Philosophy

Is “anything and everything” too broad of a topic for a web log? I suppose that’s what my blog name implies, but after writing mostly about animation and the occasional novel or graphic novel for a couple years, I’ve felt odd writing about works of history in the last month, and now I’m branching out even further.

Well, I’ll consider starting a second blog or something if people complain.

Anway, the twelfth book of the year is the rarest thing of all for me to cover: a new release. Michael Anissimov published his e-book A Critique of Democracy: A Guide for Neoreactionaries only about a week ago. Since I’ve already finished books on the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and an e-book collection of Sir Robert Filmer’s works, it seemed on-topic enough to take a detour from The Guns of August. The book is short (about seventy printed pages), and offers an overview of some of the basic arguments against democratic government. Anissimov maintains an even tone throughout and frequently refers to other authors and scholars, including several who wouldn’t agree with his own position, so the book reads more like a good textbook than a work of polemics. For example, though the enthusiasm for democratic government began in the Enlightenment, he doesn’t take a dogmatic stance on that movement as a whole. He writes, “The Enlightenment was an experiment. Some parts of that experiment did well, like the Scientific Method, others not so well, like democratic government.”

Mishima Yukio has quickly become one of my favourite authors. The hardest part of writing a post about him, though, is probably deciding just what to focus on, as he was tremendously prolific. In his 20-year career, he averaged at least one full novel a year, one full play a year, several short plays and short stories, as well as some essays and poems. I suppose the best place to start would be Sun and Steel, where he explains the philosophy and aesthetic that underlies his novels.