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Do what you will: Twelve essays
A collection of 12 essays by Aldous Huxley, including "One and Many," "Silence is Golden," Spinoza's Worm," Swift," "Paradise," and others. Huxley was a prolific and outspoken voice of the 60's counter-culture movement and one of the great public intellectuals of his time.
- GenresEssays
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1929
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About the author
Aldous Huxley
971 books13.8k followersAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 31, 2016
From 1929, this comes just after "Point Counter Point" and before "Brief Candles" and then "Brave New World", and we can see where Aldous' mind is moving. Themes and phrases common to those works turn up, and we get "Podsnapism" quite a few times, which is also used by the novelist character in "After The Fireworks".
In these 12 essays Huxley stakes the position of the sceptical humanist, who accepts the insights of Darwin and Russell and others, but is not concerned to discard the entire heritage of religion and the art it may have inspired. Science can't and shouldn't try to rule over metaphysics, and we should reconstruct the philosophies of the past as expressions of individual psychologies. The intellectual failing of the religious zealot is his demand for "consistency" (also a flaw of the too-certain non-believer), failing to grasp the multiplicity of human responses to the world. Huxley instead commends the goal of "harmony", and the real charge to be put against the religious life is that it stultifies and perverts human material. The quest for certain foundations is a futile one, since none are available and in any case they could not do the work of founding ethics and aesthetics. Instead we should accept the plurality of idioms and not bother about any form of reductionism. "Truth" is a trick-word used by churhcmen, an idea crystallised in that line about "true truth" in "Eyeless In Gaza".
That all sounds jolly good and Huxley does an excellent job of trying to sell it, expressing it all much better than the various academic philosophers (Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, any number of post-structuralists) who seem to have discovered the same thoughts 50 years later. The trouble is in the detail, and what works well in a prize-winning undergraduate essay doesn't spread so far in anything even attempting to be the first draft of a treatise. He examines the lives and ideas of St Francis of Assisi, Baudelaire, Rasputin and Pascal, ponders lines from Wordsworth and Spinoza, but when he comes to propose what the proper humanistic "life-worshipper" ought to be like, we just end up with... well, Aldous Huxley. Get the best out of a public school and Oxford education, but then retire to the library and cock a snook at it all.
There's lots of scorn for the mechanical economy and the mechanical men it produces, but no constructive idea on how to liberate any of them, although Marxism is examined and found to be outdated in its predictions of capitalist collapse and rising inequality (this situation will have changed within months of the publication in 1929). Nietzsche is present, but refracted through the influence of his friend D.H.Lawrence. J.M.Barrie is sneered at as a babyish sentimentalist, but what sort of superman does Aldous make? He is appalled by jazz and talking pictures, when he encounters them, in an essay that is the template for most of Roger Scruton's writing. A crowd of English middle class on holiday are smiled at, and Aldous overhears "that too too merry laughter of clergymen who want to prove that, malgre tout, they can be good fellows" (pg. 86). But he is just another variety of that species: one of nature's diffident observers, above the crowd, but self-conscious enough to know that he needs to be on the side of "life-worship", but only scribbling out a new liturgy. He's not ready or willing for the harder task of working out whether "consistency" and "harmony" come apart in the ways he assumes, and he is himself another pathological case. We don't have to view from any great distance to see that: W.H.Auden suggested the same of Bertrand Russell, in a review of one of his works in the 30s.
The biggest revelation in this book is the passing remark that its author has no interest in the technological future. We know he changed his mind soon enough. My copy is a quaint little "Thinker's Library" edition of 1937. Nowadays we have the crudities and inanities of New Atheism demanding attention, and opposed to them are partisans of "belief" who don't actually believe much more than Huxley did. Along the road the forms of religion he rejected simply ceased to be taken seriously.
In these 12 essays Huxley stakes the position of the sceptical humanist, who accepts the insights of Darwin and Russell and others, but is not concerned to discard the entire heritage of religion and the art it may have inspired. Science can't and shouldn't try to rule over metaphysics, and we should reconstruct the philosophies of the past as expressions of individual psychologies. The intellectual failing of the religious zealot is his demand for "consistency" (also a flaw of the too-certain non-believer), failing to grasp the multiplicity of human responses to the world. Huxley instead commends the goal of "harmony", and the real charge to be put against the religious life is that it stultifies and perverts human material. The quest for certain foundations is a futile one, since none are available and in any case they could not do the work of founding ethics and aesthetics. Instead we should accept the plurality of idioms and not bother about any form of reductionism. "Truth" is a trick-word used by churhcmen, an idea crystallised in that line about "true truth" in "Eyeless In Gaza".
