Tanner: Götterdammerung Tarski: 'Death' Taylor: Renounced agency Thales: Drowned Thoreau: Uncivil disobedience Tillich: Being underground Tuomela: Group decision Turing: Failed his own test
Unamuno, Miguel: Tragic loss of sense Unger: Never knew
Van Fraassen: Empirical inadequacy Van Inwagen: Own free will Vico: Recycled Virilio: Tachycardia Von Mises, Richard: Collective causes Von Wright: By obligation
Wagner: Götterdämmerung Walton: Make-believe Warburton: Went back to basics Weber: Overwork Wheeler: Manifold causes Whitehead: Procession Wiggins: Substantial change Williams: Bored with immortality Winch: Witchcraft Wisdom: Other minds Wittgenstein: Became the late Wittgenstein Wolf: Sanctified Worrall: Destructured Wright: Objectified
Rand, Ayn: Objectified ego Ramsey: Made redundant Rawls: Ignorance unveiled Raz: Exclusionary reasons Redhead: Robust causes Reichenbach: Common causes Reid: Uncommon sense Rescher: Incoherence Ricoeur: Felt misunderstood Rorty: No foundations Ross: In the line of duty Rousseau: Contract job Russell: Cut himself shaving Ryle: Gave up the ghost
Salmon: Fishy causal process Sartre: Nothing doing Scanlon: Passed the buck Schaffer, J: Pre-empted Scheffler, Samuel: Exercised his prerogative Scheler: Became objectively valued Schelling: Became too idealistic Schlesinger: Became hypertensed Schlick: Collapsed protocol Schopenhauer: Willing to die Searle: Chinese food Sellars: Not given Sextus Empiricus: Doubtful causes Sheffer: Stroke Shoemaker: Loss of identity Sidgwick: Impractical reason Simons: Departed Singer: Liberated Skinner, B F: Bad behaviour Skolem: Ambiguity Slote: Had enough Smart: Dematerialised Smith, A: Invisible hand Smith, M: Lost motivation Smith, P: Unanalysed Socrates: Consumption Sorabji: Four causes Spengler: Decline Sperber: Became irrelevant Spinoza: Substance abuse Stalnaker: Inquiry pending Steglich-Petersen: Lost his norms Stocker: Existence became supererogatory Strawson: Unidentified Sylvan: Lost in jungle
Naess: Over-exposure at great height Nagel, Ernest: Reduction Nagel, Tom: Struck by bat Nerlich: Spaced out Neurath: Positive causes Newcomb: Too boxed Newton: Fluxions Nietzsche: Overpowered himself Noonan: Unidentified assailant Nozick: Lost track
O'Shaughnessy: Lost the will Oakeshott: Experienced arrest Ockham: Shaved beyond necessity Oddie: Flew too close to the truth Ortega y Gasset: Learned ignoramus
Paine: Lost his rights Paley: Bad design Papineau: Supernaturalised Paracelsus: Stabbed Parfit: Mistaken identity Parmenides: No two ways Pascal: The wagers of sin Passmore: 100 years of philosophy Pavlov: Reflexed Peacocke: Discontent Peirce: Reached the end of inquiry Penrose: Became computable Perry: Lost himself Pettit: Stopped responding Pherecydes: Lice Piaget: Irreversible operation Pirsig: Motorbike crashed Place: Brained Plantinga: Of necessity Plato: Caved in Pollock: Defeated Popper: Falsified Price: Backward causes Priest: Became more dead than alive Prior: Past it Pritchard: Bad luck Protagoras: Eaten by fish Putnam: Dysfunctional state Pyrrho: Scepticemia Pythagoras: Squared on the hypotenuse
Mach: Unsensational causes Machiavelli: Intriguing causes MacIntyre: After-virtue infection Mackie: An inus condition Maimonides: Lost his guide Malcolm: Undreamed of causes Malebranche: Occasional causes Malley: Ceased to subsist Marcuse: Became multi-dimensional Maritain: Connatural causes Martin, C B: Lockejaw Marx: Material causes Matravers: Art attack Maxwell: Demonic possession McCall: Branch fell off McCulloch: Went out of his head McDowell: Left the space of reasons McGinn: Case closed McTaggart: Untimely causes Meinong: Lack of subsistence Mellor: Killed time Merleau-Ponty: Perceptions blacked out Mill: Depsychologised Millikan: Devolved Montague: Disfunction Montaigne: Misjudged causes Moore: By his own hand, obviously Mumford: Outlawed
Jackson: Saw red James, W: The will to leave Jaspers: Essence exhausted Jeffrey: Indecision Johnson, S: Kicked the bucket Joseph: Stebbing
Kamm, Frances: Hit by a trolley Kamp: Ran out of time Kant: Found the means to his own end Kaplan: dthat Katz: Decomposed Ketland: Insubstantiated Keynes: The long run Kierkegaard: Sick to death Kim: Supervened on nothing Kitcher: Vaulting Korsgaard: Kant tell Koslow: Structural failure Kripke: Dropped causal chain Kuhn: Paradigm lost Kyburg: Low frequency
akatos: Degenerated La Mettrie: Machination Langer: Ran out of new keys Laozi: Attained utmost vacuity Laplace: Prior arrangement Laudan: Progressive debility Le Catt, Bruce: Curiosity Leibniz: Monadnucleosis Lesniewski: De-parted Levi: Contracted corpus Levinas: Merged with others Levi-Strauss: Eaten by natives Lewis, C I: No more givens Lewis, D: Joined his counterparts Lewy: Outfoxed Lipton: Unexplained Locke: No idea Lovejoy: Being unchained Lloyd: Loss of bodily humours Lucretius: Bumped off Luther: Diet of worms Lyotard: Post post-modernism
Gadamer: Lost horizons Galbraith: Overpriced Galen: Lost his sense of humours Galileo: Stopped moving Geach: Reference failure Gentzen: Unnatural deduction Gettier: Fatal counter-example Gewirth: Dialectical necessity Gibbon: Scribbling Glymour: Tripped over his own bootstraps Gödel: Became incomplete Goldman: Unknown internal causes Goodman: Gruesome bleen infection Gorgias: Annihilated Green: Had to share humanity's common end Grice: Non-natural Grosseteste: Encephalitis Grunbaum: Psyched out Gupta: Became unstable
Haack: Crossed out Habermas: A discourse condition Hacker: Lost his Witts Hamilton: Crushed by mill Han Feizi: Made illegal Hare: Wrong prescription Hart: No longer recognised Hartshorne: Creatively synthesized Haugeland: Entered excluded zone Hayek: Serfdom Heal: Dissimulation Hegel: Gave up the Geist Heidegger: Not being in time Heisenberg: Uncertain causes Hempel: Explained away Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice Hilbert: Informal causes Hinckfuss: Fit of morality Hintikka: Lost his normal forms Hobbes: Nasty causes Hobhouse: Stopped developing Hofstadter: Holistic trap Honderich: Undetermined Horwich: Deflated Horstmann: Anthropopetal collapse Hume: Committed to the flames Husserl: Phenomenally bad luck Huxley: Rabies
Earman: Inextendible world-line Einstein: Diced with God Eliot: Eructation of unhealthy souls Emmet: Passage of nature Empedocles: Cosmic cycle accident Epictetus: Crime of passion Epicurus: Nothing to worry about Ewing: Unfitness
