December 3, 2010 at 12:30 pm
In anticipation of the debate on democracy being presented in CC101, consider this point made by Aristotle in Politics: In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. Is there any way this can be critiqued? Offer your […]
December 2, 2010 at 7:34 am
In honor of CC203’s examination of the seminal ethnography by Bronislaw Malinowski: The time when we could tolerate accounts presenting us the native as a distorted, childish caricature of a human being are gone. This picture is false, and like many other falsehood, it has been killed by Science. – Argonauts of the Western Pacific
December 1, 2010 at 5:19 pm
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 […]
November 30, 2010 at 5:52 pm
In a narrow circuit strait’n’d by a Foe, Subtle or violent, we not endu’d Single with like defence, wherever met, How are we happy, still in fear of harm? But harm preceeds not sin: only our Foe Tempting affronts us with his foul esteem Of our integrity Today’s analect — suggested by Sarah Cole (Core […]
November 29, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Tomorrow afternoon, the students of CC201 will attend a lecture by Prof. Michael Zell on the art of Dutch master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. In acknowledgment of this artful inclusion of painting in the second-year Humanities, today’s Analect — suggested by Tom Farndon (Core ’10, CAS ’12) — is an image rather than a text […]
November 24, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Marriage of man and wife is Fate itself, stronger than oaths, and Justice guards its life. But if one destroys the other and you relent — no revenge, not a glance in anger — then I say your manhunt of Orestes is unjust. — Apollo addressing the Leader, in Aeschylus’s Eumenides, the final play in […]
November 22, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Liken the domain revealed through sight to the prison home, and the light of the fire in it to the sun’s power; and, in applying the going up and the seeing of what’s above to the soul’s journey up to the intelligible place… A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all […]
November 19, 2010 at 4:19 pm
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. — from Paradise Lost by John Milton, Book I, ll. 254-5. Today’s analect was suggested by Tom Farndon (Core ’10, CAS/SMG ’12), who writes: “The Core reminds us that perception is our most powerful tool, endowing […]
November 18, 2010 at 5:50 pm
-A lo que yo imagino—dijo don Quijote—, no hay historia humana en el mundo que no tenga sus altibajos, especialmente las que tratan de caballerías, las cuales nunca pueden estar llenas de prósperos sucesos. -Con todo eso—respondió el bachiller—, dicen algunos que han leído la historia que se holgaran se les hubiera olvidado a los […]
November 17, 2010 at 12:08 pm
On the relationship between religious faith and knowledge: Knowledge does not have the destructive power with which it is credited, but it is the only weapon that allows us to struggle against the dissolution from which it itself results. It is not by gagging science that one may restore authority to vanished traditions; we shall […]
