NarcissusWorks (Free subscription) | 12/01/2009
The Tunxis Humanities Department and Tunxis Philosophy Club Present: Proof & Possibility A Series of Talks in Philosophy and the History of Ideas Thursday, Dec. 3rd @ 1p.m. Founders Hall Part 1: Philosophy of the Supreme Fiction: In and Beyond the Metaphysics of Wallace Stevens Hartford's most noted poet and once one of its more prominent insurance executives, Wallace Stevens, has often been studied...
The Modern Historian (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
Richard Strauss was born in June 1864 in Munich, where his father, Franz, was the principal horn player at the Court Opera. Richard received a musical education from his father and started writing music at the age of six; yet, when he entered the city's university he chose to study philosophy and art history, rather than music. He spent a year at Munich University before moving to Berlin where he briefly...
The Brooks Blog (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Call for Papers PHILOSOPHY IN LITERATURE An international congress on philosophical questions related to literature and the study of literature, at the University of Vaasa, Finland, 27-28 May 2010. Plato, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche are classical examples of the philosophers who discuss philosophical ideas with literary style. Writers of world literature such as Dostoyevsky, Hesse, and Beauvoir, for...
Bill Kerr (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Due to various push and pull factors (one of them being the need to study political economy thoroughly) I am planning to take a whole year's leave in 2010. This got me thinking as to what I would say to my teachers colleagues at the inevitable staff meeting if I was retiring. I've watched all those other teachers retire and now it's (almost) my turn. Since I'm not I won't get to give the speech but...
Stick Poet Super Hero (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
This looks really interesting, if anyone is close to Farmington, CT on December 3rd it might be worth taking in. If any readers make it to this, I’d love to hear from them about it. Submitted by Melissa Lamar, Tunxis Community College, on 2009-11-23. The public is invited to attend "Philosophy of the Supreme Fiction: In and Beyond the Metaphysics of Wallace Stevens," a free talk by...
Thoughts On Economics (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
I have previously noted the problems for utility theory created by the application of Arrow's impossibility theorem to a single individual. And I had quoted a number of classic authors who wrote of themselves as being composed of more than one mind. Here's another: "'Freedom of the will' - that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and...
Unstable Euphony (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Here's a list of texts I'll be studying for my comprehensive exams. Rhetoric is one of my two secondary areas of study. Isocrates. Against the Sophists . Plato. Republic Book X. Aristotle. Rhetoric Books 1-2. Cicero. De Oratore . Augustine. On Christian Doctrine . Erasmus, Desiderius. Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style. Ecclesiastes . De Pizan, Christine. The Book of the City of Ladies . Vico,...
Circle Of Life (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
I heard about the Great Interview Experiment hosted by Citzen of the Month via my hubby, SciFi Dad . I thought it would be fun to participate. If anything, it would give me a chance to get to know two more bloggers! I interviewed Veach from Snapperhead . MTM: How did you come up with the blog name "Snapperhead"? Veach: The term was a neologism I fabricated in the mid-1990's to be used—derogatorily—when...
impossible songs (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
These guys don't say much but their thoughts are priceless - Plato, Lao Tzu, Arther Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. They also double as fridge magnets but the door is overcrowded (see below), so they reside on a bookshelf adjacent to a digital radio, books and some useful "Believe in God" spray. It's really a utility shelf for existential emergencies. They crop up around here now and...
UNSANE AND SAFE (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
From: will to chance, Bataille Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of Nietzsche's unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality; without it, this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which negate the rest of the work).
La Vida Locavore - Front Page (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Tomorrow is November 13. That marks one year since my last long conversation with my brother. He died one week later, November 20, we think. They found his body November 24. Adam was gifted. Incredibly gifted. He didn't test well because of his anxiety, but he still scored high in the gifted range on standardized tests. He would read Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and Kant for fun. He loved English, history,...
nufc1892 blog on Absolute Radio (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
The benefits of positive thinking have been overrated. There are two basic attitudes to adversity, exemplified by Nietzsche and Christopher Reeve. When the Superman actor was left paralysed from the neck down, he refused to despair. "Once you choose hope," he insisted, "anything's possible." He died nine years later, still a quadriplegic. The philosopher, a syphilitic and part-time...
faith in honest doubt (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
TBWBoSRaDH* nicely captures what makes Nietzsche so many Christians' favorite atheist: Friedrich Nietzsche was the product of a line of Lutherans pastors, so it should not surprise that his atheism engages so directly, and inverts so forcefully, the thrust of Christianity. As philosophy goes much of what Nietzsche had to say was captivating, but then I also find science fiction captivating, as well...
WOW Insider (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
Is your raid leader Machiavellian? Is it a categorical imperative to torture that Beryl Sorceror? What would Nietzsche have thought of Leeroy Jenkins? Good questions! And now we can find out. Following in the footsteps of books dealing with philosophies in other popular game titles like Legend of Zelda , Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger recently released World of Warcraft and Philosophy . The book deals...
Song of a Reformed Headhunter (Free subscription) | 10/31/2009
TLS October 23 2009 I had not read Laura Cumming's book A Face to the World when I wrote my poem "Seven Studies for a Self-Portrait." Reading Elizabeth Lowry's review of the book, I am amazed by the connections and coincidences between Cumming's Durer and mine . The divine in the human is exactly the theme not only of the Durer study of my "Seven Studies," but also of my next book,...
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