Phil-Lit 2013
01.08.2013
After hearing two people's definitions of literature and philosophy:
- What's the interaction of literature and philosophy (8)
- Why do they merit study together? (13)
- When does a text become literature? (2)
- Are literature and philosophy two different names for the same thing? (6)
- When does thought become philosophy? (4)
- Can the terms "philosophy" and "literature" really be defined? (2)
- Are there answers to the above questions? (3)
- How is life absurd? (1)
- Why study the answers other people came up with to something as intensely personal and individualistic as our own lives? (1)
What makes for a good question?
- Thought-provoking
- We don't know their answers
- Their answers are useful/interesting
- They provoke more good questions
01.09.2013
Notes:
What was enlightenment-- Celebrated human reasoning (as opposed to Divinity).
Post-modernism-- Somehow contrasts with modernism...but in what way?
Modernists: Victorians (Common set of values, unburdened by doubt, believe they have the answers)
WWI-- Modernists realize their answers aren't perfect, doubt sets in
WWII-- Americans have family values and believe "we know best".
60s-- As close as America gets to a revolution. Sex and birth control was a projection of a deeper issue.
To have revolution, sense of disenfranchisement and sense of a better society
War, race and sex big pillars of the 60s in social change
The war was a "working peoples war"
American idea that "we saved the world"
In 'Nam... America finally feels "we didn't win"
Putin trying to become new Stalin
Post-modernist writing mostly from 50s-80s
Enlightenment ideals: We don't need God, humans can handle it"
The middle class suburban way of life does not work for every group of people
Democracy in America--minority rights are important. not true democracy
In America very educated people led revolution and democracy evolved
Compromise ingrained in the American way
In Middle East, factions rule, no compromise
A genuine civil rights experience must occur for change to American lifestyle in the Middle East
Groups for the 100 Essential Thinkers project
- Caroline, Pranav, Paul : Erasmus, Malebranche, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Paine, Bergson, Mach, Engels, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Schlick, Vygotsky, Feyerabend
- Maryam, Tommy, Preston: Lenin, Miletus, Wollstonecraft, Husserl, Elea, Socrates, Sinope, Seneca, Empiricus, Plotinus, Bacon, Hegel, Pierce, Frege
- Charlotte, Braden, Ryan- Jung, Levi-Strauss, Dewey, Durkheim, Sartre, Arnauld, Tarski, Skinner, de Beauvoir, Reid, Russell, More, Epicurus, Ryle
- Gaby, Philip, Steven : Pythagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, Copernicus, Anselm, Schelling, Darwin, Philo of Alexandria, Xenophanies of Colophon, Diderot, Democritus
- Rohan, Carolyn, Andrew Vogeley : Chomsky, Wittgenstein, Schiller, Bentham, Mill, James, Keynes, Rousseau, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Einstein, Whitehead, Marx, Locke
- Andrew, Spencer: Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Tullius, Cicero, Descartes, Adam Smith, John Dewey, Karl Popper, Freud, Moore, Nietzsche, William of Occam, Jean Paul Satre, Carnap, Scotus
- Raulston: Zeno, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley, Peirce, Camus, deBeauvoir, Saussure, Foucault, Derrida, Godel, Kuhn, Quine
Independent Readings
- Rohan: Milgram
- Spencer: Stoppard
- Gaby: Stoppard (as well)
- Andrew V: Eagleman
- Carolyn: Sartre
- Charlotte: Pynchon
- Maryam: Camus, The Stranger
- Ethan: Freud
- Stein: Eagleman
- Newell: Pynchon (as well)
- Braden: "Satyr"
- Andrew C: The Fall
- Paul: The Fall
Synthesis Ideas
Synthesis paper ideas:
- The problems with an adjectival philosophy
- When the inherent fuzziness of language leads us into trouble and when not
- How to live with others in the absence of externally imposed constraints
- Truth v. power
- In good writing, style reinforces content
- When I write, I am creating myself yet writing for you
- If Becoming is only a translation of Being through one dimension, why is it so much harder to understand? And why bother?
- Why the writer-reader-text triad, though ubiquitously used, is too simple
- Why people suck. Why we want them anyway. (Kind of a junior English topic, but…)
