Graphic philosophy

AT LAST, CLASSIC THINKERS GET TRUE ANIMATION

How wonderful and exotic it is to come upon a mention of “The Defenestration of Prague” in a new book. Historians cite it casually, as if everyone knows what it means, but I forget or never learned anything except that it involves two men being thrown out of a window in the Czech capital for some obscure dispute long ago. Yet the other day I learned more of it in a graphic story about philosophy, a relatively highbrow version of the Classic Comics that first taught me, as a nine- year- old, about the in- progress Second World War.

As f ar as historical events go, this one is poorly named. The word “defenestration,” if it means anything, would mean something like “removing a window.” But somehow, through an accident of language and history that no one can quite explain, it means throwing someone out a window. It’s an odd kind of word, used mainly in connection with the historic event in Prague that caused it to be born. In recent years “self-defenestration” has sometimes been employed as a synonym for suicide by jumping out a window.

The historic incident occurred when, on May 23, 1618, disgruntled Bohemian Protestants tossed two ambassadors of Ferdinand II, the Catholic king of Bohemia, from the window of the Prague Castle. It was not far from the ground and the ambassadors suffered no harm, except to their dignity. Nevertheless, that touched off the Thirty Years War, keeping much of Europe inflamed for a generation.

I learned this from a remarkable new book, Heretics! The Wondrous ( and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy ( Princeton University Press), by Steven and Ben Nadler. For years now we have had graphic novels. Recently, graphic journalism has appeared. And now, thanks to Princeton, we have philosophy delivered in graphic form.

Steven Nadler, a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin, specializes in the 17th century. He considers it the most influential period in the history of thought, the era when the authority of kings and cardinals was for the first time deeply questioned. Humans learned to trust what they could observe and experience rather than the flimsy beliefs they had inherited.

Nadler decided he wanted to explain this momentous development to a larger public, rather than just the scholars who read his books on René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and other figures. He thought about a friendly graphic book and enlisted his son, Ben, a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.

Steven wrote the texts, Ben drew the pictures. Together t hey t ake us through the fascinating pan-European exchange of ideas among philosophers, including natural philosophers — those who studied the physical universe, the people we now usually call scientists. By changing the rules of research, these thinkers prepared the way for the Enlightenment and modernity. They did it in the modern way, letting one idea affect another until a third used both of them to produce a worldchanging point of view.

The first drawing in the book illustrates the word “dangerous” in the subtitle by showing a man being burned alive. That’s Giordano Bruno dying at the stake in 1600 for claiming the earth is not the centre of the universe.

Later we meet Spinoza, lens- grinder and philosopher, who insists that human beings are as much a part of nature — and subject to its laws — as anything else. His view that God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of nature was regarded as heresy and he’s excommunicated by the Jewish community of Amsterdam. Galileo shows up, taking the dangerous view that Copernicus was right. “The earth is not so special,” Galileo says. “It is not the centre of the cosmos. It is a planet just like the others and they all orbit the sun.” For that effrontery his book is banned and he’s sentenced by Pope Urban VIII to permanent house arrest. Thomas Hobbes comes along, eager to tell us that good government requires secular thinking and its role is not spiritual — a radical notion.

By the time of Isaac Newton, the basic rules have changed. Man is no l onger at the centre of creation and the sun has stopped circling the Earth. The church is no longer the authority on everything.

The Nadlers, father and son, have given us an informed but lighthearted look at the heaviest subjects: God, man and the cosmos. It’s engaging, like much graphic work, and altogether accessible. With luck it will find an audience, and Steven’s hopes will be fulfilled.

I enjoyed it, especially the drawing of two men being thrown from the window — t hough t he connection between the defenestration and philosophy is at best shaky. And the artist, Ben? As he put it in an interview, “The page where the two guys are getting pushed out the window was really tough, I had to spend a whole day trying to get the perspective right. That might be my favourite illustration, because of how much work went into it.”

THANKS TO PRINCETON, WE HAVE PHILOSOPHY DELIVERED IN GRAPHIC FORM.