Feigl: Nomological dangler Feuerbach: Unfeeling causes Feyerabend: Everything went Fichte: Non-ego takeover Field: Weight of numbers Fine: Natural ontological causes Fischer: Incompatibility Flew: Met the great equaliser Fodor: Fell off Granny's knee Follesdal: Noematheosis Foot: Run over by a trolley Foucault: Disempowered Frankfurt: Revised his will Frege: Fell under a concept Freud: Slipped Fukuyama: History restarted
Dancy: No particular reason Danto: Artfully transfigured Darwin: Became unfit Davidson: Radically different schematosis Dawkins: Suicidal genes Deleuze: Deterritorialized Democritus: Atomised Dennett: Unintentional stance Derrida: Deconstructed Descartes: Stopped thinking Devitt: Naturalised causes Devlin: Fell off Clapham omnibus Dewey: Became part of the environment Diderot: Unenlightened causes Dilthey: Hermeneutic complication Dingler: Unsuccessful experiments Diodorus: Mastered by the argument Diogenes: Exposure Dretske: No indications Dreyfus: Computerised Dudman: Conditional causes Dummett: Unverifiable causes Duns Scotus: Being univocal to an accident Dupre: Disorder Durkheim: Suicide Dworkin: Lost his integrity
Calvin: Predestined Campbell, K: Epiphenomenal causes Camus: Found exit Cantor: Set aside Carnap: Left the material mode Cartwright, Nancy: Incapacitated Cartwright, Richard: Satisfied negative existential Cassirer: Symbolic causes Castaneda: Indexical self-disguise Cato the Elder: Delendus Cavell: Unacknowledgement Chalmers: Too hard a problem Chisholm: Lost his foundations Chomsky: Degenerative transformation Church: Recursive causes Churchland(s): Eliminated Cicero: Indecision Coady: No telling Cohen, G: Missed the marks Colburn: Heteronomy Collingwood: Entered history Comte: Went negative Condorcet: Improbable jury Confucius: Lost his way Copernicus: Revolution Cournot: Became too improbable Craig, E: Work of God Crane: Lost his representations Cresswell: Outmoded
Bacon, F: Hit by idol in market place Bach, Kent: Ceased to be the only bearer of his name Bacon, J: De trope Barwise: Bad situation Belnap: Became irrelevant Benacerraf: Number was up Bennett: Taking the consequences Bentham: Fell off his stilts Bergson: Elan mortel Berkeley: Divine neglect Berlin: Encountered one big thing Bird: Birdlime (unnatural kind) Bishop: Translation Blanshard: End necessitated by system Blackburn: Stopped projecting Block: Trouble with bodily function Boole: Became inverted Bosanquet: Unqualified judgment Bradley: Absolutely everything Brandom: Made implicit Bratman: As planned Brown, Harvey: Suffocation Burge: Something like arthritis Buridan: Asinine starvation Buber: Unfortunate encounter Burke: Sublimated
Abelard: Nun Acton: Corrupt causes Adler: Inferiority complex Adorno: Bad frankfurter Albert: Undermind Altham: Logical pluracy Althusser: Became history without a subject Anaxagoras: Burned up Anaximander: Infinite causes Anaximenes: Evaporated Anscombe: By intention Anselm: Than which no deadlier can be conceived Arendt: The human condition Arnold: Drowned on Dover beach Aquinas: Last causes Aristotle: Excessive moderation Armstrong: Indisposed Arrow: Voted out Audi: Durch Technik Augustine: Hippo Austin: Executionary act Ayer: Unverifiable
In light of an early post about pragmatism, I thought that this may drive home how important the distinction is between valuing the practical and valuing culture or spirit or some other thing that does not necessarily have a practical benefit.
“At Mercer, everyone majors in changing the world. Be the bear.”
This quote was taken from the front page of the Mercer web page and it prompted me to write about my opinion and furthermore put forward a problem as I see it. Before doing so, I would like to briefly recount something that happened to me yesterday which I hope will work as an illustration as to why I challenge whether or not this is truly the opinion of all individuals that are a part of the Mercer faculty. As many of you know, a costly statue was recently erected outside of the University Center. Yesterday, as I was walking up to the UC, I saw a fellow student of mine and made a comment along the lines of, “yeah, because we don’t know how to embody the bear without tens of thousands of dollars spent on a nine and half foot tall statue of one.” It just so happened that I was overheard by a Mercer faculty member who pointed out to me that it was not my tuition that was being spent and I therefore had no right to complain. I, of course, (and for any of you who know me this will not surprise you) argued back. I said that I think that such superfluous spending on a statue is not what we need, what we need are improvements that will help the students; he, of course, retorted and the argument went on. The point of what I think, however, is not that “school spirit” is not to be valued, but that we should be spending money where we truly need it. Even though I consider myself a philosopher of many schools, I am sometimes feel as though I am a pragmatist at heart. Do something practical and worthwhile (save and better the quality of the lives of those around us), that is how I believe we should change the world. However, as it appears, there are some who disagree; there are some that would accept money that is drastically needed in other areas of our school in these hard economic times (especially with many of our departments in the financial state that they are in), to build a 75,000 dollar bear statue that serves no practical good. My answer is, sure, it was not my tuition, but it was still money for my school, our school, and it frustrates me that such a wonderful place of learning would accept money for something as unnecessary and useless as a bear statue of such a great cost. I wonder if such reasoning, that spending great amounts of money on something that does not serve the purpose of helping others, whether here at mercer or around the world, is truly the way in which we can make a difference. I am not saying that there are not many wonderful programs at Mercer that do help to change the world, I am simply raising the question of whether or not such a mindset of some within our school does not further translate into the mindsets of students that will one day go out and engage the world. Are those who had any hand erecting that statue implying, as it seems to me, that excessive spending on impractical things is not only to be valued, but to be done at the expense of worthwhile endeavors? Is this truly the mindset that we students should have as we attempt to go out and “change the world?”
