November 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm
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)
November 27, 2012 at 5:11 pm
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).
November 26, 2012 at 3:00 pm
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 [...]
August 1, 2012 at 9:51 am
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 [...]
From Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan: Aristotle and other heathen philosophers define good and evil by the appetite of men; and well enough, as long as we consider them governed every one by his own law. For int eh condition of me that have no other law but their own appetites, there can be no general rule [...]
March 6, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Well, that’s Philosophy I’ve read, / And Law and Medicine, and I fear / Theology, too, from A to Z; / Hard studies all, that have cost me dear. / And so I sit, poor silly man / No wiser now than when I began. [Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, / Juristerey und Medicin, / Und [...]
November 8, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Stephen Fry’s BBC mini-series “Fry’s Planet Word” discusses The Odyssey: “Homer’s genius was to create vivid, archetypal scenes that transcended time and place. The Sirens episode is only a few paragraphs long, yet has become embedded in our collective memory.” Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W4i6sWCbk0&t=8m22s
October 28, 2011 at 9:34 am
In view of Prof. Fred Kleiner’s lecture this Tuesday on the art and politics of the Greek Acropolis, this week’s analects all concern the Athenian Parthenon. The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins. – Henry David Thoreau
October 27, 2011 at 9:59 am
In view of Prof. Fred Kleiner’s lecture this Tuesday on the art and politics of the Greek Acropolis, this week’s analects all concern the Athenian Parthenon. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon as the best gem among her zone. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
October 26, 2011 at 12:33 pm
In view of Prof. Fred Kleiner’s lecture this Tuesday on the art and politics of the Greek Acropolis, this week’s analects all concern the Athenian Parthenon. Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments we have left. Men of the future will wonder at us, as all men do today. – Pericles
