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Аристос
Two years after The Collector had brought him international recognition and a year before he published The Magus, John Fowles set out his ideas on life in The Aristos. The chief inspiration behind them was the fifth century BC philosopher Heraclitus. In the world he posited of constant and chaotic flux the supreme good was the Aristos, 'of a person or thing, the best or most excellent its kind'.'What I was really trying to define was an ideal of human freedom (the Aristos) in an unfree world,' wrote Fowles in 1965. He called a materialistic and over-conforming culture to reckoning with his views on a myriad of subjects - pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, Christianity, humanism, existentialism, socialism
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1964
41 people are currently reading
891 people want to read
About the author
John Fowles
117 books3,017 followersJohn Robert Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town in Essex. He recalled the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles said "I have tried to escape ever since."
Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attending the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began compulsory military service in 1945 with training at Dartmoor, where he spent the next two years. World War II ended shortly after his training began so Fowles never came near combat, and by 1947 he had decided that the military life was not for him.
Fowles then spent four years at Oxford, where he discovered the writings of the French existentialists. In particular he admired Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose writings corresponded with his own ideas about conformity and the will of the individual. He received a degree in French in 1950 and began to consider a career as a writer.
Several teaching jobs followed: a year lecturing in English literature at the University of Poitiers, France; two years teaching English at Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai; and finally, between 1954 and 1963, teaching English at St. Godric's College in London, where he ultimately served as the department head.
The time spent in Greece was of great importance to Fowles. During his tenure on the island he began to write poetry and to overcome a long-time repression about writing. Between 1952 and 1960 he wrote several novels but offered none to a publisher, considering them all incomplete in some way and too lengthy.
In late 1960 Fowles completed the first draft of The Collector in just four weeks. He continued to revise it until the summer of 1962, when he submitted it to a publisher; it appeared in the spring of 1963 and was an immediate best-seller. The critical acclaim and commercial success of the book allowed Fowles to devote all of his time to writing.
The Aristos, a collection of philosophical thoughts and musings on art, human nature and other subjects, appeared the following year. Then in 1965, The Magus - drafts of which Fowles had been working on for over a decade - was published.
The most commercially successful of Fowles' novels, The French Lieutenant's Woman, appeared in 1969. It resembles a Victorian novel in structure and detail, while pushing the traditional boundaries of narrative in a very modern manner.
In the 1970s Fowles worked on a variety of literary projects--including a series of essays on nature--and in 1973 he published a collection of poetry, Poems.
Daniel Martin, a long and somewhat autobiographical novel spanning over 40 years in the life of a screenwriter, appeared in 1977, along with a revised version of The Magus. These were followed by Mantissa (1982), a fable about a novelist's struggle with his muse; and A Maggot (1985), an 18th century mystery which combines science fiction and history.
In addition to The Aristos, Fowles wrote a variety of non-fiction pieces including many essays, reviews, and forewords/afterwords to other writers' novels. He also wrote the text for several photographic compilations.
From 1968, Fowles lived in the small harbour town of Lyme Regis, Dorset. His interest in the town's local history resulted in his appointment as curator of the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he filled for a decade.
Wormholes, a book of essays, was published in May 1998. The first comprehensive biography on Fowles, John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds, was published in 2004, and the first volume of his journals appeared the same year (followed recently by volume two).
John Fowles passed away on November 5, 2005 after a long illness.
Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attending the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began compulsory military service in 1945 with training at Dartmoor, where he spent the next two years. World War II ended shortly after his training began so Fowles never came near combat, and by 1947 he had decided that the military life was not for him.
Fowles then spent four years at Oxford, where he discovered the writings of the French existentialists. In particular he admired Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose writings corresponded with his own ideas about conformity and the will of the individual. He received a degree in French in 1950 and began to consider a career as a writer.
Several teaching jobs followed: a year lecturing in English literature at the University of Poitiers, France; two years teaching English at Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai; and finally, between 1954 and 1963, teaching English at St. Godric's College in London, where he ultimately served as the department head.
The time spent in Greece was of great importance to Fowles. During his tenure on the island he began to write poetry and to overcome a long-time repression about writing. Between 1952 and 1960 he wrote several novels but offered none to a publisher, considering them all incomplete in some way and too lengthy.
In late 1960 Fowles completed the first draft of The Collector in just four weeks. He continued to revise it until the summer of 1962, when he submitted it to a publisher; it appeared in the spring of 1963 and was an immediate best-seller. The critical acclaim and commercial success of the book allowed Fowles to devote all of his time to writing.
The Aristos, a collection of philosophical thoughts and musings on art, human nature and other subjects, appeared the following year. Then in 1965, The Magus - drafts of which Fowles had been working on for over a decade - was published.
The most commercially successful of Fowles' novels, The French Lieutenant's Woman, appeared in 1969. It resembles a Victorian novel in structure and detail, while pushing the traditional boundaries of narrative in a very modern manner.
In the 1970s Fowles worked on a variety of literary projects--including a series of essays on nature--and in 1973 he published a collection of poetry, Poems.
Daniel Martin, a long and somewhat autobiographical novel spanning over 40 years in the life of a screenwriter, appeared in 1977, along with a revised version of The Magus. These were followed by Mantissa (1982), a fable about a novelist's struggle with his muse; and A Maggot (1985), an 18th century mystery which combines science fiction and history.
