The Southern Festival of Books

A program of Humanities Tennessee

OCTOBER 17 (9am to 6pm)
OCTOBER 18 (10am to 5pm) 2026

Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park
Tennessee State Library and Archives
Tennessee State Museum

Free!

 

https://www.sofestofbooks.org/

Questions OCT 15

First, finish midterm report presentations. Then, go back for a look at questions posted since the exam. Then, Bertrand Russell et al: 

1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?

2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ______, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is ___." Do these examples show a deep problem with language and its ability to accurately portray reality?

3. A.J. Ayer's ______ Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as _____ ______. Is unverifiability the same thing as meaninglessness?

4. Humans don't have an _____, said Jean Paul Sartre, and are in "bad faith" like the ____ who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work. Is it possible to avoid bad faith in every situation?

5. What was Sartre's frustrating advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? Should he have said something else?

6. When Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way, she meant that they tend to accept what? Are any essential identities conferred by birth?

7. Which Greek myth did Albert Camus use to illustrate human absurdity, as he saw it? Do you ever feel that way? Do you worry that someday you might, in work or relationships or something else?

Weiner ch 13

1. What is an "unrealizable"? Can you imagine yourself at age 60+?
2. What did Cicero say old age does to personality? Do you think that's inevitable?
3. What was Sartre's metaphor for what to do instead of trying to "find" yourself? What metaphor for life is implied by de Beauvoir's early declaration that her life would be an improvised "beautiful story"? Do you like either or both?
4. How does the "balance shift" as we age? When do you think the shift will begin for you?
5. What is "bad faith"? How does Sartre's example of the waiter illustrate it? Can you think of another example?
6. What does the latest happiness research confirm? Do you think this will matter more to you later?
7. What did Camus say is "enough..."? Is he right, do you think, about absurdity and its overcoming?
8. What wasBertrand Russell's advice? Do you know any older people who've followed it? Are they role-models for you?

HWT

1. What do you think of the Japanese sensitivity to nature and the seasons? 293
2. What do you think of Shinto's "no clear-cut separation between the aesthetic, the moral, and the religious"? 294
3. What do you think it means to think without concepts? 295
4. Do you agree with what "the enlightened [Buddhist] declares"? 296
5. Is time more a feeling than a concept? 296 What would Kant say?
6. What do you think of Hume's "is/ought gap"? 297
7. What can tea teach us? 299
8. What is wabi-sabi? 300
9. Was Kravinsky crazy? 301 How about Peter Singer? 302
10. Should we consider the welfare of distant strangers as much as of kith and kin? 303
11. Are Mozi and Mill saying the same thing? 304
12. Kant's categorical imperative, again: any comment? 309
13. Do you like Rawls' veil of ignorance idea? 309
14. Do you agree with the key principles of the Enlightenment? 310
15. Is Owen Flanagan right about "no sensible person"? 312
16. Is the mixing desk a good metaphor for moral pluralism? Do you agree that it's not the same as laissez-faire relativism? 314-15

Discussion Questions

• Reading Mill's autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God. Do you agree or disagree with his reasoning? Why? 185

I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read _____'s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian

(More Russell Quotes)

• Should it bother us that logical paradoxes that seem to be true AND false can be formulated in grammatically correct statements? Does this show something important about the limits of language, thought, and (thus) philosophy? 186
• Were young A.J. Ayer and the Positivists on the right track with their Verification Principle? Or was the older, post-Near Death Experience Ayer wiser about beliefs that cannot be conclusively verified? 190, 194
• Do you agree with Sartre that humans, unlike inanimate objects such as inkwells, don't have an essential nature? Is our common biology, DNA etc. not essential to our species identity? 197
• If you become deeply involved in your work  (or seem to, like Sartre's Waiter) are you in "bad faith"? 198
• What do you think of Sartre's advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? 199
• Do you agree with Simone de Beauvoir about accepting a gender identity based on men's judgments? 200
• Is life a Sisyphean struggle? Is it "absurd"? Do you agree with Camus that Sisyphus must be happy? Why or why not? 201

FL

• Do you see any parallels between 1962 (as reflected in the SDS Manifesto, for instance) and today? 212
• What's your opinion of "Gun nuts"? And what should we do about the epidemic of gun violence in America? 218
• Do you think of The Force (in Star Wars) as a "spiritual fantasy" or does it name something you consider real? 222
• Was the sudden and widespread availability of contraception (The Pill) in the '60s a positive development, all things considered? 230
• Is the fantasy of perpetual youth an infantilizing force in America? 233 (Compare with our next read, Why Grow Up)
• Are we becoming "fake humans"? 234

Oct13/14

==

Bertrand Russell's River of Life, message to future generations, and why he was not a Christian

‘An individual human existence should be like a river – small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and – in the end – without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man or woman who, in old age, can see his or her life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things they care for will continue.’ Bertrand Russell, How to Grow Old

Understanding Humanism

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQJ3sqkdCRE

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

             ...

