Jan 23– “The Art of Persuasion” by Pascal (1660) translated by O. W. Wright

Finally, a music location/time I haven't looked up yet!

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Jan 23– “The Art of Persuasion” by Pascal (1660) translated by O. W. Wright

    Tonight, I finally realized the translators are listed on the title page. I feel a little foolish, but at least I know for the future. Might go back and add them on some of the others at some point. 

    I also had Pascal mixed up with Pythagoras for a while, and was very confused by the fact that he was a 17th century Frenchman instead of an ancient Greek. Wrong "P" triangle guy.

    After complaining about the lack of philosophy/essays last week, we got a doozy of one this week. I don't know if this is Pascal or Wright, but this is incredibly wordy, repetitive. The first paragraph is basically, "persuading people is when you persuade them of things and the way you persuade them."

    We then get a page or so about how we should always use logic, not feelings, but we should have feelings for God, but mankind is corrupt so their feelings about most things are wrong. It goes on in similar repetitive/contradictory circles for a couple pages. 

    Once we get to the actual rules, he promptly discards a third of them. The remainder are sound, but he again repeats them over and over without actually explaining effectively (though I don't know how much you need to explain about "don't use words people don't know in definitions").

    Then we get some musing about people inadvertently copying other's ideas, and how different fields are related. Interestingly, John McWhorter posted a similar article about plagiarism in the New York Times today.

    Overall, this is another case like Mazzini earlier this month. He's mostly right, but this is two or three page essay stretched out to triple that, with a couple of questionable rants tacked on for fun.