In addition to The Aristos, Fowles wrote a variety of non-fiction pieces including many essays, reviews, and forewords/afterwords to other writers' novels. He also wrote the text for several photographic compilations.
From 1968, Fowles lived in the small harbour town of Lyme Regis, Dorset. His interest in the town's local history resulted in his appointment as curator of the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he filled for a decade.
Wormholes, a book of essays, was published in May 1998. The first comprehensive biography on Fowles, John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds, was published in 2004, and the first volume of his journals appeared the same year (followed recently by volume two).
John Fowles passed away on November 5, 2005 after a long illness.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 12, 2017
Sıkılmışlığın zirvesinde bir dosta kaçıp soluklanmak gibi..
March 3, 2014
• The Aristos was not written to persuade but rather to declare, boldly (as well as baldly) and unconditionally, and to provoke.
• Its title probably doesn't mean what you think it means. It comes from ancient Greek, is pronounced with an emphasis on the first syllable, and means roughly "the best for a given situation." I know this because John Fowles told me so in his preface.
• It was written under the influence of a "love-affaire with Gallic clarity and concision" (yes, Fowles used here, as he tended to do elsewhere, the French form "affaire"), in particular the work of writers such as Pascal and La Rochefoucauld. It's often aphoristic. If you like that kind of thing, you'll probably like this.
• In case you're not sure whether you like the aphoristic kind of thing, here are some examples from The Aristos:
Such lines convey a lot. A smart reviewer, one who wants only to allow others to form enough of an impression to judge whether to pick up the work themselves, would probably do nothing but quote such lines. Today (to say nothing of other times), I'm not a smart reviewer.
• The text may also remind you of either (or both):
• Lacking any better form of expression at the moment, I'd say this book is great fun. As with Fowles's title, my use of the word "fun" probably doesn't mean what you think it means, but there's no need for me to explain.
• Its title probably doesn't mean what you think it means. It comes from ancient Greek, is pronounced with an emphasis on the first syllable, and means roughly "the best for a given situation." I know this because John Fowles told me so in his preface.
• It was written under the influence of a "love-affaire with Gallic clarity and concision" (yes, Fowles used here, as he tended to do elsewhere, the French form "affaire"), in particular the work of writers such as Pascal and La Rochefoucauld. It's often aphoristic. If you like that kind of thing, you'll probably like this.
• In case you're not sure whether you like the aphoristic kind of thing, here are some examples from The Aristos:
† "If there is an active good god he has, since 1914, paid very poor wages."
† "The function of death is to put tension into life; and the more we increase the length and the security of individual existence then the more tension we remove from it."
† "We say 'He lives in the past' and we say it with pity or contempt; yet most of us live in the future."
† "If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice."
Such lines convey a lot. A smart reviewer, one who wants only to allow others to form enough of an impression to judge whether to pick up the work themselves, would probably do nothing but quote such lines. Today (to say nothing of other times), I'm not a smart reviewer.
• The text may also remind you of either (or both):
† Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as at least one other Goodreads reviewer pointed out. However, what this book adds up to is not, I think, much like the Tractatus at all.
† The views of Heraclitus. The last example I quoted above comes from Heraclitus, via a selection given by Fowles in an appendix.
• Lacking any better form of expression at the moment, I'd say this book is great fun. As with Fowles's title, my use of the word "fun" probably doesn't mean what you think it means, but there's no need for me to explain.
March 25, 2017
Çok fazla konuda fikir ayrılığımız var diyeyim...
January 26, 2021
I mean, its brilliant, its beautiful....its making me love philosophy all over again. It's def-ly on re-read again. Please read it - if you have brains, u will enjoy it a lot.
March 17, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in May 2011.
The title may suggest "À la lanterne les aristos!", the cry of the French revolutionary mob in The Scarlet Pimpernel. But in fact Fowles is using the Greek word aristos, meaning "the best" without the reference to hereditary privilege it now has in its best known English descendant, aristocracy, or being restricted in application to people, as the same word has it. This is a book which describes Fowles' personal philosophy, which is all about the best (in his view) relative to each particular situation. Most of The Aristos originated when Fowles was in his twenties, but the material was revised for its initial publication and again for this edition.
In the introduction, Fowles - who studied French at university - cites his models as French, particularly Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Chamfort (and also mentioning Montaigne). Having only read Pascal and Montaigne from this list, I can see the relationship, but what The Aristos really reminds me of is André Gide's Fruits of the Earth, also the product of a university student of great literary ability who was a left-leaning amateur philosopher.
Not that literary quality is particularly apparent here - The Aristos is written in note form. Note form is not unknown in philosophy, obviously, and, true to his influences, The Aristos is much more like Pascal's Pensées than, say, Witgennstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The latter is much harder to read, perhaps because it is even more compressed than the other works. Fowles explains to the reader that the form is used so that it acts as a bald statement of a philosophy, not as an attempt to persuade anyone else through its artistry. This is somewhat disingenuous, as he then almost immediately slips in a rhetorical metaphor, which is perhaps more artistically pleasing than illuminating of his meaning. He says that life is like being adrift on a raft in the middle of an ocean, the point of the image being that there is no way to know the shores beyond the horizon might be like, so likewise there is no real way to be sure about what happened before birth or will happen after death.
