Nice! We expect some wise insights into political philosophy from you in the near future. Maybe you can explain Brexit to me in terms of social contract theory. Heaven knows I can't make out much from the BBC coverage.

Thread bumped! We've returned from our Roman Holiday and have better internet access now. A very good touristy time, seeing Everything, walking miles daily over stone paving so waking up with extremely sore feet and lovely memories. But no reading involved other than the guidebook. After so many Victorian novels I felt I should be standing in the piazze in my ankle-length dress poring over my Baedaker as a helpful but complicated ex-pat English gentleman swoops in to guide me to the Catacombs of Priscilla and Santa Maria Maggiore. This week it's back to Scottish literature with short story collection A Beleaguered City by Margaret Oliphant (1880). Dh and Middle Girl have already read it and judged it Odd.

A week, while we wait out Graduation Week (for which someone else rented the UK place we're staying at). Jane, congratulations to The Boy! Robin, fingers crossed for a successful outcome.

I've just got to say a word for the "Dark Ages," to which this sort of abusive stuff has been compared in this thread a couple of times. In early medieval western Europe, marriages for women tended to be late (mid 20s); the age of partners was close; fertility was low; a significant number of women remained single by choice; the family unit was nuclear rather than extended (i.e. no patriarchal grandad); and marriages outside nobility were not arranged. Let's not let these abusive creepy sorts tarnish the reputation of folks a thousand years ago who wouldn't have had time for such nonsense.

Lovely photos Jane! I love the desert. For father's day we took dh for pizza, pasta, e gelato, admired the frescos in la Basilica di Santa Maria ad Martyres, aka the Pantheon, and walked along the Tiber. Books read this week: J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep Currently reading: Absolutely nothing. Too much to do.

Oh my gosh that is the best story, and best reason EVER for "Why I need to get more books." I recommend Grotius as Patron Philosopher of the Book a Week Thread.

Escape in a bookbox!?! I must know more! What's that about?

Loesje, It's been a while but I'll try. Grotius was one of the foremost European philosophers of the 17th century. While his main influence was in Natural Law, he also was important for political philosophy, which is what Rousseau is addressing. His important contribution to political philosophy was a shift from the medieval view that saw "rights" (iura) as pertaining to things/ events/ actions to the modern view in which rights become powers of persons. Because they now pertain to persons, under this view rights are commoditized and can now be alienated: that is, transferred to others; this includes, in his view, the possibility of slavery if voluntarily entered into. I assume Rousseau's reference is to the (in)famous Book 1, Chapter 3 of Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis, in which he sets forth a sort of contract theory of government by which the right of sovereignty is delivered to a ruler, retaining no right to themselves by which they could retract that transfer. To Rousseau this is an apology for despotism. But one can also see it as an important step away from the previous two dominant theories of Right of Sovereignty by either (1) divine right or (2) right through might. Does this help?

Ethel, Sounds dreadful. Will keep you in mind on Friday.

Finished J. M. Barrie, Sentimental Tommy Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship Reading The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse Somerset Maugham, The Summing-Up J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions

Well, perhaps there's after all nothing to get. Don't tell dh's employer.

Interesting; not everyone would find that answer intuitively obvious. Consider this hypothetical: your ship is made of silver planks. A thief comes nightly into your boathouse and replaces one plank with one of the same shape and size, but made of wood. He assembles the stolen silver planks in his own boathouse. At the end of a year, the ship in your boathouse is entirely wood, and there is one in his boathouse entirely made of silver. Should the thief be able to argue successfully to the judge that he didn't steal your ship, as you have the same ship you began with? If your ship shares an identity with the original one, is the silver ship in his boathouse a different ship? Similarly, if the pieces chopped off the Tin Woodsman were reassembled as the macabre process progressed, and the man stayed alive, would it be intuitive to tell that person that the tin man over there is the same man as the original "meat" woodchopper? Which is the original woodchopper? Or are they both? Or neither? Eta: I'm not at all saying your answer is wrong! Just proffering thoughts that might lead to other conclusions.

