Philosophy

Aristotle for Inspiration

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Teaching, The Search for Values 3 Comments

We concluded the semester in my “Search for Values” class with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Specifically, we ended with the end of the Nic Ethics, Book X, in which Aristotle defends the life of contemplation as both the highest achievement for human beings and the “truly” happy and virtuous life. I always find that Book X…

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Oh, What A Tangled Web…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching 11 Comments

Many of you have probably read the now-famous text by historian James Loewen Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I find that many of my students, especially those who come from liberal or progressive backgrounds, read it in high school or in some other context before they reached college….

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War is War

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching, The Search for Values Comments Off on War is War

Several weeks ago, when my class was still reading Homer’s Iliad, I tried to goad my students into making comparisons between the Trojan War and our current war in Iraq. That didn’t go over so well, and at the time I wasn’t sure why. I suspected that it was still early in the semester and…

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Our Secrets

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 3 Comments

Anyone who’s ever read Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death, one of the greatest books ever on secrecy, has certainly had to grapple with the aporia of the secret. Of course, the “secret” of that text (such that there is one) is that there is no Secret. This is partly true because, structurally speaking, someone…

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Might and Right

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching 4 Comments

I’ve been invited to speak as one of the panelists in a colloquium entitled “Violence: The American Tradition?” coming up in a little more than a week. I am still working out what it is that I want to say. My co-panelists are a historian and an artist, and we are each expected to address…

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Idiosyncratic Crises

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 2 Comments

Prefatory disclaimer: I am fully aware that the following “crisis” only legitimately qualifies as a “crisis” for those of us in academia. Which, of course, means that it’s not a crisis at all. I hate, hate, HATE the practice of submitting panel or paper “proposals” for conferences. The way this always works out, or at…

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Mind over Mater

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, The Search for Values 3 Comments

My “Search for Values” class began our section on tragedy at the end of this week with Oedipus Rex. (We’ll read Antigone next week.) Sophocles’ “trilogy” is one of those works of literature that I always need to read again to remember how great it is. Part of that, I think, is due to the…

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Mommy and I Are One

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, The Search for Values 5 Comments

Okay, so I am now willing to retract– or at least severely qualify– my earlier disavowal of psychoanalysis. My sincerist apologies to Sigmund. As you may remember, a few days ago I wondered (in a post entitled “Mind Over Mater“) what was so damn compelling about the Freudian reading of Sophocles’ inimitable tragedy Oedipus Rex?…

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Mourning Again

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 4 Comments

On this blog, almost exactly a year ago, I posted an entry on the importance of what I called the work of mourning. That post was prompted by my attendance at the SPEP business meeting, which every year includes eulogies of the SPEP members who have passed in the previous year. I was disturbed by…

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American Beauty, Reconsidered

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 3 Comments

I run the “Philosophy Film Series” (and the corresponding “Pub Talks”) at my college, a task I enjoy so much that it doesn’t even seem like work. I’m always pleasantly surprised to find that our students are very sophisticated film viewers, and my job as the facilitator of our discussions is often impeded by my…

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