011221_On the occasion of Josephine Baker's introduction into the French pantheon, the French (white) president Immanuel Macron dared to wrest control of the N-word from its priviledged quarters among only a certain quality of English speaker, in order to make it available to all thoughtful speakers of English. This was a ceremony of the French at their very best, exemplified by an American at her very best. This is also the highest truth concerning the philosophy of democracy: it allows for the possibility of a universal brotherhood of men, far from the shores of race or color, or opinion or belief, or even nationality.
211220_Musing on the eternal return: "The eternal return is the most radical response possible to theologies both philosophic and scientific, as well as to the linear temporality of the Christian tradition: in the cosmos of eternal return, there is no room for creation, providence or redemption. One is unable to either stop time or direct it: every instant flows away, but it is fated to return, identical, for better or for worse. Who, then, may have wished to live again the same life? Who is it that would relish in taking the arrow away from Chronos‘ hands and slipping the ring on the finger of eternity? Goethe looked for an instant that he could urge thus: ―stop here, you are beautiful.‖ Nietzsche, on his part, awaits a man who could declare to every instant: ―pass away and return, identical, in all eternity!‖ This man is the overhuman, he is not an esthete, an athlete, or a product of some Aryan, slightly Nazi eugenics. He is he who can say ‗yes‘ to the eternal return of the same on earth, while taking up the weight of history and keeping the strength to shape the future."-- (The Eternal Return: Genesis and Interpretation, Paolo D’Iorio, p. 16).
211020_A blurb about our philo-cafe in Monflanquin, Fr.
270420_A Profile in Courage, and Competence: Andrew Cuomo during the NY pandemic crisis: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/05/14/andrew-cuomo-emergency-responder/
120420_Imagine young Corona asking his dad-- 'Why am I here?' What kind of an answer might he get?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aF-4f3quEg&feature=youtu.be
240320_Coronavirus musing... from Naomi Klein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niwNTI9Nqd8&feature=youtu.be
010619_We celebrated Auggie's 6th birthday today at the beach! He spent the day doing what he loves best--digging holes in the sand. Happy birthday, little canine philosopher!!!!
180519_A former UCR student who learned backgammon from me, is claiming on the obvious strength of her position in this photo she sent, that she is going to put a can of whup-as$ hurt on me in our next meeting over the dice. The hubris is palpable!
080519_According to recent studies by educational unions in the Netherlands (FNV, VAWO), and published in the Volkskrant, it would seem that "Gossip, humiliation and intimidation are the order of the day in universities. Four in ten university employees have to deal with bullying, abuse of power, withholding of information or sexual harassment by managers." "The research shows that in most cases it is gossip (48 percent) and the deliberate withholding of information (46 percent). Harassment or abuse of power by a professor or supervisor also scored high (39 percent)."
030519_As we construct our own personal history around the questions relevant to whether Liberal Arts & Sciences remains at UCR, or what kind of LAS program, and then the more political questions concerning institutional self- and co-governance, it must never be far from our minds that most of those directly concerned in these decisions, i.e., teaching faculty and students and staff, will not take any stand whatsoever to protect the 'idea' that was UCR. They will passively submit to, and to try to make work, what Leadership thrusts upon them.
In an illustration of the principle of Gleichschaltung at the university, in Japan, from 2015. This would have made Martin Heidegger proud: "Social sciences and humanities faculties 'to close' in Japan after ministerial intervention. Universities to scale back liberal arts and social science courses (September 14, 2015)
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial-intervention?fbclid=IwAR20tR6TNmOo9S2RfSpCyKWrwjLpU7-YqB7X-lwnlv5k1vIdAVuyPseNRQ8#survey-answer
220319_AN UBERMENSCHLICH OBSERVATION....
120420_Imagine young Corona asking his dad-- 'Why am I here?' What kind of an answer might he get?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aF-4f3quEg&feature=youtu.be
240320_Coronavirus musing... from Naomi Klein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niwNTI9Nqd8&feature=youtu.be
010619_We celebrated Auggie's 6th birthday today at the beach! He spent the day doing what he loves best--digging holes in the sand. Happy birthday, little canine philosopher!!!!
180519_A former UCR student who learned backgammon from me, is claiming on the obvious strength of her position in this photo she sent, that she is going to put a can of whup-as$ hurt on me in our next meeting over the dice. The hubris is palpable!
080519_According to recent studies by educational unions in the Netherlands (FNV, VAWO), and published in the Volkskrant, it would seem that "Gossip, humiliation and intimidation are the order of the day in universities. Four in ten university employees have to deal with bullying, abuse of power, withholding of information or sexual harassment by managers." "The research shows that in most cases it is gossip (48 percent) and the deliberate withholding of information (46 percent). Harassment or abuse of power by a professor or supervisor also scored high (39 percent)."
These studies show a certain consistency in culture, then, with what I
recently wrote in a Phrontisterion post on co-governance at UCR that
"When the UCR administration elected to pursue paths of secrecy and
closed-door “discussions,” they created a de facto structure of
tyranny—a tyranny of the few “representatives,” who were called upon to
replace the open debate and participation of the many." The new reality of disinformation and fake news surrounds us indeed; but its name has remained the same: tyranny.
At: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/roddels-vernederingen-en-intimidatie-zijn-schering-en-inslag-op-universiteiten~b676b130/?fbclid=IwAR2w2UpXgSsJVKFC4s6GHxAzPBYJBqTnDWW1c8zikvWOmPWMpYjZE1ZVp84
At: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/roddels-vernederingen-en-intimidatie-zijn-schering-en-inslag-op-universiteiten~b676b130/?fbclid=IwAR2w2UpXgSsJVKFC4s6GHxAzPBYJBqTnDWW1c8zikvWOmPWMpYjZE1ZVp84
030519_As we construct our own personal history around the questions relevant to whether Liberal Arts & Sciences remains at UCR, or what kind of LAS program, and then the more political questions concerning institutional self- and co-governance, it must never be far from our minds that most of those directly concerned in these decisions, i.e., teaching faculty and students and staff, will not take any stand whatsoever to protect the 'idea' that was UCR. They will passively submit to, and to try to make work, what Leadership thrusts upon them.
In an illustration of the principle of Gleichschaltung at the university, in Japan, from 2015. This would have made Martin Heidegger proud: "Social sciences and humanities faculties 'to close' in Japan after ministerial intervention. Universities to scale back liberal arts and social science courses (September 14, 2015)
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial-intervention?fbclid=IwAR20tR6TNmOo9S2RfSpCyKWrwjLpU7-YqB7X-lwnlv5k1vIdAVuyPseNRQ8#survey-answer
220319_AN UBERMENSCHLICH OBSERVATION....
The Men That Don't Fit In
There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.
221218_Pythagoras: "Life… may well be compared with these public Games for in the vast crowd assembled here some are attracted by the acquisition of gain, others are led on by the hopes and ambitions of fame and glory. But among them there are a few who have come to observe and to understand all that passes here.
It is the same with life. Some are influenced by the love of wealth while others are blindly led on by the mad fever for power and domination, but the finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself. He seeks to uncover the secrets of nature. This is the man I call a philosopher for although no man is completely wise in all respects, he can love wisdom as the key to nature’s secrets." (Quoted by Brainpickings)
211218_"... les hommes sont des poèmes récités par le destin." From Jean D’ormesson’s “Histoire du Juif errant” (Gallimard:1990, 491).
141218_ Billy Connolly reminds us that we are more than just a free-floating body in a vacuum: "Connolly at home quoted Scott:“‘This is my own, my native land …’ Sometimes your love for the place just has to find a stage. I’d like to die there. I wouldn’t like to stay away for ever.”
‘Breathes there the man’
Sir Walter Scott
I
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
II
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e’er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.
By Yarrow’s streams still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither’d cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e’er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.
By Yarrow’s streams still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither’d cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.
Sir Walter
Scott
from 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel', Canto sixth
161117_A rememberance of who we are...
Invictus
By William Ernest Henley
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
140817_The year is 1941. The word of the day is 'prescience'. From the pen of Dr. Seuss.
140817_Dangerous days, America... The Don is trying to rewrite, to retweet, the American myth.
210617_Sartre at Seventy: An Interview
190617_This must surely be what the philosophers mean when they speak about Bodenphilosophie (foundational or floor philosophy), as opposed to the Grund (ground) of Being or Truth?! A Phrontisterion summer project (2017).
160617_Imagine a society where high school graduates have learned that such questions as those that follow, and which are part of the 2017 General Baccalaureate for French high school students, are actually important -- not just to know about, but to actually reason clearly about. Phrontisterion has created the bilingual edition.
Traiter un sujet au choix / Choose one topic from the
following three:
French: Sujet 1 La raison peut-elle rendre raison de tout ?
English: 1st Subject: Can
Reason Explain Everything Reasonably?
French: Sujet 2 Une œuvre d’art est-elle nécessairement belle ?
English: 2nd Subject: Is a
Work of Art Necessarily Beautiful?
French: Sujet 3 Expliquer
le texte suivant:
« Étant donné […] qu’il n’existe pas au
monde de République où l’on ait établi suffisamment de règles pour présider à
toutes les actions et paroles des hommes (car cela serait impossible), il
s’ensuit nécessairement que, dans tous les domaines d’activité que les lois ont
passés sous silence, les gens ont la liberté de faire ce que leur propre raison
leur indique comme étant le plus profitable. Car si nous prenons la liberté au
sens propre de liberté corporelle, c’est-à-dire le fait de ne pas être
enchaîné, ni emprisonné, il serait tout à fait absurde, de la part des hommes,
de crier comme ils le font pour obtenir cette liberté dont ils jouissent si
manifestement. D’autre part, si nous entendons par liberté le fait d’être
soustrait aux lois, il n’est pas moins absurde de la part des hommes de
réclamer comme ils le font cette liberté qui permettrait à tous les autres
hommes de se rendre maîtres de leurs vies. Et cependant, aussi absurde que ce
soit, c'est bien ce qu’ils réclament ; ne sachant pas que les lois sont sans
pouvoir pour les protéger s’il n’est pas un glaive entre les mains d’un homme
(ou de plusieurs), pour faire exécuter ces lois. La liberté des sujets ne
réside par conséquent que dans les choses que le souverain, en réglementant les
actions des hommes, a passées sous silence, par exemple la liberté d’acheter,
de vendre, et de conclure d’autres contrats les uns avec les autres ; de
choisir leur résidence, leur genre de nourriture, leur métier, d’éduquer leurs
enfants comme ils le jugent convenable et ainsi de suite. »
HOBBES,Léviathan(1651)
English: 3rd Subject: Analyse the following text:
Liberty Of Subjects Consisteth In Liberty From
Covenants
In relation to these Bonds only it is, that I am to speak now, of the
Liberty of Subjects. For seeing there is no Common-wealth in the world, for the
regulating of all the actions, and words of men, (as being a thing impossible:)
it followeth necessarily, that in all kinds of actions, by the laws
praetermitted, men have the Liberty, of doing what their own reasons shall
suggest, for the most profitable to themselves. For if wee take Liberty in the
proper sense, for corporall Liberty; that is to say, freedome from chains, and
prison, it were very absurd for men to clamor as they doe, for the Liberty they
so manifestly enjoy. Againe, if we take Liberty, for an exemption from Lawes,
it is no lesse absurd, for men to demand as they doe, that Liberty, by which all
other men may be masters of their lives. And yet as absurd as it is, this is it
they demand; not knowing that the Lawes are of no power to protect them,
without a Sword in the hands of a man, or men, to cause those laws to be put in
execution. The Liberty of a Subject, lyeth therefore only in those things,
which in regulating their actions, the Soveraign hath praetermitted; such as is
the Liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with one another; to
choose their own aboad, their own diet, their own trade of life, and institute
their children as they themselves think fit; & the like.
La connaissance de la doctrine de l’auteur n’est pas requise. Il
faut et il suffit que l’explication rende compte, par la compréhension précise
du texte, du problème dont il est question.
BACCALAURÉAT GÉNÉRAL – Série ES ÉPREUVE : philosophie 17PHESMLR1
SESSION : 2017 SUJET Coefficient : 4 Page 2/2 Durée : 4 heures
230517_For the existentialists among us...
150517_The Spartans, it seems, may still be with us... a little! For a short, cheesy lesson on Greek dialects--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nxD4GDJXCw (thank you, AA).
290417_On the importance of using the right word...
260417_Thank goodness the Europeans are not buying the lunatic, counter-factual hype that America is trying to send abroad right now -- Enter: Ivanka.
310317_For those existential moments...
I Am!
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
090217_Again--a predictable action of the Trump administration is to hide, or to make impossibly unavailable, "now-uninteresting" research on government sites, even though that research has been sponsored by tax-payer dollars. Cf. "U.S. Animal Abuse Records Deleted—What We Stand to Lose."
The teaser: "Two weeks into the Trump Administration,
thousands of documents detailing animal welfare violations nationwide
have been removed from the website of the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA), which has been posting them publicly for decades."
030217_What is the difference between creating an Islamic state in the Near East and a White-supremacist, Christian state in the West? Only geography. For Trumpist White House prayer meetings, and the religious right's (Republican) "dream of creating a church-based political machine," read here.
020217_In Solidarity with People Affected by the ‘Muslim Ban’: Call for an Academic Boycott of International Conferences held in the US
On 27 January 2017, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order putting in place a 90-day ban that denies US entry to citizens from seven Muslim majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. So far, the ban includes dual nationals, current visa, and green card holders, and is affecting those born in these countries while not holding citizenship of them. The Order also suspends the admittance of all refugees to the US for a period of 120 days and terminates indefinitely all refugee admissions from Syria. There are indications that the Order could be extended to include other Muslim majority countries.The Order has affected people with residence rights in the US, as well as those with rights of entry and stay. Some of those affected are fleeing violence and persecution, and have been waiting for years for resettlement in the US as refugees. Others are effectively trapped in the US, having cancelled planned travel for fear that they will be barred from returning. The order institutionalises racism, and fosters an environment in which people racialised as Muslim are vulnerable to ongoing and intensifying acts of violence and hatred.
Among those affected by the Order are academics and students who are unable to participate in conferences and the free communication of ideas. We the undersigned take action in solidarity with those affected by Trump’s Executive Order by pledging not to attend international conferences in the US while the ban persists. We question the intellectual integrity of these spaces and the dialogues they are designed to encourage while Muslim colleagues are explicitly excluded from them.
*In order to add your signature, please write your name and institution in the box below where it says 'Short answer'. This list is updated manually (at least twice per day) so your signature will not appear immediately. Please do not enter your signature more than once.
As of 1 February 2017, 13.00 GMT the letter has 5000+ signatures.
Among those affected by the Order are academics and students who are unable to participate in conferences and the free communication of ideas. We the undersigned take action in solidarity with those affected by Trump’s Executive Order by pledging not to attend international conferences in the US while the ban persists. We question the intellectual integrity of these spaces and the dialogues they are designed to encourage while Muslim colleagues are explicitly excluded from them.
*In order to add your signature, please write your name and institution in the box below where it says 'Short answer'. This list is updated manually (at least twice per day) so your signature will not appear immediately. Please do not enter your signature more than once.
As of 1 February 2017, 13.00 GMT the letter has 5000+ signatures.
010117_No commentary.... although orange presidents come to mind quite strongly.
262216_Phrontisterion just tried submitting the name of Professor David Aiken to the following website: http://professorwatchlist.org/index.php. According to Inside Higher Education (IHE), this "website seeks to register professors accused of liberal bias and “anti-American values.”' Phrontisterion's attempt, however, was not successful: apparently Professor Aiken has never been reported. Phrontisterion's grievance against Aiken, though, remains apparent to all and sundry: "This instructor makes his students read Socrates, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus; he teaches against authoritarian trends and tendances, including corporate capitalism; and he sympathizes with left-leaning social philosophies."
Please report me to the proper authorities.
231116_A Thanksgiving photo by DAW: La Flèche (FR).
 |
| La Flèche (FR) |
071116_Is this hilarious short film, called The Gunfighter, really about the despair that comes from the idea of an all-knowing Deity?
270816_This just about sums it all up....
160816_A reminder of our debt to the future in the person of our youngsters today:
I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
-Rudyard Kipling
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
-Rudyard Kipling
From The Guardian's, "There are liars and then there’s Boris Johnson and Michael Gove."
220716_Shame on those who have been working against America's Enlightenment ideas during the recent presidential campaigns. It is still time, though, to stand against the rise of an unformed and uninformed populist state in the US : "The difficult thing about democracy is that majorities (pluralities) are sometimes wrong and that you have to decide if and when it is your moral duty to follow the wrong decisions many, or when to fight them (source)." Further reading: "Republicans Have Made a World-Historical Mistake"; "Donald Trump’s Speech Was Not Very American"
200716_Do you want to know the types of questions in philosophy the French high schoolers have to answer in 2016 to get their diploma? Here. (In French)
180616_"Ex-Auschwitz Guard Convicted In Holocaust Murder Trial." The ex-guard read the following from a prepared text at his trial: “I’m ashamed that I knowingly let injustice happen and did nothing to oppose it.” To judge from this excellent response, he is a man after Socrates' own heart -- at least now.
160616_One of the more popular subjects in French schools this year for the 'bac de philo' is-- « Travailler moins, est-ce vivre mieux ? » The question is actually rather complicated to put into English, but it would look something like this: Would we be happier in our lives if we didn't have to work so much?
---A question that has much merit....
280316_Much science fiction revolves around the concept of nations built uniquely upon the values and methods of the hard sciences; comes to mind, of course, stories like George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Interestingly enough, and despite the populist scientism that dominates in Western societies, the hard scientific vision of man's future reads as dystopia. What is lacking in that scientific vision of our future is a comprehensive, truer vision of the whole man. This, because we are more than just our bodies, is why we study the Humanities (philosophy, history, politics, music, art, literature, religion, etc.), and why we must continue to fund research in the various humanistic disciplines. Such an uphill battle, though!
The teaser... from this report ("The Humanities and Social Sciences, for a vibrant, competitive, and secure nation.") published by the
American Academy of Arts & Sciences: "The Heart of the Matter
identifies three overarching goals: 1) to educate Americans in the
knowledge, skills, and understanding they will need to thrive in a
twenty-first-century democracy; 2) to foster a society that is
innovative, competitive, and strong; and 3) to equip the nation for
leadership in an interconnected world. These goals cannot be achieved by
science alone."
Spoiler Alert: go to pp. 42 & 44 for the charts showing just how much your tax dollars are not going to fund research in the Humanities.
Spoiler Alert: go to pp. 42 & 44 for the charts showing just how much your tax dollars are not going to fund research in the Humanities.
220316_
020316_When you have to 'take back' an Idea with weapons, then you have already lost the Idea. From Vice News: "There is only one legitimate authority [...], that of the state. Wherever this authority is challenged, in the neighborhoods and territories where it may have seemed to be in decline, the Republic will take back its rights."--Bernard Cazeneuve, French Minister of the Interior.
170216_This cartoon so nailed it....
090115_From Nietzsche:
"The philosopher tries to allow the broadest resonance of the world to reverberate within himself, and then to render that in concepts." (translation by Aiken, 2015)
Der Philosoph sucht den Gesamtklang der Welt in sich nachtönen zu lassen und ihn aus sich herauszustellen in Begriffen... - Nietzsche (Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen, §3)
070116_Le 7 janvier 2015 et le 13 novembre 2015 - in Memoriam.
040116_It's been almost a year since 'Charlie' -- a chess-move in a world championship match between your freedom of and from religion, and their insistance on religion... winner takes all. From Le Point: "Et Riss de raconter : "Ce matin-là, après le bruit assourdissant d'une soixantaine de coups de feu tirés en trois minutes dans la salle de rédaction, un immense silence envahit la pièce. J'espérais entendre des plaintes, des gémissements. Mais non, pas un son. Ce silence me fit comprendre qu'ils étaient morts. Et lorsque, enfin, un pompier m'aida à me relever, et après avoir dû enjamber Charb allongé à mes côtés, je m'interdis de tourner la tête vers la pièce pour ne pas voir les morts de Charlie. Pour ne pas voir la mort de Charlie."
181115_In Memoriam: Dr. Louis Cowan, educator. From Phrontiserion's recent essay page (October 1, 2015): "Culture Wars in the Ivory Tower: Notes from the Mission Fields of Liberal Education"
"The first presentation at this AUC [Amsterdam] conference
was entitled, “The Spirit of Liberal Learning: A Reflection on the Cowan Method
of Teaching the Liberal Arts,” a title that probably left more than one
attendee initially scratching the proverbial pate. I was not in attendance at
the conference, so I can only suppose that this panelist’s reflection was based
at least partially on the work of Donald Cowan, professor of physics and past
president of the University of Dallas (TX), whose ideas about education are
concisely reflected in his short text, “Unbinding Prometheus: Education for the
Coming Age.” But any reflection “on the Cowan
Method of Teaching the Liberal Arts” should certainly not have bypassed Dr.
Louise Cowan, who was the Dean of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts
at the University of Dallas (TX), the interdisciplinary graduate school alma
mater for both this Phrontisterion philosopher and DAW.
Caveat lector: The Reader will discover in this reflection a clear
preference for the interdisciplinary humanities curriculum as the best
corrector to the more mechanical (less “liberal”) examples of Liberal Arts
& Sciences (LA&S) curricula normally on offer in undergraduate education,
both in Europe and in America.
Donald and Louise Cowan were the intellectual and dynamic impetus behind the
rather exceptional educational initiative embodied by the interdisciplinary
graduate program at the University of Dallas. As it says on the website for the
Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts:
“From the beginning this
program has been deservedly called unique. No other university offers an
interdisciplinary Ph.D. with a core curriculum in which students from the
different fields within the humanities participate as a group. Each semester
for three years all the students in the program share one of six core courses,
each devoted to pivotal texts within Western civilization. Students belong to a
true, cross-disciplinary intellectual community, using insights gained from the
study of each other's disciplines to deepen their knowledge of their own.”
The
Cowan vision of interdisciplinary humanities is akin to a great library full of
books. But in this library the books would not necessarily have to be arranged
according to subject, but instead, perhaps, according to a quasi anti-Dewey
decimal system inspired by both the chrono-linear strands of historical
thinking and imagery, and by the constellatory manner of ideas and values
meeting at serendipitous crossroads in the ebb and flow of human experience.
This interdisciplinary library would, perhaps, be oriented more like and would
therefore be more truly similar in organization to the Synopticon
volumes of Encyclopædia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World."
Obituaries:
- http://irvingblog.dallasnews.com/2015/11/louise-cowan-beloved-teacher-and-dedicated-university-of-dallas-supporter-has-died.html/
- http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2015/11/16/dr-louise-cowan-r-i-p/
- http://alumni.udallas.edu/controls/email_marketing/admin/email_marketing_email_viewer.aspx?sid=818&eiid=3440&seiid=2401&usearchive=1&puid=e14a5e98-8156-4ee3-b625-192f86584a7c
081115_From Le Point.fr (07112015): The French national education system has introduced a new class as of Fall 2015 - in "morals and civics" (le cours d'enseignement "moral et civique"). But there is a great deal of controversy and tremendous resistance on the part of the teachers to teaching this class--ce cours dérange. And yet, if Enlightenment notions of morality and civic involvement are not taught to them, how will society's youth learn about types of moral and civic conduct that are appropriate to our contemporary civil societies? In other words, ideas of Enlightenment are not innate, they are learned; and this means that these ideas must be taught. And like it or not, this responsability must fall to, among others, our teachers. But our teachers are not alone, because this is also the role to be played by society's philosophers.
The subject that was proposed in Fall 2015 was designed to illustrate the following idea: "assumptions cause us to make errors of judgment" ("les préjugés nous conduisent à l'erreur de jugement"), which is a rather straight-forward premise of Stoic thinking, and lands us right at the doorstep of (among others) Epictetus. The thought-experiement given, which was intended to illustrate this idea, and which has raised such a ruckus, is as follows: "One evening, late, you (male) are supposed to be going to visit a friend (female) who lives in a neighborhood (une cité) that you are unfamiliar with, and you are lost. You arrive at a square where there is a homeless person sleeping on a park bench, and a gang of noisy young kids talking on another park bench. There is a man, obviously of African origin because he is in traditional garb, crossing the square, accompanied by a blind woman. In front of the small corner grocery store there is a woman, a gypsy (of Roumanian origin), carrying a baby in her arms. Toward which one of these will will you turn to ask for directions? Which one will you avoid at all costs? Explain your choice."
FRENCH: "Un soir, tardivement, tu dois rendre visite à une amie qui habite dans une cité que tu ne connais pas et tu es perdu. Tu arrives sur une place où se trouvent un SDF qui dort sur un banc, une bande de jeunes bruyants qui discutent sur un autre banc. Un homme d'origine africaine en tenue traditionnelle traverse la place, accompagné d'une femme aveugle. À la sortie d'une supérette, il y a une femme d'origine roumaine qui porte un bébé dans ses bras. Vers qui vas-tu demander ton chemin ? Qui évites-tu à tout prix ? Explique ton choix."
231015_Phrontisterion endorses the following statement, from the University of Chicago, concerning Free Speech: http://provost.uchicago.edu/FOECommitteeReport.pdf.
The teaser: "Though far from over, 2015 may be remembered as a year when free speech and academic freedom on campus took center stage. From the months-long Title IX "inquisition" waged against Northwestern professor Laura Kipnis, to students in Utah and Texas being confined to tiny "free speech zones," to the University of California's Orwellian "Statement of Principles Against Intolerance," to the rise of campus trends like the policing of micro-aggressions and trigger warnings, students, professors, alumni, and even our president are wondering aloud if our campuses have lost their way." From The Huffington Post.
150915_A poetic reminder from John Donne, to temper our thinking while we reason through possible solutions to problems created by the movement of so many people:
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne
290715_Every teacher quickly learns, upon entering into a classroom, that there is a dynamic negotiation that takes places between the 'group' and the instructor. This initial moment of dynamic tension is critical to determining the type of relationship that will grow up between instructor and class. Key and Peele present one such possible moment: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/f15ai0/key-and-peele-substitute-teacher-pt--2?xrs=synd_youtube_072415_kp_66
110715_It would seem that the American Psychological Association has only now just discovered that there is an ethical 'issue' about their Association helping to develop America's Torture Program... is this good news or bad news? From the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Psychological Association Helped Justify Torture Program, Bombshell Report Says."
160515_A lovely idea... in the 3-way 'social contract' between instructors, students, and teaching institutions: "[University] Admissions officers ought to keep 10 percent of spots open for interesting nonconformists, as opposed to the legions of tutor-groomed professional applicants, who tend to arrive burnt out and too cynical for their years. These messier ones will point out the nakedness of the emperor when necessary." From: "The Teaching Compact."030515_In memoriam: Ben E. King (September 28, 1938 – April 30, 2015). "Stand by Me." Cf. Tracy Chapman's cover - for your listening pleasure.
290415_At some point, perhaps, we may finally get over the popular stigma surrounding memorizing, or, as some have called it, learning. Failure to memorize is motivated by nothing other than laziness. The analogy is really quite simple--imagine someone saying: I want to speak another language, but I do not want to have to memorize verbs, or nouns, or adverbs, or, or, or.... Your response is simple: you simply cannot "speak" a language if you do not have the building-blocks of the language (i.e., nouns, verbs, et al) firmly lodged in your head. The response is the same when we read the following headline: 'Most Likely To Succeed': Schools Should Teach Kids To Think, Not Memorize." If the data/information we need for thinking to 'happen' is securely lodged in cyberspace, but not between our ears, then thinking simply will not happen for us--believing might, but thinking will not!
240415_Many of my students actually disagree with my assessments of their papers and research projects because, in addition to evaluating the content of their papers (read: argument), I also assess their language or style-- I am interested to discover whether any grammar is used to assist their argument, or punctuation or word choice, or whether those words are spelled correctly, or how heavy-handed their passive constructions are... and the list goes on. Why do I do this? Because words matter: "100 Years Ago, 1.5 Million Christian Armenians Were Systematically Killed. Today, It's Still Not A 'Genocide'" Cf. further reading:"The G-Word. The Armenian Massacre and the Politics of Genocide."
100515_A co-musing from DAW...
140315_What is the value of a liberal arts education? A striking illustration from The Chronicle Review's "Why Terrorism Works." It would seem that no good idea goes unpunished.
Menachem Begin, the sixth prime minister of the state of Israel, began his long career of service to Israel as the head of a Jewish terrorist organization during the 1940s—the Irgun Zvai Le’umi (National Military Organization), whose “strategy was not to defeat Britain militarily but to use terrorist violence to undermine the government’s control of Palestine by striking at symbols of British rule.”
Begin’s strategy of using terrorism for political purposes was ultimately successful, and Begin would eventually write a seminal book on this strategy, called The Revolt (published in English in London and New York in 1951).
It would seem that Begin’s book, as well as his terrorist strategy, would have no small success, and would be influential in the framing of the Brazilian revolutionary theorist, Carlos Marighella’s, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, “which was essential reading for the various left-wing terrorist organizations that arose both in Latin America and in Western Europe during the 1960s and 1970s,” and which “embodies Begin’s strategy of provoking the security forces in hopes of alienating the population from the authorities.”
Then, “when U.S. military forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they found a copy of The Revolt along with other books about the Jewish terrorist struggle in the well-stocked library that Al Qaeda maintained at one of its training facilities.”
260215_My introductory philosophy students just finished reading the Presocratic philosophers, and they were asked to imagine, philosophically, two possible scenarios for the beginnings of the Universe: either that 'things' came into being, which is the present dominant paradigm model, or that 'things' always were, which is the dominant model presupposed by the earliest Greek philosophers. It would seem that contemporary science is catching up to ancient Greek philosophy!!! From Le Point.fr: "Et si l'Univers existait depuis et pour toujours ? En tentant de concilier relativité générale et mécanique quantique, des chercheurs ont produit un modèle qui débouche sur l'idée d'un Univers éternel."
040215_Rudyard Kipling's (1865-1936) The White Man's Burden
190115_Life is symbiotic -- which means that we all share the world in a give and take relationship. Classical Hinduism calls this Artha, which has the sense of exchange or reciprocity, and which is a fundamental principle of all action, from the banal to the sublime. The important goal to strive for in the world's reciprocities, is the balance between the give and the take. Too much see, and playing is over; too much saw, and again, playing is over.
Do humans make a contribution to the warming of the planet? NASA seems to think so. Watch and judge-- then think about how to act in order to ensure balance--it's the chance of a lifetime.
130115_A meditation from John Lennon.
080115_"Salman Rushdie condemns attack on Charlie Hebdo" -- from English PEN.
"Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect."
070115_In memoriam: Georges Wolinski, dessinateur de presse français, mort assassiné le 7 janvier 2015 lors de la fusillade au siège du journal Charlie Hebdo à Paris.
211114_An acronym for the Humanities....? Why not....
"An Angel for the Humanities" "Last week in this space I regretted the lack of an acronym identifying the fields of the humanities, an acronym that would be a counterpart to the scientists’ successful STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. A hundred readers joined in the discussion, and one, I think, came up with the answer to our prayers: RAPHAEL.
It would signify:
R – Religion
A – Art
P – Philosophy
H – History
A – Aesthetics
E – English
L -Languages"
121114_Some days it is just bound to feel like this:
051114_Have you ever wondered why otherwise science-savey folks seem to get some science completely wrong, especially "science" that is culturally polarizing? "Cultural Cognition" is a concept that is coming into its own--and it's about time! From the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Striving for a Climate Change ; To get beyond debates over science, Dan Kahan seeks their roots.
"While the public gladly accepts scientific advice on most topics—there’s no political debate about the public-health merits of pasteurization—a few issues, like climate change, have become polluted with cultural debris. This pollution defies education and intelligence, he’s shown; such smarts make people even more talented at rearranging facts to fit their views.
Like any good origin story, you could peg the start of cultural cognition to one point, more than a decade ago, when Kahan was struggling to understand debates over concealed-carry laws and their effects on gun violence. There was a deep divide among scholars and the public on how to interpret the evidence, and empirical research seemed unlikely to resolve the question. Something deeper was driving the public discussion.
Over the past few years, Kahan’s work has moved toward testing cultural cognition and its interplay with knowledge and psychological phenomena. Two of his recent studies have shown that numerically talented people are more likely to correctly evaluate evidence on whether to use something like a skin cream, but they’re also more likely to be polarized about climate change or gun control. It’s the curse of too much rationality. On encountering such a culturally contaminated topic, Kahan says, they open "a confabulatory escape hatch from the trap that logic would otherwise be placing them in."
101014_So much food for thought, UCR graduates. This is the now world of your future. But you must learn how to think about that world before you can ever begin to meaningfully address any of the myriad ways in which it is broken: "Amazon Must Be Stopped It's too big. It's cannibalizing the economy. It's time for a radical plan."
081014_Take time to recall how hard you work every day; all the various conflicts, both tiny and towering, you face and handle over the course of a single day; the amount of sheer emotional labor it takes to get through a week of your life. If you could translate all the complexities of that intellectual, emotional, and physical energy into a static image of your life, it would look like a Buddhist mandala--a sand painting, which you could then look at, and in looking at, remember back to specific events and acts of the days of your life. You could admire the intricacies of your decisions, and choices, and actions, and motivations. And then you could disburse all the pixels that constitute the static 'image of your life' in remembrance of how future time will unmake, will cast to the four winds, the infinitesimal grains of sand that make up the image of Life itself. For more: Tibetan Monks Create Wildly Intricate Sand Painting, Before Washing It All Away Completely.
071014_For our "religious studies" consideration--everything westerners do not know about Islam but believe they do! From cracked.com: "5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam."
010914_Pop Quiz -- Which is more deadly to people living in the United States: far-right wing ideologies or extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology? According to CNN: "U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists."
300914_Too close to home...
290914_An interesting case was recently argued in Oregon (USA) courts about the treatment of animals. There is legal ambivalence about animals, because they are our property, and the Courts are reluctant to dictate to property owners how they may best exploit their "property" for their own interests, economic and other; but while the recent rulings certainly give some instructions for protections for animals, those protections do not extend to the "animals exploited for human purposes, including billions of farmed animals."
The "Big Ideas"...
This is the CONCLUSION of the article:"Although the court acknowledged the current legal status of animals as
property, it recognized that individual animals have interests that are
incompatible with being classified as property. Hopefully, other courts
and lawmakers will also recognize these interests."260215_My introductory philosophy students just finished reading the Presocratic philosophers, and they were asked to imagine, philosophically, two possible scenarios for the beginnings of the Universe: either that 'things' came into being, which is the present dominant paradigm model, or that 'things' always were, which is the dominant model presupposed by the earliest Greek philosophers. It would seem that contemporary science is catching up to ancient Greek philosophy!!! From Le Point.fr: "Et si l'Univers existait depuis et pour toujours ? En tentant de concilier relativité générale et mécanique quantique, des chercheurs ont produit un modèle qui débouche sur l'idée d'un Univers éternel."
040215_Rudyard Kipling's (1865-1936) The White Man's Burden
Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden, In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden, The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden, No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark[14] them with your living, And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden, Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden, Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood, through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden, In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden, The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden, No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark[14] them with your living, And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden, Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden, Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood, through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!
Do humans make a contribution to the warming of the planet? NASA seems to think so. Watch and judge-- then think about how to act in order to ensure balance--it's the chance of a lifetime.
130115_A meditation from John Lennon.
"Imagine"
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
080115_"Salman Rushdie condemns attack on Charlie Hebdo" -- from English PEN.
"Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect."
070115_In memoriam: Georges Wolinski, dessinateur de presse français, mort assassiné le 7 janvier 2015 lors de la fusillade au siège du journal Charlie Hebdo à Paris.
 |
| Wolinski_by J-C HARRY dans Pour sourire retrolien |
211114_An acronym for the Humanities....? Why not....
"An Angel for the Humanities" "Last week in this space I regretted the lack of an acronym identifying the fields of the humanities, an acronym that would be a counterpart to the scientists’ successful STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. A hundred readers joined in the discussion, and one, I think, came up with the answer to our prayers: RAPHAEL.
It would signify:
R – Religion
A – Art
P – Philosophy
H – History
A – Aesthetics
E – English
L -Languages"
121114_Some days it is just bound to feel like this:
051114_Have you ever wondered why otherwise science-savey folks seem to get some science completely wrong, especially "science" that is culturally polarizing? "Cultural Cognition" is a concept that is coming into its own--and it's about time! From the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Striving for a Climate Change ; To get beyond debates over science, Dan Kahan seeks their roots.
"While the public gladly accepts scientific advice on most topics—there’s no political debate about the public-health merits of pasteurization—a few issues, like climate change, have become polluted with cultural debris. This pollution defies education and intelligence, he’s shown; such smarts make people even more talented at rearranging facts to fit their views.
Like any good origin story, you could peg the start of cultural cognition to one point, more than a decade ago, when Kahan was struggling to understand debates over concealed-carry laws and their effects on gun violence. There was a deep divide among scholars and the public on how to interpret the evidence, and empirical research seemed unlikely to resolve the question. Something deeper was driving the public discussion.
