Moby-Dick as Philosophy: Plato - Melville - Nietzsche

by Mark Anderson

Moby-Dick as Philosophy is at base a chapter-by-chapter commentary on Herman Melville's masterwork, Moby-Dick. The commentary form of the book subserves a higher end, the presentation of an ideal of the type philosopher. Superimposing portraits of Plato, Melville, and Nietzsche--the thinkers themselves, their ideas and their lives--it generates a composite image from the overlaying and interblending of figures. At a higher level still, the book is a meditation on the nature of philosophy and its relation to wisdom, and the relation of creative artistry to both. It explores these themes in the context of the history of philosophy conceived as the rise and fall of a certain influential variety of Platonism--in Nietzschean terms, the life and death of God--and it proceeds with reference to the different reactions, as exemplified particularly by Melville and Nietzsche, to the nihilism that looms on the horizon of these intellectual and spiritual revolutions.

Genres: Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Literature

388 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 2, 2015

About the author

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Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very useful book for anyone who wants to get a sense for how Melville is engaged with Platonic philosophy, and for how Melville prefigures some aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy, while packaging this into what is a human, and more humane, whole, than Nietzsche could, or did. But I have reservations, due to difficult questions regarding who exactly its proper audience is. In some respects, it seems its proper audience is the intermediate student of philosophy, someone who has had some study of the subject, but who is not an expert in the subject. It provides a lot of patient exposition of philosophical territory that is readable and clear, yet precise as well. However, I have significant reservations concerning the book's attempt to fit Melville too much into a very particular axis of thought formed along the Plato - Nietzsche polarity, a polarity that omits or renders very fuzzy indeed Melville's engagement with classes of ideas outside of that polarity. So, the Puritan Christianity that appears in Mapple's sermon, an important moment in the book, in the idea of obeying God and disobeying oneself, vs. disobeying God and obeying oneself, is on an idea of calling that is completely out of keeping with Plato's philosophy and represents the Puritan, Augustinian legacy; yet Anderson takes this moment as an opportunity to discuss Platonic opposition of soul and body, as if following the soul were "disoabeying oneself." But this cannot be so, since for Plato the soul is oneself, and the body is not oneself. Platonic philosophy cannot make sense of such Puritan -- that is, Augustinian -- problems because it locates problems in the division of body and soul, rather than in the will, whereas in Augustinian Christianity, it is the rebellion of the will that is the cause of the division of body and soul. Mapple's sermon is aimed entirely at this idea of rebellion in the will, and the need to confront the uncertainty of life by firm and complete commitment to one's calling. Second, there is a an idea that appears sometime in connection to Queequeg, the idea of a "mutual, joint-stock world." A "mutual, joint-stock world" is one in which one's fortunes rise and fall with the lot of others, due to our being interconnected with each other. Ishmael's friendship with Queequeg is just such an interconnection, and a significant one. These ideas are more associated with Dostoevsky than with Melville, but deserve significant commentary; yet, since these ideas are remote indeed for Plato and Nietzsche, they receive no significant attention. My worry is that the intermediate student is exactly the person who would be helped by drawing out these details, but this reader will receive no help with these, and indeed, will be left more ignorant of some aspects of Moby-Dick than before, insofar as the connections to the Puritans are obvious to the casual reader, but swallowed up by Platonism in Anderson's reading. Yet, for all that the Puritans have a relation to Augustine, and Augustine to Plato, they add a distinctive element to the picture, and an important one that Melville wrestles with in significant and interesting ways. This reservation aside, I learned a lot from Anderson's book, and I think any other reader of Melville will as well.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished: 03.11.2018
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: C-
#MobyDick
Conclusion:
Just read my thoughts
about...passion for metaphysical speculation.

My Thoughts

[Veronica Sadler · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
A contemplation of the Philosopher in contrast with the Sage in the frame of Melville's Moby Dick. Anderson presents an existential and greatly impacting work on how to ponder life's big questions, using Plato and Nietzsche as opposing and complementary themes and ideas. He also details some aspects of the men themselves as thinkers, artists and men not comfortable in society.

(This is an intermediate philosophy book. )



Writing: B
Hypothesis: A+
Research and Accuracy: A

[Andy P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't predict enjoying a book on Melville, Plato and Nietzsche as much as I did, but I can tell you that I eagerly devoured it up. It's got action, adventure, villains, mad men, friendship, art, domesticity, nihilism and deicide, life and death, Greek and German metaphysics, biography and history. Hawthorne and Schopenhauer show up. Socrates drinks poison; Nietzsche suffers psychiatric deterioration; Melville collapses into the despair of disappointments and dies a nobody. Loved this book all around, and I've never read Moby Dick. So, that's what I'm doing now. Strongly recommend Anderson's book.

[Benjamin Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed how I will read Moby Dick and Melville in the future. The book's first half mainly went over Plato/Socrates/Greek Mythos and how they inspired Melville while writing Moby Dick and other now-classic works.
The latter half discussed Melville in comparison with Nietzsche/Modern philosophers. While Melville was about 20 years older than Nietzsche, both had similar views on varied topics, especially Christianity.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and the next time I embark on reading Moby Dick, I plan on reading
Dr. Anderson's book simultaneously.