1. Learning that the British establishment were keen on making peace with Hitler at the start of the war, and that it would very likely have happened if not for Churchill.1

2. Churchill’s escape from prison during the Boer war aged 25.

3. Churchill presciently writing about a nuclear weapon in 1924, a full 18 years before the Manhattan project.

And of course some great rhetoric. Here are a couple disorderly notes on the matter, which can each be read independently.

Churchill the aristocrat

Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, the British equivalent of Versailles, home of his ancestor the first duke of Marlborough, who led the combined armies of Europe to victory against Louis XIVth in the early 1700s and helped establish Britain as a first rate European power. Decent pedigree, then. This, and growing up around dukes and earls and whatnot was pretty good for his self confidence later in life. Example:

‘Many thanks for your letter. I am entirely indifferent to such opinions as you mention.’ (p. 432) is a reply characteristic of his aristocratic insouciance (“zero fucks given”, in modern parlance). It was his response to an acquaintance who mentioned to him that Tory MPs thought he was up to no good after he was one of only four MPs who did not cheer on Chamberlain’s visit to Hitler in 1938.2 As we’ll see later, the House of Commons (not to mention the Lords) didn’t exactly shine in the 1930s.

Churchill the young hot-head

He grew up idolising his father, who was chancellor of the Exchequer, and his ancestor, the first duke Marlborough, who is still remembered for having never lost a battle.3 Naturally enough, Winston went to military school. However he wasn’t deemed intelligent enough by his dad or the teachers to be taught military strategy (let alone go to Oxford). So he enlisted as a cavalry officer. This lack of training in strategic thinking later cost the lives of a few soldiers, ahem. He was a bit of a hot-head, and in the summer of 1895, between academic terms, used his family connections at the Spanish royal court to join their war in Cuba. He needed authorisation to join them in their war against cuban guerillas. This is where he first saw combat.

Such proactivity turned out to be a pattern, Churchill later always sought to be wherever the action was: when his regiment in India had no fighting to do, he begged (and obtained) to be moved to a regiment that was fighting in the north west, once the Empire started fighting the Boers in South Africa, he ensured he got sent to the front,4 and AGAIN (because volunteering for just three wars isn’t enough) he voluntarily joined General Kitchener fighting in the Sudan, where he was a part of the last major cavalry charge of the 19th century. He’d definitely have rushed to Ukraine in 2022.

Churchill and technology

Churchill read a book on quantum theory in 1926 and was publicly writing about the development of nuclear weapon in the 1924. He also pushed for the creation of a large RAF after WWI, which undoubtedly saved the UK in 1940. Then he invented the tank. “His early, strong and sustained support for its development makes it plausible for him to be described as the father of the tank.” (p. 198) He was also prescient about switching the royal navy from coal to oil,5 which meant less re-fuelling stops, better range, and not needing crew shovelling coal into the furnace all the time.

I have to say the quantum thing surprised me more than a bit.

Churchill the blogger

And later Nobel Prize in Literature (1953).

He first became known to the public by writing newspaper articles, and then a whole book for each new war he participated in. I’m convinced that today he’d first get known as a blogger before entering the House of Commons.6 Leo Strauss said Churchill’s biography of Marlborough was “the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding”.7

Churchill escapes from prison aged 25

His first big break onto the national scene is when he escaped prison during the Boer war, leaving a note politely saying that he had “decided to escape from custody”, and “had to cross 300 miles of enemy territory with no map, compass, food, money, firearm or knowledge of Afrikaans” (p.69). He was 25. His escape, which involved hopping onto a coal train, and hiding in a rat-infested mine for days was the only heroic British event of the war until then, and propelled him onto the national scene. So yeah, I guess I haven’t done that much this week then.

Churchillian rule of war: *crush* the other guy, then be nice

I tried to extract a couple general Churchillian rules of conduct from the book. It’s hard to pin them down precisely but one of them is certainly the above.

In the Boer war, he insisted the Boers be treated well (they were, and he later became best friends with Jan Smuts, the Boer prime minister, who was of good counsel in WWII). In 1918, he detested the Versailles treaty for its harshness, predicting there would be war again and calling it “a sad story of complicated idiocy”. Prophetic words.

This idea served him well when someone with a say in the conduct of the war (I forget who8) suggested that Germany be “pastoralised” (turned into a farming country, i.e. have its industry dismantled), as he realised that a strong Germany would be a good counterweight to the USSR.9

Great Britain was an inch away from making peace with the Nazis

One thing I didn’t realise before reading this biography is just how close Great Britain was to making peace with Hitler in 1938.

At this point in time, Churchill has been saying for almost a decade that Britain needs to re-arm so she can avert war with Germany. Everyone just called him a warmonger. In fact, most of the establishment, including Lord Halifax (who was in second place for the premiership) wanted to know what terms of surrender Hitler would have been, and according to Andrew Roberts “they would probably have been very reasonable, as the Führer ultimately wanted to fight a one-front war against the USSR”.

Churchill was ~ the only guy ~ who wanted to fight, it seems crazy that such a big difference was made by one person. Although since the USSR handled three quarters of the Wehrmacht perhaps it wouldn’t have changed the outcome for the nazis? But it would certainly have changed the post war east-west power dynamics which is no small matter given how many people died under communism.

The common view was so much against him that as late as 1938 the Conservative Central Office tried to ensure he could not run for office in Epping, his constituency in the House of Commons.10

“Halifax was merely a logical rationalist when the need was for a stubborn, emotional romantic.” (p. 978), I wonder what our modern rationalists would do?

Certainly Churchill’s adage “Man is spirit” seems a bit at odds with “P(A|B) = [P(A)*P(B|A)]/P(B), all the rest is commentary” (the slatestarcodex blog motto, and un-official rationalist creed). My view on this is that when it comes to government, we probably want the rationalists “on tap, not on top” as Churchill said of scientists in the ‘40s.1112

Churchill’s prescient views on communism

It’s pretty avant-garde (read: fucking prophetic) to see through communist ideas as precisely as Churchill did in 1917.13 Sartre was still a communist well into the ‘50s.14

Later fun Churchill quip about communism: “the foul baboonery of Communism” (1919). He said what he thought about Communism at least once to the face of Stalin and Ivan Maisky, the soviet ambassador in London during the war.

Great English rhetoric

One pattern I noticed in quips15 I enjoyed: rimes embrassées. Examples:

• “Ivor Guest opined that ‘Few fathers had done less for their sons. Few sons have done more for their fathers.’” (p. 101)

• “The great question is – are political organizations made for men or men for political organizations?’” (p. 89)

• “There are of course old men who cannot be expected to pay much attention to anything, and young men to whom nobody can be expected to pay much attention.’” (p. 86)

• “I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.” (A line from Balfour about Churchill, p.64, different rime scheme, same idea)

A good and easy to recycle line: “I, of course, am exceedingly pro-French, Churchill asserted; ‘unfortunately the French are exceedingly pro-voking.’”(p. 784)

One final distinctly Churchillian rhetorical device: old words, especially when single-syllable. E.g. using “foe” not enemy, “Short words are the best and the old words when short are the best of all”.16

WWCD: What would Churchill do?

Netanyahu: currently violating Churchill’s rule of war, doesn’t look good long run. Elon’s “conspicuous acts of kindness” recommendation seems spot on here.

Zelensky: pretty good job muddling through (“Wars are mainly tales of muddling through”) and getting US support, needs to visit the most affected parts of the country as much as possible + an intense focus on technology (drones: good, what else? should they develop a nuke?) Ukrainian GDP is 10x less than Russia, so they’re going to need some tech here (or some Americans). Churchill was the father of the tank and the RAF, can Zelensky be the father of something big?17

Taiwan: USA needs to get the fleet ready, China outpaces US in shipbuilding, just like Germany when Churchill became first Lord of the Admiralty pre-WWI.

Textbooks

The Art and Craft of Problem Solving, Paul Zeitz: Great collection of math puzzles from middle school to IMO level, this book has almost biblical in status in my math-natsci friend group from undergrad.2 Has given me much pleasure, often shared, and I expect will for a long time to come.

Concepts in Thermal Physics (2nd Edition), Blundell & Blundell: My favourite physics textbook,3 nominally about thermodynamics, actually explains in a very lucid fashion almost everything I find most interesting in physics.

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics: Both this and the applied maths volume are delightful to peruse, great reference books. I like to flip through this the way one might through any encyclopaedia.

Biology: The Whole Story, Lindsay Turnbull: Written by an Oxford prof., and with great illustrations. This covers all of high school biology and a good amount of undergrad biology in a pleasant manner. Not dumbed down, but starts from scratch and goes far enough to be interesting. Ten chapters, one per big theme (plants, energy, DNA, …)

Novels

The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe: Brilliant, couldn’t put it down. Sent tingles down my spine. Napoleon read this novel six times during the Egyptian campaign4.

