Rabbit-trail-itis

A Serious Medical Condition

Breeding books in the wild.

I have a serious medical condition doctors call Rabbit-Trail-Itis (via leporina itis). There is no cure. It’s a disease that impacts the central purchase system, where like rabbits, books begin to multiply at exponential rates. Two books breed four breed sixteen breed hundreds. Unfortunately, it’s unstoppable.

Here’s an example of a recent outbreak of this incurable disease:

Plato

I initially planned to get my Platonic feet wet with a few of Plato’s most famous dialogues. However, I purchased the Complete Works of Plato and came up with the asinine idea to read every single one of his dialogues. I began reading said dialogues and quickly realized that Plato often referenced the ideas of earlier philosophers (I guess I just thought he had come up with all of this on his own through Socrates). I figured I should stop reading Plato and first get a grasp on what these earlier philosophers thought.

Early Greek Philosophers

So I purchased The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists, Early Greek Philosophy, and Heraclitus Fragements. I’m currently making my way through these books. The Early Greek Philosophy book makes a connection between Heraclitus’ idea of the logos and John’s use of the term in the Gospel of John. I became intrigued, which led to:

The Logos of Heraclitus by Eva Brann

This book takes a closer look at Heraclitus’ idea of the logos. I also purchased:

Heraclitus by Martin Heidegger

The hope here is that I learn even more about Heraclitus’ idea of the logos and then share that with you in an upcoming podcast episode.

Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

The philosophy books also led to an interest in early accounts of the lives of philosophers, something put together in roughly 200 - 250 AD by Diogenes Laeritus. This has some fantastic anecdotes about Heraclitus.

Heraclitean Fire by Erwin Chargaff

This is a book from my 2017 reading list (the first year of this project) that is titled after one of Heraclitus’ most famous ideas regarding fire. It was neat to see the ideas of Heraclitus channeled in a more recent book.

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It’s easy to see how this disease quickly spreads across books from different authors, times, and places. One of the main symptoms of Rabbit-Trail-Itis is impulsive purchasing behavior. I don’t have much to offer in terms of a cure, but I do hope the knowledge that others suffer the same disease provides some comfort to you today.