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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
This was a pleasant surprise, though very niche in the present day! I read this because it was mentioned in a book about the Gordon Riots as being a fictional reaction to that event. I didn’t really have any expectations other than that the riots would figure at some point. It turned out that this was a philosophical and political satire of famous names of the enlightenment - particularly David Hume and William Godwin.
In this book a group of philosophers (or vagabonds) take the philosophical and political statements of these well known figures to the extreme as they try to live their lives based on these principles. Ultimately in their philosophising they come full circle and realise that England herself had the most equal and liberated society.
The hypocrisy of philosophers and thinkers of the time is highlighted, mostly in the praise of contradictions in the political or philosophical views, but also in the desire for luxuries (brandy) in the state of nature, and the fact that these philosophers and advocates of equality own a slave to do the work on their plantation.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have got so much out of this if I had not read Humes’s Treatise on Human Nature last year, and known a little about Godwin and Wollstonecraft, but as it is I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
In this book a group of philosophers (or vagabonds) take the philosophical and political statements of these well known figures to the extreme as they try to live their lives based on these principles. Ultimately in their philosophising they come full circle and realise that England herself had the most equal and liberated society.
The hypocrisy of philosophers and thinkers of the time is highlighted, mostly in the praise of contradictions in the political or philosophical views, but also in the desire for luxuries (brandy) in the state of nature, and the fact that these philosophers and advocates of equality own a slave to do the work on their plantation.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have got so much out of this if I had not read Humes’s Treatise on Human Nature last year, and known a little about Godwin and Wollstonecraft, but as it is I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.