Eric Hoffer

I have recently read two books by Eric Hoffer, and I am now on a third. Eric Hoffer was a philosopher who wrote in aphorisms and worked as a longshoreman. I'm not sure what longshoremen actually do, but he apparently chose this line of work to have time to read. This seems to reflect a desire to live a life he could enjoy rather than toiling away for some standard of success in academia. One of the themes in his writings is the importance of loving life now rather than spoiling the present for the sake of some brighter future.

The first book of his I read was The Passionate State of Mind, and the next one was The True Believer. I am now reading Between the Devil and the Dragon. This third one is actually a compilation of selections from several of his books. I have moved on to this compilation, rather than another full book, because it is what is left at the library.

The Passionate State of Mind focuses on aphorisms about passion and human nature. Much of it is summed up in this line from the first aphorism, "The passionate attitude is less a response to stimuli from without than an emanation of an inner dissatisfaction." In this book, he goes on to elaborate on what makes a person prone to states of passion. Overall, this book is a mine of wisdom and insight. It is a very thought-provoking book I would recommend to anyone interested in self-examination.

The True Believer focuses on the psychology of mass movements and the sort of people who get caught up in them. Although mass movements can accomplish much socially, they must also constrict individuality in order to focus people toward a common cause. The true believer, the sort of person who gets caught up in a mass movement, is dissatisfied with his own life and the present, and he tries to latch onto a mass movement in order to lose himself and find some meaning for his life. Such a person can easily switch from one mass movement to another. For example, Hitler recognized that communists made good converts to the Nazi party. This book emphasized for me the importance of remaining an individual and of appreciating life now, not deprecating it for some pie-in-the-sky pipedream.

I have not yet gotten far in Between the Devil and the Dragon. Much of what I have read so far is from The Passionate State of Mind. But I have learned something about the meaning of the title. The Devil is a beast masquerading as a man, whereas the Dragon is a man masquerading as a beast. The idea of the Devil is a western one, and the idea of the Dragon is an eastern one. Both seem to reflect the fact that each person lives with both a beast side and a human side, and personhood is found in the dialogue between these two sides. This falls in line with Michael Gelvin's idea that personhood arises from the conflict between good and evil, which I discussed in my dissertation. I think Hoffer is onto the same thing. He writes about how personhood is much more complicated than the mechanism of nature or machinery. He points out that Occam's razor can work in science but cannot be applied to individuals. Individuals are complex, not simple. I think Gelven and Hoffer are on the same track, and although it would have been nice to have Hoffer's books around when I was writing my dissertation, it is refreshing to read him now. It is good to continue reading wisdom that gets at the heart of what personhood is and extols its importance.