Huenemanniac

Getting distracted by ideas

April 9, 2012

Trying to become what you is

I was in Seattle over this past weekend, and anyone walking the downtown streets could not fail to notice that about 1 in 10 people were dressed like Japanese manga characters. It was “Sakura Con 2012”, where hundreds of people dress up and share their enthusiasm for fantasy. It was fun to see their costumes… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff, This & that in the life of CH
March 30, 2012

A.J. Ayer vs. Mike Tyson

from Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers. I have no idea if there is any truth in it. It took place in Manhattan at the party of Fernando Sanchez, a fashionable underwear designer (not many philosophers get invited to underwear designer parties). Ayer was talking to a group of models when a woman… Continue reading

Historical episodes
March 29, 2012

Popular books in Alcatraz’s library

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Books, This & that in the life of CH
March 26, 2012

Reflections on Tolkien

Yesterday my family and I watched all three Lord of the Rings movies, pretty much end to end, though taking necessary breaks for eating walking, and discussing. The event was a a bit like an event a friend of mine used to host, where a small group listened to Wagner’s Ring cycle over a weekend,… Continue reading

Books, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff
March 21, 2012

Thought for the day

“Now however much great and small worries fill up human life, and keep it in constant agitation and restlessness, they are unable to mask life’s inadequacy to satisfy the spirit; they cannot conceal the emptiness and superficiality of existence, or exclude boredom which is always ready to fill up every pause granted by care.” (Schopenhauer) Continue reading

Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff
January 24, 2012

Sage words from Morris Cohen

…in a 1919 edition of The New Republic (thanks to a lead on Leiter’s blog). Cohen was writing, under the pseudonym “Philonous”, in response to someone who had said that those not in ardent support of post-war efforts to rebuild were “slackers”: My fellow philosophers for the most part are too ready to assert that… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff
January 19, 2012

Philosophy’s job

Philosophy’s job is to take you from what merely seems puzzling into what really is puzzling. Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning
January 6, 2012

My own neo-kantianism

To start, let me rehearse Kant’s basic move in explaining our knowledge of the world. Most of us will accept that there are some things we can learn only through experience (like how many donkeys are now in my yard) and some things that are simply true by definition (like anyone with an uncle has… Continue reading

Kant and/or Hume, Metaphysical musings
November 27, 2011

The discomfort of nothing

Sometimes, in a conspiratorial tone, I reveal to my students that the Great Big Philosophical Question – the baddest of all bad asses – is “Why is there something rather than nothing?” But I think an equivalent question is whether something can ever turn into nothing, even though somehow this question doesn’t sound as profound.… Continue reading

Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff
August 27, 2011

“Free, single, disengaged”

The Logan Gramophone Society met recently and uncovered this neglected gem from Mamie Smith and her Jazz Band (Okeh Records): Continue reading

Phonograph records
August 22, 2011

Value of the liberal arts

(Recently I was invited to speak to our academic advisors on the value of the liberal arts to today’s students. I thought a couple of readers out there might find it interesting … so here it is.) “WHY DO I NEED THAT, AND WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH IT? GETTING SOMEWHERE THROUGH THE… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning
July 22, 2011

“Better never to have been”

A couple of students and I are reading David Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been, alongside our reading of Schopenhauer, which, among all the ways of passing sunny summer days, must count among the most inappropriate. Benatar’s book is an argument for the claim that bringing people into existence causes them harm. He admits that,… Continue reading

Books, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff
July 6, 2011

What my son and I have learned playing baseball

1. Throw like you mean it. Every time. Point your opposite shoulder where it’s going, focus on the other guy’s glove, and throw hard. Throwing a ball is the glory of man. 2. If the ball is hit near you, go for it, get under it, scramble for it, like your pants are on fire.… Continue reading

Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff, This & that in the life of CH
July 1, 2011

Please join my campaign for illiteracy

Begin today. Find a child in your neighborhood, and unlearn them reading. “[Writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it; they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember… Continue reading

Books, Items of the academy / learning
June 21, 2011

Teaching in the Buzz

Young people live in a cloud of stimulation laced with data. Facebook, Twitter, the web generally, cell phones, iPods – let’s call them collectively “the Buzz”. The Buzz has many virtues, but one unfortunate consequence (noted often) is that many Buzzers do not have the time, and sometimes not even the capacity, to think long… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff
June 11, 2011

Vacation report: Belgium, Greece, and England

I seem to remember some pithy quote along the lines of “Traveling helps you to see the familiar once again as strange.” Anyhow, that was certainly the effect of our trip to Belgium, Greece, and England – by the time we came home, it seemed as exotic as anything else we had seen. Our main… Continue reading

This & that in the life of CH
May 4, 2011

Who ARE these people?!

It’s no news to anyone that higher education is under pressure to adapt. Some of the pressure comes from within the university, from either a social-sciency direction (like the book Academically Adrift), or from a humanistic direction (like Menand’s Marketplace of Ideas). These are intelligent, well-intentioned, and interesting critiques of the current ideals and methods… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning
April 28, 2011

On Jessica Berry, Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition

This is an interesting and insightful book on Nietzsche’s philosophy and on ancient skepticism generally. I really admire Berry’s ability to adopt and clearly express judicious opinions, and her ability to anticipate readers’ questions and objections and she moves through her story. This is the best book on Nietzsche’s philosophy I’ve seen in quite a… Continue reading

Books, Nietzsche
April 20, 2011

Getting the 4-1-1

I recently read James Gleick’s book Information: a history, a theory, a flood. It’s a fascinating account of our varying relationships to information. For a long time, we were only set on getting as much of it as we could; then a theory of information developed in the 20th century (principally by Claude Shannon); and… Continue reading

Books, Machines / gadgets / technology / games
March 21, 2011

The party-pooper principle

The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to adopt the following operational principle: THE PARTY-POOPER PRINCIPLE: Given two, roughly-equal theories, the one that is less attractive is more likely to be true. Theories can be attractive in a variety of ways. Some theories meet deep-seated wishes, like the wish for immortality,… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning, Kant and/or Hume, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff, Metaphysical musings
March 13, 2011

Homer & Langley: recluses and hoarders

I just finished E. L. Doctorow’s novel, Homer & Langley. It’s a retelling of the true story of Homer & Langley Collyer, who, by the time they died in the late 1940s, lived in a place that looked like this: The Collyer brothers were born in the 1880s and lived until 1947 in their parents’… Continue reading

Books, Historical episodes
January 12, 2011

Kolakowski, “The priest and the jester”

Leszek Kolakowski published an essay in 1959 entitled “The priest and the jester.” In the article, he claims that the question of “whether eschatology is possible” is a crucial one. “Eschatology” is usually regarded as a subject in theology, where it is the study of the goals and ends of human history, or the goals… Continue reading

Books, Items of the academy / learning, Metaphysical musings
December 27, 2010

Thomas Bernhard

I am embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t heard of him until I read Dale Peck’s NYT book review of two recently published works. Peck says he’s the greatest author of the post-WWII era, which is certainly saying something. But what captured my attention in the review is Peck’s way of locating Bernhard within one… Continue reading

Books
December 10, 2010

Diggin’ Monk

I think we all maybe need to develop some rhythmic autonomy. Continue reading

Music
December 5, 2010

I wanna be a hipster. Who’s with me?

From Wikipedia: In his book Jazz, Frank Tirro defines the 1940s hipster: To the hipster, Bird was a living justification of their philosophy. The hipster is an underground man. He is to the Second World War what the dadaist was to the first. He is amoral, anarchistic, gentle, and overcivilized to the point of decadence.… Continue reading

Music