anotherpanacea

Tag: Beings and Doings

  • Typologies of Philosophical Personalities

    There’s a somewhat disused trend of identifying philosophical methods or schools by the personalities required for them. I associate this with Karl Jaspers’s Psychology of Worldviews and Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity, but there are precursor typologies in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and William James. It largely fell by the wayside in the second half of the twentieth…

  • Snark Polemics and Contrite Fallibilism

    Most people who know me in person would at least consider using the term “snarky” in their description of me, which is why John Barnes’ polemic against “snark” troubled me so:  It’s a currently fashionable powerful rhetorical weapon that allows the uninvolved and the never-to-be-involved to discredit people who do, or attempt – anything at…

  • Testing Jetpack Comment Plugin

    I’ve been dissatisfied with Intense Debate, and I’m trying to see if Jetpack’s comment plugin works better. Please enjoy “Batman Maybe” while testing continues: UPDATE: Testing is complete, but enjoyment of “Call Me Maybe” parodies may continue.

  • Academically Adrift: How a First-Year Seminar Can Get the Academy Back on Course

    What follows is a proposal I’ve been working on to convince my university to switch from its General Education requirements to a first-year seminary, given the data in Academically Adrift. Executive Summary The best research available suggests that courses with demanding reading and writing requirements are the only way to teach the core competencies required…

  • Arendt’s 1964 Lecture on Cybernetics

    [This is an uncorrected transcription of some remarks Hannah Arendt gave to the first annual Conference on the Cybercultural Revolution. I’ve copied it from the Library of Congress, here. Notice that her concerns with the end of work are quite strong in these remarks. Her comments on the necessity of a social safety net in a…

  • New Rules

    I’m thinking of adding rules and a FAQ to my syllabi. Thoughts? Read More. Write More. Think More. Be More. Do the homework and come to class. [Woody Allen has said that “80 percent of success is showing up.” But be sure to show up for your homework, too; there will be approximately two hours…