of the most aesthetically beautiful places in the blogosphere, but she provides thought provoking commentary on science Fiction, drama, philosophy, theology and more!

Reading, Writing, Working, Playing – Jane covers history, literature, walking and more. This is a blog takes a fascinating but different approach to book blogging.

St. Orberose – Miguel was the dark horse winner of last year’s Liebstar Award. He provides brilliant commentary on both Portuguese as well as literature from around the world.

Therapy Through Tolstoy – Lucy’s blog is a terrific mix of intellectual literary commentary as well as insightful musings on life in general.

These blogs are all super. Please check them out. If there is anyone remaining out there who is not familiar with Caroline’s blog it is also a must read.

Congratulations to all the winners!

More awards to follow in the coming weeks.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis is an exploration of Thomas Jefferson’s life, career and ideas that, while it strives for balance, is highly critical of the American icon. One of the main points of this work is that this founding father was man of both enormous complexity as well as contradictions.

Born in 1743, Jefferson was member of Virginia’s elite planter class. He was a wealthy man whose livelihood was deeply connected to the ownership of slaves. An early critic of British control over the colonies, Jefferson distinguished himself as a brilliant writer and rhetorician. 

While serving in the Second Continental Congress, Jefferson penned his most famous prose as the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Later, he served as governor of Virginia, Minister to France and America’s First Secretary of State, as well its second Vice President.

Chosen as America’s third President in 1800, Jefferson endeavored to shrink the size of the American government during his terms in office, waged war upon the Barbary States, and attempted to keep the United States neutral in the conflict between Britain and France. His most notable achievement was in securing the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States. 

After retirement from the Presidency, Jefferson began an amazing political-philosophical correspondence with John Adams. The two were lifelong friends who had been estranged for several years due to political battles. Their association rekindled as the pair aged. The two carried on the exchange of letters until their respective deaths. The documentation created by this line of communication has been studied by historians and students of government ever since. Ironically, the two died on the same day, July 4^th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

It is difficult for me to comment upon this book in a vacuum. America’s Revolutionary generation has been a lifetime interest of mine. I have read somewhat extensively on Jefferson and his peers. Thus, I come into this work with a fair amount of knowledge as well as a lot of opinions.

Ellis effectively weaves the events of Jefferson’s life with an insightful analysis of the man’s character, psychology and philosophy. In terms of his virtues and sins, as well as his actions and ideas, Jefferson was a man of paradoxes and riddles, hence the “Sphinx” of the title. For instance, while Jefferson’s rhetoric about individual freedom often soared, he had one of the worst records in regards to slave ownership when compared to the other founders.

Based upon this book as well as many additional sources and readings that I have encountered over the years, I am struck by how monumental Jefferson’s achievements and thoughts were in contrast to his extraordinary flaws and just plain bad ideas that he espoused. An important point concerning these character weaknesses is that they are not only highlighted by contemporary critics looking back and judging Jefferson by modern standards, rather, they were initially recognized by his peers. 

Are some people more complex than others? Ellis makes a convincing case that Jefferson’s acts and beliefs were so multifarious that this founder presents an historical enigma that transcends other famous personages. Thus, when it comes to this book, as well as Jefferson himself, there are too many aspects to Jefferson’s achievements, character and philosophy for me to adequately summarize within a single blog post. I would need to write a series of entries in order to do so.

I will therefore focus upon only one of many striking aspects of the Jeffersonian persona that are illustrated in this book. While America’s third President was a titanic political philosopher and thinker, he was also a radical, both by the standards of our time as well as those of his own. In my opinion this sets Jefferson apart from America’s other major founders, who I would describe as being moderate or even conservative in terms of the change that they were attempting to propel. In consequence, today’s extreme partisans on both America’s political right and left wings have embraced many of Jefferson’s ideals.

In what way was he so radical? Unlike George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, etc., Jefferson had no distrust of the mass of common people and had no use for a balanced government. Significantly, he was not even in the United States when the Constitution was drafted (he was Minister to France at the time) and played almost no role in its construction. On multiple occasions, Jefferson espoused his belief in a government comprised of a single one-house legislature elected directly by the people. He believed in a weak Presidency and no Federal Court system. He argued that such institutions could only thwart the people’s will. His belief in the infallibility of the common people (who Jefferson only counted as white men, but, notably for the time, all white men, not just landowners) led him to oppose any “checks or balances” in the power of the people’s legislature. 

Jefferson was not an unabashed advocate of the American Constitution and believed that it was an actual impediment to true republicanism. Ellis writes,

“Jefferson tended to view it as a merely convenient agreement about political institutions that ought not to bind future generations or prevent the seminal source of all political power—popular opinion—from dictating government policy. “

Furthermore, Jefferson was an advocate of a citizenry’s right to overturn or secede from an unpopular government through extralegal and, at times, violent means. In one of his most famous quotations Jefferson stated, 

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure.”

Lest anyone believe that Jefferson sounds like a modern day laissez-faire conservative, he also alleged that mercantilism, industrialism and banking were a mortal threat to the nation’s well being. Instead he championed a society dominated by agricultural interests.

Ellis describes his views,

“[Jefferson believed that] America should remain a predominantly agricultural economy and society. Domestic manufacturing was permissible, but large factories should be resisted. Most important, the English model of a thoroughly commercial and industrial society in which the economy was dominated by merchants, bankers and industrialists should be avoided at all costs. “We may exclude them from our territory,” he warned, “as we do persons afflicted with disease,” going so far as to recommend that if one region of the United States should ever become thoroughly commercialized, the remaining agrarian region should secede”.

