Questions Feb 1

Epicureans and Stoics, LH 4-5; FL 7-8, HWT 6-8

ALSO RECOMMENDED: De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Cicero's dialogue between a Skeptic, a Stoic, and an Epicurean... & JMH's smart commentary on it in Doubt: A History*... LISTEN (Sep '21)

LH

1. According to Epicurus, fear of death is based on what, and the best way to live is what?

2. How is the modern meaning of "epicurean" different from Epicurus's?

3. What famous 20th century philosopher echoed Epicurus's attitude towards death?

4. How did Epicurus respond to the idea of divine punishment in the afterlife?

5. What was the Stoics' basic idea, and what was their aim?

6. Why did Cicero think we shouldn't worry about dying?

7. Why didn't Seneca consider life too short?

8. What does the author say might be the cost of stoicism?

FL

1. The people we call the American founders were what?

2. Who was Jonathan Edwards and how was he like Anne Hutchinson?

3. Who was John Wesley and what did he demand of his followers?

4. Who was George Whitefield and what did he "implant" in American Christianity?

5. What did Thomas Jefferson tell his nephew?

6. What was Immanuel Kant's "motto of Enlightenment"?

HWT

1. Who were the three great founders of American pragmatism?

2. When does philosophy "recover itself" according to John Dewey, and what should it not doubt according to Charles S. Peirce?

3. What did Richard Rorty say pragmatists desire?

4. As earlier noted in Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland, Karl Rove said what about "reality"?

...

• Are you afraid of death, of dying, or of any other aspect of human mortality? Why or why not? What's the best way to counter such fear?
• Are you epicurean in any sense of the word?
• Have you experienced the death of someone close to you? How did you handle it?
• Do you believe in the possibility of a punitive and painful afterlife? Do you care about the lives of those who will survive you? Which do you consider more important? Why?
• Do you consider Epicurus's disbelief in immortal souls a solution to the problem of dying, or an evasion of it? Do you find the thought of ultimate mortality consoling or mortifying?
• How do you know, or decide, which things you can change and which you can't? 
• Were the Stoics right to say we can always control our attitude towards events, even if we can't control events themselves?
• Is it easier for you not to get "worked up" about small things you can't change (like the weather, or bad drivers) or large things (like presidential malfeasance and terrorist atrocites)?  Should you be equally calm in the face of both?
• Who had the better idea about why we shouldn't be afraid to die, Epicurus or Cicero?
• Do you waste too much time? How do you think you can make the most of the time you have?
• Is it possible to live like a Stoic without becoming cold, heartless, and inhumane?
• What do you think of when you hear the word "therapy"? Do you think philosophers can be good therapists? 
• Do you think "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is an appropriate goal in life? Can it be effectively pursued by those who shun "any direct involvement in public life"? 
• If the motion of atoms explains everything, can we be free? 
• Is it true that your private thoughts can never be enslaved? 
• Do you agree with the Stoic critique of Plato's Forms? (321) 
• How do you distinguish things that are and are not subject to your control? 

Jefferson the Stoic-Epicurean

"Before he attained domestic happiness he had probably worked out his enduring philosophy of life; it was marked by cheerfulness not gloom, and he afterwards described it as Epicurean, though he hastened to say that the term was much misunderstood. He came to believe that happiness was the end of life, but, as has been said, he was engaged by the "peculiar conjunction of duty with happiness"; and his working philosophy was a sort of blend of Epicureanism and Stoicism, in which the goal of happiness was attained by self-discipline." Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian

Jefferson Pro Epicurus, Contra Plato

– Thomas Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819 .

This letter contains Jefferson’s explicit endorsement of Epicureanism along with his statement “I too am an Epicurean.” Jefferson shows here that he understood Epicurus’ true views to have been grossly misrepresented, and that he understood Epicurus to have been the arch-enemy of Platonism. Jefferson also states that he considered Jesus of Nazareth to have been a man of great personal merit bent on reforming the corrupt theology of Judaism, but that the theology that Jesus’ followers developed after his death was a fabrication built on a corrupt variation of Platonism. 

– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, July 5, 1814 

Here Jefferson denounces Plato (labeling The Republic as full of “whimsies, puerilities, and unintelligible jargon”) and stating of the Platonisms grafted into Christian theology that “nonsense can never be explained.”

– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 15, 1820 

Here Jefferson complains to Adams about Christian theology and states that “To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise.”

New Epicurean

Differences & similarities between Epicureans & Stoics-"Where the Epicureans believed there was only atoms and void, the Stoics believed there was only inert matter (bodies) and logos (reason) that organized matter’s motions and fate. Logos was the structuring principle, the how and the why of matter, and, like a deductive argument, had its own inner necessity. So, they too were determinists (a bit of an over-simplification), but for different reasons..."

The Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was born in 341 BC, on the island of Samos, a few miles off the coast of modern Turkey. He had an unusually long beard, wrote over three hundred books and was one of the most famous philosophers of his age.

What made him famous was his skilful and relentless focus on one particular subject: happiness. Previously, philosophers had wanted to know how to be good; Epicurus insisted he wanted to focus on how to be happy.

Few philosophers had ever made such a frank, down-to-earth admission of their interests before. It shocked many, especially when they heard that Epicurus had started a School for Happiness. The idea of what was going on inside was both entirely shocking and deeply titillating. A few disgruntled Epicureans made some damaging leaks about what was going on in the school. Timocrates said that Epicurus had to vomit twice a day because he spent all his time on a sofa being fed luxurious meats and fish by a team of slaves. And Diotimus the Stoic published fifty lewd letters which he said had been written by Epicurus to some young students when he’d been drunk and sexually obsessed. It’s because of such gossip that we still sometimes now use the adjective ‘Epicurean’ to describe luxury and decadence... SoL

Book of Life: Epicurus

What is the best life we can live? How can we cope with whatever the universe throws at us and keep thriving nonetheless? The ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism explains that while we may not always have control over the events affecting us, we can have control over how we approach things. Massimo Pigliucci describes the philosophy of Stoicism...Ed.ted

‘Stoicism’ was a philosophy that flourished for some 400 years in Ancient Greece and Rome, gaining widespread support among all classes of society. It had one overwhelming and highly practical ambition: to teach people how to be calm and brave in the face of overwhelming anxiety and pain.

We still honour this school whenever we call someone ‘stoic’ or plain ‘philosophical’ when fate turns against them: when they lose their keys, are humiliated at work, rejected in love or disgraced in society. Of all philosophies, Stoicism remains perhaps the most immediately relevant and useful for our uncertain and panicky times... SoL

Pigliucci's Best Books on Stoicism

Stoicism, in contrast with a lot of contemporary philosophy, puts a great emphasis on living well: the person who studies Stoicism, if sincere, will also practise it. I know you’re both a theorist and a practitioner. Could you say a little bit about how you came to Stoicism?

We’ll get back to the theorist part because I’m definitely not an ancient philosophy scholar, so I’m not a theorist in that sense, but I’m interested in Stoicism as both theory and practice for today’s world. How did I come to it? It was a long circuitous route. A few years ago I went through a midlife crisis and switched from my first academic career as an evolutionary biologist to become a philosopher. Within philosophy I’m interested mostly in the philosophy of science, but you can’t switch to philosophy and start studying it seriously and just be limited to your own technical field of expertise; at least you can, but I don’t think you should.

I began reading more broadly, and—coming to philosophy in the second half of my life—I had a lot to catch up with. I started reading about ethics. I read Kant and Mill, and looked at modern ethics in terms of deontology and utilitarianism in all their forms. I found those ways of understanding ethics wanting. They are wonderful authors, but it didn’t click with me. Then I remembered studying philosophy back in high school – I grew up in Italy where it is mandatory to study three years of history of philosophy. I remembered reading about the ancient Greeks and Romans, and had vague recollections that these people had a very different conception of ethics.

The first stop there was obviously Aristotle. I rediscovered virtue ethics, and that really did appeal to me immediately. Then I went beyond Aristotle and read what little there is available on Epicureanism and some of the other Hellenistic schools of virtue ethics. All this interested me because it clearly embodied a much broader conception of ethics. Most contemporary ethics is focused on answering narrower questions such as: ‘Is this action right or wrong?’ and: ‘Under what circumstances is this permissible or not permissible?’ (...continues)
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Modern Stoicism-"stoic philosophy resources for modern living"...

Human Nature and the Ethical Life

Oct 1, 2018 MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI

Philosophers have been debating human nature for centuries, but in an era of increasing political vitriol and partisanship, the issues at stake are gaining new relevance. To understand what we should expect from our leaders, we must first consider what to expect of ourselves.

NEW YORK – Does human nature exist? The answer has implications for anyone concerned about ethics. In an era defined by amoral political leadership and eroding social values, thinking about the essence of humanity has never been more important.

The philosophical concept of “human nature” has a long history. In Western culture, its study began with Socrates in the fifth century BCE, but it was Aristotle who argued that human nature was characterized by unique attributes – particularly, people’s need to socialize and our ability to reason. For the Stoics of Hellenistic Greece, human nature was what gave life meaning and contributed to their embrace of cosmopolitanism and equality.

Ancient Chinese philosophers like Confucius and Menciusbelieved human nature was innately good, while Xunzi thought it was evil and lacked a moral compass. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, human nature is fundamentally corrupted by sin, but can be redeemed by embracing God, in whose image we have been created.