The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig: For a long while this was my favourite book, I don’t really remember it that well now, but it struck a note at that time and I will return to it. Zweig is the best psychologist-author I’ve read (in the same class as Dostoevsky, but less depressing). Lots of other good novellas (Amok) and biographies (Mary Stuart and Magellan are my two favourite, the others are, at worst, pretty good).

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien: My favourite book as a ten year-old, still one of my favourites 15 years and a few re-reads later. I keep coming back to identification with Bilbo (a Baggins, certainly, but also a Took!) and his journey.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde: A one day read, very much worth it. Not necessarily deep, but very good.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen: Recently re-read most of this. Mr. Collins, and Mr. & Mrs. Bennet still made me laugh and cringe as much as the first time. Felt just as emotionally engaged in the story between Darcy and Elizabeth as the first time I read this. Definitely one of my favourite novels.

Philosophy/History

History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russel: Opinionated, intelligent, and funny in a very British manner. Beautiful prose. Don’t agree with everything in there,5 and admittedly I skipped a couple centuries of medieval philosophy but thoroughly enjoyed this one.

The Apology of Socrates, Plato: Read this in one go without putting it down, I was so excited by the end (at Socrates’ suggested own punishment, in particular) that I threw the paperback across the room upon finishing it.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung: Left me with the strong impression that Jung must have been a very clever man. Lots to be learned.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Waterson: Intelligent, funny, cute as anything. As much a good philosophy book as a comic strip. Have read many times over.

Autobiography, Bertrand Russel: Perhaps the best biography ever.6 Inimitable prose, exceptional mind. I don’t always admire Russel but he was clearly a brilliant man.

Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Ray Monk: Super interesting. Read this in english and then in french again two years later when in Chilean Antarctica. This was my first intro to Wittgenstein, and I discovered it through Reid Hoffman, who mentions it as his favourite book from his time at Oxford. How to Read Wittgenstein by Monk is a great follow-up, and perhaps the most annotated book on my bookshelf. Wittgenstein is characterised by intense intellectual honesty7 and pursuit of a life that is good, he volunteers to fight for Austria-Hungary in WWI, is one of the wealthiest men in Europe after inheriting part of his dad’s fortune, gives it all away to his sisters (not the eldest one, she was too wealthy already according to him!), works as a gardener, a Cambridge Philosophy professor, and in WWII volunteers in an english hospital particularly affected by the blitz. Lots of good and very practical lessons to be had from his example. My first “meeting” with Wittgenstein was actually on his grave in Cambridge, where Anthony and me read aloud one of his lectures at 6am one cold spring morning, after a night of solving the final examples sheet from our course “Oscillations, Waves and Optics”.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, Edward Gibbon: This is like drinking the finest of teas.8 Delicious, you want it to take a long time, and indeed it does. Highly quotable, Gibbon was friends with Hume9 and you can see their Enlightenment ideals shine through.10 Haven’t yet read volumes II-VI, I anticipate it will be a great pleasure to read them too.

Book of Proverbs + Ecclesiastes, Old Testament: Definitely a NYT bestseller if it had been published last year.

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources, Javier Blas: Great book, read in a day or two, pulls the curtain on how the world works.11

Good books that made me laugh

Sometimes all I want to read is something that will crack me up, these did the job well.

My Uncle Napoleon, Iraj Pezeshkzad: An Iranian classic, I’m told a lot of the humour is lost to the non-Iranian but Dick Davis’ translation still had me laughing a lot.12

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams: Only came around to reading this in 2024, as good as its reputation.

Roman Fleuve, Philibert Humm: This won’t work in any other language than french, but perhaps the funniest thing I’ve ever read.

Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman: A good laugh, some great pranks.

The Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche: There are good reasons to read Nietzsche, but an under-appreciated one is how funny he is, this goes for Ecce Homo and Beyond Good and Evil as well. All very good.'

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis: Almost any C.S. Lewis is worth reading, but this one is very funny. Light reading, in a sense, but some very good ideas in there. The premise is that there is a “junior devil” whose job it is to get a few human “patients” to hell, and we are reading letters from his supervisor giving him feedback on how best to achieve this.

Nietzsche is often funny, and always irreverent. I think a lot of people miss out because reading philosophy is supposedly like reading a textbook. But his autobiography has chapters like “Why I Am So Wise”, “Why I Am So Clever”, or “Why I Write Such Good Books”. He always has an opinion. This makes him so much more enjoyable to read than the sterile and obscure academic prose I’ve seen elsewhere; incidentally, it’s also why Russel’s History of Western Philosophy is so good, and Russell doesn’t even like Nietzsche!

