NOT MEETING TODAY, read & post your comments...
WGU -192
1. What hallmark of modernity reversed Plato's and Aristotle's judgment?
2. What gives life meaning, for Kant?
3. In a truly human society, according to Marx, how would our capacities to work develop?
4. Most jobs involve what, according to Paul Goodman?
5. People were certain, as late as 2008, that what?
6. What alternatives to consumerism have small groups begun to develop?
2. What is distinctive about "our age" that makes James particularly relevant?
3. What happened on Feb. 6, 2014 that prompted Kaag to write this book?
(See "Is Life Worth Living...)
5. Human history is "one long commentary on" what?
6. A "wider world... unseen by us" may exist, just as our world does for ___.
7. The "deepest thing in our nature," which deals with possibilities rather than finished facts, is a "dumb region of the heart" called (in German) ___.
SSHM ch1
1. Calvinism set out, for Henry James Sr., what impossible task?
2. Kaag thinks the Civil War gave WJ his first intimation that what?
3. WJ's entire life had been premised on what expectation?
4. What did WJ say (in 1906, to H.G. Wells) about "SUCCESS"?
5. What Stoic hope did young WJ share with his friend Tom Ward?
6. What thought seeded "the dilemma of determinism" for WJ?
7. As WJ explicated determinism in 1884, the future has no what?
8. WJ found what in Huxley's evolutionary materialism alarming?
9. Determinism has antipathy to the idea of what?
10. To the "sick soul," what seems blind and shallow?
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LH Intro, ch1
1. What reminder does Kieran Setiya say he needed when he was younger? What kind of philosophy did his teachers say he needed? (pref) What has he experienced since age 27?
2. What is moral philosophy about?
3. Does Setiya think "everything happens for a reason"? What were Job's friends wrong about?
4. What did Nietzsche say about happiness and the English?
5. Who is Susan Gubar?
6. To whom should disability matter?
7. What's the difference between disease and illness?
8. What does Setiya think Aristotle gets wrong?
9. Who are Setiya's heroes?
10. What does Setiya say about Marx's vision of communist society?
11. What was Harriet Johnson's reply to Peter Singer?
12. What did Setiya appreciate about his fifth urologist?
13. What, contrary to Descartes, does pain teach us about our bodies?
Discussion questions:
- Have you ever felt "pulled in too many directions"? 2 How did you respond?
- Do you approach philosophy as a "detached intellectual exercise," an "existential life preserver," or something else?
- Where would you place yourself on the spectrum between "sick soul" and "healthy-minded"? Does that change, over time?
- Can belief that life is worth living become self-fulfilling?
- Do you know any "sick souls"? 3 Or "healthy minds"? 4 Are they the same person?
- Do you agree that believing life to be worth living "will help create the fact"? 5
- Do you like WJ's answer to the question "Is life worth living?" 9
- Is suicide always "the wrong way to exit life"? 10
- Have you ever visited the Harvard campus? What were your impressions?
- Is "maybe" a good answer to the eponymous question of James's essay below?
- Do you like Whitman's poetic expression of "the joy of living"?
- Have you ever been as happy as Rousseau at Annecy?
- Do you agree that nature cannot embody the ultimate "divine" spirit of the universe? What if you remove (or re-define) "divine"? 489
- Do you agree that "sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life..."? 491
- Does the "purely naturalistic basis" suffice to make life worth living? 494
- Does life feel like a "real fight" to you? 502
*IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? (see the Library of America's terrific William James : Writings 1878-1899... vol.2 is William James : Writings 1902-1910).
When Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it depends on the liver" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,—
"I come no more to make you laugh; things now,
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"—
must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly; and I know not what such an association as yours intends, nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence, and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness. Without further explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to the profounder bass-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour together, and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find... (continues)
- Why does anyone give Alex Jones any credibility at all?
- Why do people like Ayn Rand's message that selfishness is a virtue?
- Was Mencken right about the Scopes Trial? 375
1. Young William James's problem, as he felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in a machine, was ____.
ReplyDeleteexistential
2. What is distinctive about "our age" that makes James particularly relevant?
We often feel intense and overwhelming anxiety, depression, etc. Many times those most effected by such feelings are in the “highest” point of society (celebrities, wealthy people, etc). Our generation craves existential meaning.
3. What happened on Feb. 6, 2014 that prompted Kaag to write this book?
A student jumped off of William James Hall at Harvard University, ending his life. Kaag rode by on his bike and witnessed the scene. Afterwards, he found himself contemplating the question of what makes life worth living.
7. As WJ explicated determinism in 1884, the future has no what?
ReplyDeleteThe future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb.
8. WJ found what in Huxley's evolutionary materialism alarming?
It teetered on the edge of casual determinism and jeopardized free will.
9. Determinism has antipathy to the idea of what?
Idea of chance
1. What hallmark of modernity reversed Plato's and Aristotle's judgment? The idea that activity rather than contemplation was the most fundamentally human.
ReplyDelete2. What gives life meaning, for Kant? Action gives life meaning, where action becomes a duty.
3. In a truly human society, according to Marx, how would our capacities to work develop? According to Marx, we would “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and do philosophy after dinner.”