Knock yourself out
Shadowboxing–
Skull numb, mouth dry–
Blind the mind’s eye
Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog: Geach sings about Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein
Save the Gnu’s Room! (Local Plea)
I have sometimes mentioned the Gnu’s Room here, a non-profit arts/bookstore/coffeeshop that is the epicenter of much that is worthwhile in Auburn. The Philosophy Department series, Philosophy at the Gnu’s Room, takes place there and has for the last three years or more. Now the Gnu’s Room, despite all its good works, is having financial trouble. If you have a connection to the place and would like to see it continue to exist, go to Kickstarter and pledge something, even if just a couple of dollars. You can also find out more about the Gnu’s Room, its current predicament, and its future plans on the site.
A Poetry session at the Gnu’s Room. I am lurking in the back, insofar as someone as big as a barn can ever be said to ‘lurk’.
Vice, the Absolute Effector of Infelicity
From a translator’s note to Plutarch’s “Whether Vice is Sufficient to Render a Man Unhappy”:
Our author having, in the beginning, describ’d the misery of a covetous person, and of a courtier, adds, in the prosecution of his principle design, that Vice is the absolute effector of infelicity, having need of no instruments or servants, to render a man miserable; whence he collects, that there is no danger or calamity which we ought not rather to choose, than to be vicious.
Happy Birthday, Neil Finn! (Video)
It is Neil Finn’s birthday (Split Enz, Croweded House). Here he is covering Hunters and Collectors great song, “Throw Your Arms Around Me”.
The Slow Cure
Wittgenstein says somewhere (Culture and Value?) that in philosophy, the slow cure is all-important. Why is that? Is it because of the way in which philosophical problems involve our will as well as our intellect, and that a change of heart requires rehabilitation, rehabituation, a reorientation of our feelings, –something that takes more time than a change of mind would take? Otherwise, why take it slow? You’d need only the time it takes to consider the conclusion in light of the argument.
There and Back Again Again
I am now home, after getting home Sunday (flight problems left us grounded a night in Amsterdam), sleeping, driving to the beach, listening to papers, giving my urban sprawling what-the-hell? essay on Sellars, listening to papers, driving back home, and finally really and truly getting home. I am now back in my office, prepping to begin the Seven Deadly Sins. I am tired–but not complaining. It’s been a wonderful and exhausting month. Good to be home again again.
Look Homeward, Look Back
It is about time for us to leave Bordeaux. We fly back home tomorrow. I then head almost immediately to a conference on Early Analytic Epistemology, a conference at which I present an essay on Sellars I have been struggling with for quite a while, but which shows very little evidence of that fact (I fear).
When I return from that conference, I begin teaching my usual summer course on the Seven Deadly Sins. I enjoy that course and look forward to it.
I have gotten a chance to talk a lot here with my friend, Jean-Phillippe Narboux, a wonderful man and wonderful philosopher. We’ve spent some hours reading Merleau-Ponty together–those hours were very rewarding. I also met and got to talk at some length with Joseph Urbas, who teaches American Literature here, and is writing these days on Emerson and Thoreau. It was good to talk about Emerson again–it has been a while for me–and Joseph makes a most rewarding interlocutor.
I thank both of them. I also thank the folks who attended my papers and asked questions. The papers will be better because of those questions.
Goodbye, Bordeaux, and thanks again!
With Montaigne Far Above Me (Photo)
Bordeaux May 2013
Quantum Est In Rebus Inane 