Sacred matter

During our peripatetic walk in #3 yesterday, The subject of materialism versus immaterialism came up. Some (like Descartes) think of a matter as mere, crudely deficient in potentiality and incapable of giving rise to all the rich and animated phenomena of life. William James thought otherwise:

"To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter COULD have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever after. It makes no difference what the PRINCIPLE of life may be, material or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself to all life's purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter's possibilities."

—William James, Pragmatism lecture 3 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm#link2H_4_0005

Good message

New England fans this morning

Positive change

Our power is on again in Nashville, we've been told. We'll head home tomorrow.

Last week in the hotel was pretty stressful, but this week at the Airbnb just 15 minutes from school is something I could get used to. It would mean more delightful walks on the Stones River Greenway, like the one the dogs and I enjoyed Monday; and more chance encounters with old students on non-teaching days, like I had yesterday.

That Greenway walk reacquainted me with Bertha Chrietzberg, whose efforts enhanced the quality of life of countless walkers over the years. She was a true meliorist, someone who achieved her potential and left the world better than she found it. And gave me a new talking point when we encountered Aristotle in class.

Day 7

 Wind chill below zero. Robert Frost comes to mind...

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Day 6

Still without power, holed up in a downtown hotel a stone's throw from the Seigenthaler pedestrian bridge so artfully depicted in the lobby. Want to dogwalk it, but it's forbiddingly icy. Hurry please, NES.

Day 4 without power

Our temporary lodging on the 12th floor afforded a view of the new Titans' stadium, until problems with climate control in the room uprooted us. Taking the dogs out is still a challenge, but at least we've thawed out and stayed warm. Could be worse. Sadly it is, for many.

Big chill

Day 2 without power. Thank goodness for firewood, extra blankets, dogs, good neighbors, and the right attitude. It's ALL temporary, after all.

The Peculiar Magic of a Winter Snowstorm

Our Lyceum guest at MTSU last Fall, Megan Craig, sees the beauty and descending spirit in a day like this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/winter-snow-storm.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Snowy sleety icky afternoon

Good time to pick up the little book about the Parnassus pooches I was gifted for Christmas. Hauled the elliptical in from the barn too, no dogwalk for us today.

petulant, violent and deranged

The "straight line" is actually more than 500 years long, in Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland account.

"How did a great, sophisticated nation, one of the world's longest-standing republics, end up so fragile that it can be undone by one man's dementia? That's an important question, the answer to which I believe lies in the straight line from Bush vs Gore and the Roberts Supreme Court, to January 6th, to the execution of Renee Good. However, what's more important is that we realize where we are right now, that we don't try to sugarcoat and sanewash what's happening: A petulant, violent and deranged individual is running America."

Paul Krugman

https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/its-sundowning-in-america?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

Opening Day '26-first contact

 It's 12 degrees in middle Tennessee on the first day of the Spring semester. No matter. Spring means renewal and a fresh start, just like Opening Day in my favorite sporting pastime. Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in just a few weeks now.

I think these "first contact" days in academia, meeting bright-eyed eager young learners for the first time (they get younger every year, somehow), hearing who they think they are and why they're here and what they think philosophy is (et al) are what I'll miss most when I stop teaching.  Is this really going to be the penultimate year? We'll see. Meanwhile, I fully intend to enjoy today. 

I see that several more student introductions have surfaced on our course site since last night, before we've entered the classroom for the first time (starting at 9:40 this morning). Pleased to see that so many of the kids have responded to my challenge, when I said in my own intro that I worry about their generation not reading books. They're mentioning titles that are unfamiliar to me, mostly, and that's good. I do learn from them at least as much as they learn from me, when I remember to pay attention and make connection. George Saunders is right: "[W]riting and reading [and teaching and learning] is a way of simply underscoring that human connection is important, that you can know my mind and I can know yours, which is a vastly consoling idea, and we need it."

So here we go. Another fresh start. Tabula rasa time. My mentor John Lachs didnt quit 'til he was 87. I begin to understand why.

On MLK day, 2026

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."

“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

“Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”— Martin Luther King Jr.

Gifted an inscribed copy to 

Younger Daughter for xmas (two days ago)

"We can succeed only by concert. It is not "can any of us imagine better?" but, "can we all do better?" The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Abraham Lincoln in the 1862 annual address to Congress

"Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject."
John Stuart Mill
1867

Heroes. HCR

I have a dream, in living color

Connect

A good point to note, on the Spring semester's Opening Day tomorrow:

"But to me, it's becoming clear that writing and reading [and teaching and learning] is a way of simply underscoring that human connection is important, that you can know my mind and I can know yours, which is a vastly consoling idea, and we need it."

George Saunders Is No Saint (Despite What You May Have Heard),
NYT Magazine 1/18/2026

Complain!