Earlier this semester, I went to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip; it was not with one of the many Mercer on Mission trips, but lets just assume that it was. We were able to be apart of a church called The Church of the Reconciliation. This was an interesting experience for me both in experiencing a place where there was only one person who spoke both Spanish and English (and he had merely taken a few college courses; which made the language barrier extremely difficult to get through) and a culture that felt quite foreign from my own. It is the latter which still interests me long after I have returned. First, I need to briefly describe what occurred in order for my quandary to fully present itself.
While we we in the DR, we were not part of a large organization that goes their year after year. For, although we were apart of a mission sponsored by the Episcopal Church, it was not like Habitat or many of the other organizations where one would be apart of a group with a number that would be responsible for putting up the wooden planks around a room. We were there with a set amount of money, and helping people in mind. What was planned for the money and us then was entirely the doing of the locals. Keeping this in mind, what we did do was put up several walls on several houses and a bathroom, as well as fixing up the church, which was under construction. Rather than money and time and effort being put into one project, or one families home, it was spread across many projects and many homes. However, at the end of the time that we spent there, all our labor and funds had not completed a single roof or whole structure. This is the aspect that has bothered me ever since.
The philosophical school of pragmatism states (at least this is my interpretation of it) that the value of something is dependent on its practical use. The more that I think about it, the more I agree with this standpoint. It will come of no great surprise then that what frustrated me about my DR trip was that not one single family is now protected from the rain, even though we spent a great amount of time and money attempting to aid them. It was later pointed out to me that when in other countries, one should respect their culture and the way in which they do things; this, of course, means that one cannot always be a pragmatist. However, I wonder if it is better to “respect the culture” of a group of people to which you are attempting to provide aid, or to be pragmatic and help as many people as you can.
Earlier in the semester, a lecture was put on to kick off the putting up of a collection of historical artifacts in Jack Tarver Library; the exhibit is fro the collection of Yulssus Lynn Holmes, and is still up in the library. The objects put on display brought to mind within me two philosophical questions: what is the dead owed, and what place does/should religion hold in everyday life?
The first of these questions comes about due to the nature of many of the artifacts: for many of them were figurines, statues, and lamps that were found in Egyptian and near eastern tombs. It got me thinking how people of old would honor their dead. In extreme cases they would build huge monuments as places of remembrance for those who died, but on a mundane level they would place many objects within one’s tomb, in some cases as a sign of having wealth in the life to come. Based on the collector’s lecture, the dead played a much more significant role in the life of the living four thousand years ago than it does today. I wonder why that is: is it merely that we are more irreverent, or do we value this life greater than some other or afterlife? I think that it is the latter. People seem to me to live their lives as though this is the climax of our existence and we should therefore not care about dying or the dead and merely focus on the here and now. Montaigne, however, has a different view: he posits that philosophy is the art of dying, and that death should constantly be on our minds. The ancients obviously thought that some part of this was true, but I doubt that those of us in the twenty-first century live our lives in such a way that we “practice the art of dying.”
The second question that came to mind from this lecture was that of religion in everyday life: for while death does not seem to be prominent, religion certainly has not gone out of daily life. The lecturer pointed out that the ancient Egyptians and such cultures would print the images of gods on their money, religious symbols as rings and jewelry, and having statues or figurines of gods which were kept around the house or in one’s pocket. He spelled out exactly how each of these has a parallel in modern life. This made me wonder if such things truly should occupy so much of our everyday life; is “God” something to be put on money and in pledges and on T-shirts and jewelry, or should God be a more quiet and inwardly spiritual thing, rather than an exterior sign. Or perhaps it is both.
If you are interested in the exhibit, it is located in the JT library; also, here is a link to the online exhibit,
There is this movie called The Invention of Lying in which everyone in the world constantly tells the truth. The word 'lie' does not exist nor does anyone have an understanding of what a lie is. Well, just as you must have an up to have a down, you must have a lie to have the truth. To clarify, just as the world has no understanding of a lie, they also have no understanding of the truth. However, one day this man went into the bank to withdraw all of his money from his account, and the bank's system was down. So, the bank teller asks the man how much money was in his account, so she could withdraw it out for me. She explains that she can't access his account because the system is still down, so he would just have to tell her. Suddenly, something strange happens. The man develops the idea to tell the lady that there is more money in the account than it actual is, and he does. This is a strange thing that the man has just done, and he is unable to explain it. Exactly when he tells the lady how much he wants to withdraw, the bank's system comes back up, and the lady notices that the amount of money that the man asked for was not present in his account. The lady informs the man of this problem and apologizes for the bank's mistake (which wasn't the bank's mistake at all), and the teller withdraws the amount of money that the man originally asked for because, again, everybody tells the truth, so she did not even begin to understand that the man was telling the first lie in the world. Now, the man continues to lie and fabricates a story about a man in the sky that controls the universe. The entire world is in 'aw' about this man in the sky and wants to know more. Well, of course the lies that the man tells are parallel to christianity, and everyone listens and obeys these supposed lies.
Now, Montaigne claims that society should only live their lives through truth and reality. Imagine if we lived in a world like in The Invention of Lying. Would the world be a better place and stress-free, or would it be a painful world to live in because people are constantly revealing their 'true' feelings towards one another, which can lead to comments like 'you're fat,' 'you're ugly,' or 'I hate you?'
In my communication class, we watched a film called In America. The film features a family from Ireland who has lost a sense of themselves and strive to regain that sense by starting a new life in America. Each member of the family deals with his/her own personal internal struggles; however, each of them share a commonness of lost due to the death of a family member (the 4 year old son). This film provides an insight inside the world of myth. It captures a sense of what it means to believe in something, not just faintly but wholeheartedly until it classifies as being sacred. The family went through many toils. The parents had difficulties providing for their two daughters, but they did the best they could in hopes that everything would soon workout for the best.
