Welcome, Mercer Philosophers, to "Awake to the World."
Each week, students enrolled in PHI 301/401 should read, comment, and make their own posts on what's going on at Mercer and on what they find of philosophical interest and significance on campus (and thereabouts).
You have two assignments to get started:
(1) Use whatever means are at your disposal to find out what's going on this semester that you think might be interesting to blog about. Post an entry that lists events, times, and locations of at least 5 events that you think fit this bill.
(2) In the interest of deepening our understanding of each others' perspectives, write 100-300 wds. on a book or experience that sparked your interest in philosophy.
These posts are due by midnight Thursday night, August 26th and will probably have to take the form of comments to this post. Once you've made an appearance on the blog, I should be able to go into the settings and make you an "author," so that you can originate your own posts.
Here we go!
1.Going to any of the events at 10am on Wednesday s in Newton chapel could work well from a Philosophy of Religion point of view. They happen every week although the schedule for this semester is not up yet.
ReplyDelete2. Well it is a deeply fascinating story. I took a philosophy class as part of Gen Ed and liked it. Originally I was a Pre-Pharmacy person but then I dropped Chemistry and well I needed a major so I picked Philosophy and Psychology as my replacement majors. I had decided that what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was to become a Professor and both of those fields are useful for that job, and conveniently there is a shortage of Quantitative Psychology professors and I like Quantitative.
Since there was something about me that lent itself to liking Philosophy, which many people I know detest, I shall now describe what I think that may be. I have grown up with a mother who is Unitarian Universalist (UU) and have now regularly attended church since about 4th grade. For those of you that do not know UU is a religion where it is everyone’s own personal responsibility to find what they believe is true. There is no creed, there is no mandate that you must believe in God, or gods, or no god. Instead there is a community that fosters each person’s ‘search for truth and meaning’ which meant that as a child I was exposed to lots of different ideas and encouraged to be intellectual.
EDIT: I have NO IDEA why my Google Docs name is Pyongyang. I didn't set it that way, but it's been like that for a while now. I actually kind of like it; it makes it look like it's a code name or something.
ReplyDelete1. Well, it's too early to tell a lot of the dates and times, but one of my housemates is heavily involved with FMLA, and she tells me that they're doing a lot this year. The Vagina Monologues, Real Women/Real Curves...Potentially interesting to get points of views from someone other than dead white men.
Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'm sure that there will be a ton of lectures in addition to the ones Charlie announced that will be blog-worthy.
2.I know that this has the potential for some heavy disapproval, but the one text that got me interested in philosophy (and one of the formative texts of my high school career—the other being “Neuromancer” by William Gibson) was “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand. Yeah, I admit it: I was a High School Objectivist (you know the type). I lacked the convictions or the killer instinct necessary to make that a life choice, but the idea that people could learn about ideas, and that these ideas were dangerous and powerful enough to shut down the world was a fascinating and appealing one to me. I loved the idea that it was possible to actually learn enough, and by learning the right things, you could not only be smarter than someone else, you would actually be a better person than “they” were. It sounds kind of mean, but hey, so's high school.
Again, I don't know why that that says Pyongyang above me, but I think I fixed it.
ReplyDelete-Ross
Events:
ReplyDeleteMovies and plays are ALWAYS good to converse about or, in this case, blog about, and it is always easy to squeeze some kind of philosophical argument out of them. Some of these events are a good while away, but a couple are coming up soon.
1. Play: Zastrozzi The Master of Discipline
At the Back Door Theatre
Aug. 26, 27, 31 at 7pm; Aug. 29 at 2pm
Sept. 1-4 at 7pm; Sept. 5 at 2pm
2. Movie Night: Neverending Story (GREAT MOVIE)
Tatnall Park
Aug. 27 at 8pm
3. Midnight Movie (Variety of Films)
Amstar Theater
Sept. 17
4. Fright Fest (2 horror films)
Porter Patch
Oct. 27 at Sunset
5. College Hill's Big Screen Night:
Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (Also good)
Riverside Cemetery
Oct. 28 at 8pm
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During the summer break, I discovered a brilliant movie entitled "Harold and Maude." In hopes that you all who have not seen will do so, I will try not to spoil the film. In examining the film in a philosophical sense, my focus fell upon the character of Maude. Thinking back to my studies of Montaigne during the summer, I see a connection between Maude and Montaigne's argument that "truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object," and "it is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him" (Montaigne). For me, the character, Maude, exemplifies this quote. She had no true concern of the world around her. She took what she wanted when she wanted. She was nowhere close to society's idea of stable. Her every move was a new surprise.
1. Other than philosophy lectures going on during the semester the only other events I can think of that are important to me would be ROTC training every week and the weekend training exercises. I could do a lot of blogging about Army philosophy ;)
ReplyDelete2. I don't think I had a real interest in philosophy until I realized that Mercer was offering a philosophy of religion course. At that point I had just finished taking Old Testament which was really interesting because during that class we had a lot of discussions on controversial issues and stories in the Bible. So seeing that Mercer was offering philosophy of religion I thought to myself, "Hey, I'll give that class a try and see what else I can learn about religion." During that class I ended up learning so many different philosophy and religion theories that at one point I actually started questioning my own faith! For one whole day I actually questioned the existence of God, which honestly was the scariest day in my life, but in the end I think it made me a little more mature in my faith. Afterwards I was so impressed with all the theories and ideas from that one philosophy of religion course that I decided philosophy was something that I absolutely had to learn more about.