Modern Western philosophers, writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, expanded on these ideas. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that our natural state leads to a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” which is why we need a strong, centralized political authority (the so-called Leviathan).

By contrast, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that human nature is malleable, but that our original state was one without reason, language, or community. He concluded that the mismatch between our early condition and modern civilization is at the root of our unhappiness, advocating a literal return to nature. David Hume, always sensible and moderate, proposed that humans are characterized by a combination of altruism and selfishness, and that such a combination can be partially molded for the better (or worse) by culture.

Charles Darwin’s work in the mid-1800s made many of the early “essentialist” views of human nature untenable. The idea that humans had a small set of characteristics that only humans possess was at odds with the slow, gradual pace of Darwinian evolution. While Homo sapiens evolved as a particular species of primate, there are no clean breaks between our biology and that of other species.

So the philosophical debate over human nature rages on, updated with the findings of biology. Today, some philosophers interpret Rousseau and Darwin to mean that human nature itself is nonexistent, and that while biology may constrain the body, it does not restrict our minds or our volition.

Evolutionary psychologists and even some neuroscientists say that is nonsense. The message they take from Darwin (and partly from Rousseau) is that we are maladaptive in a modern context – basically, Pleistocene apes who find themselves equipped with mobile phones and nuclear weapons.

As an evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science, my view is that human nature certainly exists, but that it is not based on an “essence” of any kind. Rather, our species, just like any other biological species, is characterized by a dynamic and evolving set of traits that are statistically typical for our lineage but neither present in every member nor absent from every other species.

Why does any of this matter to someone who is not a scientist or a philosopher? There are at least two good reasons that I can think of. One is personal; the other is political.

First, how we interpret human nature has broad implications for ethics, in the ancient Greco-Roman sense of the study of how we should live our lives. Someone who holds a Judeo-Christian-Islamic view of human nature is naturally going to worship God and follow the guidance of religious commandments. By contrast, someone adopting an existentialist philosophyalong the lines of Jean-Paul Sartre or Simone de Beauvoir might believe that because “existence precedes essence,” we are radically free to shape our livesaccording to our own choices, and do not need God to help us along.

Moreover, views on human nature affect views on ethics. And today, our ethics are a mess. One recent study in the United States called Donald Drumpf’s presidency the “most unethical” in American history, while Gallup’s annual survey of US attitudes toward morality suggests a steady erosion of social mores. If we all took a moment to consider where we stood on the debate about human nature, we might gain valuable insight into our own beliefs – and by extension, the beliefs of others.

Personally, I lean toward the naturalistic ethics of the Stoics, for whom human nature constrains and suggests – but does not rigidly determine – what we can and should do. But regardless of one’s religious or philosophical leanings, reflecting on who we are – biologically and otherwise – is a good way to take more ownership of our actions. Needless to say, there are many among us who could benefit from such an exercise.

Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He is the author of How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life. He blogs at patreon.com/PlatoFootnotes

Want To Be Happy? Live Like A Stoic For A Week

What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, obviously the roads – the roads go without saying. How about guidance for how to live in the 21st century? That seems less likely, but in fact the last few years have seen a flurry of interest in the work of three Roman Stoic philosophers who offered just that. They were Seneca, tutor to the Emperor Nero; Epictetus, a former slave; and Marcus Aurelius, himself emperor.

Modern books drawing on their ideas and repackaged as guidance for how to live well today include A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine, Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, and How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci. What all these books share is the conviction that people can benefit by going back and looking at the ideas of these Roman Stoics. There’s even an annual week dedicated to Stoicism.

Stoicism holds that the key to a good, happy life is the cultivation of an excellent mental state, which the Stoics identified with virtue and being rational. The ideal life is one that is in harmony with Nature, of which we are all part, and an attitude of calm indifference towards external events. It began in Greece, and was founded around 300BC by Zeno, who used teach at the site of the Painted Stoa in Athens, hence the name Stoicism. The works of the early Stoics are for the most part lost, so it is the Roman Stoics who have been most influential over the centuries, and continue to be today... (continues)
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A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety

“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is,”Kurt Vonnegut observed in discussing Hamlet during his influential lecture on the shapes of stories. “The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad,” Alan Watts wrote a generation earlier in his sobering case for learning not to think in terms of gain or loss. And yet most of us spend swaths of our days worrying about the prospect of events we judge to be negative, potential losses driven by what we perceive to be “bad news.” In the 1930s, one pastor itemized anxiety into five categories of worries, four of which imaginary and the fifth, “worries that have a real foundation,” occupying “possibly 8% of the total.”

A twenty-four-hour news cycle that preys on this human propensity has undeniably aggravated the problem and swelled the 8% to appear as 98%, but at the heart of this warping of reality is an ancient tendency of mind so hard-wired into our psyche that it exists independently of external events. The great first-century Roman philosopher Seneca examined it, and its only real antidote, with uncommon insight in his correspondence with his friend Lucilius Junior, later published as Letters from a Stoic(public library) — the timeless trove of wisdom that gave us Seneca on true and false friendship and the mental discipline of overcoming fear... (continues)

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* "The conceit of The Nature of the Gods was that many years earlier Cicero’s friend Cotta, a great orator and priest, had invited the young Cicero to his home. When Cicero arrived he found himself in the company of three famous men—one an Epicurean, one a Stoic, and one, Cotta himself, a Skeptic from the Academy—engaged in a heated conversation about the gods. The Epicurean and the Stoic have some very definite ideas about the matter; Cotta, the Skeptic, claims to know nothing for sure, but also claims to be expert at seeing falsehood..."

Hecht is also very good on my favorite Stoic, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius: "Aurelius stands out as a man struggling to internalize the truths of philosophy; his Meditations read like a sage counseling himself through some dark night or ethical confusion. That he was emperor, and perhaps as close to a philosopher-king as the West would ever know, has long fueled interest in his Meditations, but it needn’t have. The book is a marvel of insight and advice. It is not particularly original in its ideas—it is mostly a mixture of Stoicism and Epicureanism—but the voice here is new and warm, and the advice, on all sorts of subjects, is good. It feels good to read it."

Start reading it for free: http://a.co/i8pkJ5A

― from "Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson"

Arts & Letters Daily search results for “stoicism” (3)

2016-02-09 | We speak of being consumed by envy but filled with gratitude. Oliver Sacks approached death with poignancy, stoicism -- and gratitude more »

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2018-10-31 | The appeal of Stoic philosophy to both ancient Romans and today’s therapy-chasing Americans is unsurprising. But darkness is at the heart of Stoicism more »

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2010-01-01 | Between university philosophers with their high abstractions and the glib advice of self-help gurus, there lies the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius more »

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“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” 
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.” 

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.” 

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” 

“It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.” 

“If what you have seems insufficient to you, then though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.” 
― Seneca

“Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.” 

“What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.” 

“Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.” 
― Epictetus, The Art of Living

10-0

If you're from McMinn county, I'm sorry.

The MCMINN COUNTY school board has just BANNED "MAUS", the Pulitzer-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust — citing 8 curse words and an illustration of a woman that was objected to, with a 10-0 vote.
https://t.co/QytgY3CJ5v
(https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1486461123251654663?s=02)

VOTE! (for the Socratic philosopher of your choice)

What do you think? (We'll get to Pyrrho later this week in our Little History. Diogenes has been described as a poor man's Socrates. Plato called him "Socrates gone mad.")

Who was more Socratic? #CoPhilosophy

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) January 24, 2022

Walking Just 10 Minutes a Day May Lead to a Longer Life (and better philosophizing!)

Ten minutes of moderate exercise daily would prevent more than 111,000 premature deaths a year, a new analysis found.

If almost all of us started walking for an extra 10 minutes a day, we could, collectively, prevent more than 111,000 deaths every year, according to an enlightening new study of movement and mortality. Published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study used data about physical activity and death rates for thousands of American adults to estimate how many deaths every year might be averted if everyone exercised more. The results indicate that even a little extra physical activity by each of us could potentially stave off hundreds of thousands of premature deaths over the coming years... (continues)

Questions JAN 27

Skepticism-LH 3. FL 5-6, HWT 4-5. Post your thoughts, responses, questions (etc.) in the comments space below.

LH

1. How did the most extreme skeptics (or sceptics, if you prefer the British spelling) differ from Plato and Aristotle? What was their main teaching? Do you think they were "Socratic" in this regard?

2. Why did Pyrrho decide never to trust his senses? Is such a decision prudent or even possible?

3. What country did Pyrrho visit as a young man, and how might it have influenced his philosophy?

4. How did Pyrrho think his extreme skepticism led to happiness? Do you think there are other ways of achieving freedom from worry (ataraxia)?

5. In contrast to Pyrrho, most philosophers have favored a more moderate skepticism. Why?

FL

1. What did Anne Hutchinson feel "in her gut"? What makes her "so American"?

2. What did Hutchinson and Roger Williams help invent?

3. How was freedom of thought in 17th century America expressed differently than in Europe at the time?

4. Who, according to some early Puritans, were "Satan's soldiers"?

5. What extraordinary form of evidence was allowed at the Salen witch trials? What does Andersen think Arthur Miller's The Crucible got wrong about Salem?

HWT

1. Logic is simply what?

2. What "law" of thinking is important in all philosophies, including those in non-western cultures that find it less compelling?

