April 22, 2016 at 10:40 am
The knowledge that the personalities of the two sexes are socially produced is congenial to every programme that looks forward to a planned order of society. It is a two-edged sword that can be used to hew a more flexible, more varied society than the human race has ever built, or merely to cut a […]
April 22, 2016 at 10:18 am
‘Like’ and ‘like’ and ‘like’ — but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing? now that lightning has gashed the tree and the flowering branch has fallen and Percival, by his death, has made me this gift, let me see the thing. There is a square; there is an oblong. […]
August 5, 2014 at 5:20 pm
These “Analects of Professor Nelson” were recorded during class discussion by Core student Matthew Spencer, and published in The Journal of the Core Curriculum, Vol. IX, Spring 2000: The Professor said of Rousseau’s Confessions, “Boy, it’s so nitty, and it’s so gritty!” Only then did Matthew understand. When Matthew thought he really understood Rousseau, the Professor said, […]
August 21, 2013 at 9:00 am
Today’s analect relates to CC203’s study of the foundation of social sciences: Propitious circumstances and good laws might succeed in drawing to the legislature of a democratic people men very superior to those who are returned by the Americans to Congress ; but nothing will ever prevent the men of slender abilities who sit there […]
August 20, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Today’s analect was inspired by Core alumni Tim Martinez (Core ’07-’09, CAS ’11) with reference to the study of Evolution and Society occurring in CC203, which Tim marks as one of his favorite courses he’s taken here at BU. Since taking it, he’s maintained a strong interest in Sociology, but has persisted in his IR […]
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
