What I've Read - Siddhartha, Watchmen and Philosophy

I first read Siddhartha years ago. It, an encyclopedia set [which I'd read for fun, like a true geek] and the book A Boy's Sex Life were staples of the tiny bookshelf that used to be kept in the dining room. [I think it's that one I've linked to. The dude who wrote it was a priest, and that's probably the only way a book on that topic would get into my pseudo/flexible Catholic home.]

You know, parents... if you leave a book with that title out in the open, it's gonna get read when you're not around. Which, in hindsight, was probably the plan. Since that book and my dad's porn was the only sex-ed I ever had. Never had "the talk" from anyone...

So, anyways, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Chalk it up to the faulty memory of youth, and the 20 years since I'd cracked it open, but I'd thought that I'd remembered it as a biography of Siddhartha Guatama - the Buddha himself. Nope. Siddhartha touches on the buddhist philosophies, but the main character of the book is another Siddhartha, who follows a path remarkably similar to the original Buddha, who he meets and is called Gotama in the book. Regardless, about the search for meaning in life... taking the path like the Buddha himself, through ascetism and hedonism, till finding that elusive middle way. It's lyrical writing quality is still impressive, and what I thought was most profound in the book is the most simplest of realizations, of course -

"Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. I suspected it when I was still a youth and it was this that drove me away from teachers.

...I can love a stone... and a tree or a piece of bark. These are things and one can love things. But one cannot love words. Therefore teachings are of no use to me; they have no hardness, no softness, nor colors, no corners, no smell, no taste - they have nothing but words... Samsara and Nirvana are only words... Nirvana is not a thing; there is only the word Nirvana.

...It may be a thought, but... I do not differentiate very much between thoughts and words... I do not attach great importance to thoughts either...

...But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."

The world is full of things... don't mistake your thoughts about those things for the things themselves.

I also picked up, true geek that I am, Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series) by William Irwin (Editor), Mark D. White (Editor). With the movie coming out, there's a wealth of material out there. And as Watchmen, along with Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Denny O'Neil's zen inspired The Question series in the late 1980s, in a lot of ways kicked off my interest in all things philosophical. I can draw a fairly direct line from my interest in existentialism to the Nietzche/abyss quote that appears in Chapter/Issue 6 of Watchmen, and the whole series is washed in issues of fate, determinism, nihilism and existentialism.

The book itself, like any collection of essays, is hit and miss. Some seemed to me as overly academic, and simply used the Watchmen comic as a jumping off point for whatever philosophy they were ruminating on. The more fulfilling essays, for me personally, where the ones that really delved into the philosophical intricacies in the book itself.

I particularly dug the one on the Nietzchian Ubermensch, the one on means, ends and authoritarianism and the one on memory and whether memory and thought construct the personality, or are constructed by it. Some fascinating stuff.