The History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku by Haris Vlavianos is translated from the Greek by Peter Mackridge. It's an accessible pocket-size paperback which set a particular challenge for its author, who teaches at the American College of Greece. The boiling down of the work of a hundred philosophers, - each one’s thought condensed into seventeen syllables - was not, he admits, an "easy undertaking. "
Vlavionos had to marry the analytical discourse of western philosophy with “the dense, minimalist form of Oriental poetry.” The poet and academic - who was born in Rome in 1957 - hopes he is forgiven for his irreverence and sarcasm within these 120-odd pages. Poetry has other ways of approaching and appropriating truth, he notes, signalling the importance of humour.
Humour there may be, but the book is, of course, a serious undertaking, drawing on the pre-Socratic period to the Middle Ages. The Renaiasance yields up a slender three philosophers succeeding centuries a few more each, with a resounding 42 20th century philosophers.
The lines you read here in prominent type may have the form of haiku, but they are sometimes presented as pithy summaries, being distillations from far greater theses - think a far more stringent approach than John Crace’s Digested Read in the Guardian.
Max Weber on the Protesant ethic as haiku-ed by Vlavionos runs as follows: Martin Luther was /the chief originator/ of capitalism - you can almost see the word ‘ discuss’ right after it.
On the other hand, John Stuart Mill on Liberty is represented by the following: Am I bothering you?/ No? Then I will eat as much/Pudding as I want! As for Boethius (480- 525 AD) it's humour at the poor man's expense: "Any moment now/ I'm going to lose my head./ But I'm philosophical.
Paddy Kehoe