Fowles' basic argument in The Aristos is based on his reaction to one of the most famous ideas in Pascal's Pensées. This idea is known as "Pascal's Wager", that the rational man should believe in God, because there is nothing to lose in the next life if he is wrong, and everything to gain if he is right. (This doesn't work for me personally, as I don't see belief as something I can turn on and off as this suggests is necessary; but that is off the topic.) But, Fowles says, in the second half of the twentieth century, after the horrors of the two world wars, to choose to believe in a Christian God is no longer as reasonable, as it is harder to accept the concept of a God who loves his creation, making the choice between belief and atheism less balanced than it was in the seventeenth century. Thus the rational person should assume that this life is all there is; and this in turn means that we have a moral duty to make this life as good as possible for as many as possible, which we can do by aiming to reduce social injustice and inequality.
This may not be convincing (it is rather more so in its full form than summarised as drastically as I have done here). The intention is not so much to convert as to give an alternative to both capitalism and communism, neither of which, in Fowles' opinion, provide both "equal access to the chief sources of happiness" and "the maximum freedom [to the individual] to decide what these sources should be". Indeed, he goes so far as to suggest that one or other of the two ideologies will collapse in 1989 if they fail to bring greater equality (picking the date as the two hundredth anniversary of the French revolution): a remarkably prescient prediction, as it turned out.
It could be argued that this philosophy seems rather glib for a writer from a comparatively privileged background: born in the West, well educated (at a time when class distinctions mattered more in British universities than they do today, despite all the fuss about the Oxbridge intake from private schools), well respected in his chosen profession, and so on - a "champagne Socialist". Fowles himself recognises this potential problem, and argues that for the good of society, socialism cannot be left as the province of the poorest workers. His response is to call for us to seek to promote greater equality of opportunity (which he carefully differentiates from equality of innate talent); if we don't do so, he says, we are just selfish and ultimately living futile lives.
The inspiration for The Aristos is explicitly the ideas of Heraclitus, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, whose work survives solely in quotations and descriptions in the writing of others; it is his use of the word aristos which Fowles has followed. Fowles ends his book with an appendix containing the major Heraclitan material, in his own translations: four pages in all but a useful background for the philosophically inclined reader (and I am pretty sure that this is a book which will not attract any other kind).
Is Fowles convincing? Overall, not really, though most people will agree with at least some part of what he has to say. There is much food for thought, and the whole of The Aristos is interesting and readable: the layout may look like the Tractatus, but Fowles is much more easily comprehensible. Clearly an important document for deeper understanding of his fiction, The Aristos is more, as an intelligent person's reaction to the modern wold, it is a fascinating byway in twentieth century philosophy.
The title may suggest "À la lanterne les aristos!", the cry of the French revolutionary mob in The Scarlet Pimpernel. But in fact Fowles is using the Greek word aristos, meaning "the best" without the reference to hereditary privilege it now has in its best known English descendant, aristocracy, or being restricted in application to people, as the same word has it. This is a book which describes Fowles' personal philosophy, which is all about the best (in his view) relative to each particular situation. Most of The Aristos originated when Fowles was in his twenties, but the material was revised for its initial publication and again for this edition.
In the introduction, Fowles - who studied French at university - cites his models as French, particularly Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Chamfort (and also mentioning Montaigne). Having only read Pascal and Montaigne from this list, I can see the relationship, but what The Aristos really reminds me of is André Gide's Fruits of the Earth, also the product of a university student of great literary ability who was a left-leaning amateur philosopher.
Not that literary quality is particularly apparent here - The Aristos is written in note form. Note form is not unknown in philosophy, obviously, and, true to his influences, The Aristos is much more like Pascal's Pensées than, say, Witgennstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The latter is much harder to read, perhaps because it is even more compressed than the other works. Fowles explains to the reader that the form is used so that it acts as a bald statement of a philosophy, not as an attempt to persuade anyone else through its artistry. This is somewhat disingenuous, as he then almost immediately slips in a rhetorical metaphor, which is perhaps more artistically pleasing than illuminating of his meaning. He says that life is like being adrift on a raft in the middle of an ocean, the point of the image being that there is no way to know the shores beyond the horizon might be like, so likewise there is no real way to be sure about what happened before birth or will happen after death.
Fowles' basic argument in The Aristos is based on his reaction to one of the most famous ideas in Pascal's Pensées. This idea is known as "Pascal's Wager", that the rational man should believe in God, because there is nothing to lose in the next life if he is wrong, and everything to gain if he is right. (This doesn't work for me personally, as I don't see belief as something I can turn on and off as this suggests is necessary; but that is off the topic.) But, Fowles says, in the second half of the twentieth century, after the horrors of the two world wars, to choose to believe in a Christian God is no longer as reasonable, as it is harder to accept the concept of a God who loves his creation, making the choice between belief and atheism less balanced than it was in the seventeenth century. Thus the rational person should assume that this life is all there is; and this in turn means that we have a moral duty to make this life as good as possible for as many as possible, which we can do by aiming to reduce social injustice and inequality.