On last week's thread we discussed philosophical education for children, and I mentioned Gareth Matthews and his work in this area; one point of Matthews' is that children's fiction often tackles issues of importance in contemporary philosophy, and parents can be alert to these philosophical implications. For example, in The Wizard of Oz the Tin Woodsman became tin as a result of a series of chopping accidents by which parts of his body are sequentially replaced, until he is entirely tin. This is just the 'Ship of Theseus' problem, a classic in questions of identity: is the Woodsman the same person at the beginning and end of the process? If not, at what point does he cease to be the human woodsman? Or if so, aren't there then two bodies for one person? Each answer spawns new questions. To Matthews, most good children's fiction is philosophical fiction, if you pay attention. (Alice in Wonderland, a special case, is deliberately loaded with issues of interest to logicians and linguists.) This week, continuing poetry with a focus on the medieval William Dunbar, who could be philosophical himself. The first stanzas of his best-known work, The Lament for the Makaris [Poets]: I that in heill was and gladness Am trublit now with great sickness And feblit with infirmitie: Timor Mortis conturbat me. Our plesance here is all vain glory, This fals world is but transitory, The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee: Timor Mortis conturbat me. The state of man does change and vary, Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary, Now dansand mirry, now like to die: Timor Mortis conturbat me. No state in Erd here standis sicker; As with the wynd wavis the wicker So wannis this world’s vanitie: Timor Mortis conturbat me. Meanwhile having finished Graves I am reading J. M. Barrie's lesser-known novel Sentimental Tommy, about the young child of a shamed Scottish woman who returns from the London slums at his mother's death to her dismal Scottish home town. Some wonderful moments of Barrie's dry humor, but so far it's as unfortunately sentimental as the title tried to warn me. We'll see if it improves, but I don't think Peter Pan is going to be eclipsed by this one.

Alternately with Scottish poetry I've been reading poet Robert Graves' account of his childhood and service in WWI, Goodbye to All That. This is the only prose of his I've read other than some chunks of his writing on mythology. Graves conveys the horror of trench warfare by a matter of fact, understated account; not for the weak of stomach. Back to William Dunbar.

Ah--you're right--I misread the thread title. The two are combined on the official Stanford tie, which is cardinal-colored with a large Stanford "S" on which is superimposed a slender ponderosa pine tree. The fact that the resulting image from any distance is a dollar sign is of no consequence. :D (Hook 'em Horns!)

There's the Stanford Cardinal. No, not the Cardinals: the color.

I finished Dreamthorp today. Smith's essay style is old-fashioned but charming in its slow, wandering way; a pleasant change from the modern, rapid Atlantic-style. (One essay is on essay-writing, where he defends the old-fashionedness of Bacon and Montaigne.) Still reading the Penguin Book of Scottish Verse--from which, Hugh Macdiarmid's "The Parrot Cry" (excerpted): "I doot it needs a Hegel/ Sic opposites to fuse" is the best verse I've read in a while.

Reading this week: Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp. Smith was a Scottish poet and essayist of the mid-19th century. Dreamthorp, a collection of essays, is mentioned in Fahrenheit 451; but Smith is now out of fashion and I was only able to find a copy at the local university's library. An essay therein on William Dunbar introduced me to that poet--Scotland's answer to Chaucer--and to John Barbour, medieval author of an imposing epic poem called The Bruce] (written, like Dunbar's poetry, in medieval Scots dialect). Smith, Dunbar, and Barbour all make appearances in The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse, which I am also reading this week, which has in turn forced me to acquire the collected poetry of Dunbar--and The Bruce--and when it shows up in the secondhand bookshop, the more modern but equally challenging poetry of the brilliant Hugh Macdiarmid. Apparently Macdiarmid is something of a second Burns. There may also be some other Scottish literature finding its way into the suitcase, like Barrie and Oliphaunt. Maybe. From the title essay of Dreamthorp:

Ah--Look Inside doesn't work on my phone apparently. I'll have laptop access again in a few days & check out the books then.

Thanks! Wish I could get a look inside them.

Actually Middle Girl helped him more; it's intended for undergraduates, and sometimes he'd explain a chapter's concept to her, and if she didn't grasp it, keep simplifying until it was at a 13yo level of comprehension, which he figured was about right.

Ethel, what is the Philosophy for Kids book? Dh read Gareth Matthews when Great Girl was very little and it encouraged him to engage the girls in philosophical conversation since (he had perhaps noticed it didn't work so well with me). He's been unimpressed by homeschool "logic" curricula; but is there something better homeschoolers are using to introduce philosophical thinking?

Robin, I hope all ended well. I used to be terrified of Wee Girl ending up in some such situation: perfectly capable of getting herself far afield; unable to speak if found. We had an ID wristband for her but I worried she'd take it off. Jane, love your Totoro. Eastern screech owls have such a melancholy trill; it always makes the nights mysterious. Finished Moby Dick re-read. Doesn't get any better than that.

I will post later on my actual reading when I can access dh's laptop--all I've got is my phone-- but apropos of Philosophy Week I must mention dh just had a philosophy book published. Soon the royalties will pour in and we will be wealthy beyond imagining! Because technical books in the field fly off Amazon's shelves. Was that another pre-order? No it was not.

Middle Girl really relates to that. Adolescence in a nutshell.