Over the past few years, Kahan’s work has moved toward testing cultural cognition and its interplay with knowledge and psychological phenomena. Two of his recent studies have shown that numerically talented people are more likely to correctly evaluate evidence on whether to use something like a skin cream, but they’re also more likely to be polarized about climate change or gun control. It’s the curse of too much rationality. On encountering such a culturally contaminated topic, Kahan says, they open "a confabulatory escape hatch from the trap that logic would otherwise be placing them in."
101014_So much food for thought, UCR graduates. This is the now world of your future. But you must learn how to think about that world before you can ever begin to meaningfully address any of the myriad ways in which it is broken: "Amazon Must Be Stopped It's too big. It's cannibalizing the economy. It's time for a radical plan."
081014_Take time to recall how hard you work every day; all the various conflicts, both tiny and towering, you face and handle over the course of a single day; the amount of sheer emotional labor it takes to get through a week of your life. If you could translate all the complexities of that intellectual, emotional, and physical energy into a static image of your life, it would look like a Buddhist mandala--a sand painting, which you could then look at, and in looking at, remember back to specific events and acts of the days of your life. You could admire the intricacies of your decisions, and choices, and actions, and motivations. And then you could disburse all the pixels that constitute the static 'image of your life' in remembrance of how future time will unmake, will cast to the four winds, the infinitesimal grains of sand that make up the image of Life itself. For more: Tibetan Monks Create Wildly Intricate Sand Painting, Before Washing It All Away Completely.
071014_For our "religious studies" consideration--everything westerners do not know about Islam but believe they do! From cracked.com: "5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam."
010914_Pop Quiz -- Which is more deadly to people living in the United States: far-right wing ideologies or extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology? According to CNN: "U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists."
"In fact, since 9/11
extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies,
including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and
anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States
than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology. According to a
count by the New America Foundation, right wing extremists have killed
34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11. (The
total includes the latest shootings in Kansas, which are being classified as a hate crime).
"Since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing
ideologies...have killed more people in the United States than have
extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology."
By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.
(Although a variety of
left wing militants and environmental extremists have carried out
violent attacks for political reasons against property and individuals
since 9/11, none have been linked to a lethal attack, according to
research by the New America Foundation.)
Moreover, since 9/11 none of the more than 200 individuals
indicted or convicted in the United States of some act of jihadist
terrorism have acquired or used chemical or biological weapons or their
precursor materials, while 13 individuals motivated by right wing
extremist ideology, one individual motivated by left-wing extremist
ideology, and two with idiosyncratic beliefs, used or acquired such
weapons or their precursors."
290914_An interesting case was recently argued in Oregon (USA) courts about the treatment of animals. There is legal ambivalence about animals, because they are our property, and the Courts are reluctant to dictate to property owners how they may best exploit their "property" for their own interests, economic and other; but while the recent rulings certainly give some instructions for protections for animals, those protections do not extend to the "animals exploited for human purposes, including billions of farmed animals."
The "Big Ideas"...
- "Although acknowledging animals as an owner's "property," the Court decided that the animals have some minimal protection beyond their simple economic value to the owner: "...[T]he protections that do exist generally require only that property owners provide the minimal level of care needed to accomplish the owner’s particular human purpose. Animal interests for legal purposes are usually restricted to not being deprived of the minimal care required to provide an economic benefit to their owners."
- "Society displays profound moral confusion when it comes to animals. The law reflects this confusion despite the fact that it is becoming increasingly clear that nonhuman animals share with us characteristics of sentient beings. Some of these characteristics are being perceptually aware, feeling pain, caring for their offspring and desiring to continue to live. In other words, society seems to understand that all animals are sentient, but it allows the horrific exploitation of most of them, mainly in industrial agriculture. At the same time, it protects against the neglect and abuse of some of them, such as dogs, cats and the horses and goats involved in the Nix case. There is no legitimate justification for this different treatment because there is no morally significant difference between the horses and goats in the Nix case and the animals exploited for human purposes, including billions of farmed animals."
270914_Finally, someone is talking about them... those overcomitted students who are flagging under the weight of all their extra-curricular, social activities, which, argues the outspoken Deresiewicz, is "a key factor degrading the learning experience." From The C of HE: "‘Excellent Sheep’ Author Returns to Yale to Tend His Flock."
260914_Professional philosophers also, and unfortunately, show their Human, All Too Human side...; from the Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Man Who Ranks Philosophy Departments Now Rankles Them, Too."
Why, oh holy Socrates, do you always pay such homage
To this youth? Know you nothing Greater?
Why with love,
As if upon gods, does your eye gaze upon him?
Who loves what is most alive, has thought most deeply;
Who understands high Virtue, has looked into the World;
And even the Wise bring themselves to bend the knee,
Sometimes, to Beauty. (translation by Aiken, 2014)
050714_All teachers have experienced "this" class at some point in their careers: Shocking but true: students prefer jolt of pain than being made to sit and think. Report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities tackles question of why most of us find it so hard to do nothing.
290614_In response to a student question about SUMMER READING, which should look something like this:
or this:
Anyway - to the question of summer reading. Most of the great reading about things philosophical is, believe it or not, not written by philosophers. The biggest questions about how men live/should live in their world (that sorta thing, you know?), is actually found in works of fiction, and especially in the great works. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; anything by Herman Hesse, such as the Glass Bead Game, but my favorites by him are Narcissus and Goldmund and Siddhartha (you might really enjoy this one if you are intrigued by Asian spirituality!); there is also Andre Gide, The Immoralist, for example, which is a beautiful book. You might also try Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov and/or Crime and Punishment. In the spring 15 semester, for the course in Existentialism, I've picked a new book to add to the pile, which is Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.
I also enjoy fiction that tries to imagine the world of the gods differently, outside the normative philosophico-religious box, such as Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Most or many of these books we read for Existentialism, because they talk about things existential! How do we live in this world? Why? Is there such a thing as true morality? You'll also discover that almost all the authors cited, except Rand and Gaiman, are Nobel Prize winners in literature! And this means that, in addition to excellent narratives, the writing is also world-class!
I've just filled your plate with prime pickings, mon ami.... so have at it! And when you've read something interesting or beautiful, drop me a note to tell me about.... and we'll talk!
250614_Karl Jaspers: a teacher of Existenzphilosophie; one of Heidegger's significant interlocutors, who enjoyed an extended, 43-year epistolary relationship with H; the (perhaps) loudest condemning voice to keep the post-war, denazified Heidegger out of the university classroom_ http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/jasperse.pdf
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Reading the University Classics, Part 2:
"From the distance of more than half a century, Karl Jaspers's 1946 treatise, The Idea of the University, reads both like a farewell to the 19th-century German university and a lucid anticipation of several of today's academic problems. [...] Jaspers wrote his book at the end of World War II. The Nazis had suspended him from his position as professor of philosophy. One of his reasons for writing this treatise was to lay the groundwork for a thoroughly democratic restructuring of higher education in Germany. However, Jaspers also insists that the university is a genuinely transnational institution and that his elaborations concern higher education everywhere."
An excerpted rendition of Jasper's The Idea of the University, retrieved from: DIE ZEIT Nr. 30 - 21. Juli 1961 - Seite 8; Aus dem Archiv bei ZEIT ONLINE:
310514_Try to imagine working in any environment, such as teaching or law or politics, where the right to speak your mind (or to explore "difficult" ideas, or do edgy or challenging research, or try to publish unpopular ideas) is guaranteed and protected so that you do not loose your job or standing if you actually find yourself speaking against the status quo of ideas. Try to imagine, even, that such a freedom is considered fundamental enough to be enshrined in the Foundation Documents that express the public values of your country.
But then Someone decides that there also need to be some additional rules or principles to make sure that such protected speech is also used "properly" by those wishing to speak. Kansas University decided that speech is no longer protected in the academy if faculty use social media in such a way that it “impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among co-workers, impedes the performance of the speaker’s official duties, interferes with the regular operation of the employer, or otherwise adversely affects the employer’s ability to efficiently provide services.” Can you imagine any Freedom being able to stand over and against "the employer's ability to efficiently provide services."
Freedom to speak cannot stand against capital interests, and win, unless it is protected absolutely. From an opinion piece in Aljazeera America.
300514_Occasionally, along comes a voice to remind us, also, about what is good in the world of men. In his NY Times Op-Ed piece entitled "Europe’s Secret Success," Paul Krugman reminds us that Europe, as an Idea and despite all its problems, really does work. In comparison, the Halcyon Days of the Land of Opportunity, which used to be America, are now sadly and very deliberately being left behind as that country moves forward into its plutocratic future.
260514_What should education look like in and for a dynamic and rapidly changing social and material environment? It would seem reasonable, first, to look at the challenges surrounding our educational institutions, which is what Sir Ken Robinson does in this video
110514_"...the supremacy of a certain kind of economic-bureaucratic logic—one of “outcomes,” “assessment,” and “the bottom-line”—is eroding the values that undergird not just our society’s commitment to the humanities, but to democracy itself." [from The Atlantic's Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers]
080514_I wish we all heard so much more of this message at graduations: that We are not special... but that we are all certainly players in the game of the World. This teacher "encourages his students to go out and see the world—travel, buy a boat, climb mountains, work in Haiti, join the armed forces, or go to the library and simply start reading anything and everything that interests them. “Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”
From The Atlantics' "Advice to High School Graduates: 'You Are Not Special'"
280414_To all graduating seniors everywhere --you will hear platitudes galore in the upcoming graduation ceremonies designed to separate you from the nonchalance of your student years and otherwise carefree youth. But you also need to hear these graduation words, which were delivered freely (in print only), unsolicited (by any university), and which therefore remain formally unspoken.
"This is the last opportunity you have to be cynical. You can — you should — be suspicious, wary, guarded. It’s a mark of intelligence. But cynicism is a luxury you can afford no longer. Ditto with the word promise, that hallmark of college students. It’s now time to produce. Do what you need to do, but don’t do it for our sake. Don’t do it for the sake of your family or this institution. Do it because you’re a sentient being on this planet, third rock from the sun, alive among the living. It’s the rarest of gifts. It’s the fiercest of responsibilities. That’s why we’re pulling for you, and we are all pulling for you. We want for you what we pray for ourselves: a chance. This moment. Discovery. Meaning.
Aren’t you curious why you’re all dressed in flowing robes and funny hats? Because today you’re all the same. I can’t tell any differences among you. The next time you’ll be treated so democratically is when you die. So, somewhere between now and then, you have choices to make. Fortunately, you’re not alone. You’re not cynical. You’re free. And you’re alive."
260414_Have you ever wondered, really wondered, what professors do with all the rest of their time, when they are finished harassing students in the classroom for those 12 or so contact hours in the week? Is university teaching the cushy-job everyone thinks it is? Well, the study has been done and it is now official... it would seem that college professors actually do stuff! Fresh off the press: "What Do Professors Do All Day?"
200414_There is a Euthyphro moment presently occurring in Hindu studies, although it could just as well have been in any of the disciplines touching upon the academic study of religion... What this means is that there is a battle to determine who "owns" the "rights" to ideas in religious stories and/or to the stories themselves -- the academic voice or the religious voice, Socrates the inquirer or Euthyphro the religious fundamentalist, the Mind open to inquiry or the Mind closed to all but that which is included within the narrow discourse of faith.
The spark was Wendy Doniger's 2010 book, published by Penguin India, called, The Hindus: An Alternative History, "which won two awards in India: in 2012, the Ramnath Goenka Award,2 and in 2013, the Colonel James Tod Award.3 But within months of its publication in India, a then-eighty-one-year-old retired headmaster named Dina Nath Batra, a proud member of the far-right organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had brought the first of a series of civil and criminal actions against the book, arguing that it violated Article 295a of the Indian Penal Code, which forbids “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class” of citizens. After fighting the case for four years, Penguin India ... abandoned the lawsuit, agreeing to cease publishing the book. (It also agreed to pulp all remaining copies...)"
Her analysis is sensational in a Socratic kind of way: "This argument has nothing to do with religious civility; it is about the clash between pious and academic ways of talking about religion and about who gets to speak for or interpret religious traditions. [...] Batra and I are talking past one another, playing two different games with the textual evidence. But he thinks there is only one game, and is determined to keep me off my own field. To debate a book you disagree with is what scholarship is about. To ban or burn a book you regard as blasphemous is what fascist bigotry is about."
190414_Seasonal humor from an American colleague:
IMPORTANT EASTER MESSAGE
A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road.
He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car.
The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see
what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is the Easter Bunny, and he is DEAD. The driver feels so awful that he begins to cry.
A beautiful blonde woman driving down the highway sees a man crying on the side of the road and pulls over. She steps out of the car and asks the man what's wrong.
"I feel terrible," ! he explains, "I accidentally hit the Easter Bunny with my car and KILLED HIM."
The blonde says,"Don't worry." She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can. She walks over to the limp, dead Easter Bunny, bends down, and sprays the contents onto him. The Easter Bunny jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road. Ten feet away he stops, turns around and waves again, he hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet, turns and waves, and repeats this again and again and again and again, until he hops out of sight. The man is astonished.He runs over to the woman and demands, "What is in that can? What did you spray on the Easter Bunny ?"
The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label. It says..
(Are you ready for this?)
(You know you're gonna be sorry)
(Last chance)
(OK, here it is)
It says,
"Hair Spray
Restores life to dead hair,
and adds permanent wave."
Happy Easter!! !
180414_Is it accurate to say that the "human brain is genetically comparable around the globe"? Is is true that "human hardwiring for much behavior, perception, and cognition" is also universal? This has clearly been the longtime assumption of the social sciences and economics. So what if the assumption is wrong?
In a recent article entitled "We Aren’t the World" the author addresses what might seem intuitively obvious to the lesser educated -- that tests and studies done in America do not necessarily reflect attitudes and reactions of all the peoples of the world. To express this intuition more scientifically-- "96 percent of human subjects in these studies came from countries that represent only 12 percent of the world’s population." Oups.
General ramifications? In every area, including "spatial reasoning, the way we infer the motivations of others, categorization, moral reasoning, [and] the boundaries between the self and others."
Ramifications for psychology? One of the authors of this paper, who is interested in the effects of religion upon psychology, argues that this "new approach suggests the possibility of reverse-engineering psychological research: look at cultural content first; cognition and behavior second. Norenzayan’s recent work on religious belief is perhaps the best example of the intellectual landscape that is now open for study. When Norenzayan became a student of psychology in 1994 [..., he says:] “I remember opening textbook after textbook and turning to the index and looking for the word ‘religion,’ ” he told me, “Again and again the very word wouldn’t be listed. This was shocking. How could psychology be the science of human behavior and have nothing to say about religion? Where I grew up you’d have to be in a coma not to notice the importance of religion on how people perceive themselves and the world around them.”
Ramifications for other academic disciplines? According to this author, "after reading [this] paper, academics from other disciplines began to come forward with their own mea culpas. Commenting on the paper, two brain researchers from Northwestern University argued (pdf) that the nascent field of neuroimaging had made the same mistake as psychologists, noting that 90 percent of neuroimaging studies were performed in Western countries. Researchers in motor development similarly suggested that their discipline’s body of research ignored how different child-rearing practices around the world can dramatically influence states of development. Two psycholinguistics professors suggested that their colleagues had also made the same mistake: blithely assuming human homogeneity while focusing their research primarily on one rather small slice of humanity." And so knowledge moves forward, irresistible and no respecter of persons or beliefs.
170414_What is philosophy really about? In this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, "How Philosophy Makes Progress," the author argues that philosophy is about rendering "our human points of view ever more coherent. It’s in terms of our increased coherence that the measure of progress has to be taken, not in terms suitable for evaluating science or literature. We lead conceptually compartmentalized lives, our points of view balkanized so that we can live happily with our internal tensions and contradictions, many of the borders fortified by unexamined presumptions. It’s the job of philosophy to undermine that happiness, and it’s been at it ever since the Athenians showed their gratitude to Socrates for services rendered by offering him a cupful of hemlock."
The author concludes her article by speaking about the self-effacing quality of philosophy, which is so often neglected: Progress made in philosophy, "unlike scientific progress, tends to erase its own tracks as it is integrated into our manifest image and so becomes subsumed in the framework by which we conceive of ourselves. We no longer see the argumentative work it took for this advance in morality to be achieved. Its invisibility takes the measure of the achievement." Not bad....
050414_Putting people in boxes (offices, cubicles, etc.) as a way to dominate the work place? To study the office is to study how authority maintains authority—and how the subjugated stay subjugated. Or so says Jerry Stahl... in Arts & Letters Daily.
210314_As of this month the three volumes of Martin Heidegger's Schwarze Hefte (Notebooks) are now finally all in print and available to the scholarly community for study. These are Bände 94 (1931-1938), 95 (1938/39), and 96 (1939-1941) in the Gesamtausgabe, published by Klostermann in Frankfurt am Main. For an introduction/update as to the significance of this publication for Heidegger studies, you can read the recently published: "Release of Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’ Reignites Debate Over Nazi Ideology."
100513_ Many teachers, including myself, think that teaching is creating relationships with students. Online teaching venues constitute a challenge to this model, which is why I, personally, have resisted such venues for so long. I do, however, also see the value of opening up our classrooms to the greater public. It would seem that excellence in teaching is at a crossroads. An Open Letter From San Jose State U.'s Philosophy Department to Michael Sandel.
090513_Does anyone know the address of an Accessories Shop for philosophers that sells these kinds of things.... (from a former teaching colleague in philosophy--thank you, Grant.)
090513_Richard Strauss' Tone Poem encouraging us all to celebrate living -- in a distinctly Zarathustrian kind of way!
220413_The US Senate is willing, and even eager, for normal Americans to have right of access to high powered, high capacity, military-style weapons. The US Senate should therefore also be willing to accept the consequences of its applied philosophy, such as when well- and heavily-armed citizens are able to out-gun police, as recently occurred in Boston; because this is the predictable outcome of its anti-gun-control legislation and vote.
The Second Amendment, which now only means in American mythology the right to bear arms, the "militia" bit having been handily forgotten, clearly seems to enjoy preferential status among the Constitutional Amendments... a mysterious cultural evolution in and of itself. Unless the Neutral Observer of American culture is actually witnessing attempts to permutate political power into tyranny? Could such a transformation look like this? Is it really possible that There's something happening here....?
Click here for a meditation on America's fear of terror, and yet love of guns and weapons.
210413_Fallout eventually occurs in the political culture when public education is inhibited from doing its Jeffersonian job-- politicians not only do not know how to do their job, they no longer even know what the job is!
200413_Sir Ken Robinison on the suppression of creativity in schools. Where have all our artists (and poets, and philosophers, and historians, and painters, and writers, and mythologers, and musicians, and - Citizens) gone? If we do not create them in our schools, then they will not exist for the upcoming generations.
160413_ The Boston Marathon and Running Toward the Sound of Screams - Patton Oswalt muses for us all in words of high wisdom.
"Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem -- one human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in a while, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."