This may not be convincing (it is rather more so in its full form than summarised as drastically as I have done here). The intention is not so much to convert as to give an alternative to both capitalism and communism, neither of which, in Fowles' opinion, provide both "equal access to the chief sources of happiness" and "the maximum freedom [to the individual] to decide what these sources should be". Indeed, he goes so far as to suggest that one or other of the two ideologies will collapse in 1989 if they fail to bring greater equality (picking the date as the two hundredth anniversary of the French revolution): a remarkably prescient prediction, as it turned out.
It could be argued that this philosophy seems rather glib for a writer from a comparatively privileged background: born in the West, well educated (at a time when class distinctions mattered more in British universities than they do today, despite all the fuss about the Oxbridge intake from private schools), well respected in his chosen profession, and so on - a "champagne Socialist". Fowles himself recognises this potential problem, and argues that for the good of society, socialism cannot be left as the province of the poorest workers. His response is to call for us to seek to promote greater equality of opportunity (which he carefully differentiates from equality of innate talent); if we don't do so, he says, we are just selfish and ultimately living futile lives.
The inspiration for The Aristos is explicitly the ideas of Heraclitus, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, whose work survives solely in quotations and descriptions in the writing of others; it is his use of the word aristos which Fowles has followed. Fowles ends his book with an appendix containing the major Heraclitan material, in his own translations: four pages in all but a useful background for the philosophically inclined reader (and I am pretty sure that this is a book which will not attract any other kind).
Is Fowles convincing? Overall, not really, though most people will agree with at least some part of what he has to say. There is much food for thought, and the whole of The Aristos is interesting and readable: the layout may look like the Tractatus, but Fowles is much more easily comprehensible. Clearly an important document for deeper understanding of his fiction, The Aristos is more, as an intelligent person's reaction to the modern wold, it is a fascinating byway in twentieth century philosophy.
September 5, 2015
I read The Magus. Only once and in the original version. I read The Collector and The French Lieutenant's Woman. I saw the movies made from the latter two. I guess it would be okay to say that back in the day I was a Fowles fan. But I don't remember ever hearing about or reading about The Aristos. I'm a bit surprised because it seems a given that in The Sixties it would have garnered some tidbit of fame even though in the realms of the Tao and of existential philosophy, which this volume plumbs, the conversation was dominated by the likes of Alan Watts and Jean-Paul Sartre. So, I've come to it late and quite by accident. I often felt, as I was reading, that I could copy out for further consideration and meditation nearly every paragraph. I suppose they reminded me of my own flirtations with taoism and existentialism before, like Fowles it seems to me, I took the grand leap into the unknown without the crutch of either just as in their purest form each demands. I could not help, though, to retain for further consideration some of Fowles's aphorisms, if you will, on such meaty topics as education, as poetry, as, yes, politics. Definitely worth the week and some it gave me.
September 28, 2019
This is what I will remember from this book:
Before opposing, ask these questions:
To what extent do I enjoy opposing? If I could annihilate in one blow all that I oppose, would I make that blow?
Will my opposition weaken or strengthen the thing opposed?
Is it a pose or reality?
Before opposing, ask these questions:
To what extent do I enjoy opposing? If I could annihilate in one blow all that I oppose, would I make that blow?
Will my opposition weaken or strengthen the thing opposed?
Is it a pose or reality?
December 11, 2011
I had such high hopes for this. I was ready to be dazzled by a manifesto of an author I have always held in high regard. It was as dry and interesting as white bread. Such a disappointment.
November 10, 2021
Absolutely amazing. Written in short numbered aphorisms, this book touches on topics such as life/death, religion, psychology, science and education. This would have been quite a risk to publish after the success of his first novel 'The Collector'. It also baffles me that 'The Magus' was the first book Fowles wrote, but the third published.
Some stand our aphorisms:
“Man has had to accept that his body cannot survive death. So he takes the most inaccessible and mysterious part of it, the brain, and claims that some of its functionings survive death.”
“But I believe each human psyche has a fourth element, which, using a word indicated by the Freudian terminology, I call the nemo. By this I mean not only ‘nobody’ but also the state of being nobody – ‘nobodiness’. In short, just as physicists now postulate an anti-matter, so must we consider the possibility that there exists in the human psyche an anti-ego. This is the nemo”
“An informed man of fifty is the equal at the polling booth of a shopgirl who left school when she was fifteen and knows no more of the real issues on which she is voting than a parrot. They must, to satisfy democracy, be equal at the polling booth; the informed man of fifty would probably be the first to say so. Yet there is a cruelty in this situation, an irony, and an absurdity. An intelligent man is not the same as an ignoramus; yet this is what the polling booth says”
Some stand our aphorisms:
“Man has had to accept that his body cannot survive death. So he takes the most inaccessible and mysterious part of it, the brain, and claims that some of its functionings survive death.”