I sometimes meet really cynical people who wear it as a badge of cleverness, sort of like modern day Raskolnikovs. Indeed in my worst moments I can be like that. This is a great example of reverse-Nietzsche thinking.

As a side note, ecce homo, “behold the man”, is really an insane title for an autobiography, those were Pontius Pilate’s words when he presents Jesus to the crowd, shortly before the crucifixion. Cool cool.

I’ve heard so many educated people in my age group argue that the future is so screwed that it’s best to not have children, or to get a job that in any way shape or form might hurt the planet. This broadly acceptable disdain for life and human agency always seemed like a typical intellectual-yet-silly perspective. A room full of Cambridge graduates will acquiesce to it, but it’s so evidently the wrong answer.

It’s hard to argue this point in a logical manner, it’s more something I take on faith (faith in my guts? faith in fate? amor fati!). People will see suffering in the world and « think this refutes life, but really it is only them who are refuted».

Nietzsche is a joyful and positive character, « Zarathustra is a dancer ». His ideal is a knight, a poet and a thinker all at once. He plays with words, describes Spinoza as a frog1 , and Kant as an albino2! (Spinoza is actually a very lovable character.) He encourages us to be tough, embrace the fire, but also to laugh about it, and dance. Laughing and dancing are surprisingly common themes throughout. His philosophy is «the joyful science». It’s love of fate, firmly saying « yes! » to life, in spite of everything, perhaps even because of it. This was also Viktor Frankl’s take away from his time in Auschwitz (I was somehow compelled to read Frankl on my birthday this year, concentration camps and birthdays are strange bedfellows and I’m not sure I recommend the timing). I’m reminded of this Colbert line about being grateful for the worst things that have happened to you, it’s worth watching that for a minute or two.

Of course, comparing Spinoza to a frog and saying Socrates is ugly3 because he has a big nose didn’t get Nietzsche a lot of love from the academic community.

A criticism often levelled at him in the past is that he isn’t a serious philosopher, more of a literary figure. He’s inconsistent. He argues poetically rather than logically. This is a fine criticism, in the sense that it’s true, he is incoherent and illogical, but I think part of the Nietzsche story is that this is sort of the point. Nietzsche would say he argues physiologically, with his body, that « unknown sage», or his nostrils, but that this is superior to arguing with the mind.

Come to think of it, it’s funny that it’s now fashionable to say that the gut is our second brain, but of course, “I believe it in my guts” is un-intellectual. hmm.

Hiding in “-isms”, finding aliens, and cyclic cosmology

If a thinker has « a system », or a formula, red flag! Philosophical systems nerd-snipe a lot of us because they seem to explain everything (e.g. utilitarianism). This is what we dream of; but of course it’s also the bait that induced Faust to sell his soul to the devil in Goethe’s play4.

Idealistic philosophers that build systems like Kant or Hegel, the usual suspects, give us a sense of total objectivity, “fundamental” reality, the pure platonic forms, the kantian thing-in-itself, these are known as noumena. Philosophy as mathematical theorem proving. Math envy? Our experienced reality consists in phenomena, so why all the this talk of noumena? Does idealism smell bad? Ok, so any useful philosophising5 should steer clear of ideals. If it doesn’t relate to my life, change my behaviour, it’s not my thing.

In software, we have this analogy of the cathedral and the bazaar6 to describe closed source vs open source software. Trust the bazaar, never trust the cathedral!

«A systematic spirit is a lack of integrity»7. A system is a cathedral. Nietzsche’s thought is a bazaar. I always cringe a little when someone in silicon valley claims “I’m a libertarian” as this is almost always immediately followed-up with sloppy thinking. This goes for any political party. Plenty of good libertarian perspectives to be had, but it’s too easy to “hide in the -isms”, libertarianism, utilitarianism, atheism, protestantism. They give us a sense of safety in our intellectual position, we like to hide in the cathedral’s protective embrace. Following Wittgenstein’s analogy it’s best to use the “-isms” as steps on the ladder to understanding, and then throw away the ladder!8

Now we have to talk about aliens for a minute. Astrophysicists working on stellar evolution or other niche topics always complain about how little funding there is for them, as opposed to, say, people studying exoplanets and looking for life on other worlds. They complain. Does anyone like complainers? Nietzsche doesn’t either. Boo hoo! Discovering aliens is the most important thing astrophysicists could do for us, of course they get the money. Incidentally, for those who haven’t heard, it looks like we may have found aliens. Doubly exciting for me as the discoverer was one of my favourite lecturers in Cambridge. Perhaps fundamental has mostly come to mean “far removed from reality”, i.e. useless? Maybe academia is broken (it is), and if it were fixed it would get more funding? This aside on aliens is over, but we will return to physics shortly!

