(Successor site to CoPhilosophy, 2011-2020)
A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Or it can, if... But this seems to be too big an if for many. That's why I keep repeating Marc's mantra about the precious privilege of breathing, thinking, enjoying, loving…
This passage in our Happiness text today almost redeems "Friend Heidegger" (as my old Mizzou undergrad prof, Alex von Schoenborn, used to call the Third Reich's favorite academic foot soldier--he was "Führer-rector" of Freiburg University when he joined the National Socialist party):
"…if you can hold your attention, however briefly or occasionally, on the sheer astonishingness of being, and on what a small amount of that being you get—you may experience a palpable shift in how it feels to be here, right now, alive in the flow of time. (Or as the flow of time, a Heideggerian might say.) From an everyday standpoint, the fact that life is finite feels like a terrible insult, "a sort of personal affront, a taking-away of one's time," in the words of one scholar. There you were, planning to live on forever—as the old Woody Allen line has it, not in the hearts of your countrymen, but in your apartment—but now here comes mortality, to steal away the life that was rightfully yours.
Yet, on reflection, there's something very entitled about this attitude. Why assume that an infinite supply of time is the default, and mortality the outrageous violation? Or to put it another way, why treat four thousand weeks as a very small number, because it's so tiny compared with infinity, rather than treating it as a huge number, because it's so many more weeks than if you had never been born? Surely only somebody who'd failed to notice how remarkable it is that anything is, in the first place, would take their own being as such a given—as if it were something they had every right to have conferred upon them, and never to have taken away. So maybe it's not that you've been cheated out of an unlimited supply of time; maybe it's almost incomprehensibly miraculous to have been granted any time at all." — Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Redeems is too strong. This complicates the legacy. The old Roman Emperor had a complicated legacy too. And we're just lucky to be here thinking about it at all.
Indicate your first and second preference, and your section #, in comments below.
Presentations are to be accompanied by a final report blogpost (due Dec.10*), in which you should elaborate on your presentation and indicate your sources by linking to them (if you don't know how to embed links in a blogpost, ask). When you present, suggest a question or two for discussion and possible inclusion on Exam 2.
NOTE: If you've not yet selected, or if your preferences were already taken, please make a(nother) selection by Monday OCT 30. Let me know if you don't find yourself on the final report presentation schedule. If you've not been to class lately, you probably are NOT yet on the final report presentations schedule. Let me know if you want to be, ASAP.
We're a bit out of sync with the syllabus, due to a transcription error. But we'll stick with this:
NOV 2
1. Why Grow Up (WGU) - pp.125-192 (Travel) - #10 MATTHEW S. #11 ABIGAIL E. #13 ANGELA T.
2. WGU 125-192 (Education, travel or work, whichever was not selected above) #10 LAUREN H.
#11 ALIVIA. #13 MAKENZIE K.
3. Fantasyland (FL) - Topic of your choice related to the text in ch 35-36 - #10 MARTHA F.
3. FL 45-46 - #11 GRAHAM P. #13 KELLY M.,AIDEN (coordinate to avoid redundancy)
4. #11 AIDEN -- James's (and Lange's) theory of emotion (as mentioned in SSHM ch3)
5. #10 MASON - Utilitarianism and disability
NOV 28
1. SSHM ch4 - #10 ARSAL. #11 KYLE. #13 DAVID L.
2. LH 4 - #10 AMANDA , #11 EMILY. #13 CANNON.
3. SSHM ch4 - #10 REUBEN #11 IVY W.
4. LH 4 -
NOV 30
1. SSHM ch5 - #10 NYAGOA. #11 BRAYGEN. #13 CHANCE
2. LH 5 - #11 JEREMY. #13 EMMA R.
3. SSHM ch5 or LH 5 - #10 JUDE. #11 SHEMA.
DEC 5 Last class. SSHM ch6. LH 6-7. Exam 2
*DEC 10 -- Final blogpost due (you need to become an AUTHOR on the site to post this; post earlier for constructive feedback or to support presentation)
"How should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don't already have one."
Kurt also advised wisely: "What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."
He'd have been 101 yesterday. He had a complicated relationship with happiness, but he knew how to pay attention to the best things in life. If you're ever in Indianapolis, look for his library/museum.
…said Nietzsche (and Kanye, and Kelly Clarkson). But is there any truth to this idea, or the idea that suffering is necessary for happiness? Exploring the concept of post-traumatic growth…
The importance and limitations of attending to parental wishes in public schools will be the focus of the 2023 Applied Philosophy Lyceum at Middle Tennessee State University.
Dr. Eric Thomas Weber
Author Eric Thomas Weber, associate professor of educational policy studies and evaluation at the University of Kentucky, will give a free public lecture on “Freedom in Education: A Philosophical Critique of Current Conflicts in Educational Policy” at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 17, in Room 164 at the College of Education Building.
