On not reading difficult books

I am not averse to reading long, boring or difficult books. I read “War and Peace” in 5 days during a trip to New York City. I read all twelve volumes of Churchill’s “The Second World War” and his four volume “History of the English-Speaking Peoples”. Recently I read the first 3 volumes (all the ones so far published) of Ackroyd’s “History of England” at 600 pages apiece. I’ve read “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Moby Dick” and thoroughly enjoyed both (well…okay, some of GR is tough and I don’t like the white chapter).

I want to read Schopenhauer’s “World as Will and Idea”. Apparently it was Einstein’s favorite book and he read it repeatedly during his lifetime. Schopenhauer is also said to have influenced Somerset Maugham in writing “The Razor’s Edge” which was made into an enjoyable and thought provoking Bill Murray movie (the first non-comedy he starred in…I also read the book btw). “World as Will and Idea” is generally published in two volumes, each about 700 pages long. I got volume I on my Kindle and started reading the Preface. There Schopenhauer gives instructions on how to read the book.

First, he says, since the book has no proper beginning or end, it is critical that it be read twice. Second, the read must first read the Introduction, which unfortunately is in another book “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason”…another 450 pages in the edition I have. Third, Schopenhauer recommends being familiar with the works of Kant before reading any of his own books. In total, this reading program comes to something over 4000 pages by my rough count. But it was the last demand that really gave me pause.

I tried to read Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, but I gave up about halfway through. It was truly dense and difficult to read…painful really. At some point I thought “Maybe if I read a introductory book about Kant, I will get enough of the ideas that it will be easier to read the original”. In the intro to that book I found the statement that while everyone agrees Kant is brilliant, perhaps the most important western philosopher since Descartes (or perhaps since Aristotle or Plato), most also agree his writings were exceptionally hard to read…moreso than the material deserves. .

There are other books where I tried to read the original, gave up and read about the ideas instead. Occasionally I feel guilty about this. Am I missing something by not reading the original? Have the authors that digested Kant for me, themselves presumably less bright than Kant, lost something in the translation?

But on further consideration, isn’t it more sensible to read the book that best delivers the material, rather than always prefer the original author? Original academic papers are often difficult. Yes, part of this comes from the peculiar expectations of academic papers: that the target audience is already expected to be on the cutting edge of the art and simultaneously demand brevity, not to mention the rush to publish. And of course, there is no necessary correlation between being a great writer or explainer and being a great thinker or researcher. However, it is also true that over time complex topics become more approachable as the originator, his colleagues and students and others work over the material, refine the arguments and develop new machinery and notation, and simply learn the teach it.

Perhaps the best example of this is Newton’s Principia. I had mastered basically all the materials in Principa by age 21. I not only went through the normal university Calculus and Physics course, but in my math major we went through and rederived the material from axioms in foundations classes. I also learned a lot of advanced real analysis that Newton never knew. Note that this does not imply for one second any of us are as smart as Newton. There was a time when only a handful of people understood Calculus, then a period when it was a graduate topic. Now it is routinely taught in high school.

Meanwhile, reading Newton’s Principia, with its primitive or non-existent notation, is really difficult, even knowing the material beforehand. As far as I can tell, there is no practical educational reason to read the original today instead of any number of Calculus and Physics textbooks. So why do I feel guilty?