Johnny Sullivan, the father of the family, exemplifies a man who has died in the inside. He lives his life as a ghost, or a walking zombie. This is a result of the inability to sufficiently provide for his family’s needs and the guilt he feels from the death of his son, Frankie. However, Mateo, a fellow resident in the family’s apartment building and soon to be friend, resurrects Johnny from his dead state and helps him to open his eyes. Mateo aides Johnny in finding physical courage, in which is not the “assertion of egocentric power” but “a valuing of the body as the means of empathy with others, as expression of the self as a thing of beauty and as a rich source of pleasure” (Rollo May). One’s self ceases to experience condemnation, and gains the pleasures of respectable pride.
Where does this will inside of us come from to help us keep going? Out of all the many ups and downs that the human body...the human soul endures, why haven't we just given up? There has to be something outside of us; something more powerful than us that keeps us moving because I'm almost sure that if we had our own choice we would just simply give up on life. I do believe that a friend or family member can help motivate a person to keep going, but the will to actually make such a decision derives from somewhere beyond us.
I had to the pleasure of attending a Cello recital last Friday; it was breathtakingly perfect. The recital was daring; the musician tackled all the three b’s (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms) of classical music. She made it all seem effortless and yet I felt every note she played. For the first time of my life I thought of music as a philosophy. We spend an outlandish amount of time trying to understand the thoughts of Plato, the sayings of Aristotle, even the ethics behind Machiavelli’s the prince… But what is it about instrumental music? It is as puzzling as all the rest, and in many ways more mysterious. It is a sound that evokes a different emotion in most. It adds to the mysteries of our character and explains just how different we all are. “The sound of music” I am excitingly baffled because never did I think music could be more than just that. Is it even possible that music could unbalance Socrates Kallipolis because of the emotions it may convey?
First off-wow, it's been a while. Stupid turkey-based holidays.
Second--Socrates. Am I as tired of talking about this guy as you guys are hearing about him? I just got finished (and by “just finished,” I of course mean “within plenty of time for class”) reading the section in The Politics regarding laws, regimes, and men (I acknowledge that, yes, that could describe all of The Politics). Anyway, there was a particular line (or series of lines) that I found very interesting: namely, the section that stated that a man who had nothing to contribute to a city was like a god among men, and he shouldn’t bother to follow the laws of the city, and furthermore, it would be unjust for people to attempt to apply laws to him, since it would be unjust to ask him to lower himself to the level of those less excellent than him.
First off, as divisive as I know Ayn Rand is, isn’t this a pretty Objectivist principle? That there are people who are just better than everyone else, and they don’t have to obey the same petty morality that binds us all? I mean, that’s basically the entire plot of Atlas Shrugged.
Also, isn’t there a pretty strong current of this in Nietzsche, with the idea of the Overman? As the ape is to the human, so is the human to the Overman (or so spoke Zarathustra). Is it too much of a stretch to say that that relationship is like that of a god to a man?
Finally, is this the right thing to do? Should these people be allowed to do whatever they please? Is it unjust to control those greater than us, or is it the safe, prudent thing to do? By limiting them with our laws, do we limit what achievements are possible, or do we ensure that we might, one day, join them?
Specifically, let's talk about the suffering that is required to create art (less of a dialectical philosophical question and more of a rumination about...well, about creation, I suppose). See, I just finished a very good book (Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold. I didn't like it quite as much as his debut novel, Carter Beats the Devil, but still, it's a fascinating read), which featured Charlie Chaplin going through an artistic dry spot.
Chaplin's goal throughout the whole book is to make a film that's “as good as he is;” he has been coasting on the successes of his silent comedies, never really stretching to his fullest potential. Try as he might, he can't quite dig down deep enough into himself to tap that well of genius buried under his skin.
What does this have to do with philosophy? Simple: is art, or any creative endeavor, a finite resource? I mean, that sounds silly. Of course not. But think about it—what if a person only has so many good ideas in their life, and once those ideas are gone, that's it? I don't think Socrates or Aristotle would agree with that. I can see them saying that the mind is an infinite resource. Even Descartes said that our wills were infinite, even if our intellects were not. Surely we could muscle some good idea down on paper, or on celluloid, as was the case with Chaplin.
Again, though: what if you can't? That was the question that tortured Chaplin throughout the book, and one that has haunted me for a very long time. What if I've peaked, Chaplin thinks. If I can't create, what does that make me? Am I still a person if I am not putting my stamp on the world?
I recently went and watched Temple Grandin in the Engineering Building as an event that the Psychology club was hosting. Temple Grandin is a movie about an autistic woman who managed to overcome the typical limitations of her disorder and become a renowned scientist, specifically in the study of animal behavior. For those who do not know about autism it is a developmental disorder that is affecting roughly 1 out of every 100 children born in the US. This is a huge deal because the numbers used to be more like 1 out of every 10,000 less than 40 years ago. So how this is going to affect the educational system in our country and how we are going to care for these people as they age are big questions that I think are partially philosophical in nature. Do we as a country think that we should invest our money in helping the caregivers of these children, many of whom will never be able to independently function in society?
I personally think that we as a country should help the caregivers of individuals with autism, and more broadly the caregivers of any who are severely disabled, because if we do not it will come back to haunt us. When they closed down most of the mental institutions there became immediate problems like the lack of care these people were receiving and many ended up on the street as they had no one who could care for them. With the rising rates of the severely disabled we should no longer just ignore this issue and pretend that if we don’t look at it that it will just disappear. While those with autism are primarily still school aged that will soon change and we need to be ready to cope with the changes that will bring.
In Dr. Thomas' History of Philosophy class, we just finished reading about Aristotle's idea of the "being-at-work" (to use the Sachs translation) of an object. According to Aristotle, a house is not truly a house unless there are people living under its roof; indeed, if there is no one there, the house is simply a collection of bricks, lumber, and mortar.
The idea of "being-at-work," specifically how an object is not TRULY the object unless it is filling its function, is a fascinating idea to me, and I think it has possible applications in a variety of other fields. In particular, I think it can prompt some interesting discussions in the art world.
First of all, let's not get into a discussion about the nature of art or the qualities that something has to possess before it is "art." That's a much longer debate for another day. Instead, let's talk about functional art, or how putting something in a museum might be the worst thing you could do.
If I was to create a painting, the "being-at-work" of the painting would be hang on a wall; maybe there's something about observation or interpretation, but, at the core, I painted it so it would hang on a wall in a gallery or a museum. Now, if I was to create a chair, then isn't it the case that the "being-at-work" of the chair is to have someone sit on it? In other words, the "being-at-work" of the chair is to be used. If it was put in a gallery or museum--perhaps in an exhibit featuring Chairs from Around the World--then not a one of those chairs would be art. Right?