3. For Aristotle, the distinctive thing about humanity is what? How does Indian philosophy differ on this point?

4. According to secular reason, the mind works without what?

5. What debate reveals a tension in secular reason?

Trees also breathe

How Do You Mourn a 250-Year-Old Giant?

Protecting trees in public areas is a no-brainer. Protecting them on private land is a far greater challenge.

We need to stop thinking of trees as objects that belong to us and come to understand them as long-lived ecosystems temporarily under our protection. We have borrowed them from the past, and we owe them to the future... Margaret Renkl

Back entrance

Nobody has the hermit guru’s back. #CoPhilosophy pic.twitter.com/BwfQFQjFD7

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) January 24, 2022

Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master and Political Reformer, Dies at 95

A monk with global influence and an ally of Martin Luther King, he championed what he called "engaged Buddhism," applying its principles in pressing for peace.

...Traveling widely on speaking tours in the United States and Europe (he was fluent in English and French), Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced tik nyaht hahn) was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his website describes as "the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment."

In his book "Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life," he wrote, "If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything."
...
"We have the feeling that we are overwhelmed by information," he told the assembled [Google] workers. "We don't need that much information."

And he said: "Do not try to find the solution with your thinking mind. Nonthinking is the secret of success. And that is why the time when we are not working, that time can be very productive, if we know how to focus on the moment." NYT  

“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.”

“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Just be. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. Most people cannot believe that just walking as if you have nowhere to go is enough.”

More QUOTES FROM THICH NHAT HANH...

Nothing against Mr. Bat Outta Hell, but this was a noble and possibly more instructive life. https://t.co/RAsdQ9ZlUr

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) January 22, 2022

pic.twitter.com/AzYmkkRHZb

— carolyn (@imcarolyn) January 21, 2022

Questions Jan 25

Aristotle-LH 2; FL 3-4; HWT Sections 1-3

LH

1. What point was Aristotle making when he wrote of swallows and summer? Do you agree?

2. What philosophical difference between Plato and Aristotle is implied by The School of Athens? Whose side are you on, Plato's or Aristotle's?

3. What is eudaimonia, and how can we increase our chances of achieving it, and in relation only to what? Do you think you've achieved it?

4. What reliance is completely against the spirit of Aristotle's research? Are there any authorities you always defer to? Why or why not?

FL

5. What did Sir Walter Raleigh help invent (other than cigarettes) that contributed to "Fantasyland" as we know it today? Was he a "stupid git," as the Beatles song says?

6. What was western civilization's first great ad campaign?

7. What did Sir Francis Bacon say about human opinion and superstition? Do you ever attempt to overcome your own confirmation bias?

8. Which early settlers are typically ignored in the mythic American origin story? 

9. What had mostly ended in Europe, but not America, by the 1620s, and what did the Puritans think would happen "any minute now"?

HWT

10. What is pratyaksa in classic Indian philosophy, and how does the Upanishads say to seek it? 

11. There is widespread belief in India that the practice of yoga can lead to what?

12. What is metanoetics, in Japanese philosophy?

13. What does ineffable mean?  

14. Unlike the west, religion in Japan is typically not about what?

Louis Menand

It’s the birthday of American critic, scholar, and essayist Louis Menand (1952) (books by this author), best known for his nonfiction book The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001) which examines the development of the philosophy of pragmatism by William James, John Dewey, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The book received the Pulitzer Prize for History (2002).

Menand often writes quirky, challenging pieces for The New Yorker and The New Republic. On writing he said, “I just try, like any writer, to be entertaining and interesting. I want people to get some pleasure and to learn something. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s about T.S. Eliot or about Tom Clancy.”

Louis Menand’s books include American Studies (2002) and The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (2010). He teaches at Harvard University. WA

• “James believed that scientific inquiry, like any other form of inquiry, is an activity inspired and informed by our tastes, values, and hopes. But this does not, in his view, confer any special authority on the conclusions it reaches. On the contrary: it obligates us to regard those conclusions as provisional and partial, since it was for provisional and partial reasons that we undertook to find them.”
• “They all believed that ideas are not “out there” waiting to be discovered, but are tools—like forks and knives and microchips—that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves.”
• “Everyone is simply riding the wave chance has put them on. Some people know how to surf; some people drown.”
• “…in a universe in which events are uncertain and perception is fallible, knowing cannot be a matter of an individual mind ‘mirroring’ reality. Each mind reflects differently—even the same mind reflects differently at different moments—and in any case reality doesn’t stand still long enough to be accurately mirrored … knowledge must therefore be social.”
• “We permit free expression because we need the resources of the whole group to get us the ideas we need.”
• “Of course civilizations are aggressive, Holmes says, but when they take up arms in order to impose their conception of civility on others, they sacrifice their moral advantage. Organized violence, at bottom, is just another form of oppression.”
• “Scientific and religious beliefs are important to people; but they are (usually) neither foundational premises, backing one outcome in advance against all others, nor ex post facto rationalizations, disguising personal preferences in the language of impersonal authority. They are only tools for decision making, one of the pieces people try to bundle together with other pieces, like moral teachings and selfish interests and specific information, when they need to reach a decision.”            ― Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club g'r

