Two books encountered at an impressionable age inspired me to pursue my philosophical vocation: The Story of Philosophy by Will & Ariel Durant, later thoroughly dissed by my urbane and mysterious Teutonic tutor at Mizzou as hopelessly lowbrow and superficial...
Sagan's critics said similar things about him, and it's true that he was a committed popularizer. He was, though, anything but lowbrow and superficial. He was a serious scholar and scientist who was passionately invested in William James's "really vital question for us all-what is this world going to be, what is life eventually to make of itself?" His was a cosmic philosophy not only in the astrophysical sense but in the Jamesian sense in which all philosophy is cosmic: originally not technical, barely articulate, just the way in which each of us assimilates and expresses what it's uniquely like to feel "the total push and pressure of the cosmos."
In CoPhi today, after a glance at the headlines and history, we explore our respective definitions of philosophy-I like James's "unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly." We solicit favorite philosophers (my current top 5: James, John Dewey, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell), and try to summarize our personal philosophy of life. No one will be pithier than Sally Brown: "No!"
And, those who read Just Mercy over the summer or attended convocation will tell us what they thought of it.
And, we'll discuss William James's Pragmatism lecture 1, the School of Life's What's Philosophy for?, and the opening of Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History.
In Environmental Ethics today, it's the first two chapters of Erle Ellis's Anthropocene: A Very Short Inttroduction. Listen... and watch...
And because I've been talking up the peripatetic way of philosophizing, we'll do as much of this on the grounds of our lyceum as weather and will permit.
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Opening Days last January (there were a couple, Day 1 was snowed out):
Alain de Botton's School of Life has its critics, but it sure performs a valuable service when it comes to opening a philosophical conversation. That's what our classes are, extended conversations with one another but also with philosophers long past and, we may hope, into a far future.
Our quest is for clarity, in William James's sense when he defined philosophy as an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly, and for sweep:
"...explanation of the universe at large, not description of its details, is what philosophy must aim at; and so it happens that a view of anything is termed philosophic just in proportion as it is broad and connected with other views... any very sweeping view of the world is a philosphy in this sense." Some Problems of Philosophy
We're also in search of mutual understanding and respect, in Spinoza's sense when he said "I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."
And we're also after kindness, in Kurt Vonnegut's sense when he welcomed babies to planet Earth and informed them of its one indispensable rule:
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."
Ultimately of course, in philosophy - philo-sophia - we're searching for wisdom.
"It’s one of the grandest and oddest words out there, so lofty, it doesn’t sound like something one could ever consciously strive to be – unlike say, being cultured, or kind. Others could perhaps compliment you on being it, but it wouldn’t be something you could yourself ever announce you had become..." SoL
This semester we acknowledge the particular duress lately suffered by our grand old standby philosophical abstractions "truth, reality, fact," et al, by taking up Kurt Anderson's Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. This moment may have blindsided many, but we might have seen it coming. Maybe, with the right vision, we can see how to get past it.
And so we begin. Put on your philosophy goggles, everyone. You don't want to look directly at the Form of the Good (aka the sun) without 'em. No one's exempt from the laws of nature.
Opening Day, take 2
Let's try that again...
After two snowdays we'll finally kick off the "Spring" semester, with two sections of CoPhi, Atheism, & Bioethics on tap today and every Tuesday/Thursday 'til winter's well behind us. An old new routine, up at 5 and straight into the shower, before coffee, before walking the dog, way before dawn.
So that's a reality check, to commence a semester dedicated to the proposition that we who value philosophy must embrace facts, truth, and reality. One new reality I must face this morning is an ironic one, for a self-avowed peripatetic: I somehow wrenched my knee yesterday, and will be moving today with a visible limp. Never take mobility for granted, is myOpening Day lesson this time.
In the spirit of Heraclitus, who didn't exactly say you can't step twice into the same river - it was more like, the same river perpetually hosts new waters - I try to approach each rendition of these old courses with new eyes and fresh receptivity to what can and must be different.
For one thing, we're now a full year into the benighted age of Drumpf's reality-bending world of alt-facts. That's the elephant in the room, whatever his physician says. (6'3/239 - really?)