In the talk, Weber will defend the importance of students’ and teachers’ freedom to challenge the overreach of parental views that seek to silence the lived experiences of marginalized groups.
“In effect, I will argue that parents’ rights are indeed important, but must be understood to be limited,” said Weber, whose essay on the topic will appear in Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society American philosophy journal.
The topic for the lyceum was prompted by recent aggressive movements by a small minority of parents involving themselves in protests against decisions of professional educators regarding materials deemed appropriate for classrooms.
“That movement has been quite visible in Middle Tennessee lately, with parents attending school board meetings and creating hostility that sometimes has spilled even into the threat of violence,” explained Phil Oliver, associate professor of philosophy and religious studies at MTSU.
In July, Tennessee state law went into effect that puts book publishers, sellers and distributors at risk of prosecution for providing what is deemed “obscene materials” to public schools.
Dr. Phil Oliver
“A free society cannot endure when a vocal but ill-informed and anti-intellectual minority is allowed to suppress the best pedagogical practice and judgment of trained educators,” Oliver said.
Oliver said parents and guardians are naturally concerned about what their children are taught in schools. Some lament what they feel is a lack of control over curricula and what are thought to be forces or agendas they believe are not in kids’ best interests.
But there are issues with blanket decisions based on a small minority in opposition, Weber said.
“Because public schools are a shared endeavor, such that imposition on others must be taken into account,” Weber said. “And secondly, because students and teachers have interests and rights as well, morally and educationally, such that we must understand there to be a balance to strike.”
Following Weber’s talk, the floor will open for a Q&A session regarding the topic. There will also be a post-event reception.
The Applied Philosophy Lyceum, which was conceived with Aristotle’s Lyceum in mind, was created in 1992. The public lecture aims to stimulate private reflection and public reasoning. Over the years, topics have ranged from environmental ethics to theories of love and friendship.
The College of Education Building is located at 1756 MTSU Blvd. For off-campus visitors attending the event, a searchable campus parking map is at http://bit.ly/MTSUParkingMap.
For more information, contact the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at 615-898-2907.
* “My parents taught me that the provable, tangible, verifiable things were sacred, that sometimes the most astonishing ideas are clearly profound, but when they get labeled as "facts", we lose sight of their beauty. It doesn't have to be this way. Science is the source of so much insight worthy of ecstatic celebration.”
“Growing up in our home, there was no conflict between science and spirituality. My parents taught me that nature as revealed by science was a source of great, stirring pleasure. Logic, evidence, and proof did not detract from the feeling that something was transcendent—quite the opposite. It was the source of its magnificence.”
Further vindication for our practice of spending a few moments in class with history and news. Remember what Mark Twain said: "never let your schooling interfere with your education."
"…A few decades ago, I began to notice that many of the recently minted college graduates I was working with had surprisingly wide gaps in essential cultural and historical knowledge. Casual conversations revealed no idea who Dante was, what William the Conqueror conquered or what happened at the Appomattox Courthouse, to cite just a few real examples. What made these revelations so surprising and even paradoxical was that these folks were generally very smart and had attended some of America's best universities. I have encountered this phenomenon so often since then that I'm no longer surprised when it occurs.
This is troubling on a number of levels, starting with the well-worn but valid notion that good citizenship and by extension democratic self-government hinge upon our population having an understanding of our common culture and history and the governing institutions that grew out of them. As Winston Churchill said, "A nation that forgets its past has no future."
But most of us no longer know much about our past. Even though more Americans are going to college than ever before, another recent survey showed that only 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. would pass a basic citizenship test. And as we've seen in recent weeks on campuses around the country, a knowledge vacuum can easily be filled with dangerous ideas…"
If you've not been to class lately, you probably are NOT yet on the final report presentations schedule. Let me know if you want to be, ASAP.
PRESENTATIONS NOV 9
1. William James (WJ), Is Life Worth Living? - #10 EMMA W. #11 HASSAN. #13 ALLYSON C.
2. Sick Souls, Healthy Minds (SSHM) Prologue - #10 JOSIAH. #11 CONNOR. #13 DAVID S.
3. FL 39-40 - #10 MARK M. #11 DIXON D. #13 CIARA R.
WGU
1. What mixed messages keep us in states of immaturity?
2. The older you get, the more you know what?
3. What does the U-bend tell us about aging?
4. Growing up means realizing what?
5. Philosophy is an attempt to wrestle with what three questions, according to Kant?
6. The young have only vague and erroneous notions of what, according to de Beauvoir?
7. Shakespeare's As You Like It is a gloss on what modern message?
8. Philosophers seek answers to children's questions such as what?
SSHM
1. "Anhedonia" is what?
2. What was Renouvier's definition of free will?
3. Renouvier said an individual's will could break what?
4. What must one frequently do, according to James, to establish reciprocity in a relationship?
5. "Looking on the bright side," though often not objectively warranted, is nonetheless what?