As Ellis points out, Jefferson lived in a different era. However, in Jefferson’s time these views were not mainstream nor were they shared by Jefferson’s peers.  Hamilton and, to a lesser degree, Washington, Adams and others were frequently appalled and dismayed by Jefferson’s philosophy. 

Other aspects of Jefferson’s views, radical at the time, became the basis for much of what modern society considers individual freedom and rights. 

 Ellis writes,

“Alone among the influential political thinkers of the revolutionary generation, Jefferson began with the assumption of individual sovereignty, then attempted to develop prescriptions for government that at best protected individual rights and at worst minimized the impact of government “

Jefferson ultimately was a believer in a republican utopianism. He espoused an agricultural based society with very little government or large institutions. He argued that in such a free society people would take care of themselves. It goes without saying that neither the United States nor any other state evolved in the way that Jefferson would have preferred. It seems clear to me that the state and society that Jefferson espoused would lead to a nation fraught with chaos and instability. Human progress would have been impossible under such a system.

Interestingly, when Jefferson ascended to the Presidency, he took a much more pragmatic and, at times, hypocritical approach than his beliefs would lead one to expect. For instance, he exceeded his executive power when he purchased Louisiana; he also did not dismantle the American banking and finance system that he professed to despise. Unfortunately, in actions that can be characterized as oppressive, he initiated prosecutions against his political and ideological enemies.

Ellis’s book is about so much more than the above commentary concerning Jefferson’s political and social values. This founder’s virtues and accomplishments were indeed immense. Unfortunately, his hypocrisies were also legendary. His views on religion, history and science as well as his personal life also interwove together and had a profound effect on American culture and politics, as well as upon world civilization. Ellis effectively explores all of this and more.

There are many, many reasons to study Jefferson. He is a figure of immense historical importance and one of the most complex people who ever lived. In American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson Ellis has created a highly readable and coherent account of this thinker’s accomplishments, beliefs and failings.

A few years ago I read His Excellency: George Washington which is another of Ellis’s books. I highly recommend that work too.

Beautiful Blogger Award

In previous posts I have expressed how marvelous the blogging community is. I must now confess that I been remiss. I have received several awards from my fellow bloggers over the past couple of months and have yet to post a thank you, nor have I passed the awards on.

Though no there is no real excuse for my malfeasance I feel the need to explain my belatedness. First, it is so difficult to choose which blogs to recognize. I visit and read so many extraordinary sites of all styles and kinds!

Second, I feel that by handing these awards to blogs that in some way I am imposing upon their owners. I really do want anyone to feel obligated and pressured to put up a reciprocal post. I certainly understand why someone would not wish to do this. There exist time and energy constraints, it may not be everyone’s style to post something like this, it is difficult to choose whom else to recognize, etc. 

To the award winners, please under no circumstances feel obligated to post or pass along. This is supposed to be fun! Heck, I almost did not do it myself for the above reasons.

With that said, over the next couple of weeks I will be putting up several entries passing along my recent awards. While I considered wrapping it all up into one giant post, I do not want to short change either the very kind folks who awarded me these honors, or the recipients. Plus every award deserves its own post!

First up, Vibina from Books for Me was kind enough to bestow the Beautiful Blogger Award upon Babbling Books. Thanks Vibina! Please check out her blog, it is outstanding.

The rules for of this award for those who wish to continue it are as follows:

1. Copy the Beautiful Blogger Award logo and place it in your post.
2. Thank the person who nominated you and create a link back to their blog.
3. Tell 7 things random facts about yourself.
4. Nominate 7 other bloggers for their own Beautiful Blogger Award.

Random Facts about me!

1.   I love Craft Beer

2.  I love artisanal cheese (The fact that 1 and 2 are of a similar pattern make this list seem not so random)

3.  I often run several miles before dawn.

4.  I am a CPCU.

5. I have an odd fascination with the chemistry, specifications, performance and issues surrounding various brands and grades of motor oils (This was so strange that I found it difficult to confess).

6. I worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant for several years during my youth.

7. I love animals, especially cats.

Without further ado, the winners of my Beautiful Blogger award are:

The Argumentative Old Git – Himadri is a true connoisseur and expert commentator of the classics. He likes to throw a little bit of controversy into the mix from time to time.

Beauty is a Sleeping Cat – Caroline’s world famous blog is truly beloved by thousands of readers all over the Earth. Her commentary gets to the tenor and atmosphere of a book better then any other reviewer I know.

Book Around the Corner – Emma usually really digs deep into books and characters. At the same time she keeps her writing entertaining and dynamic.

A Common Reader – Tom’s blog offers commentary on an eclectic mix of books. His website is also distinguished by distinctive and outstanding writing.

His Futile Preoccupations – Guy’s Blog also offers diverse mix of books. He is particularly fond of darker psychological crime fiction. His reviews are captivating.

Reading in Taiwan – One of the many marvelous things about Ryan’s Blog is that he mixes serious and intelligent commentary with hilarious humor.

Still Life With Books – Anyone who has visited Violet’s blog knows that her writing is almost poetic. Yet she is not afraid to express her opinion and delve into a little controversy from time to time.

I urge all the winners to bask in the glory of their achievements! Anyone one not familiar with these blogs should check them out. It will likely be a rewarding experience.

More awards to follow in the coming weeks!