Philosophy 599: Creative Demcracies (Spring 2007)
a culture of humiliation: Zizek, shame, and what does it mean to be American?
Today was the first meeting of Gottlieb’s “Theory after 9/11″ Seminar. During class we read Slavoj Zizek’s In These Times article What Rumsfeld Doesn’t Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib. Zizek argues that despite the claims of the media and Bush administration that the humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not symbolic of [...]
what do we mean by liberty?
In his 2005 essay “Liberating ‘Liberatory’ Education, or What Do We mean by ‘Liberty’ Anyway?“, Jeffrey Ringer critiques the work of critical pedagogues in composition who do not reflect critically on their use of the concept of liberty. He writes that his “central concern [...] deals with the way in which North Americans have habitualized [...]
is democracy inherently good?
Yesterday in Creative Democracy Professor Orosco asked us to write and share our ideas on two questions. It hadn’t occurred to me to blog about this, but then Luke did, so I thought I’d go ahead and type up what I wrote about and a bit of a reflection. Orosco’s two questions: 1) Is democracy [...]
TagCrowd
Anne-Marie Deitering (OSU Valley Library) is (at this very moment!) doing her presentation for Writing Intensive Curriculum, titled “Read, Write, Share: Emerging Technologies in the Writing Classroom.” She just showed us TagCrowd, which is amazing. I just pasted in a paper I turned in this morning, and here is the tagcloud for the paper (it’s [...]
Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty, Chapter 3
Josiah Royce, in Chapter 3 of The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908), argues that in order to be a moral person, one must chose to be loyal to causes that do not infringe upon other people’s loyalty to their causes — that is, one must be loyal to loyalty — and that all virtues are forms [...]
599 Summary: Emerson’s Fortune of the Republic
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in “Fortune of the Republic“ (1863), argues that “morality is the object of government“ (204) and that forms of government are not the end goal. He does this through a discussion of the Civil War effort, by discussing the need for a “superior source“ (188) — that of morality — to social [...]
what a barbarous world we live in
I’m not a huge fan of Emerson, but this is the sixth of seven essays of his that I’ll be reading for weeks 1 and 2 of this quarter. He often leaves me lost and not sure of what I just read, but his essay “American Civilization” is fairly clear in its assertions, and I [...]
