Philosophy

Inception

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 6 Comments

“What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea.” — Dominic Cobb, protagonist in Inception If you buy the basic premise of the new film Inception, most of our ideas (perhaps all of them) begin deeply in our subconscious, in our dreams. There, they are born and grow, fertilized and fed in a world in which they…

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Bon Mots: Arendt on the Rights of Stateless People

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bon Mots, Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

From The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt/HBJ, 1979, p. 295-6), Hannah Arendt tracks the coincidence of statelessness and rightlessness: The calamity of the rightless is not that they are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or of equality before the law and freedom of opinion– formulas which were designed to solve problems within…

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The Uncanny Valley 4: Magic, Miracles, and the Necessary Third

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Uncanny Valley 3 Comments

As many of you know, I was a tad bit obsessed with a certain theory in robotics known as “the uncanny valley” several months back. I even delivered a philosophy paper this past Spring using the uncanny valley as one way of explaining our aversion to racial passing. (You can read my series of posts…

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Bon Mots: Agamben on Ausnahmezustand

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bon Mots, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

In State of Exception (University of Chicago Press, 2003, p.86-7), Giorgio Agamben writes:The aim of this investigation– in the urgency of the state of exception “in which we live”– was to bring to light the fiction that governs this arcanum imperii [secret of power] par excellence of our time. What the “ark” of power contains…

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Bon Mots: Derrida on the future of the Humanities

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bon Mots, Human Rights, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

From “The University Without Conditions” in Without Alibi (Stanford University Press, 2002, p.231), Jacques Derrida describes “the Humanities of tomorrow”: These new Humanities would treat the history of man, the idea, the figure, and the notion of “what is proper to man.” They will do this on the basis of a nonfinite series of oppositions…

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Ass[backwards]essment in Higher Ed

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 6 Comments

About a week ago, in a NYT article entitled “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” professor and provocateur Stanley Fish lambasted the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Texas Governor Rick Perry for proposing that the evaluation of faculty should move to a more “consumerist” (Fish calls it “mercenary”) model. The proposal would require college and…

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Thanks x 50K

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson BlogCounts, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

We’ve reached another milestone here at Dr J’s blog: 50,000 hits! We passed 10,000 hits back in our second year, and so it’s exciting to reach the 50K mark at just under four years! Here’s a big THANK YOU to all the readers who keep coming back to this small little speck in the blogosphere….

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In Praise of Smartypants

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 11 Comments

This morning, in stereotypical egghead fashion, I tuned my radio to the Saturday NPR programming, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down to read the most recent (June 7) issue of the New Yorker. In the mini-essay section “Talk of the Town,” located near the beginning of every New Yorker, there was a…

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Dr. J Answers Your Questions

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Just Ask, Memphis, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

A while ago, I invited readers to submit questions through my “Ask Doctor J” site over on Formspring and promised I would do my best to answer them here on the blog. Then, I quickly forgot about the whole thing. Oops. I just went back and found that there was quite a list of questions…

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Yes, Jessica, You CAN Do Anything Good

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 2 Comments

I’m not usually one to forward or re-post YouTube videos of cute kids doing cute things, of which there are literally hundreds of thousands, but I recently came across one that I just couldn’t resist. It’s a little girl named Jessica– I’m guessing around 4 or 5 years old, probably pre-school age– standing on her…

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