Much used, and little loved: The Rationalists

The Rationalists is an old textbook of mine from college. I took a lot of philosophy and political science in college, so much so that I could have double majored in poli sci if I wasn't convinced that it would have been a waste of time.  I won't call all of them wasted, but the philosophy credit hours would probably have been better spent somewhere else. I don't regret the poli sci classes though, that Thucydides class was great, even if the professor was wrong about the ending. This book was a much-recycled textbook. I count three different used stickers on my copy. Much used, and little loved, the fate of many a textbook.

Dear Reader, I did not finish The Rationalists. In truth, I barely gave it a start. I come to you now to confess my sins. I bounced right off of Descartes. That is a combination of the language and the subject matter. I have never read the work in its original language, and I never will, but the translator didn't punch up the language to make it more readable. "For to hold converse" is a phrase that exists, and I don't like it. I prefer a translation that preserved the text's meaning without using styles and structures that seem like gatekeeping. By that, I mean that the construction of the sentences makes it harder to understand what the author means, in a way that those who cannot parse it easily get frustrated and those that can feel superior. The responsibility of effective communication lies in the communicator, not the recipient. Too much of philosophy and political science is focused on communicating with their peers, and not being approachable to the general public. This lets ideas in more approachable formats spread better than other works. A good example of this is the works of Ayn Rand, which would not have been half as successful if not presented in a novel.

Enough about the language, now onto the subject matter. I did not find the ideas gripping. I will admit that I ventured none to deep, but I was unconvinced from the start of my revisitation. Descartes states early in the book that his approach to truth was to sit in a room alone and think his way through the issue. To trust that Descartes got anywhere near the actual truth is to have a great deal of trust in Descartes. But my points of view are so different than his that the base he builds his conclusions on does not seem like a solid stone foundation but rather sand. With that, every one of his conclusions is shaky. 

What is more, I recently bought a bunch of books. With a nice, new book sitting so tantalizingly close, it is hard to force yourself to work through a book you already read before, and are sure you are not going to really enjoy reading again. So I am dropping The Rationalists and reading a book new and interesting to me that I didn't pick at random. That book is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I am looking forward to it.