6. Why did James think most of his contemporaries would not have preferred to "expunge" the Civil War?
7. Readiness for war is the essence of what, according to General Lea?
8. James says he devoutly believes in what, and in a future that has outlawed what?
9. Non-military conscription of our "gilded youth" would do what for them, according to James?
==
LH
What sort of childhood did Kieran Setiya have? Can you relate?
What was KS's response to the pandemic? What was yours?
What did Aristotle and Hume say about friendship?
What is the impact of social isolation on health?
What does KS say about Descartes, Hegel, Sartre, and Wittgenstein?
KS is unsure about which view of Aristotle's?
What "dual propensity" did Kant say belongs to human nature?
What is KS's picture of friendship?
What is the path to strong relationships?
Discussion Questions
Is suffering the rule, not the exception, in the human condition? 43
Can facing death provide an impetus to live? 46
Why do you think so many who attempt and fail suicide say they experienced immediate regret for the attempt? 47
What has believing in free will enabled you to do, that you couldn't or wouldn't have done otherwise?
Are you ever unsettled by a "psychological upturn"? 51
Do you consider yourself fully "embodied"? 54
Do you find anything about war "ideal, sacred, spiritual" etc.?
Can sports function as a moral equivalent of war, at least to the extent of channeling our martial imupulses into benign forms of expression on playing fields, in harmless competition? Or do sports intensify and exacerbate the aggressive side of human nature?
Are most politicians "pliant" like McKinley, easily "swept away" by war fever?
Do we glorify war and millitarism excessively, in this culture?
"Patriotism no one thinks discreditable" (1284). True? Should we sharply distinguish patriotism from nationalism?
What do you think of James's references to our "feminism" as a mark of weakness or lack of hardihood? 1285-6
Instead of an army enlisted "against Nature," do you think we can muster an army in defense of nature and against anthropogenic environmental destruction?
==
FL
1. What gives Andersen "the heebie-jeebies"?
2. What does Disneyfication denote?
3. A third of people at theme parks are what?
4. Andersen thinks we've become more like what?
5. Andersen argues that Americans are not just exceptionally religious, but that what?
DQ
Should we be worried or excited (both, neither?) about the future impact of "augmented reality" technologies? 395
Does the prevalence of adults infatuated with the world of Disney indicate an increasingly infantilized public (in Susan Neiman's sense of the tern)?
What do you think of Rhonda Byrne's Secret advice? 408
LISTEN (11.9.21). "The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party," begins James's "Moral Equivalent of War." This is no idle metaphysical dispute about squirrels and trees, it's ultimately about our collective decision as to what sort of species we intend to become. It's predicated on the very possibility of deciding anything, of choosing and enacting one identity and way of being in the world over another. Can we be more pacifistic and mutually supportive, less belligerent and violent? Can we pull together and work cooperatively in some grand common cause that dwarfs our differences? Go to Mars and beyond with Elon, maybe?
It's Carl Sagan's birthday today, he'd remind us that while Mars is a nice place to visit we wouldn't probably want to live there. Here, on this "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," is where we must make our stand. Here, on the PBD. The only home we've ever known.
In light of our long human history of mutual- and self-destruction, the substitution for war of constructive and non-rapacious energies directed to the public good ought to be an easier sell. Those who love the Peace Corps and its cousin public service organizations are legion, and I'm always happy to welcome their representatives to my classroom. Did that just last year... (continues)
==
The Moral Equivalent of War
by William James
This essay, based on a speech delivered at Stanford University in 1906, is the origin of the idea of organized national service. The line of descent runs directly from this address to the depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps to the Peace Corps, VISTA, and AmeriCorps. Though some phrases grate upon modern ears, particularly the assumption that only males can perform such service, several racially-biased comments, and the notion that the main form of service should be viewed as a "warfare against nature," it still sounds a rallying cry for service in the interests of the individual and the nation.
The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. There is something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war. Ask all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing, in cold blood, to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible... (continues)
==
War
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Some reject the very idea of the “morality of war”.[1] Of those, some deny that morality applies at all once the guns strike up; for others, no plausible moral theory could license the exceptional horrors of war. The first group are sometimes called realists. The second group are pacifists. The task of just war theory is to seek a middle path between them: to justify at least some wars, but also to limit them (Ramsey 1961). Although realism undoubtedly has its adherents, few philosophers find it compelling.[2] The real challenge to just war theory comes from pacifism. And we should remember, from the outset, that this challenge is real. The justified war might well be a chimera.
However, this entry explores the middle path between realism and pacifism. It begins by outlining the central substantive divide in contemporary just war theory, before introducing the methodological schisms underpinning that debate. It then discusses the moral evaluation of wars as a whole, and of individual acts within war (traditionally, though somewhat misleadingly, called jus ad bellum and jus in bello respectively)... (continues)
