At Quizlet, someone has created study cards for my Explaining Postmodernism. Here, for example, are the flash cards for Chapter 2 on Kant, reason, structuralism, Hegel, and so on. Neat. May they be helpful to those students in various universities reading it this academic year as a textbook.
Quiz flashcards for Explaining Postmodernism Read More »
After a terrible yesterday, like many people I am still trying to understand how someone could do those horrible things. I run through the list of factors and wonder which ones contributed causally. His being male? His mental abilities/disabilities? How his parents raised him? His living in a society with access to firearms or with
Firearm death rates and more Read More »
At Harvard University, here is the reading list for the 2012 entering freshman class: * A More Perfect Union — Barack Obama, 2008. President Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, addressing race and inequality in the United States. * Every Asian American I Know Is Smart — Frank H. Wu (Professor of Law
Harvard versus Rockford: what freshmen read Read More »
Philosophers are noted for their stylish prose as well as their profound insights. Or, to put that point in another, perhaps more felicitous, formulation, they are justly celebrated for their abilities in the words-putting-togetherness department. Earlier I presented some 100-plus word monster sentences from philosophers — Mill, Kant, Aristotle, Locke. But now, via Stuart Hayashi,
Philosophy’s longest sentences — Bentham edition Read More »
John Merrow on “Rebirth: New Orleans,” a documentary about the transformation of schools in New Orleans after the hurricane, mostly by means of charter schools. “In 2004, not even one-third of 8th graders in New Orleans could pass a state reading test. In some schools, the number was lower — just 4 percent. “Since then
New Orleans schools rebuild after Katrina Read More »
How true is the following diagnosis of contemporary higher education? “During the past twenty years the leading universities of the country have changed markedly in form and function … All tend to suffer from similar and unexampled difficulties. They spend huge sums and are desperately poor; their students attack them; the neighbors hate them; their
Criticizing American universities — plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose Read More »
I recommend Charles Millick’s The Challenges for Leadership, Values, and Happiness. Millick is a business professor at Wheeling Jesuit University, where he relocated after decades of real-life business experience at General Electric and other blue-chip corporations, as an entrepreneur, and as a management consultant. In this new book, Millick collects and condenses decades of leadership
Millick’s *The Challenges for Leadership, Values, and Happiness* Read More »
Following up on “Are we declining from our decline?” and “The constant decline of civilization?”, here is one of my favorites historians, Sallust (86– c. 35 BCE), on how his generation of Romans is so much worse morally than the preceding ones. In The War with Catiline, he writes: “Since the occasion has arisen to
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