Beyond fear

	Phil Oliver ⁦‪@OSOPHER‬⁩ "What I found waiting beyond my fear was every person who searched beyond their own fears to find space for hope in their lives… Fear can be love trying its best in the dark" nytimes.com/2022/01/20/opi…   1/20/22, 6:04 AM

Possibilism

	Phil Oliver ⁦‪@OSOPHER‬⁩ "I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious 'possibilist.' That's something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason…" Hans Rosling was a meliorist. But he didn't make it up. nytimes.com/2022/01/20/spe…   1/20/22, 5:57 AM

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Responsibility

	Humanists UK ⁦‪@Humanists_UK‬⁩ 'You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity.' A great quote to start the day by humanist Marie Curie. pic.twitter.com/g5PpoiW2ya   1/20/22, 12:30 AM

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

The adequately examined life

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is nothing to write home about either.--Daniel Dennett
(https://twitter.com/philosophersmag/status/1483834141938487300?s=02)

Writing Center

The Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center (UWC) tutors are ready to serve MTSU writers this semester! The UWC serves all MTSU students and staff, from freshmen to PhD students, on writing from any discipline, and in any genre. We support writers working on D2L discussion posts, PhD dissertations, research posters, and everything in between.

...website... digital class visit, a brief introduction to the UWC

What can students expect? Starting Jan. 18th, students have three opportunities to meet with a trained writing tutor:

Face to Face: students meet with a tutor in the UWC (LIB 362) ​
Live Chat: students to use their mic and camera and meet tutors in real time to work on a shared document
Document Drop: students upload their text and assignment sheet, identify specific feedback needs, and receive tutor feedback through email

How else can the UWC support your student writers this semester? We also support writers through course-specific or assignment-specific 45-minute writing workshops. The UWC administrative team has worked closely with faculty from diverse programs and departments, such as Biology, Music Publicity, and Professional Studies, to create workshops and writing support for students in those courses. Please head to our new workshop request page to find out what type of workshops we offer, schedule a writing workshop, and steps to co-create a specialized writing workshop.

Wishing everyone a lovely start to the semester.

Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, PhD
Director, The Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Middle Tennessee State University
615.898.2921

mtsu.edu/writing-center

Preview YouTube video Welcome to the University Writing Center (Fall 2021-Spring 2022)




Welcome to the University Writing Center (Fall 2021-Spring 2022)

5 Books

A philosophy starter kit. The Best Philosophy Books for Beginners https://t.co/lvIMVr9JqI

— Five Books (@five_books) January 19, 2022

Plato's man

Plato having defined man to be a two-legged, animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the Academy, and said, 'This is Plato's man.'--Diogenes Laertius

— TPM: The Philosophers Magazine (@philosophersmag) January 19, 2022

Opening Day!

 LISTEN. Another semester's Opening Day is upon us. Deja Vu all over again. It's cold out there, as they say day after day in Punxsutawney PA. After so many of them, I (like Phil Connors) should be able to get it right. 

Getting it right is pretty easy, on Opening Day in CoPhi, Atheism, and Bioethics. We just talk about who we are and why we're here, and we prepare to ask and address lots and lots of other questions... (continues)

Public philosophy

Since the millennium, there has been a huge increase in the visibility of philosophy, both online and off. There are, of course, books on philosophy, but also numerous popular live events, courses, podcasts, television and radio programmes, and newspaper columns. Philosophy today is as likely to be found on YouTube as it is in a bookshop or library. Just to mention a few examples of freely accessible online public philosophy initiatives: Michael Sandel's 'Justice' course, the BBC's History of Ideas animations, or the many popular philosophy podcasts, including History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps from Peter Adamson, Philosophy Bites from David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, and the philosophy episodes of the BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time. This complex and heterogeneous phenomenon is generally called 'public philosophy'. It's philosophy done in public rather than behind the doors of seminar or lecture rooms, or in paywalled academic journals... (continues)

https://psyche.co/ideas/what-public-philosophy-is-and-why-we-need-it-more-than-ever

Speak up

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Martin Luther King Jr. https://t.co/OKIWW6yaol
(https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1483114396398374912?s=02)

Professor MLK, Humanist

MLK’s syllabus was as meat and potatoes as you are going to get for an Ethics and Political Philosophy class pic.twitter.com/KSBj90fh7x

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) January 17, 2022

While Dr. King is largely remembered for his religious faith, he was also one of our foremost philosophers who understood the importance of reason and balance in society.