One Nietzschean idea I still have a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around is «eternal return», the idea that we will all have to live our lives, exactly the same, over and over, an infinite number of times. He calls this his one «truly abyssal idea», and is supposedly the whole point of Zarathustra. Dafuq? The second law of thermodynamics was formulated properly in the 1850s, which led to a good amount of public discussion around the possible heat death of the universe. Simply put the argument goes like this: some parts of the universe are hot, others are cold, if you put a cold thing in contact with a hot thing, they both end up lukewarm. Because there’s way more cold stuff in the universe, we should expect that if we wait long enough, the whole universe will be too cold to support life. This is heat death, sort of.

Nietzsche talks about Darwin in a few places (mostly to argue that his ideas about the overman are not darwinian), so he was clued in to the scientific discourse of the day, and considering that even poets were writing about heat death, it seems likely that he’d heard of this. It may have prompted him to give his own view of cosmology, a cyclical one, eternal return.

There is plenty of modern physics that lend credibility to eternal return. Let’s start with the un-controversial crazy physics, Poincaré’s recurrence theorem.

So… this is kind of crazy because, maybe we are just atoms that jiggle (bodies) in a box (the universe)? And then Nietzsche was right, just wait for the right amount of time and you’ll have to re-live the exact same day! So we should be pretty careful to live lives we’re proud of because we’re going to have to put up with them forever. Now, it’s not actually clear that the universe is a box, nor that we are atoms that jiggle deterministically. But it could be true, if you believe in superdeterminism, even quantum mechanics is deterministic, and suddenly this sounds a lot less whacky.

Now for even more exciting physics. Nobel laureate Roger Penrose has a model he calls conformal cyclic cosmology. Consider this:

So… maybe, just maybe Nietzsche was right about this eternal recurrence thing. What the hell? There are some caveats to this particular model, but the cyclical idea is being worked on.

Modern physics is very weird, this is something we’ll come back to another time. Did you know that causality, i.e. cause precedes effect, is not a thing in modern physics? Sometimes, effect precedes cause!

Silicon Valley’s philosopher, Nazis, and the totalitarian state action heuristic

Europe is a great place to live, but California is a great place to feel alive. I think silicon valley loves Nietzsche because agency is highly valued and encouraged around there. Ambition is cool. Balaji talks about “uncle Fred versus uncle Ted”. Fred is Friedrich Nietzsche, Ted is the unabomber. Fred and Ted agree that human happiness is « the feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome ». Fred talks about « will to power », Ted talks about « the power process ». Where Ted goes wrong is that he argues: well, all the easy problems have been solved, so that leaves trivial problems which don’t satisfy our will to power, or very hard problems which can’t, so we have no agency, and that sucks, let’s go back!

Fred says embrace reality, love it, dance forward into the future, you have agency, use it! You have the potential to be a hero, cultivate it! Nietzsche’s view is much closer to modern psychology’s view of mental health: cultivate agency and gratitude.

Balaji’s point is that this is a new political axis: do we go the stars, or back to the past. The unabomber moved to the forest to send bombs in the mail and return to a pre-technological era. Silicon valley is squarely in the first camp.

Thinking about Nietzsche and SV gave me this idea for a heuristic: if a totalitarian state would do it, we probably should avoid doing it too much; if a totalitarian state would ban it, we should probably do it a bit more.

First fruitful application of the heuristic: totalitarian states exile journalists and poets. Engineers? Not so much.

What sort of education was favoured in the Soviet Union? Technical education, engineering, mathematics, and with as little literature and philosophy as possible. Stalin was a poet as a youth, so he had a bit of a soft spot for them, but of course also realised the danger.

The other day a friendly guy at the WeWork asked me if I’d done the international baccalaureate when I was a teenager. Upon learning I’d done the french baccalaureate instead of IB he said “oh, the one with way too much philosophy?”

Right, god forbid the kids learn to think for themselves.