When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku-Klux-Klan or the Fascists?

            ... 

Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth - 

a graphic novel featuring Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein 

Podcasts-Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Arendt, Popper, Ordinary Language, Trolley Problems

In Our Time

Sartre. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright, and philosopher who became the king of intellectual Paris and a focus of post war politics and morals. Sartre's own life was coloured by jazz, affairs, Simone de Beauvoir and the intellectual camaraderie of Left Bank cafes. He maintained an extraordinary output of plays, novels, biographies, and philosophical treatises as well as membership of the communist party and a role in many political controversies. He produced some wonderful statements: "my heart is on the left, like everyone else's", and "a human person is what he is not, not what he is", and, most famously "we are condemned to be free". Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Sartre's novels and plays express his ideas and what light Sartre's life brings to bear on his philosophy and his philosphy on his life.

Simone de Beauvoir. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immediate success with the thousands of women who bought it. Many male critics felt men came out of it rather badly. Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a high bourgeois family and it was perhaps her good fortune that her father lost his money when she was a girl. With no dowry, she pursued her education in Paris to get work and in a key exam to allow her to teach philosophy, came second only to Jean Paul Sartre. He was retaking. They became lovers and, for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners. Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy; Beauvoir explored that, and existentialist ethics, plus the novel and, increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986, the situation of women in the world.

Camus. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus. In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography The First Man. Camus was 46. Born in Algeria in 1913, Camus became a working class hero and icon of the French Resistance. His friendship with Sartre has been well documented, as has their falling out; and although Camus has been dubbed both an Absurdist and Existentialist philosopher, he denied he was even a philosopher at all, preferring to think of himself as a writer who expressed the realities of human existence. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus’ legacy is a rich one, as an author of plays, novels and essays, and as a political thinker who desperately sought a peaceful solution to the War for Independence in his native Algeria.

Bertrand Russell. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872 into an aristocratic family, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In his important book The Principles of Mathematics, he sought to reduce mathematics to logic. Its revolutionary ideas include Russell's Paradox, a problem which inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein to pursue philosophy. Russell's most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for the discipline.

In addition to his academic work, Russell played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote a number of books aimed at the general public, including The History of Western Philosophy which became enormously popular, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russell's many appearances on the BBC also helped to promote the public understanding of ideas.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth century; on his return to Cambridge in 1929 Maynard Keynes wrote, “Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train”.Wittgenstein is credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not one but two philosophies for his descendents to argue over: The early Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my mind [language] mean the limits of my world”; the later Wittgenstein replied, “If God looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of”. Language was at the heart of both. Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was to finally free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all. As he put it, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”.How did he think language could solve all the problems of philosophy? How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? And could his thought ever achieve the release for us that he hoped it would?With Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius; Barry Smith, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Marie McGinn, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York.

Ordinary Language Philosophy. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. With its roots in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language Philosophy is concerned with the meanings of words as used in everyday speech. Its adherents believed that many philosophical problems were created by the misuse of words, and that if such 'ordinary language' were correctly analysed, such problems would disappear. Philosophers associated with the school include some of the most distinguished British thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Gilbert Ryle and JL Austin.

Hannah Arendt. In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the C20th, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of 'the banality of evil' when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust.

Karl Popper. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved true. Popper wrote: “The more we learn about the world and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance”. He believed that even when a scientific principle had been successfully and repeatedly tested, it was not necessarily true. Instead it had simply not proved false, yet! This became known as the theory of falsification.He called for a clear demarcation between good science, in which theories are constantly challenged, and what he called “pseudo sciences” which couldn't be tested. His debunking of such ideologies led some to describe him as the “murderer of Freud and Marx”. He went on to apply his ideas to politics, advocating an Open Society. His ideas influenced a wide range of politicians, from those close to Margaret Thatcher, to thinkers in the Eastern Communist bloc and South America. So how did Karl Popper change our approach to the philosophy of science? How have scientists and philosophers made use of his ideas? And how are his theories viewed today? Are we any closer to proving scientific principles are “true”?