1. I think that the tunnel of Oppression raises some very interesting thoughts on human rights issues (which can in many ways apply to philosophical ones). I have seen it a couple times and participated in it the year before last. It takes place on November 3-5 generally in the evenings
ReplyDelete2. In years past I have found the Lamar lectures to be quite interesting,
October 18, 10:00 am: "Remembering Medgar Evers: Aesthetics, Justice and the Long Civil Rights Movement"
October 18, 7:30 pm: ""Where are the Voices 'Coming From'? James Baldwin, Margaret Walker, Eudora Welty, and the Local"
October 19, 7:30 pm: "Memory and the Memoir: Anne Moody, Myrlie Evers, and Willie Morris Remember Medgar Evers"
for more info on that visit http://www.mercer.edu/SST/Lamar.html
3. I a the president of the Episcopal organization on campus and we do many cool events throughout the year; we meet regularly at 7PM on Tuesdays at Jittery Joes for regular discussions and food for thought
4. This is not a campus event, strictly speaking, but I thought that the movie "Inception" was realy interesting from a philosophy of mind perspective. It is still out in theaters for the time being (possibly a midnight movie)
5. That's all that I have for the moment, however I will keep everyone posted on the lectures that happen in Willet (some of them are actually quite philosophically
interesting).
One of the most philosophically eye opening experiences that I had was actually during a trip that I took with Charlie and the gang the summer after my freshmen year. While we were there, we drove to Delphi, which is a mountain with many temples and such on top of it. What was amazing to me about that was the history of the place as one where people would go to seek guidance and a prophesy regarding their lives. This place just seemed almost magical to me (the view was astonishing). But, more over, this was a place where people came to, in a sense, be close to the gods and preform forms of worship. (on a personal note, I remember thinking that I can see what they meant: on top of that mountain I did somehow feel closer to God). Furthermore, it was fascinating to me that on top of this mountain, there were not just temples, but a sports track and an amphitheater.
ReplyDeleteIf philosophy consists of self discovery or questioning, as well as the contemplation and the understanding of the world around you (for I consider the people who are now and who were two thousand years ago to be included in that), then this place truly sparked a light of philosophy within me, for it made me think not only about those who lived back then and why it was so important to them to have such a holy place in such a remote and beautiful location, but also about myself and the personal 'Delphis' in my life and why I am drawn to them year after year. That experience made me quite interested in the human condition, especially when any sort of belief or religious doctrine is concerned.
By the way, I think that the timer is off on the posts (as it is actually 8:47 not 5:47)
ReplyDelete1. Honestly I have no idea what is going on at mercer. I have not yet situated myself and no one seem to speak to each other. I am so sorry I don't mean to let you guys down, I simply don't know how or where to find out. I will redeem myself soon i hope.
ReplyDelete2.I don’t truly have a book or a movie that necessarily sparked my interest in philosophy. I always loved the idea of questioning everything and the only subject that permitted me to do so is philosophy. Since then however everything I observed, read, and watched seem to somehow lead back to philosophy. The latest one that truly amazed me was inception; Leonardo Dicaprio had the lead role. I think it was Zhuangzi that introduce me to the idea that life can just as well be the dream. Inception however on a different level further evaluated that idea. The idea itself is so unusual that it’s truly worth looking into. Is it possible to live a dream? If so how can we possibly tell the difference between the two?
1) I have Chess club every week now at 5 on Mondays which is an interesting look into logical rules and strategy. Besides that, I will be going to as many lectures as possible and I will also be doing debate (Wednesdays at 7:30)and mock trial(Wednesdays at 10 am), which both will give me some insights into logic and language. I will also be watching a lot of AIDS movies this year as i am in the AIDS awareness WGS course, which would give great insights to the way people cope with death and dying and also how they choose to live when they know that they fully realize how short their time on earth is. Any and all of those might be interesting, but I'll just see what hits me as the weeks go on.
ReplyDelete2) My first introduction to philosophy was my AP Language class in high school. I read Descartes' Treatise on Light and John Stewart Mill's On Liberty. I immediately read Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I fell in love. I wasn't required to read these books, but they were on a reading list that we could choose from and the reason I picked them, I think, was because I had dropped out of the Honors program the year before and therefore missed out on the great Humanities class that they offered. Of course, the Humanities class heavily involved Philosophy in it, and so I thought that if I couldn't be in the class I would read what they read on my own. Also, all my friends were in Honors and they would have discussions about what they had read and I wanted to keep up and be able to talk to them about it too. I liked it so much I would ask for Philosophy books for all the gift-giving holidays. I haven't stopped since.
-Kris
Okay, so, I went to view the faculty art work, and the entire collection was wonderful of course, but being as I hold photography close to my heart, this is what drew me in. The photography was done by Craig Coleman entitled "Regularity in the Midst of Chaos." The photos were everyday images of this location absent of any sort of unnatural occurrences, but still there was beauty there. In the philosophy world, there has been debates on whether 'ordinary' images; such as these can be considered art, and I say YES, (Ayn RAND), YES THEY CAN!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting, Shari; but, you should start your own thread instead of commenting on mine. It might seem silly, but copy this post and repost it as the beginning of a new thread. Maybe you'll spur an online conversation about Philosophy and Art!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I knew I was suppose to do that, but I just could not find out for the life of me how to create my own thread. I'm really terrible at this. Can you explain to me how I go about doing this? In the mean time, I'll be exploring the site to find out how to do it myself.
ReplyDeleteNevermind. Clearly, at the top it says 'NEW POST.' I don't feel stupid...okay maybe a little...how did I miss this the first time???
ReplyDelete