This originally appeared on Patton Oswalt's Facebook page.
Follow Patton Oswalt on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/pattonoswalt"
130413_Woody Allen on the existential predicament of man as seen through the eyes of an observer of a Jackson Pollock painting....Play it Again Sam (1972).
130413_Beyond words... beyond belief, into the very heart of dispair. Il vaut mieux en rire....
041013_Why it is good to live in Europe - thank you Ludwig van...
030413_So what happens when US politicians promote legislation to bypass the US Constitution on the question of the dis-establishment of religion? It is of course obvious that these lawmakers are not promoting equality among religions on the question of God; nor is their wish to encourage the growth of Islam, or Judaism, or Atheism, or New-Ageism. How and why are these people in the service of a Constitution that they obviously do not wish to serve? "North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill..." read more. On a more somber note, if that is possible, 32 percent of Americans in a survey, said they were in favor of making Christianity the official religion of the United States. This would be a day of mourning for America's Founding Fathers -- for their childrens' children and their children after them have lost the capacity to understand the nature of Tyranny, which at least 32 percent of modern America freely desires to embrace; because in fact and in truth, the very definition of the religious life is to embrace the tyranny of God-- hence the language of blind obedience, submission, yielding up, etc.
210313_Carlin Romano is one of the few in academe who dare to speak of the "great" Martin Heidegger in less than sterling language: "In light of the work of Victor Farias, Hugo Ott, and Emmanuel Faye, the putative greatest of 20th-century German philosophers, Martin Heidegger, stands exposed and delegitimized as a committed Nazi—only dead-enders who ride his coattails in academe still worship his work." The philosopher of hermeneutics Hans Gadamer, disciple of Heidegger, has also escaped critical review for the most part: (again Romano): "The still-undercriticized Hans-Georg Gadamer cleansed one of his 1940 lectures of its celebration of völkisch ideology." Way to go, Romano!
190313_A soldier's dying rant_Where is justice for Bush, Cheney, & their Iraq?
190313_The "problem" of consciousness, as Thomas Nagel calls it in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, lies at the heart of what philosophers call the mind-body problem. It is also the thorn in the side of the empirical sciences, and continues to irritate.
170313_The very real "reality" of what bullets do to human bodies_Michael Moore & the NRA.
170313_Hermeneutics writ large over the political face of America.
160313_An African Proverb...
240213 -- Here are a rabbi's brief reflections on atheistic religions and their choice of gods... from deep within the existential situation.
180213 - In the 21st century, as in the 20th, the war for the freedom of the world's peoples will be progressively won, or lost, on the Battlefield of Ideas; what is at stake is nothing less than the Zeitgeist of a generation. On this great field are met the forces of the Religious Mind in opposition to the forces of the Secular Mind. A Free Mind for each of us will be the prize for the triumph of the Secular Mind. What will be our prize if the Religious Mind triumphs?
The battle is raging and bloody. See Paul Trewhela's defense of one Free Man's voice (Salman Rushdie & The Satanic Verses). For further reading on the question refer to Bertrand Russell's famous lecture: Why I am not a Christian.
130213 - I woke up this morning thinking about a psychologist who once defined me as an "over-acheiver" -- discourse specific jargon designed to negate, if ever I've heard. Hermeneutically, this is the way that truth dies: "not with a bang but a whimper." George Carlin on euphemisms.
120213 - It's not about drones, silly... it's about respecting the Constitution. In all areas of human endeavor, the application of some type of Technology to doing a job is seldom if ever the true bone of contention -- it is simply the use of created Tools to accomplish some task we have set ourselves. We generally should not spend our energies on trying to follow that Red Herring. The carpenter is not criticized for using a Hammer, except when the Task he is called to do requires the use of a Saw. So the Hammer becomes a surrogate "wrong" only when it is linked to an inappropriate, a wrong, Task. And so we come full circle to the true question -- for on the topic of this warfare technology it cannot be about the tools of the trade; the true question for We the People is, and has always been, whether or not the Task in which we are engaged is worthy, whether it is appropriate, and whether or not it is legal according to the laws of the land.
110213 - Students doing a hermeneutical analysis on teacher... this sign is their creation. What is Teacher? Am I all parts equally? Some parts more than others?
060213 - Thoughts of belonging, and not....
060213_ Has America Truly Entered into a Post-Legal Period? What is the role of philosophy, public and private, in such a State?
040213 - When art disappears from the world....
290113 - Armed Patriotism
28 January 2013 - Religious allusions and language used to call America to the philosophical life. Martin Luther King - I Have a Dream (delivered August 28, 1963).
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
21 January 2013 -- I can wish for nothing greater than that my journey should share the same spirit as that which inspired Tennyson's Ulysses on to his final journey. There are certainly worse models for a life....
12 January 2013 - Charles Trenet -- L'oiseau des vacances!
12 January 2013 - The Spiegel -- Hannah Arendt on the question of evil....
According to [Arendt's] theory, Eichmann was literally thoughtless. Efficiency and obedience were his guiding principles, which replaced that inner conversation that we call conscience, that intangible space where human beings encounter themselves and responsibility arises. Arendt asked how political systems could have been created in which it is not the traditional notion of evil -- motivated by greed and vanity, revenge and envy -- but "sheer thoughtlessness" that brings the most horrific consequences.
11 January 2013 - Musings from Robert Reich - Causes of Death for American Young People...
10 January 2013--- Perspectivism from a different point of view
02 January 2013 - Nietzsche redacted....
01 January 2013 -- A Fine Question for the New Year.... Americans and Education?
31 December 2012 -- Waar leren wij nog denken? A Dutch language reflection by Pepijn Vloemans on why one studies philosophy at the university.
28 December 2012 -- A wonderful assessment of the value of the Liberal Arts Education to a society that thinks and measures in strictly materialistic terms, at TheLastPsychiatrist.com. It is not enough to understand the problem, though, now we in the Liberal Arts must learn to find the voice that the material society CAN here! Go here: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html
24 December 2012 -- "Modern civilization, it seems, is gravely threatened because the perennial values of intellectual and moral verities have increasingly been divorced from the realities of matter and nature, so that material reality, deprived of the guidance of right reason and a rationally enlightened will, is being handed over to the blind forces of chance and the biological urges of the will to power" (Kurt F. Reinhardt in The Existentialist Revolt).
16 December 2012 -- President Obama spoke at a prayer vigil in Newton, Connecticut on Sunday in honor of the victims of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Below, read Obama's full remarks as provided by the White House:
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, Governor. To all the families, first responders, to the community of Newtown, clergy, guests -- Scripture tells us: “…do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away…inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”
We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults. They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school; in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.
Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief; that our world too has been torn apart; that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you, we’ve pulled our children tight. And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide; whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown -- you are not alone.
As these difficult days have unfolded, you’ve also inspired us with stories of strength and resolve and sacrifice. We know that when danger arrived in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary, the school’s staff did not flinch, they did not hesitate. Dawn Hochsprung and Mary Sherlach, Vicki Soto, Lauren Rousseau, Rachel Davino and Anne Marie Murphy -- they responded as we all hope we might respond in such terrifying circumstances -- with courage and with love, giving their lives to protect the children in their care.
We know that there were other teachers who barricaded themselves inside classrooms, and kept steady through it all, and reassured their students by saying “wait for the good guys, they’re coming”; “show me your smile.”
And we know that good guys came. The first responders who raced to the scene, helping to guide those in harm’s way to safety, and comfort those in need, holding at bay their own shock and trauma because they had a job to do, and others needed them more.
And then there were the scenes of the schoolchildren, helping one another, holding each other, dutifully following instructions in the way that young children sometimes do; one child even trying to encourage a grown-up by saying, “I know karate. So it’s okay. I’ll lead the way out.” (Laughter.)
As a community, you’ve inspired us, Newtown. In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other, and you’ve cared for one another, and you’ve loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered. And with time, and God’s grace, that love will see you through.
But we, as a nation, we are left with some hard questions. Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around. With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves -- our child -- is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice. And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child’s very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won’t -- that we can’t always be there for them. They’ll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments. And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.
And we know we can’t do this by ourselves. It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize, no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself. That this job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation. And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.
This is our first task -- caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.
And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children -- all of them -- safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?
I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.
Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law -- no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.
But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that -- then surely we have an obligation to try.
In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?
All the world’s religions -- so many of them represented here today -- start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain; that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame, or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that no matter how good our intentions, we will all stumble sometimes, in some way. We will make mistakes, we will experience hardships. And even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.
There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have -- for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace -- that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves, and binds us to something larger -- we know that’s what matters. We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that.
That’s what we can be sure of. And that’s what you, the people of Newtown, have reminded us. That’s how you’ve inspired us. You remind us what matters. And that’s what should drive us forward in everything we do, for as long as God sees fit to keep us on this Earth.
“Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them -- for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.
God has called them all home. For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on, and make our country worthy of their memory.
May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort. And may He bless and watch over this community, and the United States of America. (Applause.)
Helping Classroom Concentration
Notes from a Public Lecture to the RA Political Society (21 November 2012):
A Tuesday Muse from another philosopher - 20 November 2012
A ranting sort of muse in Memoriam: Bill Sakalauskas, a friend who has gone ahead - 24 October 2012
An Academic Rant about Interpreting Stuff (Hermeneutics) (text in French) - 26 September, 2012
MUSINGS - 22 August, 2012
A Sunday Appreciation - 05 August 2012
MUSINGS - 04 August 2012
MUSINGS - 29 July 2012
MUSINGS - 28 July 2012
260914_Professional philosophers also, and unfortunately, show their Human, All Too Human side...; from the Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Man Who Ranks Philosophy Departments Now Rankles Them, Too."
250914_Perceptive words about writing... that it's really all about hearing: The Sound on the Page
240914_Professor Steinhardt, an Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University, does not need to enlist Nietzsche's name in his extremely thought provoking article about the beginning of things; indeed, Nietzsche is actually quite superfluous to this conversation. On the other hand, this is a reflection concerning initial paradigms of Nature and Reality that UCR's Introduction to Philosophy students, who have just finished studying the Greek Presocratic philosophers, might find familiar. For Steinhardt's excerpted article in Salon: "The universe according to Nietzsche: Modern cosmology and the theory of eternal recurrence. The philosopher's musings on the nature of reality could have scientific basis, according to a prominent physicist Paul Steinhardt"
180914_Musing about the long-time controversy concerning student evaluations, a recent study done by statisticians affirms that "averages and comparisons make no sense, as a matter of statistics." So what should evaluators be asking students about their courses instead? The study's author suggests that evaluations should be about things on which students are expert: "Did you enjoy the class? Did you leave it more enthusiastic or less enthusiastic about the subject matter? Could you hear the instructor during lectures? Was the instructor’s handwriting legible?" There is a caveat to this type of questioning, though, which is that, while "It’s totally valuable to ask [students] about their experience, [...] it’s not synonymous with good teaching." From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Scholars Take Aim at Student Evaluations’ ‘Air of Objectivity’
050914_The media have recently been on a roll on the topic of teacher-student and classroom dynamics, from electronics in classrooms, to most popular classroom distractions, to, now, teachers pet peeves. Honestly? my favorites are 1-10.
040914_On the question of distractions in the classroom that interrupt teaching, The Chronicle of Higher Education has the following survey: "Your 3 Worst Classroom Distractions (and How to Deal With Them)."
270814_On the question of electronics (computers, telephones, et al) in philosophy classrooms, for both teachers and students, I favor the "not" crowd: "Why I’m Asking You Not to Use Laptops."
100814_From the pen of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), one of the finest lyricists of the English language... a sonnet, a musing, and a reminder.
080814_On November 18, 2013 Phrontisterion published a blog/rant entitled "Ad Hoc re media coverage & the Law: Equality and Justice are not equivalences—sometimes with tragic consequences." Well, here is the upshot of that story from the HuffPost: "Theodore Wafer Found Guilty Of Second-Degree Murder In Death Of Renisha McBride."
060814_Based on a study concerning the many weaknesses of the MOOC concept in teaching, here is a next (possible) challenge for teachers to consider who are institutionally locked into a 15-week academic semester for their courses: learning to think modularly within those 15 weeks! Cf. Chronicle of Higher Education: "Are Courses Outdated? MIT Considers Offering ‘Modules’ Instead."
In other Chronicle news this week... it would seem from this Chronicle story that folks do not want to take credit for their plagiarism anymore... instead they resign their positions; they deny; they say it was unintentional; they redefine plagiarism; etc., and they all, from the high 'n mighty to the most humble, are completely mystified to find that significant portions of "their" work are not theirs at all -- le mystère complet--comment est-ce Dieu possible! "In Their Own Words: A Field Guide to Accused Plagiarists’ Public Statements."
Finally, how can one not love an article about teaching that concludes on this note: we "raise children [who are] so coddled that they have a hard time functioning on their own in the larger world. So too with the way we have infantilized our students. Afraid or unwilling to challenge them, we pass them through with perfectly good grades but without much of a sense of how to work on their own or think for themselves." From "The Rise of the Helicopter Teacher."
280714_The philosophical study of sexuality now has a name, at least in French-- following the title of a recent book: the philosophy of nookie: Je pense donc je jouis. La philosophie du cul. Articulated philosophically, as opposed to the fashion holding sway in other, empirically framed sciences, the question has Platonic or Cartesian overtones, and looks like this: "Les différences de comportements sexuels entre l'homme et la femme sont-elles innées ou acquises?" For philosophy, the resolution of the theoretical question must "live" somewhere in the tension between the two great theoretical families: 1) there are the essentialists, the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus sort, who argue from some sort of innate nature; and 2) there are the constructionists who, following in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir and, later, Judith Butler, argue that we are entirely a product of our social environment.
190714_If there are no other, better, truer reasons for studying philosophy, there are always those reliable standby reasons (i.e., clarity of thought, critical thinking, ability to recognize an argument, or not, etc.), which are reasonably well stated, with a journalistic slant, in the following article: Be Employable, Study Philosophy. Unsolicited advice for those entering the brave new world of work, or worse, journalism.
170714_From the Chronicle of Higher Education: 33 Ethicists Defend Facebook’s Controversial Mood Study. Among some of the other points made, the article argues the following 3 points:
080714_In August of 1918 Heidegger is a soldier stationed as a weather observer on a German front in France, and he is thinking about Hölderlin (1770-1843), German lyric poet of the romantic period. So, quoting from Hölderlin's Socrates and Alcibiades, he writes to Elfride: "Höld. is currently turning into a new experience for me -- as though I were approaching him wholly primordially for the first time."
240914_Professor Steinhardt, an Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University, does not need to enlist Nietzsche's name in his extremely thought provoking article about the beginning of things; indeed, Nietzsche is actually quite superfluous to this conversation. On the other hand, this is a reflection concerning initial paradigms of Nature and Reality that UCR's Introduction to Philosophy students, who have just finished studying the Greek Presocratic philosophers, might find familiar. For Steinhardt's excerpted article in Salon: "The universe according to Nietzsche: Modern cosmology and the theory of eternal recurrence. The philosopher's musings on the nature of reality could have scientific basis, according to a prominent physicist Paul Steinhardt"
180914_Musing about the long-time controversy concerning student evaluations, a recent study done by statisticians affirms that "averages and comparisons make no sense, as a matter of statistics." So what should evaluators be asking students about their courses instead? The study's author suggests that evaluations should be about things on which students are expert: "Did you enjoy the class? Did you leave it more enthusiastic or less enthusiastic about the subject matter? Could you hear the instructor during lectures? Was the instructor’s handwriting legible?" There is a caveat to this type of questioning, though, which is that, while "It’s totally valuable to ask [students] about their experience, [...] it’s not synonymous with good teaching." From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Scholars Take Aim at Student Evaluations’ ‘Air of Objectivity’
050914_The media have recently been on a roll on the topic of teacher-student and classroom dynamics, from electronics in classrooms, to most popular classroom distractions, to, now, teachers pet peeves. Honestly? my favorites are 1-10.
040914_On the question of distractions in the classroom that interrupt teaching, The Chronicle of Higher Education has the following survey: "Your 3 Worst Classroom Distractions (and How to Deal With Them)."
270814_On the question of electronics (computers, telephones, et al) in philosophy classrooms, for both teachers and students, I favor the "not" crowd: "Why I’m Asking You Not to Use Laptops."
100814_From the pen of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), one of the finest lyricists of the English language... a sonnet, a musing, and a reminder.
Ozymandias (1818)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
080814_On November 18, 2013 Phrontisterion published a blog/rant entitled "Ad Hoc re media coverage & the Law: Equality and Justice are not equivalences—sometimes with tragic consequences." Well, here is the upshot of that story from the HuffPost: "Theodore Wafer Found Guilty Of Second-Degree Murder In Death Of Renisha McBride."
060814_Based on a study concerning the many weaknesses of the MOOC concept in teaching, here is a next (possible) challenge for teachers to consider who are institutionally locked into a 15-week academic semester for their courses: learning to think modularly within those 15 weeks! Cf. Chronicle of Higher Education: "Are Courses Outdated? MIT Considers Offering ‘Modules’ Instead."
In other Chronicle news this week... it would seem from this Chronicle story that folks do not want to take credit for their plagiarism anymore... instead they resign their positions; they deny; they say it was unintentional; they redefine plagiarism; etc., and they all, from the high 'n mighty to the most humble, are completely mystified to find that significant portions of "their" work are not theirs at all -- le mystère complet--comment est-ce Dieu possible! "In Their Own Words: A Field Guide to Accused Plagiarists’ Public Statements."
Finally, how can one not love an article about teaching that concludes on this note: we "raise children [who are] so coddled that they have a hard time functioning on their own in the larger world. So too with the way we have infantilized our students. Afraid or unwilling to challenge them, we pass them through with perfectly good grades but without much of a sense of how to work on their own or think for themselves." From "The Rise of the Helicopter Teacher."
280714_The philosophical study of sexuality now has a name, at least in French-- following the title of a recent book: the philosophy of nookie: Je pense donc je jouis. La philosophie du cul. Articulated philosophically, as opposed to the fashion holding sway in other, empirically framed sciences, the question has Platonic or Cartesian overtones, and looks like this: "Les différences de comportements sexuels entre l'homme et la femme sont-elles innées ou acquises?" For philosophy, the resolution of the theoretical question must "live" somewhere in the tension between the two great theoretical families: 1) there are the essentialists, the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus sort, who argue from some sort of innate nature; and 2) there are the constructionists who, following in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir and, later, Judith Butler, argue that we are entirely a product of our social environment.
190714_If there are no other, better, truer reasons for studying philosophy, there are always those reliable standby reasons (i.e., clarity of thought, critical thinking, ability to recognize an argument, or not, etc.), which are reasonably well stated, with a journalistic slant, in the following article: Be Employable, Study Philosophy. Unsolicited advice for those entering the brave new world of work, or worse, journalism.