Read about King's support of church-state separation: https://t.co/Q0hPElajFY pic.twitter.com/r4lPMZiO9i

— American Humanist Association (@americnhumanist) January 17, 2022

Questions Jan 18

 Welcome to CoPhi! 

One of our daily tasks in class is to ask and address relevant questions: textual questions that may appear on exams, and discussion questions we can talk and post about. I'll post some in advance of each class, and we can add to them when we meet. If we use a question you've suggested, you can "take a base" on the scorecard. (Don't worry, I'll explain what that means.)

Since we've not read any assigned texts yet, today's questions are just for discussion -- they won't be on the first exam.

• Who are you?
• Why are you here?
• What is philosophy?
• Do you have a favorite philosopher?
• Do you have a pithy personal philosophy?
• Your suggestions...

Post your responses to these questions in the comments space under Introductions, below. Remember to include your section # (6 or 9).

Introductions

 Welcome to Intro to Philosophy, which I prefer to call CoPhi. (I'll explain later.)

I'm Dr. Oliver, I've been at MTSU for decades now teaching this course and others on Atheism, Bioethics, Environmental Ethics, Enlightenment, Evolution, Happiness, Rationality,... 

My twitter profile identifies me as a peripatetic, a dog person, a baseball fan, and an author. I'm also a dad and a meliorist, among other things. I'll elaborate when we meet.

My initial questions for you: who are you, and why are you here? What's your current understanding of what philosophy is? Do you have a favorite philosopher? Click on "comments" below and introduce yourself. See you soon.

Dr. Oliver

jpo

The power of asking questions

‘Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life’ Bertrand Russell

— Nigel Warburton 🧡 #RejoinEU (@philosophybites) January 14, 2022

One of many caves

Plato's cave. https://t.co/aii9DOu0HI
(https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1481607359575347202?s=02)

15 Minute Masterclass philosophy videos

We will be releasing new videos in our 15 Minute Masterclass series later this month.

Perfect for A-Level students or anyone looking for an engaging introduction to the main problems of philosophy, the series so far can be browsed for free here:

https://t.co/SzaxBI307N
(https://twitter.com/RIPhilo/status/1481570185375105026?s=02)

WJ at 180

It’s the birthday of the man who coined the term “stream of consciousness” and who said that “the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook” — psychologist and philosopher William James (books by this author) (1842), born in New York City to one of the most prominent intellectual families in the history of America. His brother was writer Henry James, his sister was diarist Alice James, his dad was a famous theologian, and his godfather was Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He was tone-deaf, got motion sickness easily, suffered from depression and was suicidal for long intervals, had chronic back pain, recurring digestive ailments, and problems with vision. He told people he had “soul-sickness.”

He got an M.D. at Harvard but never practiced medicine; instead, he spent his life in academia at Harvard. There he taught physiology, then anatomy, and then, for many years, psychology and philosophy. Over the years he lectured to many future famous Americans, including Teddy Roosevelt, W.E.B. DuBois, and Gertrude Stein, a favorite of his. On an in-class exam he gave, Gertrude wrote, “Dear Professor James, I am so sorry but I do not feel a bit like writing an examination paper on philosophy today.” He wrote back, “Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly. I often feel like that myself.”

He was an enormously prolific writer. Scholar John McDermott put together a bibliography of William James’ writings that was 47 pages long. His most well-known work is probably the 1,200-page Principles of Psychology, published in 1890 after more than a decade of research and writing. While working on the book he did first-person research on the psychology of mystical experience, and to aid in this he sometimes used narcotics. He said that he could only really understand the German idealist philosopher Hegel when he was under the influence of laughing gas.

He wrote a lot about the psychology of pragmatism. He argued that a person’s beliefs were true if they were useful to that person [no, not quite] and he said, “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”

He also wrote, “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

He hung out with Freud, Jung, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell, and many other intellectuals. He once said, “Wherever you are, it is your own friends who make your world” and he said, “Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.”

WA

==

WJ at 180-U@d

Happy 180th birthday, WJ. Happy 65th, SCR. 

The dance of common sense is more supple than most commentators, in and out of academia, trying to grasp what James meant when he said truth is what it is better for us to believe. But I've come to think it best to overlook the flat-footedness of some neo-pragmatists' glibness on this topic. There's far more depth and import in WJ's philosophy than is dreamt in most interpretations of his delineation of what it means for a philosophical view to "work" and successfully guide our experience. 

