Tagged: philosophy

Humanists at the Santa Fe Institute

Professor Daniel Hudon (Core Natural Sciences) writes… What’s the best kind of conversation to have, with those who share your views or those who don’t? If you want to have anything beyond a mutually agreeing chat, then you’re going to want to seek out interlocutors who don’t share your views because they’re the ones who […]

Philosophy as civic education in Brazil

Erin McDonagh (Core ’08, CAS ’10), a member of the EnCore steering committee, writes: In this article by Carlos Fraenkel of Boston Review, we learn that Brazil’s public education policy has surprising stipulation: According to a 2008 law, students are required to study philosophy for three years in high school. The law is a political […]

Analects of the Core: Rousseau on the social contract

The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mind and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the […]

Analects of the Core: Beauvoir on female sexuality

Sexual initiation!  Not to be mentioned in our house! . . . I hunted in books, but wore myself out without finding the road. . . . For my schoolteacher the question did not seem to exist. . . . A book finally showed me the truth, and my overexcitement disappeared; but I was most […]

Should virtue be pleasurable?

In his lecture last week for CC102 on Aristotle’s concept of virtue, Prof. David Bronstein made a fascinating point about Aristotle’s understanding of the relationship between virtue and pleasure. Prof. Bronstein explains: Does it feel good to be virtuous? Hear what Aristotle has to say: We may even go so far as to state that […]

The Examined Life is Rarely Worth Living?

The Economist summarizes a new book by James Miller,  Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, wherein he explores the troubled lives of some of the world’s most famous philosophers.  He proposes that the pursuit of philosophical questions, wrought with uncertainty and self-questioning, has led to similarly unfortunately troubled lives: If one wanted to compile a […]

Analects of the Core: Descartes on plausible philosophy

Je ne dirai rien de la philosophie, sinon que, voyant qu’elle a été cultivée par les plus excellents esprits qui aient vécu depuis plusieurs siècles, et que néanmoins il ne s’y trouve encore aucune chose dont on ne dispute, et par conséquent qui ne soit douteuse, je n’avois point assez de présomption pour espérer d’y […]