“But I believe each human psyche has a fourth element, which, using a word indicated by the Freudian terminology, I call the nemo. By this I mean not only ‘nobody’ but also the state of being nobody – ‘nobodiness’. In short, just as physicists now postulate an anti-matter, so must we consider the possibility that there exists in the human psyche an anti-ego. This is the nemo”
“An informed man of fifty is the equal at the polling booth of a shopgirl who left school when she was fifteen and knows no more of the real issues on which she is voting than a parrot. They must, to satisfy democracy, be equal at the polling booth; the informed man of fifty would probably be the first to say so. Yet there is a cruelty in this situation, an irony, and an absurdity. An intelligent man is not the same as an ignoramus; yet this is what the polling booth says”
August 24, 2019
Through what's prefaced with an insecure humblebrag and largely feels like a vanity project disguised as a neurotic's spat with his ideologies, Fowles manages to:
1. Argue that inequality is a necessary and natural force in the world but also that wealth inequality is bad and should be "evolved" away from
2. Tie self-discovery to anti-statism while using the randomness of circumstances that leads to inequality to promote decreasing wealth inequality, somehow
3. Analog societal "evolution" to a spinning top because there is nothing to "evolve towards," while also proposing a social structure based around leisured learning towards which to evolve
4. Distinguish between Capitalism's "unfair free" society and Socialism's "fair unfree" one as if this were an aphorism and not a jumble of loaded words
5. Describe Socialism as a system driven by envy and Capitalism as a system driven by happiness (speaking of loaded words) which each fulfill psychological demands and need one another - as if this didn't already sound enough like Peterson's chaos dragon/walled garden nonsense binaries
6. Posit that "the male and female are the two most powerful biological principals" (speaking of Peterson's nonsense binaries)
7. Coin the term "nemo" to describe an "anti-ego" in Freudian psychology equivalent to anti-matter in physics - outside of the non-clarity of positing that (as Fowles does) flat earthers refuse to believe evidence because they have created a self-structuring belief to fend off non-being in resistance to the self-destruction of being the lesser in a perceived hierarchy while also claiming, again, the inevitability of inequality - is a weird word to imply you regularly use by claiming it forms a fundamental aspect of your worldview
8. Make understanding him more difficult by regularly use words like "inequality" and "evolve" in aggressively singular ways
9. Call the then developing Buddhism in the west "Lamaism"
10. Defend population control policies without evidencing overpopulation being an issue
11. Claim a universal language is needed that has "phonetic spelling," is adaptable and basic, and is "analytic, not synthetic." Coincidentally for this English writer, it's English, an already almost global second language - totally not because of the utility of learning an imperialist hegemon's language (or being forcibly taught it), by the way, no, but because "it is the best tool available"
12. Write "Because I am a man death is my wife; and now she has stripped, she is beautiful, she wants me to strip, to be her mate....she wants me to make love, not like some man-eating spider, to consume me, but like a wife in love, so that we can celebrate our total sympathy, be fertile and bear children" (Bro, you just posted cringe)
The longest blog post to be printed as an actual book was published in 1964, and then republished in 1970. Some might call it a clever take on autobiography and brave for its forthrightness. Maybe this performing of self is both those things. Yet no matter how much I agree with his politics (there are cross-sections) I found The Aristos to be posturing and evasive, its refusals and obstinacies exactly parallel to the flat earther in his above example, full of many ideas about life and no life. In Fowles' own words:
"All inner-feeling thus becomes a disguised form of the self-portrait. Everywhere the artist sees himself as in a mirror. The craft of the art suffers; craftsmanship even becomes 'insincere' and 'commercial.' Even worse, in order to conceal the triviality, banality, or illogic of his inner self, the artist may introduce deliberately hermetic and ambiguous elements into his art."
TL;DR: Read Sheila Heti's How Should A Person Be instead. It's probably what this book was when it was originally published, and will likely age about as well.
1. Argue that inequality is a necessary and natural force in the world but also that wealth inequality is bad and should be "evolved" away from
2. Tie self-discovery to anti-statism while using the randomness of circumstances that leads to inequality to promote decreasing wealth inequality, somehow
3. Analog societal "evolution" to a spinning top because there is nothing to "evolve towards," while also proposing a social structure based around leisured learning towards which to evolve
4. Distinguish between Capitalism's "unfair free" society and Socialism's "fair unfree" one as if this were an aphorism and not a jumble of loaded words
5. Describe Socialism as a system driven by envy and Capitalism as a system driven by happiness (speaking of loaded words) which each fulfill psychological demands and need one another - as if this didn't already sound enough like Peterson's chaos dragon/walled garden nonsense binaries
6. Posit that "the male and female are the two most powerful biological principals" (speaking of Peterson's nonsense binaries)
7. Coin the term "nemo" to describe an "anti-ego" in Freudian psychology equivalent to anti-matter in physics - outside of the non-clarity of positing that (as Fowles does) flat earthers refuse to believe evidence because they have created a self-structuring belief to fend off non-being in resistance to the self-destruction of being the lesser in a perceived hierarchy while also claiming, again, the inevitability of inequality - is a weird word to imply you regularly use by claiming it forms a fundamental aspect of your worldview
8. Make understanding him more difficult by regularly use words like "inequality" and "evolve" in aggressively singular ways
9. Call the then developing Buddhism in the west "Lamaism"
10. Defend population control policies without evidencing overpopulation being an issue
11. Claim a universal language is needed that has "phonetic spelling," is adaptable and basic, and is "analytic, not synthetic." Coincidentally for this English writer, it's English, an already almost global second language - totally not because of the utility of learning an imperialist hegemon's language (or being forcibly taught it), by the way, no, but because "it is the best tool available"
12. Write "Because I am a man death is my wife; and now she has stripped, she is beautiful, she wants me to strip, to be her mate....she wants me to make love, not like some man-eating spider, to consume me, but like a wife in love, so that we can celebrate our total sympathy, be fertile and bear children" (Bro, you just posted cringe)
The longest blog post to be printed as an actual book was published in 1964, and then republished in 1970. Some might call it a clever take on autobiography and brave for its forthrightness. Maybe this performing of self is both those things. Yet no matter how much I agree with his politics (there are cross-sections) I found The Aristos to be posturing and evasive, its refusals and obstinacies exactly parallel to the flat earther in his above example, full of many ideas about life and no life. In Fowles' own words:
"All inner-feeling thus becomes a disguised form of the self-portrait. Everywhere the artist sees himself as in a mirror. The craft of the art suffers; craftsmanship even becomes 'insincere' and 'commercial.' Even worse, in order to conceal the triviality, banality, or illogic of his inner self, the artist may introduce deliberately hermetic and ambiguous elements into his art."