I don't know the implications of this, save that if Aristotle's right, we'll have to start renaming exhibits, or at the very least, take off those "Don't Sit on the Chair" signs.
So I just recently realized that mathematics plays a huge role in the world of philosophy. Why I am just now realizing this, well maybe somebody needs to slap me next time they see me.
Plato wrote on the door of his academy, "Let no one enter here that is ignorant of geometry". Aristotle is known for studying the sciences and even putting them into categories and giving them names. Other famous philosophers were also known for their work in mathematics such as Descartes, Leibnitz, and Pascal. A lot of philosophers came into philosophy through mathematics.
Mathematics was back then, and even now, still one of the most important means of gaining knowledge and understanding in this world. What is it about mathematics that makes it so reliable? Why do we think that we can trust mathematics in so many areas of study and everyday life? I don't know what a professor, mathematician, or a scientist would say but my answer is that mathematics makes the world go round. Without mathematics we would still be living like cavemen. So, I guess mathematics was the beginning of civilization, or the beginning of "thinking".
I think what mathematics represents is a kind of truth. Through deductive reasoning you get to an answer based on facts that you have. We get to the truth based on what there is and the way things are. Then there is another factor, the human mind. How the mind takes facts and interprets everything is also important.
I think I'm going to stop at this point because after throwing the human mind in the situation I feel that I'm not sure of anything else beyond that point.
So, I had advising today. I like the advising process—it's sort of a plan for your future, yes, but beyond that, it's a statement of what you're interested in (yes, I suppose those two often intersect, but not always). It made me consider a few philosophical questions: for example, in planning for our future, we necessarily must limit ourselves. To that end, should we accept the limitations and focus on one particular field, in which (I would assume) one would excel? Or should one diversify, attempting to experience everything, and perhaps be less talented in all other areas?
On a side note, I know what Socrates would say—diversification is, if not the height of folly, at least the upper-middle. For him, it's necessary to focus so one can devote all energies to one task.
Or another idea—registration is a plan for the future. But to what extent is that future set? I don't really mean this to be a religious, destiny-type argument—instead, look at it educationally. In theory, registration states that you'll pay attention to that area of study, learn it all, and then apply it. Does that mean that one will stop learning other fields?
The easiest answer is no, of course not, but the easy answer is not always the correct one. To be honest, this is the mindset I see quite often: “I'll learn what I need to do, and then I'm done,” as if learning was something that could be turned off, like water from a hose. Certainly learning must never stop—this being the case, is the registration process as philosophically sound as it could/should be?
I have had some serious health problems in the last few weeks. I don't want to get too personal here, but the reality is that I have something wrong with my brain. I am waiting on the results as to whether I have a brain tumor or just epilepsy or some other disease that one can take medication for and simply live with. This has made me really think about things recently and re-evaluate my life. My next few blog posts will be about the issues that I have come upon, including the issues of death and the good life I present here. In these posts, I don't really want reactions about me or how I'm feeling, only on the philosophical debates that such issues bring up. I honestly don't need any more "Are you ok?"s or "I'm so sorry"s.
That being said, I find myself wondering what it was all for. This may seem like very despondent or depressed sort of thinking, but it's actually positive. I want to live. I just can't help but feel that I've put my nose to the grindstone all my life to achieve something, make something of myself, to be x type of person with y type of life one day. The reality is that many people never get there. I understand we have to act as though things in the world mattered, otherwise we would never do anything, but honestly, if I were to die now or even in a few years, my life would have been a complete waste. I would have suffered all my life so that I could reap benefits later, hated what I was doing, and putting life on hold, and that end result would never have happened. It would all have been for nothing. Like I said, these words sound like they should come from a depressed or possibly suicidal person, but the truth is that people who are dying or think they might be dying have the same thoughts, but think about it from the opposite side. I need to live in order to make my life worth it. I can't die now or even soon, because my life would have been meaningless.
I was always scared of this, though I thought that it would be one day when I am very old; I would look back on my life and realize that I haven't lived. I knew this, and somehow I still couldn't see a way out of it if I wanted to get where I was going. There would always be more ladders that I would feel compelled to climb. There is always the raise, the promotion, and soon you're dead and regretting not spending time with your family or friends and not doing that irresponsible thing. Then at least you would have some memories to smile on when you look back.
The thing I want to talk about is, that we often know where our lives are headed based on the personalities combined with the drive and the dreams that we know we have. We also often know the price of chasing those dreams, and the sacrifices that must be made to "make it happen" for ourselves. We even know that in chasing our dreams, we often give up our lives. We know, but we still do it. Is it that we think that there is nothing else to do? Is it that we prize our ideal future life so much? Is it that we think that we might actually get there one day, and we try to pretend that one day we will stop running in our hamster wheels? Do we think that one day we will make the decision that we are where we want to be, and we can finally "buck the system"? In any case, we never think that if we try as hard as we can that it won't happen. We always think that one day we will get there, through our hard work and perseverance; just that it may not really be what we wanted. I want to ask the readers here: Why do you go to work, to school? Why do things you hate doing? Why suffer people you can't stand? Why put off seeing the people you love? Is there something more important than that?
There was an interesting discussion in Great Books today regarding the nature of free will and reason in Paradise Lost. More specifically, the question posed was “Is reason the antithesis of free will?” The argument being that if one was using reason, one would (presumably) choose to obey God every time; at least, that is the action with the best outcome.
I disagreed (as I am wont to do), saying that God says (in Paradise Lost) that if man does not have the ability to choose, then man's worship is empty, hollow; it is merely what needs to be done rather than what should be done. There are a bunch on quotes from the text on this: for example, “Not free, what proof could they have giv'n sincere/of true allegiance,” and “What pleasure I from such obedience paid/when will and reason (reason also is choice)/useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled/ made passive both, had served necessity/not me” (V.103-4, 107-11).
From a philosophical standpoint, is this true? It's been a long time since I've read Descartes or Leibniz, the people who most make me think of “applying reason to free will and God.” What about someone like Socrates or Plato? Certainly they would have believed that reason is paramount over all, but what would they have said regarding a “master plan,” or the “destiny” that is mentioned so often in Homer's Odyssey?