==

The Scientific Method. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought. In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.

The Meaning of Life According to AJ Ayer. What was an English philosopher doing at a New York party, saving the young model Naomi Campbell from a rather pushy boxing heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson? The philosopher was Alfred Jules Ayer, who was just as at home mixing with the glitterati as he was with Oxford dons. On the one hand he was an academic, on the other a celebrity and bon viveur.

So what does this logician have to say about the meaning of life?

In 1988, a year before his death, he gave a lecture at the Conway Hall in which he set out his notion of existence. By this time, ‘Freddie’ Ayer was one of the UK’s most prominent public intellectuals, with regular television and radio appearances, discussing the moral issues of the day.

Ayer’s former student at Oxford, philosopher AC Grayling, remembers the tutor that became his friend. He explores the man of contradictions – the atheist who almost recanted after a near-death incident; the deep thinker with a weakness for mistresses and Tottenham Hotspur. What was his contribution to philosophy? How did it inform the way he lived his life? What, if anything, can we learn from Freddie’s view on the big question?

Trolleyology
The Philosopher's ArmsSeries 4 Episode 2 of 4

Pints and Philosophical Problems with Matthew Sweet. This week, trolleyology: how should you decide between two morally troubling courses of action? This is a question which affects both soldiers in the heat of action and decision-makers in the NHS. Matthew is joined in the snug by philosopher David Edmonds.

==

Philosophy Bites

Sebastian Gardner on Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith

Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness is sometimes described as the bible of existentialism. At its core is the notion of Bad Faith. For this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Sebastian Gardner, author of a recent book about Bei...

Kate Manne on Misogyny and Male Entitlement

Cornell philosopher Kate Manne discusses misognyn, male entitlement, together with the notion of 'himpathy', a term she coined, in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Manne is the author of two recent highly influential books, ...

Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography

Ray Monk discusses the relationship between philosophy and a philosopher's life in this interview with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast. Can understanding the biographical context of a philosopher and the type of person t...

David Edmonds on Wittgenstein's Poker

For this second special lockdown episode of Philosophy Bites, Nigel Warburton interviewed David Edmonds about his bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, which he wrote with John Eidinow. This brilliant book is an exploration of an event that...

Melissa Lane on Plato and Totalitarianism

Was Plato's ideal state a totalitarian one? Karl Popper, thought so, and made his case in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Melissa Lane, author of Plato's Progeny discusses Popper's critique of Plato in this episode of Philosophy Bites....

David Edmonds on Trolley Problems

Is it ever morally acceptable to kill one person to save five? Most people think that it can be. But are we consistent in this? In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Nigel Warburton interviews David Edmonds (co-creator of Philo...

Julian Baggini on Thought Experiments

Philosophers often use elaborate thought experiments in their writing. Are these anything more than rhetorical flourishes? Or do they reveal important aspects of the questions under discussion. Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers'...

==

Sartre - existence precedes essence

"...there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?

... 
--Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)

Hope you’re all having a good break

Why we all need a fall break (starting AFTER class Friday)

“One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.”

— Bertrand Russell, “The Conquest of Happiness”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/77894/77894-h/77894-h.htm

James William Buffett agrees:

Call My A.I. Agent

Maybe it’s not such a great idea to share all of your personal information with Meta’s Muse, just for the convenience of having it order your lunch? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/podcasts/the-daily/meta-ai-agent-muse.html?context=audio&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Bill McKibben’s plea for a more human environmentalism

This is why I have added Jill Lepore’s Rise and Fall of the Artificial State to our reading list for environmental ethics in the spring:

“… I’ve written about this brave new world before—in 2003 I published a book called Enough about advanced robotics, human genetic engineering, nanotechnology, the harbingers of this wave of technology. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, an assault on human meaning. We are limited; it is in engaging with those limits that we find joy. Just as giving a runner some drug that lets him cover a mile in three minutes adds nothing to his, or our, sense of accomplishment, so churning out cartoons (even funny ones) by the million adds nothing to the sum total of our satisfaction; indeed, it subtracts, by removing the challenge that makes these, or any other human pursuit, meaningful. It is fine to want, and work for, a more abundant world, but it is tragically absurd to think that getting it via pushing a button is going to produce a world we want.

