Category: Analects

Analects of the Core: Cervantes on sleep

Dedicated to all sleep-deprived Core students and faculty preparing their battlements for the approaching finals’ week, and relating to the work of CC201, here is today’s analect from Cervantes’ Don Quixote: All I know is that while I’m asleep, I’m never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories — and bless the man […]

Analects of the Core: Locke on the harm of intemperance

Relating to temperance, and the work of John Locke studied in CC203, here is today’s analect: For esteem and reputation being a sort of moral strength, whereby a man is enabled to do, as it were, by an augmented force, that which others, of equal natural parts and natural power, cannot do without it; he […]

Analects of the Core: Homer on sleep’s regenerative power

As a tribute to all sleep-deprived Core students and faculty near the semester’s end, here is today’s analect in celebration of Sleep’s regenerative power: A man in a distant field, no hearthfires near, will hide a fresh brand in his bed of embers to keep a spark alive for the next day; so in the […]

Analects of the Core: Lane on hunger prolonging life

Expanding further on the works studied in CC106, here is the next analect from Nick Lane’s Life Ascending: The Great Inventions of Evolution: We may not enjoy the fact much, but we’ve recognized since the early 1920’s that going moderately hungry prolongs life. It’s called calorie restriction. Rats fed a balanced diet, but with about […]

Analects of the Core: Diamond on the Greenland Norse

From a book that sometimes plays a part in CC106, Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, here is today’s analect: The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick […]

Analects of the Core: Descartes on quality in the flame

Relating to the reading that the students of CC201 have done on Descartes’ work, here is today’s analect: Although in approaching the flame I feel heat, and even though in approaching it a little too closely I feel pain, there is still no reason that can convince me that there is some quality in the […]

Analects of the Core: Homer on ruling the dead

Yesterday’s analect from Paradise Lost can be contrasted with today’s choice: By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead. (The Odyssey, 11.556-8)  

Analects of the Core: Milton on reigning in Hell

Professor Ricks lectured today on John Milton’s Paradise Lost. From this spawns today’s analect: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n” (Paradise Lost, Book 1, 258-263).

Analects of the Core: Malinowski on exchange and reciprocity

In view of Professor Barfield’s lecture on 11/29 about Malinowski’s notions of exchange and reciprocity, here is today’s analect: Apart from any consideration as to whether the gifts are necessary or even useful, giving for the sake of giving is one of the most important features of Trobriand sociology, and, from its very general and […]

Analects of the Core: Engels on revolution

But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the […]