170714_From the Chronicle of Higher Education: 33 Ethicists Defend Facebook’s Controversial Mood Study. Among some of the other points made, the article argues the following 3 points:
- If in the experiment Facebook “purposefully messed with people’s minds,” it was no more than it usually does through routine changes in its algorithm.
- Criticism of the study could drive large companies that already have access to mountains of personal data to stop sharing those data for research.
- Though they were not legally required to do so, the researchers should have sought an ethical review and debriefed the study’s participants.
080714_In August of 1918 Heidegger is a soldier stationed as a weather observer on a German front in France, and he is thinking about Hölderlin (1770-1843), German lyric poet of the romantic period. So, quoting from Hölderlin's Socrates and Alcibiades, he writes to Elfride: "Höld. is currently turning into a new experience for me -- as though I were approaching him wholly primordially for the first time."
Socrates and Alcibiades - Hölderlin
Warum huldigest du, heiliger Sokrates,
Diesem Jünglinge stets? Kennest du Größers nicht,
Warum siehet mit Liebe,
Wie auf Götter, dein Aug' auf ihn?"
Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste,
Hohe Tugend versteht, wer in die Welt geblickt,
Und es neigen die Weisen
Oft am Ende zu Schönem sich.
Why, oh holy Socrates, do you always pay such homage
To this youth? Know you nothing Greater?
Why with love,
As if upon gods, does your eye gaze upon him?
Who loves what is most alive, has thought most deeply;
Who understands high Virtue, has looked into the World;
And even the Wise bring themselves to bend the knee,
Sometimes, to Beauty. (translation by Aiken, 2014)
050714_All teachers have experienced "this" class at some point in their careers: Shocking but true: students prefer jolt of pain than being made to sit and think. Report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities tackles question of why most of us find it so hard to do nothing.
290614_In response to a student question about SUMMER READING, which should look something like this:
or this:
Anyway - to the question of summer reading. Most of the great reading about things philosophical is, believe it or not, not written by philosophers. The biggest questions about how men live/should live in their world (that sorta thing, you know?), is actually found in works of fiction, and especially in the great works. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; anything by Herman Hesse, such as the Glass Bead Game, but my favorites by him are Narcissus and Goldmund and Siddhartha (you might really enjoy this one if you are intrigued by Asian spirituality!); there is also Andre Gide, The Immoralist, for example, which is a beautiful book. You might also try Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov and/or Crime and Punishment. In the spring 15 semester, for the course in Existentialism, I've picked a new book to add to the pile, which is Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.
I also enjoy fiction that tries to imagine the world of the gods differently, outside the normative philosophico-religious box, such as Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Most or many of these books we read for Existentialism, because they talk about things existential! How do we live in this world? Why? Is there such a thing as true morality? You'll also discover that almost all the authors cited, except Rand and Gaiman, are Nobel Prize winners in literature! And this means that, in addition to excellent narratives, the writing is also world-class!
I've just filled your plate with prime pickings, mon ami.... so have at it! And when you've read something interesting or beautiful, drop me a note to tell me about.... and we'll talk!
250614_Karl Jaspers: a teacher of Existenzphilosophie; one of Heidegger's significant interlocutors, who enjoyed an extended, 43-year epistolary relationship with H; the (perhaps) loudest condemning voice to keep the post-war, denazified Heidegger out of the university classroom_ http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/jasperse.pdf
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Reading the University Classics, Part 2:
"From the distance of more than half a century, Karl Jaspers's 1946 treatise, The Idea of the University, reads both like a farewell to the 19th-century German university and a lucid anticipation of several of today's academic problems. [...] Jaspers wrote his book at the end of World War II. The Nazis had suspended him from his position as professor of philosophy. One of his reasons for writing this treatise was to lay the groundwork for a thoroughly democratic restructuring of higher education in Germany. However, Jaspers also insists that the university is a genuinely transnational institution and that his elaborations concern higher education everywhere."
An excerpted rendition of Jasper's The Idea of the University, retrieved from: DIE ZEIT Nr. 30 - 21. Juli 1961 - Seite 8; Aus dem Archiv bei ZEIT ONLINE:
http://www.zeit.de/1961/30/die-idee-der-universitaet; http://pdfarchiv.zeit.de/1961/30/die-idee-der-universitaet.pdf
310514_Try to imagine working in any environment, such as teaching or law or politics, where the right to speak your mind (or to explore "difficult" ideas, or do edgy or challenging research, or try to publish unpopular ideas) is guaranteed and protected so that you do not loose your job or standing if you actually find yourself speaking against the status quo of ideas. Try to imagine, even, that such a freedom is considered fundamental enough to be enshrined in the Foundation Documents that express the public values of your country.
But then Someone decides that there also need to be some additional rules or principles to make sure that such protected speech is also used "properly" by those wishing to speak. Kansas University decided that speech is no longer protected in the academy if faculty use social media in such a way that it “impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among co-workers, impedes the performance of the speaker’s official duties, interferes with the regular operation of the employer, or otherwise adversely affects the employer’s ability to efficiently provide services.” Can you imagine any Freedom being able to stand over and against "the employer's ability to efficiently provide services."
Freedom to speak cannot stand against capital interests, and win, unless it is protected absolutely. From an opinion piece in Aljazeera America.
300514_Occasionally, along comes a voice to remind us, also, about what is good in the world of men. In his NY Times Op-Ed piece entitled "Europe’s Secret Success," Paul Krugman reminds us that Europe, as an Idea and despite all its problems, really does work. In comparison, the Halcyon Days of the Land of Opportunity, which used to be America, are now sadly and very deliberately being left behind as that country moves forward into its plutocratic future.
260514_What should education look like in and for a dynamic and rapidly changing social and material environment? It would seem reasonable, first, to look at the challenges surrounding our educational institutions, which is what Sir Ken Robinson does in this video
110514_"...the supremacy of a certain kind of economic-bureaucratic logic—one of “outcomes,” “assessment,” and “the bottom-line”—is eroding the values that undergird not just our society’s commitment to the humanities, but to democracy itself." [from The Atlantic's Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers]
080514_I wish we all heard so much more of this message at graduations: that We are not special... but that we are all certainly players in the game of the World. This teacher "encourages his students to go out and see the world—travel, buy a boat, climb mountains, work in Haiti, join the armed forces, or go to the library and simply start reading anything and everything that interests them. “Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”
From The Atlantics' "Advice to High School Graduates: 'You Are Not Special'"
280414_To all graduating seniors everywhere --you will hear platitudes galore in the upcoming graduation ceremonies designed to separate you from the nonchalance of your student years and otherwise carefree youth. But you also need to hear these graduation words, which were delivered freely (in print only), unsolicited (by any university), and which therefore remain formally unspoken.
"This is the last opportunity you have to be cynical. You can — you should — be suspicious, wary, guarded. It’s a mark of intelligence. But cynicism is a luxury you can afford no longer. Ditto with the word promise, that hallmark of college students. It’s now time to produce. Do what you need to do, but don’t do it for our sake. Don’t do it for the sake of your family or this institution. Do it because you’re a sentient being on this planet, third rock from the sun, alive among the living. It’s the rarest of gifts. It’s the fiercest of responsibilities. That’s why we’re pulling for you, and we are all pulling for you. We want for you what we pray for ourselves: a chance. This moment. Discovery. Meaning.
Aren’t you curious why you’re all dressed in flowing robes and funny hats? Because today you’re all the same. I can’t tell any differences among you. The next time you’ll be treated so democratically is when you die. So, somewhere between now and then, you have choices to make. Fortunately, you’re not alone. You’re not cynical. You’re free. And you’re alive."
260414_Have you ever wondered, really wondered, what professors do with all the rest of their time, when they are finished harassing students in the classroom for those 12 or so contact hours in the week? Is university teaching the cushy-job everyone thinks it is? Well, the study has been done and it is now official... it would seem that college professors actually do stuff! Fresh off the press: "What Do Professors Do All Day?"
200414_There is a Euthyphro moment presently occurring in Hindu studies, although it could just as well have been in any of the disciplines touching upon the academic study of religion... What this means is that there is a battle to determine who "owns" the "rights" to ideas in religious stories and/or to the stories themselves -- the academic voice or the religious voice, Socrates the inquirer or Euthyphro the religious fundamentalist, the Mind open to inquiry or the Mind closed to all but that which is included within the narrow discourse of faith.
The spark was Wendy Doniger's 2010 book, published by Penguin India, called, The Hindus: An Alternative History, "which won two awards in India: in 2012, the Ramnath Goenka Award,2 and in 2013, the Colonel James Tod Award.3 But within months of its publication in India, a then-eighty-one-year-old retired headmaster named Dina Nath Batra, a proud member of the far-right organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had brought the first of a series of civil and criminal actions against the book, arguing that it violated Article 295a of the Indian Penal Code, which forbids “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class” of citizens. After fighting the case for four years, Penguin India ... abandoned the lawsuit, agreeing to cease publishing the book. (It also agreed to pulp all remaining copies...)"
Her analysis is sensational in a Socratic kind of way: "This argument has nothing to do with religious civility; it is about the clash between pious and academic ways of talking about religion and about who gets to speak for or interpret religious traditions. [...] Batra and I are talking past one another, playing two different games with the textual evidence. But he thinks there is only one game, and is determined to keep me off my own field. To debate a book you disagree with is what scholarship is about. To ban or burn a book you regard as blasphemous is what fascist bigotry is about."
190414_Seasonal humor from an American colleague:
IMPORTANT EASTER MESSAGE
A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road.
He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car.
The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see
what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is the Easter Bunny, and he is DEAD. The driver feels so awful that he begins to cry.
A beautiful blonde woman driving down the highway sees a man crying on the side of the road and pulls over. She steps out of the car and asks the man what's wrong.
"I feel terrible," ! he explains, "I accidentally hit the Easter Bunny with my car and KILLED HIM."
The blonde says,"Don't worry." She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can. She walks over to the limp, dead Easter Bunny, bends down, and sprays the contents onto him. The Easter Bunny jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road. Ten feet away he stops, turns around and waves again, he hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet, turns and waves, and repeats this again and again and again and again, until he hops out of sight. The man is astonished.He runs over to the woman and demands, "What is in that can? What did you spray on the Easter Bunny ?"
The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label. It says..
(Are you ready for this?)
(You know you're gonna be sorry)
(Last chance)
(OK, here it is)
It says,
"Hair Spray
Restores life to dead hair,
and adds permanent wave."
Happy Easter!! !
180414_Is it accurate to say that the "human brain is genetically comparable around the globe"? Is is true that "human hardwiring for much behavior, perception, and cognition" is also universal? This has clearly been the longtime assumption of the social sciences and economics. So what if the assumption is wrong?
In a recent article entitled "We Aren’t the World" the author addresses what might seem intuitively obvious to the lesser educated -- that tests and studies done in America do not necessarily reflect attitudes and reactions of all the peoples of the world. To express this intuition more scientifically-- "96 percent of human subjects in these studies came from countries that represent only 12 percent of the world’s population." Oups.
General ramifications? In every area, including "spatial reasoning, the way we infer the motivations of others, categorization, moral reasoning, [and] the boundaries between the self and others."
Ramifications for psychology? One of the authors of this paper, who is interested in the effects of religion upon psychology, argues that this "new approach suggests the possibility of reverse-engineering psychological research: look at cultural content first; cognition and behavior second. Norenzayan’s recent work on religious belief is perhaps the best example of the intellectual landscape that is now open for study. When Norenzayan became a student of psychology in 1994 [..., he says:] “I remember opening textbook after textbook and turning to the index and looking for the word ‘religion,’ ” he told me, “Again and again the very word wouldn’t be listed. This was shocking. How could psychology be the science of human behavior and have nothing to say about religion? Where I grew up you’d have to be in a coma not to notice the importance of religion on how people perceive themselves and the world around them.”
Ramifications for other academic disciplines? According to this author, "after reading [this] paper, academics from other disciplines began to come forward with their own mea culpas. Commenting on the paper, two brain researchers from Northwestern University argued (pdf) that the nascent field of neuroimaging had made the same mistake as psychologists, noting that 90 percent of neuroimaging studies were performed in Western countries. Researchers in motor development similarly suggested that their discipline’s body of research ignored how different child-rearing practices around the world can dramatically influence states of development. Two psycholinguistics professors suggested that their colleagues had also made the same mistake: blithely assuming human homogeneity while focusing their research primarily on one rather small slice of humanity." And so knowledge moves forward, irresistible and no respecter of persons or beliefs.
170414_What is philosophy really about? In this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, "How Philosophy Makes Progress," the author argues that philosophy is about rendering "our human points of view ever more coherent. It’s in terms of our increased coherence that the measure of progress has to be taken, not in terms suitable for evaluating science or literature. We lead conceptually compartmentalized lives, our points of view balkanized so that we can live happily with our internal tensions and contradictions, many of the borders fortified by unexamined presumptions. It’s the job of philosophy to undermine that happiness, and it’s been at it ever since the Athenians showed their gratitude to Socrates for services rendered by offering him a cupful of hemlock."
The author concludes her article by speaking about the self-effacing quality of philosophy, which is so often neglected: Progress made in philosophy, "unlike scientific progress, tends to erase its own tracks as it is integrated into our manifest image and so becomes subsumed in the framework by which we conceive of ourselves. We no longer see the argumentative work it took for this advance in morality to be achieved. Its invisibility takes the measure of the achievement." Not bad....
050414_Putting people in boxes (offices, cubicles, etc.) as a way to dominate the work place? To study the office is to study how authority maintains authority—and how the subjugated stay subjugated. Or so says Jerry Stahl... in Arts & Letters Daily.
040414_UCR's Dean, Barbara Oomen, is on board with the idea of "doing" philosophy-- from her recent column called, Committing Philosophy! The Dean's text follows:
Committing Philosophy
"3/26/2014 12:00 AM
Some of you might have seen his online lectures,
in which he discusses how individuals, shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean,
should decide who's to live and who's to die. The dvd's in which he asks you
what you would do if you were faced with a train coming up and could, through
changing a switch, ensure that one instead of six people get killed. Others
might have read 'Not for Sale', on whether human organs, citizenship rights and
women's fertility should be for sale in the market. In all these cases, you
will understand why I was so thrilled to attend the conferral of an honourary
doctorate by Utrecht University on Michael Sandel this Wednesday.
The Utrecht Dies Natalis is always a highly festive and ceremonial occasion
with the carillon playing Io Vivat, two trumpetists high up in the church who
slightly remind one of the muppet show and a long procession of professors at
student boards to celebrate the -378th - birthday of our mother university.
Speaking about the 'lost art of democratic discourse' prof. Sandel argued that
there is nothing that today's world needs more than philosophy. He pointed out
how politics has turned into partisan shouting matches, and old ideologies have
lost their capacity to inspire. 'We have lost', he reasoned, 'both the capacity
and the ability to engage in public debates about big things, especially where
these concern values'. At the same time he did see an unmet yearning for a
larger meaning. This, as you might guess, is where universities cime in. To
help equip us for reasoned public discourse in hard ethical questions. His
closing words sounded like the clarion call of trumpets, and were hailed as
such: 'Democratic citizens should develop the art and the habit of committing
philosophy in public places'.
Committing philosophy! It's with this in mind that I'm so happy to see you
discussing away in classroom 13 with Dr Aiken. Rushing off to a debating
competition, or engaged in a heated discussion in the Helm. This is not simple
entertainment, or a theoretical activity. It is, as prof. Sandel emphasized on
Wednesday, the future of our democracy."
020414_A visual from gavin@zenpencils.com: Stanley Kubrick Answers a Question [about the meanings of life]
250314_In the survey recently published by the Pew Research Center, 2011-2013, on whether it is necessary to believe in God in order to be a moral person (cf. musing below for 200314), one writer found a problem with the survey in China: "Chinese Atheists? What the Pew Survey Gets Wrong." Apparently, when translated into Chinese, the survey question really looks like this: Is is necessary to believe in the Christian/Protestant God in order to be a moral person? When asked, Pew justified its translation with bureaucratic bla-bla, which becomes clear from the article, and which further aggravates Pew's Western headstrong desire to interpret all the religious thinking of the world through the framework of the Abrahamic religions -- yet another example of religious imperialism running stealthily amok among the religious playgrounds of the world.
210314_As of this month the three volumes of Martin Heidegger's Schwarze Hefte (Notebooks) are now finally all in print and available to the scholarly community for study. These are Bände 94 (1931-1938), 95 (1938/39), and 96 (1939-1941) in the Gesamtausgabe, published by Klostermann in Frankfurt am Main. For an introduction/update as to the significance of this publication for Heidegger studies, you can read the recently published: "Release of Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’ Reignites Debate Over Nazi Ideology."
In a spirit of open-mindedness, but
nonetheless still enraged, I continue to try to make sense of this philosopher,
one of the most brilliant of the 20th century, even though his clear ambition
and agenda was to become the philosophical guide for the Nazi Führer’s
political program. So, lest we forget… below is the 25-step program of the
German Worker’s (Nazi) party in German, followed by the English translation
(provided by Stephen Hicks, who has done some
wonderful work in the area of Nietzsche and the Nazis, which is also the title
of his book and the documentary film).
It is not enough to be a profound thinker
if one embraces bad ideas.
·
25-Punkte-Programmder NSDAP. You may notice in the language of this Nazi program
significant similarities to language used by Heidegger in his various discourses
as Rector of the University of Freiburg.
