Books like On Certainty — picked by fans

Commonly interpreted as the finest account of the ‘gigantic criminality’ of the Nazi and Stalinist totalitarian regimes, Arendt’s book has for me a more immediately visceral significance. It has profound things to say about what she called a "terribly cruel" contradiction lurking within the modern democratic commitment to equality.

She pointed out that although democracy demands that we recognize others as our equals, certain groups, especially for reasons of their past sufferings, are prone to misuse and abuse their democratic freedoms. They do so by violently asserting their rights to live as a "sovereign people" at the expense of others whom they treat as "superfluous."

Would Arendt have been surprised by the way a "democratic" state born of the ashes of genocide is nowadays behaving? Would she have condoned its military efforts to destroy "in whole or in part" (Genocide Convention Article 2c) a "superfluous" people known as Palestinians? Almost… show more.

Brimming with paradoxes and ironies, this 18th-century novel about language and power is more than an ingenious attack on the bland literary fashions of a closed-minded ancien régime of aristocratic power and privilege.

I love its playful celebration of heterodoxy and its witty defense of the clever thoughts of an upstart servant who demands to be treated with respect by daring to call into question his master’s illusions about the meaning of life. 

At once Jewish, French, and Christian, an ex-factory worker and field laborer, and political thinker whose short life was tragically ended by a hunger strike against Nazism, Simone Weil should today be remembered as the first thoughtful defender of our need for social and ecological roots.

Published posthumously, this extraordinary book is a withering protest against deracination: the forcible uprooting of peoples’ lives by unbridled capitalism, state socialism, nationalism, and war. Anticipating the recent celebration of the ideals of civil society, Weil stood against violence and every form of institutional standardization, bossing, and bullying. Felt obligations toward others, freedom from arbitrary power, and self-government based on citizens’ grounded consent are, for her, the mark of a good society.

One of those rare pieces of political writing that outlive their moment of birth to become classics, Havel’s grippingly written essay invites us to rethink the meaning of power. The radical idea is that the powerful are never as powerful as they, or we, might imagine.

Since within any institution or political order, the lines of organized power pass like low-current electricity through all its subjects, the downtrodden always have within themselves the power to short-circuit the system and to remedy their own powerlessness by refusing the power of rulers bent on running and ruining their everyday lives. 

When I read Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus logico-philosophicus’ some 50 years ago, I was immediately fascinated. Throughout my academic career, this most mysterious—and at the same time clearest—philosophic mind of his generation has inspired me in many ways.

He had tried to nail down the clarity of mathematical argumentation in his early work, only to escape to the jungle of arguments following his concept of ‘sprachspiele’ in his second philosophical stage. And parallel to this mental journal, he physically escaped to a lonely hut in Norway to live in solitude.

Constantine Sandis, the author of this brand-new book, is the leading expert on Wittgenstein studies. He takes the reader on a journey that leads right up to the current debates on artificial intelligence. Wittgenstein returns!   

Like Ludwig Wittgenstein himself, this book is a work of extremes.

The delusions are grand, the narrative is dense, and the non-sequiturs are out of control. And yet, the more time you spend with it, the more these inhibitors become the very reason for your voracious engagement.

Once you get through that, what stands out about this work is the nuanced approach Markson takes to the female voice. On the one hand, it’s very subtle, with thin, cosmetic references to clothing, aesthetics, and male love interests. But as you immerse yourself in the text, you begin to sense a deeper ambition is possibly at work, inherent in the stream-of-consciousness narrative he employs.

The other thing that’s cool about this book is the series of disparate facts Markson weaves together about a range of cultural figures. It’s easy to take these as throwaway comments until you remember they were accumulated manually,… show more.

In most introvert-theme fiction, not much “happens.” Instead, the author focuses on the texture of characters’ thoughts, experiences, and memories. I found this novel, by an Austrian writer not well known in the English-speaking world, fascinating for two reasons. First, it explores the life, work, and thinking process of an obsessive genius – someone introverted to the nth degree. And second, it does so in a book of just two paragraphs, going on and on in musical prose where the repetitive rhythms of the sentences have just as much impact as what they’re narrating. The architectural genius in Correction is partly based on Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, which added interest for me since I find Wittgenstein a uniquely inspiring figure.

From Martin’s expansive look at things, let’s move onto a more granular approach – Fournier’s Double Nickels. Fournier focuses on just one band and an album (albeit a double record album and one of the best to come out of punk in the 1980s). The Minutemen played a fast, discordant music that sounded like jazz as much as hardcore thrash music. Fournier’s examination turns up something few people consider, that punk wasn’t all about blistering music but rather sophisticated in its nature. Fournier documents how the bassist in the band, Mike Watt, had extended conversations with one of the most important artists associated with 1980s punk – Raymond Pettibon (who as of now has made his way into accomplished art museums and galleries). They talked about everything from Ludwig Wittgenstein to James Joyce. Band members supposedly got into heated debates about history and would stop at public libraries while… show more.

Readers seriously interested in the continuing influence of Aristotle on Western and global thinking will find the short book of Sir Anthony Kenney’s essays both useful and enjoyable. The author, a well-known authority on the history of Western philosophy, Thomas Aquinas, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, writes with panache on a wide variety of topics relevant to Aristotelian thought and modern intellectual and social life.      

The Vienna Circle was a group of polymaths—primarily scientists and philosophers—who held weekly meetings in Vienna between the World Wars. This book is by far the best retelling of their story, and it’s fascinating.

While their names aren’t well known, their work had tremendous influence. They prominently shaped the reception and understanding of Einstein’s new theories of relativity, began the use of simple images to communicate information without words, and introduced logical developments that eventually led to computers and other technology.