In the reading of Odysseus last week Professor Brann raised an interesting point. She asked “what do you think was the point of the game between Odysseus and Penelope?” And she also mentioned the idea that just maybe Penelope might have recognized Odysseus immediately. I personally believe that there is a strong possibility that she had indeed recognized him in the instance she heard his voice. If we can agree that true love is an imprint of two lovers on each other it is a definite possibility. If that theory is accepted than even deaf, blind, and mute they would be able to know one another. To answer the question as to why the games, I believe it was a way for the two to know one another once again. Ten years is a long time to be apart although once love exists it is never too late to find our back to it, it is nevertheless true that we as human need reassurance. I think that they needed to find their way back to each other; Penelope and Odysseus being who they are it is the perfect scenario.
Seriously, it was a cool experience to get to see two days of presentations from Eva Brann. I had never heard of her before and I am one of those people who like listening to old people. I just think it's fascinating to hear from someone who has been around for a long time and seen a lot of things.
I don't really know a lot about the Odyssey, and even if I did it wouldn't amount to the level of Dr. Brann, but she sparked enough interest in me that I am planning on reading the Odyssey for my own personal pleasure. Seeing the level of passion that she had for this book makes me wonder what I'm missing out on.
One subject that came up during the question and answer session was about the Gods. She brought up the question of what the point of Gods were in Greek Literature. Gods can be fooled, they don't seem to really help people that much, they are not omnipotent, and they seem to enjoy watching humans go through trials, tribulations, and warfare. I had actually thought of this many times before. Honestly, being a Christian was my reason for questioning the Greek Gods and comparing them to the God of the Christian faith (sue me). Brann's conclusion was that maybe the Gods are just there as an audience and that maybe it makes people feel better knowing that the Gods are always watching.
One last note on Eva Brann, I thought it was crazy that such a sweet little old lady could be so intimidating just by the amount of knowledge she had. Craziness.
From what I’ve been led to understand, Eva Brann is THE scholar—I’ve heard her name mentioned in quite a few different contexts, and specifically of late in the context of Homer. According to Dr. Thomas, Dr. Brann knows more about Homer than “any other three people alive,” which seems to me to make her eminently qualified to talk about…well, anything really, but especially Homer.
Everybody knows that Dr. Brann was at Mercer a few nights ago, talking about “Achillean Armor and Odyssean Time.” While I found her discussion to be fascinating—seriously, it had about enough content for a semester-long class—I’d like to address a parallel topic.
Dr. Brann spent a great deal of time talking about the passage of time, both in the context of the character and the text itself. But, and I don’t THINK Dr. Brann mentioned this—it isn’t in my notes—but I could be wrong, to what extent does the passage of time change Odysseus? To put it another way, I don’t think that Odysseus really has a character arc within the text.
The reader gets to see Odysseus travelling around, either from the stories he tells or from Homer’s narration. But through the whole thing, Odysseus never actually matures, or changes, or seems to learn anything, save information on how to overcome his next challenge. Is this significant? Is it important that Odysseus at the beginning of the story is fundamentally the same as the Odysseus at the end? For that matter, is it important that the other members of the cast remain the same? Is Homer trying to make some sort of statement that who were are is who we will always be? That perhaps we can make superficial changes to ourselves, but deep down, we’re the same at the beginning of our story as we will be when we plant the oar in the ground?
Earlier this week in PHI 313 we were talking about Petrarch’s On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others. The main themes of the conversation were whether it is better to ‘be good’ or ‘be learned,’ and what it is that each of these mean. For some background Petrarch has been accused by four of his friends of being good but not being learned. Petrarch proceeds to defend being good and tries to parse out what it means to be learned, since he views himself as being learned and his friends do not.
For the purposes of this class it does not matter what Petrarch or his friends views are on the subjects, instead what matters is the question of is it better to spend your life accumulating knowledge or is it better to spend your life trying to discover what it means to be a good person and then proceeding to do whatever that means. Also how important is it for an individual to have oratory skills?
I personally find that the best life involves both being a good person and being knowledgeable. Without being a good person I would not have friends, which would greatly affect my quality of life. But without being knowledgeable it is difficult to have a career, or at least one that I would want. So what it comes down to, in my opinion, is which is more important to you, friends or money.
Does anyone come down strongly on one side or the other? And if so, for what reason?
Recently (and I mean pretty recently, like a couple of hours ago), a few chance comments got me looking into the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, and after that the Columbia, the latter of which spelled the end of NASA's manned space program.
Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that I did the absolute barest minimum of research on this topic, I think we can get some interesting discussion out of this. This might be more of an ethical question than a philosophical one, but it's a question I want to pose anyway: to what extent should our desire to explore be tempered by the potential loss of life? How responsible is it to be one of these explorers, knowing that the risks are so high?
I mention the desire to explore, and by that I mean the need that we have to learn everything we can about the nature of our universe. It's this motivation that spawned the Renaissance; it's this motivation that sparked the scientific revolution, split the atom, and put men on the moon—but now, apparently, we've stopped. Should we let this desire for exploration be subordinate to risks?
On the other hand, the “risks” are both very real and very...well, very risky. Is it possible to justify the loss of human life? If we don't do anything, if we stay earthbound and ensure that we never have to go through another Challenger, then it's almost an admission of defeat; but at the same time, it's a promise that parents and children will never lose a loved one due to a shuttle disaster. On some level, that's worth it.
I wouldn't be much of a philosopher if I claimed to have the answers. I'm just tossing this out there.
Ok so I did a little more research and found another interview that was done on David Chalmers. At this point, before seeing the interview, I am thinking to myself, "OK so what is it about consciousness that is important (for myself because I keep thinking about this issue) and also what is it that fascinates David Chalmers so much about consciousness?"
I mentioned the first and easy problem that he states about consciousness before but I will state it again. The first problem, which is the easy problem, is just figuring out how we react to things and how we feel about things. The second problem with consciousness, which is the hard problem, is trying to explain how all the complex interaction in the brain gives us subjective experiences in our life. For example, the sensation of looking at color, hearing music, our awareness of situations and every moment in our lives.
In this interview, the conversation with David Chalmers was a little different because he was trying to explain to this other guy why consciousness was important. The subject came up that it was possible that studying consciousness could eventually be a waste of time. David Chalmers' defense to this was that even if nothing extraordinary ever comes from studying consciousness, then at least it can lead to other important findings and information on understanding how the brain and neural processes work.
At this point I am thinking, "you know what, this isn't getting me anywhere like I had hoped so let me go ahead and find out what the definition of consciousness is." According to Gerald Edelman, who happens to be a Nobel Prize Winner of Medicine and is the founder and director of The Neuroscience Institute, consciousness is a form of awareness that is a process which is individual or personal, continuous but changing, and has intentionality. This didn't quite do if for me so I went on Wikipedia and found another answer. Wikipedia defines consciousness as a subjective experience, awareness, the ability to experience feeling, wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind.