·
Hicks' English translation is available on his webpage,
linked above, under Part 9, Appendices, #42. Appendix 1: NSDAP Party Program
[PDF]
Unfortunately, according to the Pew Research Center, which conducted a study between 2011 and 2013 in which more than 40,000 people in 40 countries were asked to answer just this question, it would seem that a great majority of the world disagrees with my assessment. Oh well.... just another day in the life of a philosopher! 190314_From an article entitled, Does Your Language Shape How You Think? "Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most people’s idea of glamour. And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language’s power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think." 180314_A BIG thanks to Xavier Delucq, Dessinateur de presse, who reminds us in the HuffPost.fr, that only car drivers/owners are responsible for the recent terrible pollution in Paris--at least that is the media pitch. It is such a relief to know that the automobile industry is off the hook, along with diesel powered public transportation, factories, etc.  160314_Troubling times a-brewin' for public intellectuals in the Academy given the news that Columbia University fired two professors for not bringing in enough outside grant money. "[In the corporate university...], teaching [is] something that doesn’t count for as much as it should in grant-obsessed institutions." The author concludes that [the laying-off of public intellectuals is] "a demonstration of what happens to scholarship and intellectual endeavor when financial concerns trump all else. When money is the most salient measurement in cultural life, we all end up impoverished." In this article from The Nation: "Columbia University Fired Two Eminent Public Intellectuals. Here’s Why It Matters. The fate of Carole Vance and Kim Hopper should worry everyone who wants academics to play a larger role in public debates." 100314_A tribute to a very visual philosopher of our culture: "The Beauty, Violence, and Sheer Skill of Stanley Kubrick." An excellent video montage of Kubrick’s oeuvre by Alexandre Gasulla. 090314_From the Chronicle of Higher Education. "You Don't Have to Love Your Job. Too many Ph.D.’s are too attached to the romantic notion of loving their work." I would take issue with the following criticism of Joseph Campbell: "But the whole notion of "follow your bliss," the popularity of which is attributed to the late American comparative-mythology scholar, Joseph Campbell, has done a disservice to American students and particularly doctoral students." In and of itself, Campbell is indisputably correct--if we do not follow our bliss, even if one part of that bliss is the study of literature or philosophy, then at the end of our lives we will not have lived a blissful life. Campbell's logic is elementary. Then the authors of this Chronicle article attach the following immensely problematic interpretation to Campbell's bliss-seeking admonition, where the ham-handed hermeneut qua optimistic graduate student translates the idea of bliss into some specific type of work/job : "The belief that if you do what you love everything else—including a perfect job—will work out is what’s partially behind so many students pursuing degrees in fields where the job outlook is poor or nonexistent." There should be no issue with Campbell's admonition to pursue bliss, with the attendant consequence that when bliss is pursued then the blissful life will follow. Bliss, after all, does not mean that all of Life's normal challenges will be erased and the ways of the graduate student will be made straight into the halls of the academic life. As Campbell would have said: let us, instead, continue to be students and learners throughout our lives-- this will be our primary occupation; what we do on the side to make money is a task of living. And if we have the pleasure of being paid to remain students, i.e., by becoming teachers, then bliss upon bliss-- we are the fortunate ones indeed. 070314_Better bitching? A new theory about the value of education has surfaced in The Atlantic, in an article entitled: "Highly Educated Countries Have Better Governments." The article grants as a premise that, "We know why education is good for individuals." Those reasons being: "intellectual stimulation and love of learning, and "increased earning and power potential." HOWEVER, continues the articles rhetorically, "What we don’t really know is why education is so good for societies," and yet, "More educated countries consistently have better governments..." Conclusion? you ask... "A new paper, “Education, Complaints, and Accountability,” published last week in the Journal of Law and Economics suggests one possible mechanism: the power of complaining." So this is the calculation: acquiring debt through more education leads to qualitatively improved whining, which in turn moves the wheels of democracy-- tax dollars to validate the old saw that every plouk on the planet knows about, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease? I have to admit, I am less than whelmed by the brilliance of this conclusion. 270214_Words from an American sage of yesteryear... a visionary. Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass. "Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul…" 250214_From the desk of a friend and former colleague, Doug Haneline: "Here's an excellent discussion of "Stand Your Ground" laws as viewed through the prism of Enlightenment philosophers, especially Hobbes and Locke. I agree with the conclusion that these laws effectively return us to what Hobbes called "the war of all against all" by allowing shooters to subjectively decide if they are in danger and act on that perception, shielded by the law from the normal consequences of murder. The enthusiasm for these laws is increasing, and I don't expect that any advocate of Stand Your Ground who reads my comments and this article will change his mind." Read the article here: Locke and Load: The Fatal Error of the ‘Stand Your Ground’ Philosophy
210214_It has always struck me as a sad irony in the teaching profession that teachers are so seldom asked about what good teaching is all about, especially when it comes time to implement teaching reforms. The teaching professionals are then left out of the loop, except to take the blame for implementation failures, and then they are left in the dark to pick up the pieces of an implementation that teaching administrators created and foisted upon the public. For the article in the HuffPost: We Need a Course Correction on Common Core.
170214_From Adam Gopnik's "When Did Faith Start to Fade?" ...who would have thought that Mel Brooks would play such a central role in the philosophical evolution of this question?! "Yet the need for God never vanishes. Mel Brooks’s 2000 Year Old Man, asked to explain the origin of God, admits that early humans first adored “a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshipped him.” Phil “was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands!” One day, a thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. “We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s something bigger than Phil!’ ” The basic urge to recognize something bigger than Phil still gives theistic theories an audience, even as their explanations of the lightning-maker turn ever gappier and gassier. Expert defenders are more and more inclined to seize on the tiniest of scientific gaps or to move ever upward to ideas of God so remote from existence as to become pure hot air. Stephen C. Meyer’s best-selling “Darwin’s Doubt” (HarperOne) reinvents the God of the Gaps—a God whose province is whatever science can’t yet explain—with a special focus on the Unsolved Mysteries of the Cambrian explosion. Experience shows that those who adopt this strategy end up defending a smaller and smaller piece of ground. They used to find God’s hand in man’s very existence, then in the design of his eyes, then, after the emergence of the eye was fully explained, they were down to the bird’s wing, then they tried the bacterial flagellum, and now, like Meyer, they’re down to pointing to the cilia in the gut of worms and the emergence of a few kinds of multi-cellular organisms in the Cambrian as things beyond all rational explanation. Retreat always turns to rout in these matters. As the explanations get more desperately minute, the apologies get ever vaster. David Bentley Hart’s recent “The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss” (Yale) doesn’t even attempt to make God the unmoved mover, the Big Banger who got the party started; instead, it roots the proof of his existence in the existence of the universe itself. Since you can explain the universe only by means of some other bit of the universe, why is there a universe (or many of them)? The answer to this unanswerable question is God. He stands outside everything, “the infinite to which nothing can add and from which nothing can subtract,” the ultimate ground of being. This notion, maximalist in conception, is minimalist in effect. Something that much bigger than Phil is so remote from Phil’s problems that he might as well not be there for Phil at all. This God is obviously not the God who makes rules about frying bacon or puts harps in the hands of angels. A God who communicates with no one and causes nothing seems a surprisingly trivial acquisition for cosmology—the dinner guest legendary for his wit who spends the meal mumbling with his mouth full." 160414_"This is our freakish, wondrous, terrifying signature: We can explore a planet, admire it, domesticate it, destroy it." Kathryn Schulz's excellent review of Elizabeth Kolbert's new book: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. 150214_A reflection forwarded by a former philosophy colleague at Ferris State University, who finds this New York Times Review "pretty darn provocative" -- the review is entitled, "Is the Universe a Simulation?" "It seems spooky to suggest that mathematical entities actually exist in and of themselves. But if math is only a product of the human imagination, how do we all end up agreeing on exactly the same math? The great logician Kurt Gödel argued that mathematical concepts and ideas “form an objective reality of their own, which we cannot create or change, but only perceive and describe.” But if this is true, how do humans manage to access this hidden reality? We don’t know. But one fanciful possibility is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics — not in what we commonly take to be the real world. According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer of the future has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it. Thus when we discover a mathematical truth, we are simply discovering aspects of the code that the programmer used. This may strike you as very unlikely. But the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not. If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them — presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.' Does everyone have their red pills handy?" 140214_For the romantic who has remembered that today is Valentine's Day, there is still the problem of how to phrase the language of love so that the Lover appears "high-minded" in the eyes of the Beloved. For some lessons in the art of high-minded love, see "Crib Your Valentine's Day Card From the Western Canon." 090214_Hippydom, European-style...meditation cartoonified by Barbara Stok... Acem cartoon in Dutch business newspaper. 300114_The last time the idea of statelessness was used as a significant political strategy, Adolf Hitler was leading the Nazi state. The Nazi state stripped German citizenship from German Jews, thereby making them wards of the state, and a viable and inexpensive labor force. This is a dangerous and emotionally-charged precedent, to be sure, which should make the British wary of exploring this option for addressing the question of how to handle their terrorist problem. From The Guardian online: "Theresa May plan capable of making foreign-born terror suspects stateless. Nick Clegg approves scheme to strip away British citizenship in move to stem Tory rebels' support of criminals' deportation." 290114_For those of you, especially young people, who think you're being put into a little box, cataloged, and dismissed, have a listen to Pete Seeger's "Little Boxes." This wonderful tune was juxtaposed at Literary Jukebox with some Berty Russell memorabilia. Another tribute (with some nice links): 'We Are Not Afraid': The Holy Spirit and the Life of Pete Seeger. 280114_In memoriam to Pete Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014)--American, patriot, protester, folk singer. Watch, listen, learn... enjoy. 260224_An essay-review called The Social Animal, which reflects upon three empirically oriented works of philo-science:
asks the enormously important question of "Whether in
education, ethics or politics, we ignore our social natures at our peril?"
This essay managed to get and keep my attention with this
hook: "The contemporary western world just doesn’t take enough account of
our fundamentally social nature. “We are square (social) pegs being forced into
round (nonsocial) holes,” he says. Part of the blame for this lands on the
enlightenment idea of the autonomous rational agent. This individualism is so
ingrained in the west that what eastern cultures and Lieberman call
“harmonising” is more often thought of as “conforming”, with all the negative connotations
that entails," but this author’s conclusion, sadly but typically, remains
banal: "Taken together, these books show how the personal is political in
ways that have not been fully appreciated. None comes up with entirely
convincing solutions to problems of social co-operation, within and between
nations, but all help us to understand more clearly how we must take account of
our affective as well as rational natures if we are to deal with them. Emotion
is not the spanner in the works of a more rational society. It is the engine
that powers it, which reason must understand in order to steer it wisely."
190114_Things are hopping in the Land-of-the-Free-and-the-Home-of-the-Brave in terms of spooks and spies and collecting information. Edward Snowden and others think his wiki-"leakage" has been vindicated, albeit begrudgingly, in President Obama's recent speech to the Department of Justice, because he was instrumental in bringing public attention to the high-handed manner of America's invasion of World-privacy, and at least priming public involvement in what has been hitherto private government matters. You can look at the video of the speech as well as the .gov spin on the official site: President Obama Discusses U.S. Intelligence Programs at the Department of Justice. HOWEVER, there was a very interesting response to Obama's speech by a French blogger from Le Point.fr, who titled his article: "Réforme de la NSA : Obama entérine la surveillance planétaire." Quite literally translated: NSA to be Reformed: Obama sanctions planetary surveillance," this title catches the two-tiered program outlined in Obama's speech to the Department of Justice. The first tier, obviously will have to be to fix the NSA in such a way that will prohibit any future repetition of Snowden-like escapades, (because it seems obvious, does it not, that the issue is not what NSA has been doing, but that it got caught in flagrante delicto with its hand in a rather nasty cooky jar!). The second tier, however, is that, from the French point of view, the American representatives of State look at public surveillance as a fatalism that must occur, and that must actually be improved and increased to a planetary scale. Hence our Le Point.fr blogger gives us the subtitle to his article: "Le président américain a fait quelques concessions, mais il a surtout validé un système de collecte d'informations liberticide." This perception, whether ultimately accurate or not, must give We the People pause; for if we wish to remain the Land-of-the-Free-and-the-Home-of-the-Brave, we must needs pay attention to the policies being enacted in our country and on our behalf. These policies may not be for our good. To translate the subtitle: "The American president made some concessions, but he essentially validated an information collection system that will assassinate Liberty." 180114_For 18th century France Voltaire set up a little philosophical battle between Optimism and Pessimism in his short and brilliant novel, Candide. On Voltaire's telling, non-philosophical or populist "optimism" of the Protestantesque variety (i.e., "keep your nose clean [=mind your own business]," "just take care of the job at hand," and "let the world sort itself out"...) is the hands-down winner of that scuffle. In a different and modern telling for 21st century America, a telling that claims to recount only a (fairly typical?) week in the ongoing drama of the Human Story, William Rivers Pitt lets drop the other shoe, and suggests as a remedy for the politico-philosophical pessimistic week-that-was--a thoroughly intimate meeting with the Jameson family, one bottle at a time: A Good Week for Hard Drinking. Pitt opens his reflection with a quote from Charles Bukowski, which already sets both the tone and the probable conclusion for our modern Candide's article: "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." 100114_FOLLOW-UP. On 181213 (cf. below) I reflected upon the question of whether classroom content was controlled by the instructor, or by an administrator-quidam looking to appease an outside constituency. "The question on the table today is: What [or who] determines/controls a professor's course content? The answer is, obviously, the professor, the content expert. Right? Maybe, maybe not. The problems surrounding the answer to this question have been in the news lately - see Chris Bray's Enjoy Your G-RatedCollege Learning Experience. [...]" Well, it would seem that, at least in this particular case, the jury is in. According to this morning's Chronicle of Higher Education, "Faculty leaders criticized the university’s handling of Patricia A. Adler’s case, saying that her academic freedom had been violated and asserting that the university had been inconsistent in justifying its actions. Later a committee of Ms. Adler’s peers in the sociology department cleared her to resume teaching the course, and the department’s executive committee signed off on that recommendation. In a written statement on Thursday, Ms. Adler asserted that the university had “backed down” from its initial position. She said the fact that the course had to undergo intense scrutiny to reverse the university’s “jump to judgment” was “a sad statement on what is occurring in universities.” She added that universities and schools were “increasingly sacrificing academic freedom as they become more concerned with risk and liability than with creating an environment in which creativity and ideas can flourish and students can be challenged to expand their horizons.”" 091014_There is something comforting in this knowledge... I think.  070114_The Bard, (or, for you non-Liberal Arts students: William Shakespeare) reminds us with no undue humility that, — 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' A Propos the ongoing mysteriousness of the world, then, read/watch: "Dogs Align With Earth's Magnetic Field While Pooping." 020114_What dog philosophers can teach us about New Year's resolutions... if we just would pay attention.  291213_Everyone in my family, especially on my mother's (Italian-American) side, and especially my grandmother and her siblings, no matter the level of education, used expletives with great color and zeal, frequently, appropriately, and to good effect. So I have always enjoyed thinking I was simply carrying on a fine family, and U.S. English language tradition with my rather colorful articulations. It turns out now that not only is that correct, but I am also enhancing the chances that I will live longer and healther, with much less existential and/or emotional Angst, by simply color-coordinating my language to my emotions! According to the HuffPost, swearing is actually a pain reliever! "Curse Like A Sailor. Put your potty mouth to good use next time you stub your toe: Swearing seems to have some powerful painkilling properties. In a 2009 study, 67 students who had been asked to hold their hands in a tub of cold water for as long as they could stayed submerged 40 seconds longer when they were allowed to swear while doing so, Scientific American reported. However, swearing selectively may be more beneficial than simply swearing more: The pain-reducing powers of curse words seem to drop if you've been using them regularly when you don't really need to, HuffPost reported in 2011." 251213_In a musing reminiscent of something from Xenophanes, who thought the gods were necessarily and intrinsically interpreted through cultural filters--
But mortals suppose that gods are born,
wear their own clothes and have a voice and body. (frag. 14) Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired. (frag. 16) But if horses or oxen or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men, horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen, and they would make the bodies of the sort which each of them had. (frag. 15)-- DAW found this morning a Border Collie's notion of heaven....  Gives a whole new meaning to the traditional Christmas carol - listen hear! 181213_The question on the table today is: What [or who] determines/controls a professor's course content? The answer is, obviously, the professor, the content expert. Right? Maybe, maybe not. The problems surrounding the answer to this question have been in the news lately - see Chris Bray's Enjoy Your G-Rated College Learning Experience. Summarized in a nutshell-- "The strange case of Patricia Adler, a respected and widely published sociologist who teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of those conflicts in which no one comes out looking great. But one problem shines through the fog: it’s becoming increasingly clear that academic administrators can exert direct control over course content, forcing professors to rewrite their syllabi to guard—even preemptively—against the possibility that students will be offended by something someone says in class." University administrators, it would seem, would like to stand in the way of our professors professing, and our students studying... because they do not want anyone to be uncomfortable in the learning process. So, when did learning become a comfortable process or a process of entering into our comfort zone? For this, see the Phrontisterion blog: Life-long Learners: The Degree of our Disquiet is the Measure of our Merit. 161213_Peter O'Toole....1932-2013
121213_The cost of courtesy, or lack thereof? Not a bad idea! This restaurant, La Petite Syrah, is in Nice, FR.
A Nice, le restaurant
"La petite Syrah" a mis en place un système aussi insolite qu’efficace
pour inciter ses clients à la politesse : augmenter le montant de la
douloureuse si ces derniers ne se montrent pas assez aimables. Ainsi, un
"Bonjour, un café s'il vous plaît" vous fera payer votre expresso au
prix standard, soit 1,40 euro, tandis que le "Un café, s’il vous plaît"
est facturé 4,25 euros. Pour les clients les moins civils, la note peur
même atteindre les 7 euros !
En savoir plus: http://www.gentside.com/insolite/a-nice-un-restaurant-fait-payer-le-cafe-plus-cher-aux-clients-malpolis_art57097.html Copyright © Gentside
Dans le restaurant niçois "La petite Syrah", commander son café poliment peut faire baisser l’addition de plusieurs euros.
En savoir plus: http://www.gentside.com/insolite/a-nice-un-restaurant-fait-payer-le-cafe-plus-cher-aux-clients-malpolis_art57097.html Copyright © Gentside
Dans le restaurant niçois "La petite Syrah", commander son café poliment peut faire baisser l’addition de plusieurs euros.
En savoir plus: http://www.gentside.com/insolite/a-nice-un-restaurant-fait-payer-le-cafe-plus-cher-aux-clients-malpolis_art57097.html Copyright © Gentside
Dans le restaurant niçois "La petite Syrah", commander son café poliment peut faire baisser l’addition de plusieurs euros.