So to address and tame the elephant we'll be reading and discussing Kurt Andersen's Fantasylandin CoPhi, alongside Anthony Gottlieb's Dreams (of Reason and Enlightenment) and Nigel Warburton's Little History. It's not enough to chart the history of (mostly-western) philosophers' takes on truth, facts, and reality, we've got to think about where we're taking those ideas/ideals... and how to take them back from the charlatans who've somehow seized the spotlight and, for the moment, the reins of political power.
As my sometime-namesake Philip Roth says, "No one [but Mencken, maybe] could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the U.S.A., the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell’arte figure of the boastful buffoon." But there we are. We must deal with it.
"I go to sleep smiling and I wake up smiling. I’m very pleased that I’m still alive." We can deal.
Again in the spirit of Heraclitus: my friend the new interim Dean to our south has a nice tagline on his emails, from the not-a-looney author of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, that seems worth noting on Opening Day: "The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; ... with artists like these we do really fly from star to star." And so we must do what we can to borrow other eyes, not only by accessing the perspectives of "great artists" and thinkers but by simply showing up and conversing, collaborating, and co-philosophizing in kindness (as Kurt Vonnegut knew) and civility.
I'll drop a couple more names in class, to kick us off: Immanuel Kant, not a real pissant, said (says one twittering muse) "science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
And the guy Kant said woke him from his dogmatic slumbers, David Hume, said (same source) "philosophical discussion unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of human life: study and society."
Once more, then, unto the breach (a base to the first student today who can tell me who said that the first time, and another to the first who can tell me how many bases gets you a run). Let's get organized, and let's get to studying. It will be my pleasure and I hope, fellow co-philosophers, yours as well.
Back from a wonderful weekend meetup in Chattanooga with old Grad School pals who descended on the Gig City from all directions - not quite Seven States, but next year we'll add Carolina to Tennessee, Alabama, and Virginia. It was the perfect transition from summer to the first day of fall semester today. I can now heartily recommend The Honest Pint, The Hair of the Dog, and the Pucketts breakfast buffet. The Lookouts fell dramatically to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. But really, it is only a game.
Today I'm meeting a section of Honors Intro ("CoPhilosophy") and Environmental Ethics. Much to talk about, to bemoan, to hope we'll soon overcome.
Opening Day every semester is still special, after all these years. Fresh starts and new beginnings never get old.
But the old ones were good. Maybe it's time to bring back the argument clinic, or the whale...
It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a sperm whale had been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with suddenly not being a whale any more. This is what it thought as it fell.
Ahhhh!!!! What's happening? Excuse me! Who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? What is this 'I' that I want to know what it is? Calm down, get a grip now ... ooh! This is an interesting sensation... ANGLE: From below. The whale is wriggling a bit. Oh! This is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of... yawning, tingling sensation in ... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach! Good. Ooooh! It's getting quite strong now. And hey,what's this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Perhaps I can give it a better name later when I've found out what it's for! It must be very important because there certainly seems to be an awful lot of it. Hey! What's this thing ... this ... let's call it a tail - yeah! Tail! The whale thrashes its tail. Between the camera and the whale drops the bowl of petunias. It falls from sight. Hey! I can really thrash it about pretty good, can't I? Wow! Wow! Doesn't seem to achieve much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. How. Have I built up a coherent picture of things yet? No. Never mind. Hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, ao much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ... Or is it the wind? There really is an awful lot of that now, isn't there? It's eye tries to look down. Camera pulls back from the whale, abandoning it ... And hey! What's this thing coming suddenly coming towards me very fast, so big and flat and round it needs a big wide-sounding name like ... ow ... ound...round ... ground! That's it, ground! I wonder if it'll be friends with me?
Unlike the philosophical whale, we'll hit the ground running!
On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency. At 11:35 a.m., his resignation letter was delivered to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Gerald Ford took the oath of office. Then, at 12:05 p.m., Gerald Ford gave his first speech as president of the United States. He was the only president in U.S. history who was never elected president or vice president.
In his inaugural address, Gerald Ford said: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men."
