OK, as I mentioned in class, I've been very disappointed with Blogspot, which I've been using far more extensively with my IT3 class. I spent an entire week experimenting with various sites and I have finally found one that should work well for us, WordPress. Below is a link to the new site, click on it and you'll be taken to the new site directly. We'll be using the WordPress site throughout the remainder of the semester. Go there to get all your readings. This site will be retired after our next meeting. The move to WordPress should not confuse anyone, since we've hardly used any blog at all so far this semester, but accept my apologies if it does.

http://didascalos.wordpress.com/

Real Men Study Law and Engineering, while Ideas and Values are for Sissies.

From one of the most distinguished and celebrated intellectuals of our day, literary scholar and philosopher Terry Eagleton:

The Death of Universities

Academia has become a servant of the status quo.

Its malaise runs so much deeper than tuition fees

Terry Eagleton

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 17 December 2010

Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question is absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear from pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.

Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The quickest way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether – is to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name. The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.

(read full article)

Readings - Week One - Set One

Hi,

Please read both of these pieces and come to class prepared to discuss them. Remember, it may help you in a number of ways to write down questions before class. It will make reading at home and speaking in class both easier and more productive. Good luck accessing these materials and learning to use the journal. Let me know if you have any troubles.

Frances Yates

"The Art of Memory" (1966)

Mary Carruthers

The Book of Memory (1992)

THIS IS THE PLACE!

This is the place where I will post our readings this semester. You can also use the blog to keep in touch with me, and ask questions and comment on assigned texts. Blogspot is easy and fun to use. I know many of you will take right to it, whereas it will be new and intimidating for others. The more you follow and utilize this form, the better you will get to know my ways of thinking and my expectations regarding your work, the more help and guidance you will receive, and the more you will learn.

To follow DIDASCALICON just click the option above and to the left in the transparent toolbar.

I have used blogs with great success in variety of courses over the last seven years. It has been an tremendous resource for both my students and me. You will be amazed at how much you will learn - from me, your peers, and yourself - if you will check this site regularly and treat it not just as a task but as an expressive artistic medium, a vehicle through which to think in new and exciting ways.

Please, don't allow yourself to become anxious about writing here. I've designed this as a place to diffuse anxieties and to get to know my expectations gradually, long before it's time to write a paper. Using Blogspot really is not very hard at all, and becomes increasingly fun once you get that hang of it.

Finally, for those who want a standing means to access to the syllabus, here is a link to it. You will be held responsible for its contents and I would recommend reviewing it throughout the semester.

Best wishes,

Brian

Friends

Most of us, sadly, will never know.

But if life itself is good and pleasant (which it seems to be, from the very fact that all men desire it, and particularly those who are good and supremely happy; for to such men life is most desirable, and their existence is the most supremely happy) and if he who sees perceives that he sees, and he who hears, that he hears, and he who walks, that he walks, and in the case of all other activities similarly there is something which perceives that we are active, so that if we perceive, we perceive that we perceive, and if we think, that we think; and if to perceive that we perceive or think is to perceive that we exist (for existence was defined as perceiving or thinking); and if perceiving that one lives is in itself one of the things that are pleasant (for life is by nature good, and to perceive what is good present in oneself is pleasant); and if life is desirable, and particularly so for good men, because to them existence is good and pleasant for they are pleased at the consciousness of the presence in them of what is in itself good); and if as the virtuous man is to himself, he is to his friend also (for his friend is another self):-if all this be true, as his own being is desirable for each man, so, or almost so, is that of his friend. Now his being was seen to be desirable because he perceived his own goodness, and such perception is pleasant in itself. He needs, therefore, to be conscious of the existence of his friend as well, and this will be realized in their living together and sharing in discussion and thought; for this is what living together would seem to mean in the case of man, and not, as in the case of cattle, feeding in the same place.

Aristotle, On The Soul

This dialogue, proposed to Jacques Derrida by the historian Elisabeth Roudinesco, brings together two longtime friends who share a common history and an intellectual heritage. While their perspectives are often different, they have many common reference points: psychoanalysis, above all, but also the authors and works that have come to be known outside France as “post-structuralist.”

Beginning with a revealing glance back at the French intellectual scene over the past forty years, Derrida and Roudinesco go on to address a number of major social and political issues. Their extraordinarily wide-ranging discussion covers topics such as immigration, hospitality, gender equality, and “political correctness”; the disordering of the traditional family, same-sex unions, and reproductive technologies; the freedom of the “subject” over and against “scientism”; violence against animals; the haunting specter of communism and revolution; the present and future of anti-Semitism (as well as that which marked Derrida’s own history) and the hazardous politics of criticizing the state of Israel; the principled abolition of the death penalty; and, to conclude, a chapter “in praise of psychoanalysis.”

These exchanges not only help to situate Derrida's thought within the milieu out of which it grew, they also show more clearly than ever how this thought, impelled by a deep concern for justice, can be brought to bear on the social and political issues of our day. What emerges here above all, far from an abstract, apolitical discourse, is a call to take responsibility—for the inheritance of a past, for the singularities of the present, and for the unforeseeable tasks of the future.