I returned home from a class today to find two parcels in the letter box. Two books that I’d more or less forgotten that I’d ordered.
Their arrival was timely as today is my birthday.
One is The City and Man by Leo Strauss. The other is Machiavelli’s God by Maurizio Viroli.
The other day I published a blog post about Strauss and Machiavelli among others, on the topic of interpreting Plato. That blog post was itself an extension of my musings on Talib’s book, Skin in the Game. It was on questions arising from those blog posts that I was prompted to order the books that arrived today.
I ordered Strauss’ The City and Man to find out more about his view of Plato. I came across Klosko’s critique of Strauss’ view of Plato only after I’d ordered the book, but I will delay reading the critique until I’ve finished The City and Man and also Allan Bloom’s introduction to The Republic.
That project may have to wait for a while as I’ve already jumped into Viroli’s Machiavelli’s God which I anticipate will help me to fill in my view that Machiavelli was not an atheist or even “anti-Christian” so much as critical of the Papacy and of the more debilitating forms of the religion.
Meanwhile, I am pressing on with the Audible version of Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature, and am also intending to start reading Tylor Lovin’s book about Jordan Peterson, Why Tell The Truth.
I included two birthday cards in the photo, one from my sister and one from my aunt. It seems they were both thinking along the same lines, apparently because in most of my Facebook photos I am brandishing a glass of beer. Apparently, personal branding works!
DH