Notes about researching and teaching philosophy…
On Wordprocessing
“Plenty of writers balked at the joys of word processing, for a host of reasons. Overwriting, in their view, became too easy; the labor of revision became undervalued, and noisy printers and plugged-in gadgets the norm. When Gore Vidal wrote in the mid-1980s that the ‘word processor is erasing literature,’ he expressed an uneasiness about technology’s proximity to creative writing (and the wider field of publishing) that persists. This too is the literary history of word processing, a snapshot of dread about gadget love, the seduction of the screen, and automation and the threats they pose to writers. This dread has taken various forms over the years. It lurks in the background of Sven Birkerts’s late-1990s jeremiads against the Web and Leon Wieseltier’s 2015 diatribe about what distraction was doing to the contemplative mind (and, by extension, the writer). Paradoxically, much of the hand-wringing over digital-era distraction as a mortal enemy to thinking has given rise to apps: Scrivener, or WriteRoom, or Write or Die, the last an online editor that promotes concentration by erasing your text if you pause too long between keystrokes.”
"The Program Era" - http://bookforum.com/inprint/023_01/15810
On Liberal Education
“In In Defense of a Liberal Education, Fareed Zakaria writes that learning ‘how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically’ are the prime virtues of education. These are almost exactly what many of us at small liberal-arts colleges hope for our own students as well. Clearly, we’re onto something of timeless value. We had best keep at it without apology or deviation. This of course is not an easy thing. ”
"What I'm Reading: 'In Defense of a Liberal Education" - http://chronicle.com/article/What-Im-Reading-In/236377
On Vita Activa
Zeitgeist films has produced a new documentary Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt. Hopefully international distribution will be soon.
On Intellectual Life
“What is the point of studying the humanities? The question reflects the current climate among humanist educators: anxiety shading into despair... There is no danger, in our hyper-moralized, hyper-political culture, that our young people will somehow fail to be enchanted by the prospect of making a difference. The danger is quite otherwise: that as all human goods are either put to use or discarded in the struggle for social and political ends, we lose our humanity and the dignity it implies. We lose what makes life worth living, whether that is intellectual life or any of the other unutterably precious human activities that dwell in peace and holy uselessness.”
Zena Hitz, "Freedom and Intellectual Life" - First Things
On Kierkegaard and "Son of Saul"
“At the same time that it depicts Saul’s conversion, ‘Son of Saul’ also directly engages the viewer’s subjectivity by its style and mode of presentation; its achievement is to embody the dynamic that is its very subject matter. Kierkegaard called such communication — the only sort he thought befitting a subjective thinker — ‘double reflection.’ He thought this is the only way that the authenticity of the message can be guarded — the only way to avoid being a town crier of subjectivity. In this way, ‘Son of Saul’ is both art and philosophy: It makes inwardness visible. Through its depiction of death and destruction it reminds us how to live.”
Katalin Balog, "'Son of Saul,' Kierkegaard and the Holocaust," The Stone - http://nyti.ms/2150xgH
On Staring at Machines
“Reagle surveys this varied landscape in pursuit of a goal he calls ‘intimate serendipity,’ his term for successful online communities, places where people are able to express themselves electronically in a civilized way... But in the main, the Web conversation Reagle considers suffers from tendencies similar to the ones Turkle identifies: narcissism, disinhibition, and the failure to care about the feelings of others. It’s a world devoid of empathy.... How can we enjoy the pleasures and benefits of mobile and social media while countering its self-depleting and antisocial aspects? Turkle keeps her discussion of remedy general, perhaps because there aren’t many good solutions at the moment. She thinks we should consciously unitask, cultivate face-to-face conversation, and set limits on ourselves, like keeping devices away from the family dinner table.... Harris wants engineers to consider human values like the notion of ‘time well spent’ in the design of consumer technology... These are helpful suggestions—more thoughtful apps, and apps to control our apps. They also seem wildly inadequate to the problem. ”
"We Are Hopelessly Hooked" - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/25/we-are-hopelessly-hooked/
On Peak Paper
“And yet in 2013, despite positive growth overall, the world reached ‘Peak Paper’: global paper production and consumption reached its maximum, flattened out, and is now falling. A prediction that was over-hyped in the 20th century and then derided in the early 2000s – namely, the Paperless Office – is finally being realised. Growth continues, but paper is in retreat. Why did this seem so unlikely only a decade ago?... While the production and consumption of paper has slowed and declined, there has been an explosion in the production and distribution of information of all kinds. That includes digital versions of traditional publications, such as e-books and online newspapers, as well as new kinds of publications such as social media. ”
"Doing More with Less: The Economic Lesson of Peak Paper" - https://aeon.co/opinions/doing-more-with-less-the-economic-lesson-of-peak-paper
On Possibilities
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilites; Truth isn’t”
http://www.archive.org/stream/followingequator00twaiuoft#page/156/mode/2up. I wonder what Derrida might make of this.
Why Musicians Need Philosophy
“Not as much, I grant, as philosophers need music, but nevertheless the need is real. In the past our musical culture had secure foundations in the church, in the concert hall and in the home. The common practice of tonal harmony united composers, performers and listeners in a shared language, and people played instruments at home with an intimate sense of belonging to the music that they made, just as the music belonged to them. The repertoire was neither controversial nor especially challenging, and music took its place in the ceremonies and celebrations of ordinary life alongside the rituals of everyday religion and the forms of good manners. We no longer live in that world.”
Roger Scruton, "Why Musicians Need Philosophy," - http://www.futuresymphony.org/why-musicians-need-philosophy/
On the Humanity in Physics
“Roberts seems to be suggesting that physics is a realm apart from say, the humanities, where unique cultural perspectives would be more obviously valuable—and in doing so, he gives voice to a widely held misconception about science. Roberts’s error is to treat physics as a discipline that sits outside its own history and the larger culture, when of course it does no such thing. This was not the view of physics that 70-year-old Albert Einstein described as he looked back across his own life experience [From the time he was 12, he wrote, ‘The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.’].”
"What Chief Justice Roberts Misunderstands About Physics: Science Is Not a Separate Realm that Sits Outside Culture" - http://theatln.tc/1OyuVzt