Consider the Paypal mafia, how come so many of the cool companies in SV were started by guys with philosophy and law degrees? Palantir’s CEO has a PhD in social theory, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman were undergrads in philosophy. Narrative violation.

Incidentally, it’s through Reid’s book recommendation that I discovered Ludwig Wittgenstein, about which I’ll have more to say (this biography of Witt. is one of my favourite books).

Engineers aren’t encouraged to think about civic issues (even civil engineers!), or how they should give meaning to their lives. They’re taught to build bridges, code in React, and sometimes we ask them to build bombs. Very convenient!

A strong state prefers a feeble mind. Do your calculations, write code for us, and shut up. A strong state is bad for the development of a rich culture.

Now consider that every child in silicon valley is encouraged from the youngest age to study programming so that “they can go to Stanford”. hmmm… It’s doubly f’d that increasingly universities seem like finishing schools for how to not have ideas. Harvard is ranked last of 248 universities for its free speech climate, described as « abysmal », an exciting prospect for bright young minds! :)

Returning to Nietzsche, one piece of lore surrounding him is his supposed adoption by the Nazis. I find this so hard to believe, given all the irreverent things he says about « party men » being mindless, and the state being what gets in the way of the greatness of a culture. At some point, I think in Beyond Good and Evil, he even suggests that to breed a master race, one should mix Germans and Jews. It seems crazy that one could mis-read Nietzsche so thoroughly. Perhaps never did a convinced Nazi read a whole Nietzsche book? Or his evil sister, which he kindly describes as an «anti-Semitic cow», did a great job of selectively publishing his works? Hitler attended her funeral, so definitely something odd was going on.

Second fruitful application of the totalitarian state action heuristic

Link to Wittgenstein, a larger than life kind of guy: this man loved music, he grew up surrounded by music prodigies (a few of his siblings), Brahms and Mahler were family friends. «Without music, life would be a mistake» says Nietzsche. Witt. almost never gave talks, and only published one book in his lifetime, but in one talk he did give, about ethics, he has this interesting line: « now I will use the term [ethics] in a slightly larger sense, which includes the most part of what we commonly call aesthetics.» Hmmm… At first this seems a bit suspicious, what’s the link between music, or a painting, and ethics? Is this philosophical nonsense again?

But we can use our earlier heuristic: isn’t it odd how art in totalitarian states is always boring and monotonous statues of aryan masters or heroic workers and nothing else? They ban the other stuff! Perhaps the totalitarian state knows that there’s an ethics/ aesthetics link, and so it suppresses the arts. Sounds pretty practical to me. I haven’t figured out this connection fully yet, but strongly suspect there is something there. Another hint in this direction is this: when someone acts in a truly good way, we’re inclined to say that was a beautiful action. Ok…

My best guess goes something like this. Wittgenstein’s central idea is that language is limited, like a tea cup, you can pour a litre of water in it, but it will only ever hold a teacup’s worth of water. Language is imperfect, we can’t use it to talk about everything. Indeed Nietzsche also has this line where he says that what you can talk about, you’ve already overcome it, understood it. What is communicable is commun (common). It’s the trivial stuff we’re able to talk about easily, the hard stuff is, well, hard. Ethics is hard, Wittgenstein argues it’s in the class of things we cannot properly discuss with language. So what do we do? Well, art! Maybe I can’t describe my emotion it but I can paint it? I’m a taker if anyone has good ideas about this.

The order in which you should read Nietzsche

The first time round I made the mistake of trying to start with Zarathustra and I gave up, mystified. Why is the city called «Motley Cow»?! This seems to be many peoples’ experience. So this time I approached it a bit more carefully. Start with Beyond Good and Evil, it’s a broad and funny book, covering many of his key ideas, and very accessible. Then read The Genealogy of Morals, this will clarify the slave morality / master morality thing. After these two, I think any order works for his other works. The Anti-Christ is a short, hard hitting and absolutely hilarious book, I highly recommend not leaving that one out. A funny line from it is his description of « messieurs the metaphysicians — those albinos of the intellect. » Another analogy that has stuck with me is his riff about the « colourblind utilitarians » seeking « english happiness » (read: a comfortable chair, a scone and a cup of tea, or, equivalently, a job at Google), which as a frenchman who lived in the UK for years was of course very amusing. Twilight of the Idols is good and read-able in a day or two. Right now I’m half-way through Zarathustra, it’s good, but I don’t think I could have appreciated it very much without a lot of prior reading.

Thanks to Coline Rialan, Anthony Kirilov and Domenico Praticó for useful comments.