That all sounds jolly good and Huxley does an excellent job of trying to sell it, expressing it all much better than the various academic philosophers (Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, any number of post-structuralists) who seem to have discovered the same thoughts 50 years later. The trouble is in the detail, and what works well in a prize-winning undergraduate essay doesn't spread so far in anything even attempting to be the first draft of a treatise. He examines the lives and ideas of St Francis of Assisi, Baudelaire, Rasputin and Pascal, ponders lines from Wordsworth and Spinoza, but when he comes to propose what the proper humanistic "life-worshipper" ought to be like, we just end up with... well, Aldous Huxley. Get the best out of a public school and Oxford education, but then retire to the library and cock a snook at it all.
There's lots of scorn for the mechanical economy and the mechanical men it produces, but no constructive idea on how to liberate any of them, although Marxism is examined and found to be outdated in its predictions of capitalist collapse and rising inequality (this situation will have changed within months of the publication in 1929). Nietzsche is present, but refracted through the influence of his friend D.H.Lawrence. J.M.Barrie is sneered at as a babyish sentimentalist, but what sort of superman does Aldous make? He is appalled by jazz and talking pictures, when he encounters them, in an essay that is the template for most of Roger Scruton's writing. A crowd of English middle class on holiday are smiled at, and Aldous overhears "that too too merry laughter of clergymen who want to prove that, malgre tout, they can be good fellows" (pg. 86). But he is just another variety of that species: one of nature's diffident observers, above the crowd, but self-conscious enough to know that he needs to be on the side of "life-worship", but only scribbling out a new liturgy. He's not ready or willing for the harder task of working out whether "consistency" and "harmony" come apart in the ways he assumes, and he is himself another pathological case. We don't have to view from any great distance to see that: W.H.Auden suggested the same of Bertrand Russell, in a review of one of his works in the 30s.
The biggest revelation in this book is the passing remark that its author has no interest in the technological future. We know he changed his mind soon enough. My copy is a quaint little "Thinker's Library" edition of 1937. Nowadays we have the crudities and inanities of New Atheism demanding attention, and opposed to them are partisans of "belief" who don't actually believe much more than Huxley did. Along the road the forms of religion he rejected simply ceased to be taken seriously.
April 24, 2023
no ! it’s the opposite
do NOT do what you will
the “do what thou wilt” is a ridiculous attitude. pure ruin
do NOT do what you will
the “do what thou wilt” is a ridiculous attitude. pure ruin
Read
June 12, 2024Virulently anti semitic and misogynistic to boot, this offers a fascinating (if sometimes revolting) insight into Huxley’s view of humanity.
I’ve been intrigued by Huxley since reading Brave New World, and while his views on culture interest me (particularly his critique of the machine and point of human boredom toward passive entertainment instead of personal creativity), the essays here that tie some of those points up in antisemitism and misogyny make me question his critique somewhat. Not to say he is necessarily wrong, but how does the logic hold if that foundation is removed?
His book Boiled down to a point: live moderately to an excess. Love and live life, don’t worry too much about constructing logical systems and missing life while you have it.
I’ve been intrigued by Huxley since reading Brave New World, and while his views on culture interest me (particularly his critique of the machine and point of human boredom toward passive entertainment instead of personal creativity), the essays here that tie some of those points up in antisemitism and misogyny make me question his critique somewhat. Not to say he is necessarily wrong, but how does the logic hold if that foundation is removed?
His book Boiled down to a point: live moderately to an excess. Love and live life, don’t worry too much about constructing logical systems and missing life while you have it.
June 21, 2017
Enjoyed it. Lots of tautologies. Be prepared to squint and question everything. There are gems in some of the paragraphs in the essays; insofar he doesn't somehow repeat himself, again, and again, and again.
huxley
September 12, 2013According to Nicholas Murray, author of "Aldous Huxley: A Biography, "this is Huxley's finest essay-collection to date ( and a good starting-point for anyone seeking to explore further...[Huxley's] talent."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews