Teachers love thank-you notes from students; they, along with great classroom interactions with students, are easily the highlights of our careers. Here is one I received recently, which as a teacher of philosophy, I will particularly treasure–because it cuts to the heart of the enterprise I take myself to be engaged in. It comes fromContinue reading “A Thank-You Note This Philosophy Teacher Will Treasure”
Tag Archives: existentialism
Dostoyevsky on Donald Trump And The 2016 Elections
Yesterday, I spent part of a gloomy, overcast day in the CUNY Graduate Center library, preparing for my classes today. In particular, I prepared for my class on existentialism by reading, yet again, Dostoyevsky‘s Notes From Underground. As I read sitting next to a large window, I heard chants emanating upward from Fifth Avenue; IContinue reading “Dostoyevsky on Donald Trump And The 2016 Elections”
Nikolai Berdayev On Philosophy’s Therapeutic Function
In Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (Macmillan, 1950) Nikolai Berdayev writes: It has been said that ‘green is the tree of life and grey the theory of life.’ Paradoxical though it may seem, I am inclined to think that the reverse is true: ‘grey is the tree of life and green the theory thereof.’…What isContinue reading “Nikolai Berdayev On Philosophy’s Therapeutic Function”
The Shock Of The New (Entry On A Class Reading List)
Teaching a new entrant on a class reading list is always a fraught business. It is especially so when the entrant is a well-established member of analogous canons and you have come late to the game. You are dimly aware you’ve ‘neglected a classic,’ and thus rendered your education–in several dimensions–incomplete; you are well awareContinue reading “The Shock Of The New (Entry On A Class Reading List)”
A Literary Semester To Look Forward To
This fall semester, I will teach three classes; all feature literary components. They are: ‘Political Philosophy,’ ‘Philosophical Issues in Literature,’ and ‘Existentialism.’ The following are their course descriptions: Political Philosophy: Shakespeare and Political Theory In this class, we will read Shakespeare’s famous ‘history plays’—Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II, Henry V–as political theoryContinue reading “A Literary Semester To Look Forward To”
The Most Valuable Philosophical Lesson Of All
I’m often asked–by non-academics, natch–if anything in my philosophical education has been of value to me in the conduct of my lived life. I have found this question hard to answer in the terms my interlocutors demand, largely because is because posed to me in what I call ‘lock-key’ form: is there a lock youContinue reading “The Most Valuable Philosophical Lesson Of All”
Kōbō Abe’s ‘Woman in The Dunes’ And The Scientist’s Existentialist Despair
Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes wears and displays its existentialist, absurdist aspirations openly and transparently; this is its terse Wikipedia summation: In 1955, Jumpei Niki, a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led, by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a houseContinue reading “Kōbō Abe’s ‘Woman in The Dunes’ And The Scientist’s Existentialist Despair”
Simone Beauvoir On Psychotherapeutic Healing As Mutilation
In Simone de Beauvoir‘s The Mandarins (WW Norton, New York, 1954; 1999, pp. 64), Anne Dubreuilh, a practicing psychoanalyst wonders: Why does healing so often mean mutilating? What value does personal adjustment have in an unjust society?….My objective isn’t to give my patients a false feeling of inner peace; if I seek to deliver them from their personalContinue reading “Simone Beauvoir On Psychotherapeutic Healing As Mutilation”
Straight Trippin’: Sartre, Mescaline, Nausea, Crabs
In a previous post, I had wondered whether Jean-Paul Sartre‘s description of Roquentin’s ‘vision in the park’ in Nausea was an indication of psychedelic experiences in Sartre’s past:
On Failing In Our Own Style
In Flaubert’s Parrot (Vintage International, New York, 1990, pp. 39) Julian Barnes writes: But then Ed Winterton liked to present himself as a failure…. His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore toContinue reading “On Failing In Our Own Style”
Samir Chopra 