Are Amazon Recommendations Actually Accurate?
The yenta that lives in Amazon's Web site told me that I should buy philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum's Upheavals of Thought because I recently ordered Pierre Hadot's What is Ancient Philosophy?. Even though I had never heard of her or her book, this recommendation caught my eye for several reasons. The book, subtitled "The Intelligence of Emotions," seems to be an attempt to bridge what I always believed to be an artificial distinction between thought and emotion, a distinction that I'm trying to understand in my therapy. It seems to be trying to develop a living philosophy that encompasses logic, ethics, psychology, and dogma. In short, it seems like it would be a very interesting book for me right now.
Our reading group met this past Monday to discuss the remainder of Sodom and Gomorrah. The questions that we keep coming back to (aside from the credibility of the narrator's heterosexuality) are: Is this a great book? If so, what makes it great? What is one to get from reading it? These are just the sort of questions that a reading group should ask (as opposed to things like: Who's your favorite character? What would you do in this situation?). In the course of our discussions, it has emerged that I'm the only one who is really enjoying the experience of reading Proust, and it would add to those discussions if I could explain why.
On the way back to my office from the psycho-pharmacologist on Wednesday, I went into Barnes & Noble, having agreed with myself that I would buy Upheavals of Thought in the unlikely event that they had it. (Am I the only one who makes those kind of deals with himself?) As it happened, they had one copy, and I bought it.
The book has two epigraphs, one of which is a quote from Proust (describing the Baron de Charlus's decision to love Charles Morel) from which Ms. Nussbaum drew the phrase "upheavals of thought." (Who knew?) The introduction begins:
Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like the "geological upheavals" a traveler might discover in a landscape where recently only a flat plane could be seen, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain, and prone to reversal. Why and how? Is it because emotions are animal energies or impulses that have no connection with our thoughts, imaginings, and appraisals? Proust denies this, calling the emotions "geological upheavals of thought." In other words, what changes the Baron's mind from a flat pane into a mountain range is not some subterranean jolt, but the thoughts he has about Charlie Morel, a person who has suddenly become central to his well-being, and whom he sees as inscrutable, undependable, and utterly beyond his control. It is these thoughts about value and importance that make his mind project outward like a mountain range, rather than sitting inert in self-satisfied ease.
Thus far, I have only read the remainder of the introduction, which maintains an impressive balance between common sense and rigor. Ms. Mussbaum seems to be attempting to base a philosophy on the writings of Marcel Proust. She goes on to call him "in some ways the most profound object-relations psychoanalyst of all." So it is in a book of philosophy that I have found this pithy summary of what it is about reading In Search of Lost Time that I enjoy:
...it seems that we will have reason to turn to texts such as Proust's novel, which encourage us in such imaginings, deepening and refining our grasp of upheavals of thought in our own lives. If Proust is right, we will not understand ourselves well enough to talk good sense in ethics unless we do subject ourselves to the painful self-examination a text such as his can produce.
And God help me, I enjoy struggling to understand myself.
7:54:43 AM 
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