In the beginning, I was really interested in this topic of consciousness but now I am starting to become annoyed with it. I am beginning to think that David Chalmers is just fascinated with the fact that he can feel things and that he is "awake" to life. Through his other interviews and seeing him refer to God many times, it is obvious that he is a very spiritual person and I believe that is the reason why he is so fascinated with all of this. We experience being "aware" of everything because the brain sends signals at hundreds if milliseconds. I think what David Chalmers is more concerned with is just the sensation of experience by itself. Experiencing emotions, say seeing a beautiful waterfall for example, can possibly be an overwhelming experience. Maybe that isn't the best example but does anyone know what I'm trying to get at?
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Having a great interest in reason and logic, I have always thought that there was no way that i can turn off my brain. I think EVERYTHING out, which is good and bad. The thing is, however, I thought for the longest time that even people who say they are not using the rational parts of their brain really are and just don't know it or don't want to admit it because they are afraid that it would make them responsible for the actions that they take. Even art, painting, I thought, especially realistic painting, was a manner of noticing the small details and presenting them in the appropriate way using the rational kinds of thinking. I even thought that if it wasn't realism, the artist has to think about what kind of emotion he or she wants to portray and then they proceed to do so based on some theme and normal mode and manner which coincides with their particular style. Maybe this is why I can't paint.
I talked to a painter the other day, after first Friday, and he had this to say:
"If you paint like I do you are irrational in the way you create a composition. Rational in the way you execute a painting and believe it or not when we draw realistically we are irrational. It's like an automatic mechanism that is triggered when you suppress the logic-related side of our thought."
What does that mean?
"It means when we draw we think of anything but the subject we're drawing. If your brain knows what you are trying to draw, for example an arm, you wont be able to. Unless your Raphael. In fact, you just learn to recognize lines in the objects you want to draw and you reproduce the lines, not the edge of an arm. I don't know if that makes sense to you. When they 'let go', that's what it means. You have to trust your brain. One practical example, if you fill a glass to the top and you walk across a room trying not to spill it you will be able to, walking normally, if you don't look at it. If you look at it you will spill it if you try to walk normally. Why? Because our brain is able to do more that we can imagine. If you rationalize the process you won't be able to because you are limited by the rational thought-process. If you let go Adonis Extra: and let your brain do the work your mind is able to perceive, for example, the vibrations and balance of the water inside the glass and will adjust your hand, arm automatically. You should try."
And I did. And he's right. There are some things that we do consciously that we don't rationalize, and can't. This may be obvious to you, but this shook my world a little.
I went to hear Dr. Brown (or "Doc Brown," as I'm sure every fan of Back To The Future calls him) speak on his work restoring poverty-stricken neighborhoods around Mercer. The primary focus on the talk was the various pitfalls and failures encountered by previous attempts at social engineering; for example, he discussed how the civil rights movement, while obviously effective at creating more equality, also resulted in the rigid stratification of poor blacks. Essentially, while a black middle class was created, the poorest black families were forced to remain where they were with no chance of escape.
The discussion was fascinating and wide-ranging, and raised some interesting points; however, I want to approach this from an ethical standpoint. To what extent should unintended consequences be considered when making an ethical decision? (A brief digression: I recognize that expecting unintended consequences may, at first, sound like a contradiction of terms, and on the surface, it is; however, I am here talking about consequences that may not, at first glance, be apparent, but reveal themselves upon further consideration.)
Take a utilitarian “net good,” for example. How far in the future should the agent look? Should they even care about the long-term consequences of their actions? Would a utilitarian accept short-term loss in favor of long-term gain, or should the short-term pleasure be the primary focus?
Or consider Kant’s categorical imperative. If the decision-maker does not act with the full knowledge of the effects of his actions, can he really make an ethical decision? Can he say with absolute confidence that any situation is exactly what it appears to be?
Obviously, thinking too hard about this can result in paralysis and inaction; however, the consequences of one’s actions cannot be ignored. To do so would be to engage in gross ethical irresponsibility. Doc Brown didn’t come down on one side or the other, suggesting that these consequences were “endemic” to social engineering.
This was originally a reply to Marion's post, but it got so long, and I don't have enough posts, that I honestly decided to make it a post for myself rather than a comment on Marion's last post.
I feel that a connotative mode of teaching a work is the best way to understand it more completely,discussing through example and culturally updated metaphor, however I also feel that an old work of philosophy should be read denotative-ly (if i can use that term), that is, in a way where we are reading the work in pure form, and also being taught about the culture and the rich history surrounding the work. This is where I feel that the Great Books courses fall short. I love learning about classic books and especially works of philosophy, but I feel that without the cultural context and the explanations of philosophical history of ideas, there is no way that a person can talk about philosophy in an intelligent way.
Philosophy especially is just so rich with information, not only in context with itself, but with other philosophers' generic views, taking other philosophers' definitions for words, references to works of literature, and other historical events, there is simply no way to truly understand what a philosopher is saying unless you have that depth of information about he subject matter. As I was saying in our Medieval class the other day, there is no way that someone is going to understand Bacon and his view in the New Organon if they only read the first 3 chapters, and they have no knowledge about how the scholastic system worked, as well as the definitions of various keywords that he takes from other philosophers of his day. To prove this, my friend has done just this, and therefore just got done writing a paper on how much Bacon hates education. This is completely false, but there is no way to address the issue of just how false this is, if they as students are not allowed to look at the depth of the information rather than the breadth.
These students want to be able to say "I read x philosopher, and I know what he thinks about y." But they aren't actually getting that information if they are just reading one work, and only a piece of the work at that, without context, and moving along. Is it good to be well- read? Yes. Do I hate the Great Books program? No. But I do think that in using this John's Hopkins version of Great Books, we are actually sending misinformed students out into the world. Without the outlining of the connotative experience of the works being read, along with the denotative literal translation and direct reading from the text, there is no way to speak intelligently about philosophy. In my opinion, it would almost be more fruitful to just lecture on the movements and ideas that these people were apart of and leave out the text itself entirely, because at least they would have correct information when they go out into the academic world with it.