TL;DR: Read Sheila Heti's How Should A Person Be instead. It's probably what this book was when it was originally published, and will likely age about as well.
December 3, 2015
Mes bendraujame su pasauliu per operacinę sistemą – mūsų pasaulio suvokimą, per tai, kaip mumyse aprašytas pasaulis,jame vykstantys procesai ir kur jame yra mūsų vieta. Tai yra pas visus, net pas Mauglius, kuriems pasaulį aprašė vilkai ir kurie su pasauliu sąveikauja kaip vilkai, tačiau apie tai susimąsto ir apie tai ima rašyti tik nedaugelis, tik taip vadinami filosofai. Būna, kad apie tai parašo ir rašytojai. Kartais esė forma, o kartais ir filosofinio traktato pavidalu, kaip atsitiko su Johnu Fowlesu, kuris ėmė ir išdrįso savo požiūrį į būtį išdėstyti knygoje Aristos. Sveikintina, manau, kad ir kitiems verta tai padaryti, aišku, spausdinti ir skelbti nebūtina. Tiesiog padaryti tai sau. Pasidaryti savo gyvenimo suvokimo inventorizaciją, atsisėdus priešais tuščią popieriaus lapą kaip priešais veidrodį.
November 16, 2012
a strange, ultimately inspiring work of philosophy from one of the best writers of human character (if you don't believe me, read The Magus or The Collector. then take a look at this.) it's reminiscient of Wittgenstein's Tractatus in terms of format. you might not always agree with what he says, but it'll hot-poker your mind for hours after you put it down.
January 6, 2024
Deserves a read, later on in life, when the deeper meanings have more weight, and relevance; that being said, exceptional as per his norm.
September 8, 2022
THE FUTURE ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE
I first read this book in the 1980s for general interest, then a decade later for support materials when I was teaching The French Lieutenant's Woman at ‘A’ level (UK). This third reading was triggered partly by my continuing search for a philosophy that helps with daily life and partly curiosity to see how well it has aged since its first publication in 1964.
The philosophical material stands up quite well, based as it is on thoughts and ideas that have already lasted for thousands of years. The parts that cover Fowles’s picture of modern society and his vision of its future are less impressive but still interesting.
My main complaint about the book is the scatter-gun approach that takes over at times, especially when Fowles offers general political analysis. He frankly admits that this is a book of notes and thoughts rather than a complete thread of argument, but there are times when he could and should have presented his thoughts in a sequence of connected stages to make the general picture clearer and his ideas more convincing.
Other Goodreaders have noted the aphoristic nature of Fowles’s work here, and there are many neatly condensed thoughts on offer. A couple of examples:
“What the state considers a good teacher and what is a good teacher are always two different things. A good teacher never teaches only his subject.”
“We object to battery hens; but we are turning ourselves into battery humans.”
That second quote is an almost prophetic insight into modern life under capitalism, but much of Fowles’s vision of the future is flawed, as he believes ‘cybernetics’ will usher in an age of increased leisure for ordinary people. I have heard this idea iterated all my long life and I suspect my grandchildren will be hearing it all their lives too without it ever becoming a reality.
Fowles makes some other slips, failing to differentiate between males and females regarding maturity despite recognising feminist values; and how about this for intellectual complacency: “The terrible thing about poverty is less that it starves than that it stagnates as it starves.” Only a man who has never starved could say that, surely?
But a lot of this book remains interesting and stimulating sixty years on, especially in the areas of moral, social and of course existential philosophy. His reflections on religion seem largely limited to Christianity but are lively and useful; and, as we might expect, Fowles is especially good when espousing the value of the arts in general and literature (which he calls ‘poetry’) in particular.
I enjoyed his observation that modern (1960s) intellectuals were being replaced by “visuals”, people whose frame of reference is restricted to design/film/tv/decoration etc with minimal awareness of deeper thought or meaning: “A visual is always more interested in style than in content, and more concerned to see than to understand. A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police; he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.”
Fowles approaches the conclusion of his arguments with a rallying call for the proper valuing of the poet in society. “If we think poetry of least concern among our arts, we are like generals who disband their best fighting troops.”
As a poet myself I feel obliged to reply, ‘Well, maybe, but…..’
I first read this book in the 1980s for general interest, then a decade later for support materials when I was teaching The French Lieutenant's Woman at ‘A’ level (UK). This third reading was triggered partly by my continuing search for a philosophy that helps with daily life and partly curiosity to see how well it has aged since its first publication in 1964.
