Ever since Michael Jackson died last week, I’ve been listening to his music almost non-stop. I had forgotten just how many mega-hits he had in his arsenal, and I’ve been shocked and awed all over again by their timelessness. The music of the 80’s and early-90’s had a very disctint sound that, in my humble…
Read MoreCarlin Romano (Univ. of Pennsylvania) recently wrote an excellent piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education heralding President Obama as our first “Philosopher-in-Chief,” an honorific given to him largely as a result of the nuanced cosmopolitanism that characterized his Cairo speech entitled “A New Beginning” (full text and video of that address here). I was…
Read MoreI’m working on the chapter of my manuscript that traces the genealogy of human rights discourse through the Enlightenment, and I had the opportunity today to re-read Descartes’ Letter of Dedication that prefaces his Meditations on First Philosophy. What a hoot! (Admittedly, I may be getting a little punchy and it might not be that…
Read MoreI was very glad to receive all of your various contributions to the discussion about “small groups” in the classroom last week, so I thought I might impose on you again for your pedagogical insights. In the last few days of our core-humanities curriculum seminar, we were debating which translations of the core texts to…
Read MoreAs they say in France: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It turns out that this year marks the 30th aniversary of the invention of the Sony Walkman, what A. N. Wilson terms “the gadget that helped break Britain.” That’s right, 30 years ago we saw the forbear of the now-ubiquitous iPod, which…
Read MoreLast week and this week, I’m participating in the annual seminar that reviews and (occasionally) amends the curriculum of the core humanities course-sequence at my college. Some of the work that we do is tedious and bureaucratic, but a lot of it includes really interesting sessions on pedagogy, core text discussions, interdisciplinarity and more general…
Read MoreThere’s a debate ensuing over on The Leiter Report (which, for all intents and purposes, serves as the internet bulletin board and agora for professional philosophers) over whether or not the pensive-looking woman to your left, Hannah Arendt, is a “philosopher.” The question that started the debate, posed by Jason Stanley, is articulated in his…
Read MoreDid I mention that I don’t care about cheating? Check. Did that already. Of course, if you read the earlier post, you know it’s not so much that I don’t care about cheating as it is that I don’t care about policing cheaters. (Read linked blog-post for my amazing argument in support of said apathy.)…
Read MoreHey, did you hear our President is FUNNY? Here is the video from his gig at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Targets of Obama’s barbs: Dick Cheney, Larry Summers, FOXNews, Arlen Specter, Hillary Clinton, swine flu, Somali pirates, Joe Biden, the First Dog (Bo), and of course, himself, himself, himself. What a nice change…
Read MoreLest you think that the “author” is really “dead,” here’s a term I stumbled across recently that you might find interesting: redactional fatigue. Our friends at Wikipedia define it thus: When making changes to a large text, a redactor may occasionally overlook a piece of text that conflicts with the redactional goals. Since many important…
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