This is not an argument against technology. I spend most of my time working on spreading the technologies of sun, wind, and batteries. But that technology allows us to be more human, not less—it reduces our impact on the planet on which we depend, and on the handful of oligarchs who currently control our energy supply. It offers the chance of less death, from pollution and war, and more local control and meaning on a world where the rise in temperature that also threatens its own brand of extinction begins to slow. Technology has to somehow be set in service to humanity; either that or put in a box and contained, if that is still possible...”

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-human-environmentalism?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

L

‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

AI is an “alien mind,” not just software, says the latest Silicon Valley protest resign-ee… and he was a Philosophy major, btw…

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000011191541/this-is-nuts-an-openai-insider-explains-why-he-quit.html?smid=url-share&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Schoolyard protests are setting France ablaze

“…many complaints from final-year pupils about the lack of philosophy teachers…”

https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/10/02/schoolyard-protests-are-setting-france-ablaze

Questions Oct 8

Presentations continue. Catch up... then,

#_ Camryn Noel-Philosopher Queens. @1 Baker Kilmartin-Freud. #2 erik angelo-Freud. Wyatt Coleman-Nietzsche. Keziah-"Can Letting Go Makes Us Happier?  #3 Alivia Bond-Nietzsche

and then everyone else. Looks like we may have to wait 'til after Fall Break to finish them all. That's okay.

1. What's the point of James's squirrel story? Have you ever been involved in a "metaphysical dispute" of this sort? How was it resolved?

2. Who said truth is what we would end up with if we could run all the experiments and investigations we'd like to? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?) What does it imply about the present status of what we now consider true?

3. What did Bertrand Russell say about James's theory of truth? Was he being fair?

4. What 20th century philosopher carried on the pragmatist tradition? What did he say about the way words work? Does his approach seem reasonable to you?

5. What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?) Does that statement seem nihilistic to you?

6. Where did Nietzsche think Christian values come from? What do you think about that?

7. What is an Ubermensch, and why does Nigel find it "a bit worrying"? Does it worry you that some of our peers think of themselves as exempt from the rules and norms that the rest of us follow?

8. How did Nietzsche differ from Kant but anticipate Freud? Is rationality less available to us than we think?

9. What were the three great revolutions in thought, according to Freud? Was he overrating his own contributions?

10. The "talking cure" gave birth to what? Have you had any direct experience with it, or any other form of "talking cure"?

11. Why did Freud think people believe in God? Was he right, about some people at least?

12. What was Karl Popper's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis? Do you agree?

Weiner ch 11

1. What is Weiner's favorite movie? What philosophical themes does it wrestle with? What Nietzschean idea does it resemble? How would you respond to the "demon" who proposes it?
2. How do we write well, according to Nietzsche? Have you tried it? 
3. What is amor fati? Do you have an "all or nothing" attitude towards life? What does that mean to you?
4. What is the "as if" approach to life? Do you take it? Does it work?
5. What is Sonya's opinion of Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence? Do you share it?
6. How does the "Hollywood version" of ER differ from Nietzsche's? Which do you prefer? Why?

HWT

1. What really distinguishes utilitarianism, for Baggini?

2. How did Mozi's maxim resemble J.S. Mill's principle of utility?

3. Each item of Jonathan Israel's key principles of Enlightenment concerns what?

4. Pluralism is often mistaken for what?

MAR1

==

"Best book in the MTSU library" (more modestly, the best book by me in the library):

Applied Philosophy Lyceum with Dr. John Kaag, Oct2: video

 Thanks to all of you who showed up, it was a terrific talk.

https://jcbmtsu.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=1672d5a1-5adf-4e85-bc23-b4d6015ff3e5

There’s Something Better Than Happiness

...Many of us think that the goal of life is to work hard, succeed and live softly for the rest of our days. Get on the sailboat to nowhere. Go to the South of France and sample every wine-paired dish. Float from one music festival to the next.

This, many think, is happiness. And plenty of prominent thinkers would agree. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham said we should seek maximum pleasure at all times and do all we can to avoid pain. Oscar Wilde, a lifelong sybarite, wrote in his letter “De Profundis”: “I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.”

Yet there are others who think that happiness of this sort is, if not to be avoided altogether, then taken in guarded doses...

Mark Edmundson

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/07/opinion/happiness-research-joy-mental-health.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share