061213_For those who love to play with words... I've just learned an entirely new expression from Stephen Fry -- "sound-sex." Meaning the extreme, or should I say, the orgasmic pleasure of slipping and sliding words all around on a page frissoning (a noun-thing [from the French] made into a verb-thing) with expectation. En savoir plus: http://www.gentside.com/insolite/a-nice-un-restaurant-fait-payer-le-cafe-plus-cher-aux-clients-malpolis_art57097.html Copyright © Gentsid 051213_For those of you who read digitally instead of enjoying the tactile pleasure of pressing a real book into your hands... apparently you do not retain as much from your reading as the rest of us real-book hedonists! Read this: "Be Less Stupid: Digital Content Is Destroying Your Comprehension." 011213_ 291113_Speaking about Michigan in the particular, but certainly with much more universal application, the conclusion of this article from the Pacific Standard is that more and better education of the young people leads to a decrease in population, because they have fewer children of their own. In turn, this means that there will be fewer tax-payers in the next generation to pay for their grand-parent's and parent's retirements. The solution seems obvious enough -- less education. "Fifty years ago, the population was booming. Soon-to-be Rust Belters promised pensions to all the teachers needed to teach the deluge of children. Better educated children would prosper, but have less children of their own. The next generation wouldn't be big enough to fund the pension, not to mention the flight to the suburban taxation loophole. The number of people aged between 15 and 19 living in the city proper would fall off the cliff. The explanation would be brain drain." 281113_This is the definitive say on this particular evolutionary brand of MOOCs, when the founder of the idea, Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, "calls his company’s massive open online courses a 'lousy product' to use for educating underprepared college students." In the interview, which appeared this morning in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thrun is quoted as saying: “We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product. It was a painful moment.” Two observations: 1) According to the studies, it is accurate to say that as a teaching tool Udacity's MOOCs have failed to produce as intended. HOWEVER, there are still many university administrators "out there" who will continue to try to figure out how to use this tool as means to cut costs and circumvent faculty hires; and 2) If you ever get a chance to work for Sebastian Thrun, go for it! If it is possible to judge by this interview, he is an honest and ambitious man looking to create an honest product to enhance the arts of teaching and learning. 271113_In this article from Slate, A Ghost Town With a Quad, the author is dismayed to think that university administrators, for the sake of budget, would be short-sighted enough to cut off entire TEACHING departments, without considering the possibility of making cross-institutional cuts among ALL the services. Is it really possible that administrators forget what line of business they are in? Their job is to 'sell' teaching and subject matter... so what happens when nothing is left in the building but the 'salesman' himself -- the university administrator--with nothing left to administer or to sell? The unspoken assumption in all this, of course, is that the Humanities (e.g., foreign languages, theater, art, film, music, philosophy...) are "useless" and therefore disposable commodities; because these are the departments being axed. 231113_One of my students (thank you, Tajha!) just informed me that yesterday was "World Philosophy Day, which the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) celebrates every year on the third Thursday of November, [which] emphasises the enduring "value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual". It is interesting, additionally, that Aljazeera had the article about this High Holy Day set aside to celebrating things philosophical, but the Huffington Post did not. 121113_A Song of dying composed with Lyrics about living....
While you're alive, shine:
never let your mood decline. We've a brief span of life to spend: Time necessitates an end. [Greek melody by Seikilos, ca. 200 AD] 071113_Jack Gilbert, Poet. More at The Poetry Center at Smith College. I Imagine The Gods:
“I imagine the gods saying, We will
make it up to you. We will give you three wishes, they say. Let me see the squirrels again, I tell them. Let me eat some of the great hog stuffed and roasted on its giant spit and put out, steaming, into the winter of my neighborhood when I was usually too broke to afford even the hundred grams I ate so happily walking up the cobbles, past the Street of the Moon and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers, the Street of Silence and the Street of the Little Pissing. We can give you wisdom, they say in their rich voices. Let me go at last to Hugette, I say, the Algerian student with her huge eyes who timidly invited me to her room when I was too young and bewildered that first year in Paris. Let me at least fail at my life. Think, they say patiently, we could make you famous again. Let me fall in love one last time, I beg them. Teach me mortality, frighten me into the present. Help me to find the heft of these days. That the nights will be full enough and my heart feral.” 051113_I breathe easier knowing there are others "out there" like me. Paul Slansky writes in I'd Love to Live in a Country Where... "There comes a time in every day when I think something like, "I'd love to live in a country where there's a machine that can measure your soul, and when someone -- someone, say, like a Ted Cruz, or a Michele Bachmann -- falls below a certain level of humanity, he or she is simply not allowed on TV. 'Sorry, you're just too hateful and we really would rather not have your toxic bile in our lives.' Yes, that would definitely be a very much better place to live." 301013_International initiatives for justice are slow... but it is good, finally, to learn that even (and especially) political leaders are not exempt from ordinary justice! According to Foreign Policy Journal: "In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington,
William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in
Malaysia.
At the end of the week-long hearing, the
five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as
war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
Full
transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant
material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.
The
Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is also asking that the names of
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes be
entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals for
public record."
Repercussions of this legal decision for Dick Cheney have been almost instantaneous.... as he seeks to travel to Canada.
When we clamor our support for Rule of Law, this is what it should look like; not a stick to be used just against or used to control common citizens, but rather to be carefully held in check as a reminder also to our political leaders to act well, or at least legally, in the international arena - with both foe and friend. When some can stand above the laws, then there is no Law.
291013_A not uncommon story for career academics who, after getting the special club-card, door-opener - the Ph.D., find that the doors to employment do not necessarily open very readily. From Welfare to the Tenure Track, in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
From Welfare to the Tenure Track
From Welfare to the Tenure Track
From Welfare to the Tenure Track
From Welfare to the Tenure Track
271013_Bill Maher reminds us in this video-clip that the American people are actually subsidizing highly profitable companies/corporations like McDonalds & Walmart, which pay wages so minimum that, in order to live, employees must take advantage of additional state-aid schemes such as food stamps -- "Bill Maher Takes On Minimum Wage: 'That Is Barely Enough To Gas Up The Car You're Living In' (VIDEO)." Visit the Daily Kos site for the printed version of Maher's reflection, which includes the link to George Carlin's classic sketch on "The American Dream," which only, he says, exists in our dreams. Here is another link to the Carlin sketch, which includes the printed transcript. 251013_The new face of free speech in university classrooms. As we wait around for a social and moral etiquette to evolve around the use of technologies in our university classroom environments, our very lack of initiative creates the opportunity for a disaster-in-teaching to occur, and the future is even now knocking at the doors of our hallowed hallways. It used to be generally understood by all the "players" in a university education, that the educational environment was to be entered into with a certain measure of respect, both for the process of teaching as much as for the process of learning. Those halcyon days are, it seems, history. It is still generally understood by those who understand anything about teaching, however, that teaching in university classrooms can become pretty provocative... and that the teaching-learning environment should be protected; because the provocation, at least when the instructor is acting professionally, is performance art - it is pro forma, and deliberately designed to get students to think outside their own mental frameworks. So, as our opening article highlights, when students (or anyone with an "onlooker" point of view, rather than that of an "engaged player" in the performance art of teaching-n-learning) may use the various technologies to instantly truncate even the most mundane and routine gestures in the teaching-learning environment, when students are authorized to transmit, and thereby to translate, the odd bit-n-piece of the teaching/learning Process into the murky shadows of Virtual Lala-land where Understanding is not a virtue or a necessary premium, and when students have the possibility, whimsically, to decontextualize and project into the world of appearances, without the possibility of decoding, the instructor's slightest faits-et-gestes --- then to such students, and to any "onlooker" who remains spectator to, and outside of, the performance of teaching, we give permission to gut the performance of the art. And when teaching ceases, learning ceases. We have choices to make. 191013_Visit Bill Maher's musings on America's spy-based economy. On his telling, America has 16 spy agencies, with a total budget of just over a billion dollars a week. A number to recall when Tea Party politicians try to persuade Americans that health insurance for poorer Americans (i.e., Obamacare) is too expensive, or that food stamps and other social aid packages should be cut, etc. 181013_Figures released this week from the Global Slavery Index highlighted that at least 880,000 people are forced to work in slave labour conditions across Europe, including 270,000 victims of sexual exploitation. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/18/human-trafficking_n_4120142.html 29.8 million people in modern slavery globally....[the link to the Global Slavery Index at the Walk Free Foundation is a little slow -- be patient]: http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/?utm_source=Google+Adwords&utm_m The United States is 134 on the list of 160 nations, with 59,644 slaves; France is 139, with 8,541 slaves; and the Netherlands is 140, with 2,180 slaves. How is this possible? where is the Absolute Outrage? 171013_Certainly worth musing on...Simic's take on America's version of Dickens' Bleak House: "Some of us notice them, while others don’t seem to, even though there are 46.5 million of them according to the latest census and they are everywhere if one cares to look. [...]" 141013_Alain de Botton's Art as Therapy. Art can be therapeutic in Love, Work, Anxiety, Self, Politics, and Free time. It is worth checking out. 081013_You have to love it when the ongoing Saga of Washington D.C. is expressed in the language of historical metaphor and analogy. The second analogy in the article is to the period of the American Civil War, in which today's Democrats play yesteryear's northern Republicans, and today's Republicans interpret southern Democrats--all the elements of an excellent historical farce. The first analogy is expressed in language like this: in which the "modernizing forces" are played by the Democrats, and the "economically retarding influence" is played by the GOP with Tea Partiers as cast leaders: "This underscores that what is really going on in Washington today is a replay of the Kulturkampf, a period of German history that occurred in the 1870s. At the time, that country’s modernizing forces resolved to fight back against the economically retarding influence of conservative religious forces, mainly the Catholic Church." For the full article in The Globalist, follow the link. 040913_It defies all reason to think that this type of conversation is possible in the modern world, but have a look at this article by Jim Wallis: Why the Government Shutdown Is Unbiblical. First, let me say that Wallis' reading of the Bible is correct, and this was in fact the subject of our September blogpost; so to whatever degree we value a correct interpretation of biblical texts - hurray. It is dismaying to me, in principle, that in a secular democracy like the United States anyone should continue to reference seriously Paul and/or the Bible in a conversation about America's political and social life in the first place-- whether about feeding the poor, or Obamacare. It is also saddening, however, that where so many give lip-service to the Christian faith, we are called to remind Christians of their biblical duty to obey the laws of the land, which include Obama's Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This is law; yet it seems clear that a certain segment of our Christian legislators has gone renegade from their Christian faith in order to shut down the U.S. government over this matter --this is not politics as usual; but if they are not "fighting" for their Christian faith, which they clearly are not because there is no possible connection between affordable health care in the U.S. and the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity, what is the motivation for their shutdown of the American process over this law? Is this some type of coup? Because this is not our legislative process for changing laws. Would it be conceivable, for instance, to shut down the federal government because we were not in agreement with federally enforced speed limit laws, or with any other laws of the land. When, then, did it become appropriate for Christians to forget "the rule of law"? So let us encourage our Christian friends in the United States to consider to their shame that they have so far forgotten Honor, and Obedience, and self-sacrificial Love, which are the teachings of their own Holy Writ, that they need to be reminded, even by a heathen and philosopher (that would be me), what is the true calling of their faith. You may also wish to read what Bill Maher says on this subject--whose thinking is a little more heathen than my own. 300913_Visual musings on a dog's life, entitled My Dog: The Paradox -- or, Auggie in a nutshell! 170913_bis_On language ownership and the expression of emotion in a non-native language... Fritz Mauthner (in Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache) speaks about das Ichgefühl, where the child constructs his emotional "person" narratively, or through words. When we wish to express true or authentic emotion in a second language, then we must, first, know the appropriate speech-tools of the second language (e.g., words), and we then must have already spent time using those speech-tools in the emotional construction of our (new or second) "person." It is our "vécu" in a language that allows us to have an emotional life in the second+ language, not just our knowledge of its speech-tools. 170913_Just reading the headline already gives us pause: "Russian shot in quarrel over Kant's philosophy." Trying to guess from the headline -- should we the reader be wary of Russians? Guns? Quarrels? Or Kant's philosophy? Frankly, it seems kind of difficult to believe that it was Kant's philosophy... which is rather dry and straightforward; but, read and weep. (Thanks to Roland by way of Bas by way of my DAW) 120913_A visual interpretation of Sylvia Plath's metaphor of The Fig Tree in The Bell Jar; from ZENPENCILS. Even when we resist all that Life offers us, Life manages to get something to us anyway! 100913_Dr. Al Bartlett, Physics Professor: In memoriam (from Huffington Post).
"A renowned former physics
professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who was famous for a lecture he
delivered over 1,700 times died on Saturday at the age of 90. Dr. Al Bartlett's
"Arithmetic,
Population, and Energy" talk has received almost 5 million views on
YouTube, a lecture that has remained a relevant and celebrated lesson since he
first presented it to students in September 1969. ‘Here
we can see the human dilemma, because everything we regard as good makes the
population problem worse. Everything we regard as bad helps solve the problem,’
Dr. Bartlett says in his lecture. ‘Now there is a dilemma, if ever there was
one.’ In
2008, he was a winner of The
Population Institute 2008 Global Media Award.”
080913_An interesting transition in my own teaching is reflected in this article about keeping the big questions alive. I suppose that in the teaching of philosophy it is important, to some degree, that the student should have some academic recognition of thinkers and their thought traditions; but I have always been persuaded, and am now making this increasingly the focus in all my classes, that in order for us to discover the truest relevance of the discipline of philosophy we must take it out of its ivory tower and bring it to the streets. Philosophy must be able to speak to us where we live...
030813_Lovely, touching, truthful words, of which we must not loose sight -- "Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead." Gore Vidal 290813_Life musings from another philosopher.... It doesn't get any better than Calvin and Hobbes for real-life philosophical situations, problems, solutions, and advice. From: gavin@zenpencils.com Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 19:34:20 -0400 Subject: 128. BILL WATTERSON: A cartoonist’s advice http://zenpencils.com/comic/128-bill-watterson-a-cartoonists-advice/
170913_In memoriam to my first canine teacher... Daisy (April 20, 1997-July 25, 2013). “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” ― Will Rogers  140803_Words to remind all of us "students" of life -- we can amuse and entertain ourselves by looking to the outside; but only the "I," the individual all alone in his mental solitude, can write the poetry of his being on the pages on his life!
For this Phrontisterion philosopher, literature of the 19th century (English, French) is the staple of my diet, with absolute favorites being Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas. And the fantasy writers, such as Neil Gaiman, who ask me to see all the variations-on-a-(human)-theme, any of which may lay in store for us all depending on our consumption and digestion of our past and present. So, whether nutritive or non-nutritive: READ! 070813_This author has smugness about religious opinion down to a fine science! That said, in addition to accusations of an essential ignorance about their own Good Book, a charge that is entirely defensible, I found linguistically refreshing his assessment of America's brand of right-wing, Evangelical fundamentalism-- "Few fundamentalists care about the early church, the Gospels, the Catholic traditions, Augustine, Arian heresies, encyclicals and councils. Rather, they blend Southern Conservatism, bastardized Protestantism, some Pauline doctrine, gross nationalism and a heavy dose of naive anti-intellectualism for a peculiar American strain of bullshit. As Reverend Cornel West has noted, “the fundamentalist Christians want to be fundamental about everything, except ‘love thy neighbor.’”" Further reading, here, about looking for Jesus in all the wrong places... entitled, "Arguing Over Jesus." 040813_"So, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the principal author of the Constitution were of one mind on this: All persons are by nature free, and to preserve those freedoms, they have consented to a government. That was the government they gave us – not power permitting liberty, but liberty permitting power – and the instrument of that permission was the Constitution. The Constitution was created by free men to define and limit the government so it can defend but not threaten our freedoms. Since only free persons can consent to a government, the government cannot lawfully exist without those consents. Here is where the modern-day tyrants and big-government apologists have succeeded in confusing well-meaning people. They have elevated safety – which is a goal of government – to the level of freedom – which created the government. This common and pedestrian argument makes the creature – safety – equal its creator – freedom. That is a metaphysical impossibility because it presumes that the good to be purchased is somehow equal to the free choices of the purchaser. What does this mean? It means that when politicians say that liberty and safety need to be balanced against each other, they are philosophically, historically and constitutionally wrong. Liberty is the default position. Liberty is the essence of our natural state. Liberty cannot possibly be equal to a good we have instructed the government to obtain." Bravo, for the fine word! Andrew P. Napolitano 030813_“...the key to understanding Eichmann’s behavior lies in his 'quite authentic inability to think.'” ― Arendt. This very particular "inability" is the enemy against which the liberal arts are locked in mortal combat! 150713_My DAW praised me the other day for completely mastering the DAH (Dutifully Attentive Hubby-osaurus) "look." The DAH "look" was immortalized in this Klondike advert. I am still not quite sure whether my DAW's praises were sincere, or a compliment... 140713_Death by cow. A man is sleeping in bed with his wife; a 3,000 pound cow falls through the roof of his house onto his side of the bed. The brother's response to the death of his brother by cow is:"There's no justice in the world." But then this world is not about justice... it is a place of simple happenings, some of which are predictable and rather normal, others not. There is no universal law of justice (like a law of gravity) built into this world--it is just a place that "is." So failing an Afterlife in an Afterworld complete with Avenging Deity to right There in that Other/After world all the wrongs that have occurred Here in this world, as the Christians hope, if there is to be any sort of justice in this "just-so" type of world that is our Here and Now, it will come at the hands of each one of us acting out justice through our just acts. 120713_To study philosophy is to try to discover, and then to unravel, the deep, secretive patterns that frame the world of men. Is it an unfair assumption to think that, even as I the philosopher create designs and patterns, sometimes unintentionally, in my humble little corner of reality, there exist also, all around me, deep-flowing designs and patterns, which are both truthful although not necessarily apparent or obvious aspects of world-ness [Geworfenheit], and also discoverable by human intelligence when diligently applied?
070713_John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, puts the matter for us in black and white--this is not about present choices, but about predictable futures. What will be the role of intelligence, of philosophy, in this scenario? From Straw Dogs (8): "A human population of approaching 8 billion can be maintained only by desolating the Earth. If wild habitat is given over to human cultivation and habitation, if rainforests can be turned into green deserts, if genetic engineering enables ever-higher yields to be extorted from the thinning soils -- then humans will have created for themselves a new geological era, the Eremozoic, the Era of Solitude, in which little remains on the Earth but themselves and the prosthetic environment that keeps them alive. It is a hideous vision, but it is only a nightmare. Either the Earth's self-regulating mechanisms will make the planet less habitable for humans or the side effects of their own activities will cut short the current growth in their numbers." 030713_My DAW (Dutifully Attentive Wife, for those of you not following this blog), sent me a reflection this morning, just to remind me about what is important: from Adrienne Rich, poet and essayist.