Earlier today, I was fortunate enough to hear one of Mercer’s most distinguished faculty members, Dr. Judson Mitcham, read selections of his poetry. Let me say up front that I am normally not a poetry enthusiast—I much prefer prose, as poetry will either make me sleepy or send me to groaning. Dr. Mitcham, on the other hand, was a pleasure to hear.
The poems that he read dealt with simple themes, particularly love and the inevitability of age, but had, as undertones, elements of Christian theology and philosophy. Many of his poems dealt with simple people in simple situations, guided by their faith. One such poem dealt with Dr. Mitcham, forced to endure the proselytizing of the zealous woman in the seat next to him. This poem raised an interesting question about the requirements a faithful man. Should he quietly listen to the sermon, not acknowledging that he is, in fact, a member of that faith? Should he wholeheartedly agree, join in, and attempt to convert everyone on the plane? Or should he do as Dr. Mitcham did—privately reaffirm his faith, defuse the situation with a joke (the Pope and President Nixon are on a boat. It didn’t go over well, apparently), and resume reading his magazine?
This might be reading too much into what was an ordinary story, but it did get me thinking, especially in light of Andaika’s paper in class today—to what extent does action have to take the place of thought? How does a religious man have to act? Does he have to prove he’s religious, or is it enough to act in the appropriate manner (be that aggression, peace, compassion, etc) at the right time? When you meet someone of your faith, but you don’t really want to interact with them, what, if any, are your obligations?
Let’s talk about the recent film Inception. A fairly good movie, it was both critically acclaimed and financially successful. It was billed—both by the director, Christopher Nolan, and the press surrounding the movie’s release—as the next Matrix. It was supposed to have been mind-bendingly deep, “too smart for its audience,” promising to usher in a new era of thought-provoking and philosophically sound cinema.
It didn’t really do that. There are criticisms abound about what the film was and was not able to do, so I won’t focus on that. What I do want to focus on is the philosophy the film DID do right—Descartes’ idea of radical skepticism.
Briefly, let me recap the idea of the film: Leo DiCaprio is a man who can go inside dreams and steal top-secret information. Over the course of the movie, it is revealed that the dream thieves, much like Descartes, soon lose the ability to determine what is real and what is a dream. To help, they carry totems (small trinkets that have unique properties that will reveal whether they are dreaming or not).
These totems, and the ideas behind them are, both on the surface and on a deeper level, reminiscent of Descartes’ theories. First, the characters cannot be sure of whether or not they are awake. This was the starting point for Descartes, and, much like the characters in the film, led to a rejection of the potentially false. This means that both men are able to function in a world that is attempting to deceive their senses.
In the totems, we see the manifestations of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, his one unshakeable principle that allowed him to interact with the world. For DiCaprio, his totem takes the form of a spinning top; for Descartes it takes the form of a principle that only he knows for certain. Both men are able to cling to these as unquestionably true; but whereas Descartes moves forward with his theories, eventually proving the rest of existence, director Nolan is content to remain based in the skeptical, cinematic ground already tilled by The Matrix over ten years ago.
There is an immense amount of information that can be said regarding Ryan Hanley’s lecture, but in trying to avoid being overwhelmed, I will simply just scrape the surface.
This idea that man has strayed away from an act of natural selfishness, the selfishness that is driven by the necessities of life, to an act of artificial selfishness, the selfishness driven by the need and desire of approval, in which Rousseau argues this (artificial selfishness) is due to the ownership of private property, is an idea that seems not only plausible but necessary. For, if human beings participated in a continuous act of natural selfishness, human beings would cease to possess the qualities of what it means to be human. Artificial selfishness is what separates humans from animals. I wholly agree with Rousseau that artificial selfishness brings about restless and misery, for the depression rate is steadily increases in society, but we will never cease to be dependant on one another, nor will ever cease to be in competition with one other. There will always be a desire to get ahead, to be one step ahead of your neighbor. Now, Rousseau argues that in order to correct this capitalistic society, equality should be our main focus, but Smith says no, and I agree. Smith argues that in an equal society, we would all be in poverty. Friedrich Nietzsche speaks on equality saying, "I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality. For, to me justice speaks thus: 'Men are not equal.' Nor shall they become equal!" (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra) Instead, Smith argues that morality should be our main concern. I agree, but how do we come to an agreement of the standards of morality?
During Anime Weekend Atlanta I overheard many arguments about subtitleing versus dubbing anime. While this is a hot issue for anime it is also an important issue for philosophy. What the argument boils down to is whether you want accuracy of translation (ie subbed) or understanding of the story/character in your own language (ie dubbed). The second entails changing examples to fit with the current culture and taking into account the changing meanings of words. This issue is important in philosophy when dealing with how to translate philosophical works from one language into another. It becomes even more complicated when the philsophical works are old enough that the author can not be consulted to explain the intentions they had behind their examples/writings. What side of the argument do you fall on and why?
I went to a research/alumni lunch where a few students who were doing research got up for a while and talked about it.One of the individuals spoke about her research involving comparing the essays of Montaigne and John Calvin; while her particular research was involved in the French writings of each, she mentioned some things that I think have some interesting philosophical implications.
One of these is that both individuals were interested in development of the self, although the manifestations of this were different.From what little I know of Montaigne, I understand that he spent a great deal of his life writing and rewriting his essays, which, I have heard it argued, allowed him to describe the details of his life for himself, as well as for everyone else.By continuing to write about himself, he was delving into what it meant to be a self and what it meant to be human.
Calvin, the lecturer told us, was doing the same thing, although he did it through his commentary and translations into French of political and religious works; he did this, she told us, so that the common man, those speaking French not Latin, could participate in the conversation about God, politics, and philosophy.Montaigne, she argued, did the same thing in a sense by writing his essays in French rather than Latin.It would seem that both of these individuals believed that such works should be available to all, rather than just the elite.
The second topic that has sparked thought in my mind that she went over was that of contemporaries playing off of each other. Apparently, Montaigne came briefly after Calvin and therefore was well versed in the manner in which he wrote and put forth various ideas.Why is this interesting: well, I think that philosophy should be (and has been in the past) a similar conversation in which one is developing, strengthening, and challenging not only one’s own philosophical understanding, but that of others as well.
For example, right now I am doing research for Dr. Rosental on the dialogue between Leibniz and Newton, two individuals who vehemently disagreed with one another, and yet they participated in a conversation (although with several intermediaries) which helped to develop in writing their individual thoughts.This sort of dialogue seems to be essential to the development of philosophical thought, whether it is one person building on that of another, or two bitter rivals trying to sway the other.