Some of my favorite WJ quotes: 

"Keep your health, your splendid health. It's worth all the truths in the firmament."--Letter to Schiller 

"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf." --Will to Believe

"The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself? The centre of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place. The earth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume its rights." Pragmatism III

"Interesting"

Who is the most interesting living philosopher?

— Nigel Warburton 🧡 #RejoinEU (@philosophybites) January 10, 2022

Simone de Beauvoir

It’s the birthday of the novelist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (books by this author), born in Paris, France (1908). She entered the Sorbonne, and it was there that she met another philosophy student, Jean-Paul Sartre. He was five feet tall, had lost his sight in one eye, wore baggy clothes, and seemed to have no interest in hygiene. But he loved to talk and he was both funny and brilliant. Beauvoir later said, “It was the first time in my life that I felt intellectually inferior to anyone else.”

Sartre was equally impressed by Beauvoir’s intellect, especially when she finished her philosophy degree in one year after it had taken Sartre three years to finish his own. She was the youngest person to receive the degree in French history. They fell in love but, instead of getting married, they decided to form a pact. They would both have affairs with other people but they would tell each other everything. That basic arrangement of their relationship would last for the rest of their lives.

They didn’t even live together, but every evening they would meet in a café and show each other what they were working on. They each edited the other’s work and they gave each other ideas and together they helped formulate the school of philosophy known as existentialism, which was the idea that human beings should consider themselves completely free to define their own existence, without regard to religion, culture, or society.

Sartre wrote his book Being and Nothingness (1943) about the new philosophy, and Beauvoir followed with a book of ethics based on the same ideas called The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947). But one of her most famous books was inspired by an offhand comment Sartre made one day. They were talking about the differences in the ways men and women were treated, and Beauvoir claimed that she’d never been adversely affected by this treatment. Sartre said, “All the same, you weren’t brought up the same way a boy would have been; you should look into it further.”

So Beauvoir did look into it. She spent weeks at the National Library in Paris researching the way women had been treated throughout history. The result was her book The Second Sex (1949), in which she wrote, “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” It was one of the first comprehensive arguments that the difference between the sexes was the result of culture, not nature, and it helped found the modern feminist movement.

Beauvoir went on to write many more books, including several volumes of autobiography, such as Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), about her childhood, and The Prime of Life (1960), which tells the story of her relationship with Sartre and the years they spent together during World War II.

Simone de Beauvoir said, “The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.” WA

Kwasi Wiredu

Kwasi Wiredu, one of the greatest of African philosophers, has died at the age of 90. If you don't know about him, you should. He was an unbelievably decent man; I know because he was my first departmental Chair. Do read:
https://t.co/plVOUMkE9o
(https://twitter.com/KAnthonyAppiah/status/1479907725505089543?s=02)

ungrading & unteaching

Hmm...

Tim Gill (@timgill924) tweeted at 8:42 AM on Wed, Jan 05, 2022:
I'm not only 'ungrading' this semester. I'm 'unteaching' too. The students are choosing the readings for the class and teaching via group presentations each session. I'm just doing administrative work *for* them, like submitting the grades. I want this to be THEIR classroom.
(https://twitter.com/timgill924/status/1478738799198883850?s=02)

TEXTS Spring 2022

REQUIRED for Spring 2022:

• Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life (SS) by John Kaag
• Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age (WGU) by Susan Neiman
• How the World Thinks by Julian Baggini (HWT)

RECOMMENDED:

• A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton (LH)-see link to etext in sidebar
• Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (FL)
• William James, to be announced... see syllabus

Agreed?

We agree that what is holy is loved by the Gods because it is holy, and not holy because it is loved by the gods.--Plato

— TPM: The Philosophers Magazine (@philosophersmag) January 3, 2022

Skeptics Say, ‘Do Your Own Research.’ It’s Not That Simple.

"D.Y.O.R." is not the same as sapere aude or think for yourself...

The slogan promotes a freethinking approach to understanding the world.

A new slogan has emerged in the culture: "Do your own research." On internet forums and social media platforms, people arguing about hotly contested topics like vaccines, climate change and voter fraud sometimes bolster their point or challenge their interlocutors by slipping in the acronym "D.Y.O.R."

"Two days after getting the jab, a friend of mine's friend had a heart attack," a Reddit user wrote recently in a discussion about Covid-19 vaccines. "I'm not saying they're connected, but D.Y.O.R."

The slogan, which appeared in conspiracy theory circles in the 1990s, has grown in popularity over the past decade as conflicts over the reliability of expert judgment have become more pronounced. It promotes an individualistic, freethinking approach to understanding the world: Don't be gullible — go and find out for yourself what the truth is.

That may seem to be sound advice. Isn't it always a good idea to gather more information before making up your mind about a complex topic?
...nyt

Rationality tips from Pinker

Three ways to be more rational this year https://t.co/50Tof746pP

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 1, 2022