The philosophical material stands up quite well, based as it is on thoughts and ideas that have already lasted for thousands of years. The parts that cover Fowles’s picture of modern society and his vision of its future are less impressive but still interesting.
My main complaint about the book is the scatter-gun approach that takes over at times, especially when Fowles offers general political analysis. He frankly admits that this is a book of notes and thoughts rather than a complete thread of argument, but there are times when he could and should have presented his thoughts in a sequence of connected stages to make the general picture clearer and his ideas more convincing.
Other Goodreaders have noted the aphoristic nature of Fowles’s work here, and there are many neatly condensed thoughts on offer. A couple of examples:
“What the state considers a good teacher and what is a good teacher are always two different things. A good teacher never teaches only his subject.”
“We object to battery hens; but we are turning ourselves into battery humans.”
That second quote is an almost prophetic insight into modern life under capitalism, but much of Fowles’s vision of the future is flawed, as he believes ‘cybernetics’ will usher in an age of increased leisure for ordinary people. I have heard this idea iterated all my long life and I suspect my grandchildren will be hearing it all their lives too without it ever becoming a reality.
Fowles makes some other slips, failing to differentiate between males and females regarding maturity despite recognising feminist values; and how about this for intellectual complacency: “The terrible thing about poverty is less that it starves than that it stagnates as it starves.” Only a man who has never starved could say that, surely?
But a lot of this book remains interesting and stimulating sixty years on, especially in the areas of moral, social and of course existential philosophy. His reflections on religion seem largely limited to Christianity but are lively and useful; and, as we might expect, Fowles is especially good when espousing the value of the arts in general and literature (which he calls ‘poetry’) in particular.
I enjoyed his observation that modern (1960s) intellectuals were being replaced by “visuals”, people whose frame of reference is restricted to design/film/tv/decoration etc with minimal awareness of deeper thought or meaning: “A visual is always more interested in style than in content, and more concerned to see than to understand. A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police; he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.”
Fowles approaches the conclusion of his arguments with a rallying call for the proper valuing of the poet in society. “If we think poetry of least concern among our arts, we are like generals who disband their best fighting troops.”
As a poet myself I feel obliged to reply, ‘Well, maybe, but…..’
Read
November 3, 2020Ключ к пониманию романов Фаулза сокрыт в этой книге. И еще, конечно — в философии тех, кто вдохновлял его: Гераклита, экзистенциалистов и гуманистов. Отличные наброски — и отличная идея, структурировать свои мысли от прочитанного и переваренного в единое целое.
Но Фаулз не только повторяет, он изменяет. Так, наверняка гераклитовское "многие" и "немногие" проецируется у Фаулза не на общество в целом, но на каждого отдельного человека. Линия раздела лежит в каждом из нас. Или же раздел о тайне. Может, я мало пока что читала, но только Фаулз так четко подметил человеческое стремление к разгадыванию загадок. Хотя, можно списать этот пункт к основным философским вопросам.
Можно ругать Фаулза за то, что он сам считает себя лучше других.
Но он действительно лучше других.
Но Фаулз не только повторяет, он изменяет. Так, наверняка гераклитовское "многие" и "немногие" проецируется у Фаулза не на общество в целом, но на каждого отдельного человека. Линия раздела лежит в каждом из нас. Или же раздел о тайне. Может, я мало пока что читала, но только Фаулз так четко подметил человеческое стремление к разгадыванию загадок. Хотя, можно списать этот пункт к основным философским вопросам.
Можно ругать Фаулза за то, что он сам считает себя лучше других.
Но он действительно лучше других.
November 9, 2021
Fowles siempre cumple.
Cada uno de sus libros es un hagazajo.
Y este no es la excepción.
Es un largo tratado introspectivo acerca de distintas cuestiones de la vida y del contexto.
Por momento se contradice, y por momentos es muy claro.
Aún así, lo que expresa tiene sentido, y por sobre todo, corazón y pensamiento.
Algunos se han reído al leer este libro y sus contradicciones.
Para mí, eso hace aún mejor exponente de lo que Fowles quiere expresar con toda su humana existencia.
Es un libro sumamaente agradable y fácil de leer.
Incluso me a servido a comprender errores que estaba comentiendo en mi propia vida.
Muchas gracias, John Fowles, por haber escrito este interesantísimo libro.
Cada uno de sus libros es un hagazajo.
Y este no es la excepción.
Es un largo tratado introspectivo acerca de distintas cuestiones de la vida y del contexto.
Por momento se contradice, y por momentos es muy claro.
Aún así, lo que expresa tiene sentido, y por sobre todo, corazón y pensamiento.
Algunos se han reído al leer este libro y sus contradicciones.
Para mí, eso hace aún mejor exponente de lo que Fowles quiere expresar con toda su humana existencia.
Es un libro sumamaente agradable y fácil de leer.
Incluso me a servido a comprender errores que estaba comentiendo en mi propia vida.
Muchas gracias, John Fowles, por haber escrito este interesantísimo libro.
May 10, 2025
I read Aristos after the original version of The Magus. (I cannot bring myself to read Fowles' revised version. It seems like a self-betrayal somehow.) Aristos I picked up at the American Bookstore near Syntagma in Athens on a fall day a few months after my first son was born. I felt that Fowles' pithy observations in Aristos were useful in my own growth. I had enjoyed his novels The Collector and The Magus. I read a couple of other of his novels like The French Lieutenant's Woman, but none was as thrilling as the first Magus.