"...Unless climate change, nuclear war, or both burn us to cinders entirely, humanity will stagger forth from this dreadful era, and once the dizziness has stopped will look back, and will condemn: and condemn us all, unless we did something – even just complain, but the complaint needs to be public and constantly iterated – to refuse to accept this vicious assault on the prospects of a better world." Anthony Grayling

https://open.substack.com/pub/acgrayling/p/pictures-from-an-exhibition?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

Or cones

Stitches come out Monday.

"You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know
that of all the sights I love in this world —
and there are plenty — very near the top of
the list is this one: dogs without leashes."
— Mary Oliver, Dogsongs

Biblio-patriotism

"So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut

WJS Newsletter – William James Society

Spring 2026 Newsletter

President's Message from Dr. Phil Oliver

LISTEN (audio file on Google Docs)

'Tis the season of William James's birth, in 1842.

By an odd twist of coincidence, January 11 happens also to be my wife's birthday. So it's a date I cannot and dare not ever forget.

The late great biographer Robert Richardson, noting the legendary James "family tradition" according to which Emerson blessed infant William, cautioned against attaching either too much or too little import to that mythic connection. It does seem too right to be true, but also too good not to be...

https://wjsociety.org/news/

Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato

Definitely planning, now, to discuss Plato's Symposium in my classes around Valentine's Day. What a moment we're living through! And what a platonic irony, as they're literally killing poets too.

… On Wednesday, as word of disputes like Dr. Peterson's spread, critics of the Texas A&M policies said free-speech clashes became inevitable after the board's moves. The College Station campus's chapter of the American Association of University Professors said the move against Dr. Peterson "raises serious legal concerns."

The group said its misgivings went beyond the Constitution.

"Silencing 2,500-year-old ideas from one of the world's most influential thinkers betrays the mission of higher education and denies students the opportunity to engage critically with the foundations of Western thought," the group said. "A research university that censors Plato abandons its obligation to truth, inquiry, and the public trust — and should not be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/tamu-plato-race-gender.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

'Who am I?' (etc.)-time yet again for introductions

It's a real treat, relatively late in an academic career, to teach a new course for the first time. I'll be doing that next semester with Existentialism, and this semester (beginning in less than two weeks now) with Philosophy in Recent American Fiction. I always ask my new students some basic Opening Day questions. Here are my own responses, this time:

*Who are you? - I'm the Prof, probably the oldest guy in the room (though that isn't always the case, in MALA classes). I've been teaching at MTSU for a quarter century, but this is the first time I've offered THIS course. My special interest is in American philosophy, particularly that of pragmatist William James. [And btw: I am current president of the William James Society.]

*Why are you here? - I'm at MTSU because they hired me, not long after the Belmont provost un-hired me when I expressed sympathy for the Unitarian Universalist credo ("guided by reason and inspired by love, we celebrate diversity, confront oppression, and promote environmental and social justice"). And in retrospect, I'm glad he did! I've been happy at MTSU (and teach a course called Philosophy of Happiness). I'm in Middle Tennessee because I came to Vanderbilt (from Mizzou) for grad school and liked it enough to stay.

*What's your definition of philosophy? - "An unusually stubborn attempt to think [and write and speak] clearly" in the pursuit of wisdom. (The quoted/un-bracketed bit is, naturally, from William James.)

*What are the best and the most recent novels you've read? What did you like/dislike about them? Did you find in them anything "philosophical," by your definition? - Most recent, and among the best, are those by the two Richards (Ford and Powers) we'll be reading. We'll get into my thoughts (and yours) concerning their relation to wisdom. Suffice for now to say that Ford's Frank Bascombe is a character I find amusing and occasionally wise, living his life in Periods (The Existence Period, The Permanent Period, etc.); and Powers's Playground touches on themes I find vitally relevant and potentially either an advance or a big setback for humanity: the environment, and Artificial Intelligence. It's too soon to tell about that, but it's pretty clear that we've got to address those issues effectively as individuals AND as a species, if we're to survive and flourish for long.

== 

 Postscript. Frank says things like:

• "For your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret. Though you must also manage to avoid it or your life will be ruined".
• "Maturity, as I conceived it, was recognizing what was bad or peculiar in life, admitting it has to stay that way, and going ahead with the best of things".
• "If you lose all hope, you can always find it again".
• "Love isn't a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts."

A day of infamy

 

Jan 6 now signifies surgery, for Nell (and Mom too), as well as insurrection. But this Jan 6 had a better outcome than in '21, even if Nell doesn't quite believe it yet. Substack

A Case for Beauty in a Fleeting World

We turn to art to make sense of a life that is heartbreakingly fragile.

"...Because the rest, as Shakespeare knew, is silence."

Margaret Renkl

New day

But history does matter. Make some more.