260613_Remembering the protest years in music -- they seem to be gone now, and yet the problems remain... not just in America, but in a world with its people taking to the streets. And there are still so many "Lives in the Balance" (Jackson Browne). I've been waiting for something to happen For a week or a month or a year With the blood in the ink of the headlines And the sound of the crowd in my ear You might ask what it takes to remember When you know that you've seen it before Where a government lies to a people And a country is drifting to war And there's a shadow on the faces Of the men who send the guns To the wars that are fought in places Where their business interest runs On the radio talk shows and the t.v. You hear one thing again and again How the u.s.a. stands for freedom And we come to the aid of a friend But who are the ones that we call our friends-- These governments killing their own? Or the people who finally can't take any more And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone There are lives in the balance There are people under fire There are children at the cannons And there is blood on the wire There's a shadow on the faces Of the men who fan the flames Of the wars that are fought in places Where we can't even say the names They sell us the president the same way They sell us our clothes and our cars They sell us every thing from youth to religion The same time they sell us our wars I want to know who the men in the shadows are I want to hear somebody asking them why They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are But they're never the ones to fight or to die And there are lives in the balance There are people under fire There are children at the cannons And there is blood on the wire 240613_What was Walt Disney's attitude toward the war in Vietnam? ambiguous, to be sure. Watch the Long Lost, [Disney knock-off], 1968 Anti-War Short “Mickey Mouse in Vietnam”- here. 220613_A state can literally get away with murder, mass and other, and not be called to accounts by its own citizens, precisely because the state is not threatening or undermining its own power. Woe to the individual citizen, however, who attempts to remind the state of its constitutionally assigned obligations. The "uneasiness" that exists between the state and the watchdogs of the state (i.e., the Free Press and Free Speech), is the compulsory toothache that lies hidden and throbbing at the core of the democratic ideal; and this dull, persistent pain must be deliberately nurtured if democracy is to remain honest, and true to its own ideals (per the Declaration of Independence and Constitution). In an article entitled Snowden's real crime, which was sent along by a former student (thank you Dan!), the author speaks of the psychology of the state: "In this sense, the fact that he [Snowden] challenged the prerogatives of the state itself makes his alleged crime so much more transgressive than, for example, merely lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction, starting a war with a random nation in which tens of thousands die, or torturing rendered persons. None of these latter crimes are a threat to the state itself, and for that reason may be readily forgiven and forgotten." If this is truly a state's natural state of mind, then it is also inevitable that citizens such as Manning and Snowden, who are unsung heroes necessary to the fulfillment of the democratic ideal, should become, in contrast to the state, "'great criminals' in that their actions embarrassed and undermined state power. They can never be forgiven or forgotten." The individual will always be fodder ground up by the wheels of state; this seems inevitable--and there is no place in the world to flee from it. This is also, however, precisely the role, indeed the calling, of the Free Man of Reason in Jefferson's conception of We the People: we are to call the state to accounts, and the court must never be adjourned. No matter the cost. And indeed -- the hunt is already on for Snowden! 210613_It's in all the headlines: the peoples of the world are in motion-- this is the coming of age of the idea of We the People. Consider Turkey, from the point of view of French revolutionary history en images. Consider Brazil, where one million people are in the streets. Headline news in America is a little different, though; the movement of the peoples of the world is replaced by highly paid movement on the basketball courts. Must be a question of priorities... 160613_On burning our books... words fail me...
http://www.upworthy.com/burn-the-libraries-down-kidz-can-learned-stuff-on-there-oan?g=2 The Young Heideggarians invite all those interested in burning books to join the planning committee. b chair, FSU Young Heideggarians" 100613_ To my fellow philosophers, students of the Roosevelt graduating class of 2013... my wishes for you penned in the immortal words of The Persian Poet:
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky,
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little Ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."
(....)
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
to fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
Let the festivity of Life begin!
I am also made mindful that Bobby Kennedy is addressing this new generation of Americans, because apparently mine has forgotten to listen, in an attempt to reason with them concerning what is important in the world-of-men. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.Once again Bobby's voice rings out [this time from a video recording, and no longer live] to remind us about the 'mindless menace of violence.' The words were spoken on April 5th 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. The full text of the speech, of which the following is the excerpted beginning, is available here. 040613_In an innocent social situation among students and teachers last night, I was asked if I was going to really just enjoy my entire summer off, you know, not do any type of institutional work. How can you say to someone normal -- I don't really do that. I'm always working. -- without sounding either pompous or crazy? So I was delighted, and comforted, to read this morning in The Chronicle of Higher Education, that I am not the only pompous and crazy dude out there in the teaching world. This author reminds us that, in education at least, "Your career is everything you do—there's no such thing as a year [or a summer!] 'off'." 020613_"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." --Milan Kundera. 010613_The Cost of the Philosophical Life and the Cost of Citizenship are equivalent = the imperative necessity that we participate as Actors in the Process. Turkey in the news. Give 'em hell, Tuna!
290513_ A Bill Maher reflection on the immigration "problem," although, heaven forbid, he actually brings some statistics to the conversation.... I wonder -- is the unwillingness to admit our own private racism due to a personal sense of shame? ...Not! It is, rather, that we wish to continue quietly savoring our dislike of and discomfort with the Other, the Outsider, although we cannot (as in, we do not have the intelligence) or we dare not (significant chutzpah deficiency) make a reasonable and public case for that racism... in which case we have chosen to become the enemy of Reason. 230513_Avec le départ de Georges Moustaki toute une génération touche à sa fin, et une belle part de notre jeunesse... de ma jeunesse. Selon Jack Lang: "GEORGES MOUSTAKI ... était une sorte d'icône qui au sein de sa génération incarnait le chanteur poète. C'était un artiste qui avant tout avait le sens des mots et dont la créativité touchait le coeur des gens." Un mixage de Youtube. 200513_A Goethe idea....(maybe)  |
090513_Does anyone know the address of an Accessories Shop for philosophers that sells these kinds of things.... (from a former teaching colleague in philosophy--thank you, Grant.)
090513_Richard Strauss' Tone Poem encouraging us all to celebrate living -- in a distinctly Zarathustrian kind of way!
220413_The US Senate is willing, and even eager, for normal Americans to have right of access to high powered, high capacity, military-style weapons. The US Senate should therefore also be willing to accept the consequences of its applied philosophy, such as when well- and heavily-armed citizens are able to out-gun police, as recently occurred in Boston; because this is the predictable outcome of its anti-gun-control legislation and vote.
The Second Amendment, which now only means in American mythology the right to bear arms, the "militia" bit having been handily forgotten, clearly seems to enjoy preferential status among the Constitutional Amendments... a mysterious cultural evolution in and of itself. Unless the Neutral Observer of American culture is actually witnessing attempts to permutate political power into tyranny? Could such a transformation look like this? Is it really possible that There's something happening here....?
Click here for a meditation on America's fear of terror, and yet love of guns and weapons.
200413_Sir Ken Robinison on the suppression of creativity in schools. Where have all our artists (and poets, and philosophers, and historians, and painters, and writers, and mythologers, and musicians, and - Citizens) gone? If we do not create them in our schools, then they will not exist for the upcoming generations.
160413_ The Boston Marathon and Running Toward the Sound of Screams - Patton Oswalt muses for us all in words of high wisdom.
"Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem -- one human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in a while, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."
This originally appeared on Patton Oswalt's Facebook page.
130413_Woody Allen on the existential predicament of man as seen through the eyes of an observer of a Jackson Pollock painting....Play it Again Sam (1972).
130413_Beyond words... beyond belief, into the very heart of dispair. Il vaut mieux en rire....
041013_Why it is good to live in Europe - thank you Ludwig van...
030413_So what happens when US politicians promote legislation to bypass the US Constitution on the question of the dis-establishment of religion? It is of course obvious that these lawmakers are not promoting equality among religions on the question of God; nor is their wish to encourage the growth of Islam, or Judaism, or Atheism, or New-Ageism. How and why are these people in the service of a Constitution that they obviously do not wish to serve? "North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill..." read more. On a more somber note, if that is possible, 32 percent of Americans in a survey, said they were in favor of making Christianity the official religion of the United States. This would be a day of mourning for America's Founding Fathers -- for their childrens' children and their children after them have lost the capacity to understand the nature of Tyranny, which at least 32 percent of modern America freely desires to embrace; because in fact and in truth, the very definition of the religious life is to embrace the tyranny of God-- hence the language of blind obedience, submission, yielding up, etc.
210313_Carlin Romano is one of the few in academe who dare to speak of the "great" Martin Heidegger in less than sterling language: "In light of the work of Victor Farias, Hugo Ott, and Emmanuel Faye, the putative greatest of 20th-century German philosophers, Martin Heidegger, stands exposed and delegitimized as a committed Nazi—only dead-enders who ride his coattails in academe still worship his work." The philosopher of hermeneutics Hans Gadamer, disciple of Heidegger, has also escaped critical review for the most part: (again Romano): "The still-undercriticized Hans-Georg Gadamer cleansed one of his 1940 lectures of its celebration of völkisch ideology." Way to go, Romano!
190313_A soldier's dying rant_Where is justice for Bush, Cheney, & their Iraq?
190313_The "problem" of consciousness, as Thomas Nagel calls it in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, lies at the heart of what philosophers call the mind-body problem. It is also the thorn in the side of the empirical sciences, and continues to irritate.
170313_The very real "reality" of what bullets do to human bodies_Michael Moore & the NRA.
170313_Hermeneutics writ large over the political face of America.
160313_An African Proverb...
240213 -- Here are a rabbi's brief reflections on atheistic religions and their choice of gods... from deep within the existential situation.
180213 - In the 21st century, as in the 20th, the war for the freedom of the world's peoples will be progressively won, or lost, on the Battlefield of Ideas; what is at stake is nothing less than the Zeitgeist of a generation. On this great field are met the forces of the Religious Mind in opposition to the forces of the Secular Mind. A Free Mind for each of us will be the prize for the triumph of the Secular Mind. What will be our prize if the Religious Mind triumphs?
The battle is raging and bloody. See Paul Trewhela's defense of one Free Man's voice (Salman Rushdie & The Satanic Verses). For further reading on the question refer to Bertrand Russell's famous lecture: Why I am not a Christian.
130213 - I woke up this morning thinking about a psychologist who once defined me as an "over-acheiver" -- discourse specific jargon designed to negate, if ever I've heard. Hermeneutically, this is the way that truth dies: "not with a bang but a whimper." George Carlin on euphemisms.
120213 - It's not about drones, silly... it's about respecting the Constitution. In all areas of human endeavor, the application of some type of Technology to doing a job is seldom if ever the true bone of contention -- it is simply the use of created Tools to accomplish some task we have set ourselves. We generally should not spend our energies on trying to follow that Red Herring. The carpenter is not criticized for using a Hammer, except when the Task he is called to do requires the use of a Saw. So the Hammer becomes a surrogate "wrong" only when it is linked to an inappropriate, a wrong, Task. And so we come full circle to the true question -- for on the topic of this warfare technology it cannot be about the tools of the trade; the true question for We the People is, and has always been, whether or not the Task in which we are engaged is worthy, whether it is appropriate, and whether or not it is legal according to the laws of the land.
110213 - Students doing a hermeneutical analysis on teacher... this sign is their creation. What is Teacher? Am I all parts equally? Some parts more than others?
060213 - Thoughts of belonging, and not....
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (excerpt)
Sir
Walter Scott (1771-1832)
“Breathes
there the man with soul so dead…”
Breathes
there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.
060213_ Has America Truly Entered into a Post-Legal Period? What is the role of philosophy, public and private, in such a State?
040213 - When art disappears from the world....
290113 - Armed Patriotism
28 January 2013 - Religious allusions and language used to call America to the philosophical life. Martin Luther King - I Have a Dream (delivered August 28, 1963).
I
am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five
score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the
Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light
of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of
withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of
captivity.
But
one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still
not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly
crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One
hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst
of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is
still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile
in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling
condition.
In
a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the
architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which
every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be
guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
It
is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as
her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred
obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back
marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank
of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds
in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this
check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the
security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America
of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of
cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to
rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of
racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of
God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of
racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It
would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to
underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the
Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating
autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a
beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now
be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as
usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is
granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake
the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And
as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn
back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When
will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies,
heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the
highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the
Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never
be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New
York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied,
and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream.
I
am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and
tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have
come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of
persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the
veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned
suffering is redemptive.
Go
back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to
Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing
that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the
valley of despair.
I
say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and
frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream.
I
have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all
men are created equal."
I
have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a
table of brotherhood.
I
have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state,
sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into
an oasis of freedom and justice.
I
have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character.
I
have a dream today.
I
have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are
presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be
transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be
able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as
sisters and brothers.
I
have a dream today.
I
have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and
mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the
crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This
is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this
faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our
nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be
able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail
together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one
day.
This
will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new
meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every
mountainside, let freedom ring."
21 January 2013 -- I can wish for nothing greater than that my journey should share the same spirit as that which inspired Tennyson's Ulysses on to his final journey. There are certainly worse models for a life....
Alfred,Lord Tennyson : Ulysses |
It little profits that an idle king1, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades2 Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy3. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this grey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles4, And see the great Achilles5, whom we knew Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. |
|
| FOOTNOTES |
| 1 In this poem, Ulysses (the Roman for Odysseus and the hero of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey), now an old man, having returned to Ithaca after twenty years absence and much adventure, has grown restless, and is now contemplating setting out with his crew again; 2 a constellation of stars associated with rain; 3 site of the Trojan wars of which Ulysses was a hero; 4 the Elysian Fields, believed by some to be the resting place of heroes after death; 5 Greek hero of the Trojan wars who suffered an early death |
12 January 2013 - Charles Trenet -- L'oiseau des vacances!
- Merci à l'amie médocaine qui nous a remis en mémoire ce très beau poème...
12 January 2013 - The Spiegel -- Hannah Arendt on the question of evil....
According to [Arendt's] theory, Eichmann was literally thoughtless. Efficiency and obedience were his guiding principles, which replaced that inner conversation that we call conscience, that intangible space where human beings encounter themselves and responsibility arises. Arendt asked how political systems could have been created in which it is not the traditional notion of evil -- motivated by greed and vanity, revenge and envy -- but "sheer thoughtlessness" that brings the most horrific consequences.
11 January 2013 - Musings from Robert Reich - Causes of Death for American Young People...
10 January 2013--- Perspectivism from a different point of view
02 January 2013 - Nietzsche redacted....
01 January 2013 -- A Fine Question for the New Year.... Americans and Education?
31 December 2012 -- Waar leren wij nog denken? A Dutch language reflection by Pepijn Vloemans on why one studies philosophy at the university.
28 December 2012 -- A wonderful assessment of the value of the Liberal Arts Education to a society that thinks and measures in strictly materialistic terms, at TheLastPsychiatrist.com. It is not enough to understand the problem, though, now we in the Liberal Arts must learn to find the voice that the material society CAN here! Go here: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html
24 December 2012 -- "Modern civilization, it seems, is gravely threatened because the perennial values of intellectual and moral verities have increasingly been divorced from the realities of matter and nature, so that material reality, deprived of the guidance of right reason and a rationally enlightened will, is being handed over to the blind forces of chance and the biological urges of the will to power" (Kurt F. Reinhardt in The Existentialist Revolt).
16 December 2012 -- President Obama spoke at a prayer vigil in Newton, Connecticut on Sunday in honor of the victims of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Below, read Obama's full remarks as provided by the White House:
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, Governor. To all the families, first responders, to the community of Newtown, clergy, guests -- Scripture tells us: “…do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away…inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”
We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults. They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school; in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.
Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief; that our world too has been torn apart; that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you, we’ve pulled our children tight. And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide; whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown -- you are not alone.
As these difficult days have unfolded, you’ve also inspired us with stories of strength and resolve and sacrifice. We know that when danger arrived in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary, the school’s staff did not flinch, they did not hesitate. Dawn Hochsprung and Mary Sherlach, Vicki Soto, Lauren Rousseau, Rachel Davino and Anne Marie Murphy -- they responded as we all hope we might respond in such terrifying circumstances -- with courage and with love, giving their lives to protect the children in their care.
We know that there were other teachers who barricaded themselves inside classrooms, and kept steady through it all, and reassured their students by saying “wait for the good guys, they’re coming”; “show me your smile.”
And we know that good guys came. The first responders who raced to the scene, helping to guide those in harm’s way to safety, and comfort those in need, holding at bay their own shock and trauma because they had a job to do, and others needed them more.
And then there were the scenes of the schoolchildren, helping one another, holding each other, dutifully following instructions in the way that young children sometimes do; one child even trying to encourage a grown-up by saying, “I know karate. So it’s okay. I’ll lead the way out.” (Laughter.)
As a community, you’ve inspired us, Newtown. In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other, and you’ve cared for one another, and you’ve loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered. And with time, and God’s grace, that love will see you through.
But we, as a nation, we are left with some hard questions. Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around. With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves -- our child -- is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice. And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child’s very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won’t -- that we can’t always be there for them. They’ll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments. And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.
And we know we can’t do this by ourselves. It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize, no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself. That this job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation. And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.
This is our first task -- caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.
And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children -- all of them -- safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?
I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.
Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law -- no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.
But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that -- then surely we have an obligation to try.
In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?
All the world’s religions -- so many of them represented here today -- start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain; that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame, or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that no matter how good our intentions, we will all stumble sometimes, in some way. We will make mistakes, we will experience hardships. And even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.
There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have -- for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace -- that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves, and binds us to something larger -- we know that’s what matters. We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that.
That’s what we can be sure of. And that’s what you, the people of Newtown, have reminded us. That’s how you’ve inspired us. You remind us what matters. And that’s what should drive us forward in everything we do, for as long as God sees fit to keep us on this Earth.
“Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them -- for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.
God has called them all home. For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on, and make our country worthy of their memory.
May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort. And may He bless and watch over this community, and the United States of America. (Applause.)
A Thursday Appreciation - 13 December 2012
- In Memoriam (June 22, 1917 – December 2, 2012) -- Chester A. Green. A no-nonsense educator of the "old west" type, and an educational innovator of "new world" vintage. Education runs in my family.
Pooh's Favorite Day
|
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Helping Classroom Concentration
Notes from a Public Lecture to the RA Political Society (21 November 2012):
A Tuesday Muse from another philosopher - 20 November 2012
A Sunday Appreciation - 28 October 2012
- In Memoriam (July 10, 1919 – June 24, 2012) -- Father Claude Sumner, SJ, Former Chairman of the Department of Philosophy, College of Social Sciences, Addis-Ababa University, Ethiopia. I worked with Professor Sumner in 1995-1996, first as Secretary for the Pan-African Symposium on “Problematics of an African Philosophy: Twenty Years After (1976-1996),” and then as Consulting Editor for the re-edition of Professor Sumner’s complete philosophical, theological and poetical works, which was under contract to be published by the Gelawdewos Foundation in Addis Ababa. A kind and gentle man.
An unamusing muse on Irrationality in one of its myriad forms - 27 October 2012
-
Do not go gentle into that good night, (my friend, my father),Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on that sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
An Academic Rant about Interpreting Stuff (Hermeneutics) (text in French) - 26 September, 2012
- A soutenance is the public oral defense of a doctoral dissertation in France. This was my second earned doctorate in France, and my second public oral defense, so I actually showed marked improvement over my first public defense in the political framing of its delivery-- I managed not to insult anyone in my jury by assuming that they also shared in my naive and overly romantic interest in the quest for truth. This, therefore, is a rather official looking ‘academic rant’, and the interrogation surrounding it lasted for 6 hours. It was well received all in all (April 1995).
MUSINGS - 22 August, 2012
- A Philosophy of Teaching - 18 August 2012
- A Student Letter About God & The Bible - 08 August 2012
A Sunday Appreciation - 05 August 2012
MUSINGS - 04 August 2012
MUSINGS - 29 July 2012
MUSINGS - 28 July 2012
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