December 31, 2023
Fowles was definitely opinionated, but what stood out most to me is how black and white and bleak his view of humanity is. There is no gray in Fowels assessment of humanity. However, if you want to read something that will get you charged up and responding with your own thoughts on humanity, then I highly recommend you read this.
PS: After reading this, I understood better some of the things that happened in The Magus.
PS: After reading this, I understood better some of the things that happened in The Magus.
January 24, 2019
Ancient-Greek style discourse for modern society. From theology to art, from sociology to family counseling. Some observation are rather obvious, some quite deep, some rather paradoxical (for example, how and why the book named "Aristos" proclaims equality as an important goal).
Bonus for attempting all the star-marked hard questions.
Bonus for attempting all the star-marked hard questions.
Read
March 1, 2020bazen çok iyi bazen çok karmaşık ve asla ilgilenmediğim bölümlerle aforist bir kitap. ilk yarışına kadar her şey yolunda gitti ama sonra sık sık klişe terimler kullanması can sıkıcıydı. kitabın son iki sayfasındaki herakleitos alıntıları her şeye değerdi ama.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 24, 2020
Философия по поводу основных тем жизни каждого человека.
С одного раза мне сложно понять и обдумать все, что там написано. было несколько попыток начать ее читать.
Это книга, которую нужно периодически перечитывать, возвращаясь к ней с новым своим опытом. Хорошо, что это моя личная книга
С одного раза мне сложно понять и обдумать все, что там написано. было несколько попыток начать ее читать.
Это книга, которую нужно периодически перечитывать, возвращаясь к ней с новым своим опытом. Хорошо, что это моя личная книга
June 23, 2018
Fowlesin romanlarına yön veren düşüncelerinin kısa kısa notlarla anlatıldığı,eşsiz bir felsefi derleme
January 10, 2020
Pretty dull.
December 23, 2022
Very interesting, especially his concept of a negative god and the Nemo.
May 15, 2025
Opening it up from time to time and find some short thought to think about.
April 13, 2025
After reading Fowles' early novels in the late 60s and early 70s (The Collector, The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman), I thought to give this book a go... Maybe I got a third of the way through it...
I've had it on my shelves all these years, anticipating a return. While generally interesting, especially in the early going, as Fowles discusses his notion of the Nemo as a psychic drive that compels asserting existence, the book probably should have remained unpublished. It's a good liberal-minded person's view of the world, overstating in a very un-English way the importance of the emotional values of art and culture.
The latter part of the book becomes long-winded, but the earlier, more epigrammatic sections prompt speculation about its bald statements and invite a dialogue with the reader.
I've had it on my shelves all these years, anticipating a return. While generally interesting, especially in the early going, as Fowles discusses his notion of the Nemo as a psychic drive that compels asserting existence, the book probably should have remained unpublished. It's a good liberal-minded person's view of the world, overstating in a very un-English way the importance of the emotional values of art and culture.
The latter part of the book becomes long-winded, but the earlier, more epigrammatic sections prompt speculation about its bald statements and invite a dialogue with the reader.
February 7, 2025
I stumbled on this book in a small bookshop in Oslo in 1984. I believe that’s true, but I could be mixing up memories. I was backpacking/hosteling in Europe that summer when I was 18 and could carry about three books with me at any one time. This book was small, and thin, and written by the author of The Magus, which I read in high school my senior year probably just months before this trip. Anyhow, serendipity, this book is a part of my consciousness from that summer and that era, and I still have it. I will eventually reread in my ‘60s (soon!)
The book as I remember it is an essay, or meditation on how to live a creative life of excellence and that this is the true Aristocracy. I’d put it in a similar family of writings that would include Emerson.
My second reading awaits. Did I meet my life expectations from summer of ‘84 and the ideas in this book?
The book as I remember it is an essay, or meditation on how to live a creative life of excellence and that this is the true Aristocracy. I’d put it in a similar family of writings that would include Emerson.
My second reading awaits. Did I meet my life expectations from summer of ‘84 and the ideas in this book?
May 23, 2010
An interesting philosophical autobiography of John Fowles--his attempt to illustrate the philosophy behind his novels. Fowles writes as an existentialist, naturalist, and poet, and his prose is the child of Thomas Hardy. I don't normally like books of philosophy -- they so often wallow in abstractions, but having read all of Fowles' fiction, I found I could see the concrete illustrations from his novels to demonstrate the generalized ideas discussed in this book.
February 27, 2012
The Aristos is a nonfiction exposition and statement of position on reality, the problems and challenges of humanity and what it means to be human by John Fowles, one of the greatest novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. One may agree with or differ from these pronouncements, for that is what they are, but one must acknowledge the author’s precision and clarity of presentation, cutting insights and serious philosophical approach. It is very much worth the effort of reading.
July 26, 2024
I was recommended this book by an old professor of mine who was guiding me through the classics. In all, I love the idea of this book - Fowles is not selling any ideas, simply expressing the things he holds true because of his experiences in life. I found myself moved at his perspective on interpersonal relationships, especially marriage and how to view “arguments”. This is a great, thought-provoking reads
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