Philosophy

My Plato Is Better Than Your Plato

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Teaching, The Search for Values 2 Comments

I 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…

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Torture 101

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Dr. J's Lists, Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, Teaching, Torture, Weak Humanism 2 Comments

A friend and colleague of mine invited me to come speak to his class about torture last week. The class was a writing seminar, organized around the theme of “citizenship,” and my colleague was feeling (understandably) frustrated because– in his words– he “just didn’t feel like [he] had the tools or the knowledge to counter…

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Redactional Fatigue

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, Torture Comments Off on Redactional Fatigue

Lest 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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Cheating and Swine Flu

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Teaching Comments Off on Cheating and Swine Flu

Did 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.)…

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On Being (And Not Being) A “Philosopher”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Women and Gender Issues 3 Comments

There’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…

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Small Groups

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Teaching, The Search for Values 17 Comments

Last 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…

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A Community of Kitsch

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 8 Comments

There’s an interesting review of Brithish philosopher Roger Scruton’s new book, Beauty, that looks at the value (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of kitsch. In “Finding Kitsch’s Inner Beauty,” Robert Fulford praises Scruton’s text for holding the “now marginalized view” that philosophers should help the rest of us “think about issues that really matter.” (Marginalized?…

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Torture Reading

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, Teaching, Torture Comments Off on Torture Reading

Just a couple of quick recommendations for those of you keeping up with the current scandal over the so-called “torture memos.” I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this stuff over the course of the past year as a part of my research, and I plan to include both of these texts in my…

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Work-Guilt and Time-Management

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 6 Comments

It’s really surprising how long it takes to acclimate oneself to a full-time position in academia. I’m nearing the end of my second year now, and I still find myself constantly tweaking all of my best-laid-plans for “balancing” the Holy Triumvirate of responsibilities: scholarship, teaching and service. As I’ve said many times before, one of…

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Solitary

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, Torture, Weak Humanism 4 Comments

Several months ago, there was a story in the New York Times entitled “Two Decades in Solitary” recounting the story of Willie Bosket, who has spent 23 hours a day for the last 20 years in a 9×6 cell… all alone. I had intended to write a post about that story then, because I was…

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