On the Other Side of December

Well I survived exams and have already begun my work for the January term. The surprising thing is that I am really looking forward to the next couple of months.

Home was great, although I was not able to see everybody that I wanted. Unfortunatly I was there only for two short weeks so I didn’t do all that much. I went down to visit a law firm in Halifax and it went okay. I don’t think that I will get a job with them this summer but it is always good to make some connections.

For those of you who are interested in what I am reading here is a brief list of stuff you might want to check out.

Aside from my work for law school I am reading:

1) A Clash of Kings, by George RR Martin- This is the second installment in the fantasy ‘saga’ called “The Song of Ice and Fire” . I just finished the first novel and I thought it was pretty good, I would describe it as ‘mature’ fantasy, the plot line is complex and it is politically intricate. I don’t usually read fantasy but I thought I would give the genre a try and I bought the first novel in Toronto while I had to wait for the train. I was quite impressed. If you want some fun escapist reading I would strongly suggest it.

2) The Third Reich in Power, by Richard J Evans. This is the follow up volume to ‘The Coming of the Third Reich’. This is a pretty astonishing piece of History and was worth the 50$ I paid for it in hardcover. It basically gives a description of the Third Reich in power detailing many aspects of the regime prior to the outbreak of war, especially its institutional manifestations, the one-party state etc. Evans major argument is that Hitler’s policies were to gear the country towards war. My interest in the book, and the topic of the third Reich more generally, involves trying to gain some understanding of a non-liberal modern nation-state. Some of my guiding questions in reading the book are “What would a society look like if it refused many liberal and Christian ideas?” “How did the utopian energies of the Nazis manifest themselves in society?” . Furthermore, I have been thinking of doing some academic work on the nature of law, the relationship of law to ethics, legal indeterminacy, judicial activism, etc. And I have been thinking that the experience of the courts during the Third Reich could help inform the following debates in some interesting ways.

3) The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, by Stanley Rosen. I just began this one yesterday, it looks quite good. One of the things that I appreciate aobut Rosen is that he takes Nietzsche’s politics seriously. What I mean by this is that he does not twist Nietzsche into some promonent of democracy. Furthermore, Rosen’s reading of Nietzsche runs counter to the popular postmodernist readings of Nietzsche that places his aesthetics at the heart of his philosophy. Rosen does admit the importance of aesthetics to Nietzsche but, correctly I think, speaks about Nietzsche’s writing has demonstrating that he was laying the groundwork for a total philosophical and political revolution. I like to say that Nietzsche is part of the ‘grand’ tradition of political philosophy that thinks more in civilizational terms rather than simply at the level of the state. It is hard to explain what I mean by this, but I think those who have read Nietzsche understand what I mean. Plato is the one that begins this tradition of political philosophizing. I can say this at least, these thinkers conceive of politics as much more than simply the rules that best govern the state, and look to more significant issues than simply distributive justice. I guess this comes back to Plato, again, that the form of political organization will be reflected in the souls of its citizens. Regardless, looks like great book, Rosen is an interesting philosopher, a strong Platonist inspired by Leo Strauss. Great to read something different than the heavily postmodernist inspired everything.

Anways, that’s it for me. Keep your sticks on the ice.