Philosophy Reading Group Update

We are cancelling the May 7th meeting, but will meet on the first Thursday of June, which is the 4th at 7pm, Gallery Room, Park Campus.  We will be reading two chapters from The Brothers Karamazov.  The links are for “Rebellion”:   http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dostoyevsky/d72b/chapter35.html  and for “The Grand Inquisitor” (the following chapter):  http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dostoyevsky/d72b/chapter36.html

A brief abstract of The Brothers Karamazov  runs:                                               The major plot lines of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov follow the moral development of the Karamazov brothers, Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov. All of the brothers are, to some extent, portrayed as torn between reason and faith, a divide that echoes throughout Dostoevsky’s later work. The chapters “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor” elaborate a challenge against a belief in religious faith and morality which Dostoevsky attempts to answer through the beliefs of his characters and the effects of their beliefs on their lives. The Brothers Karamazov as a whole can thus be read as an indirect response to the challenge of the ‘Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.’

Please feel free to post comments on the reading.   Look forward to an enthusiastic response to these two great chapters,                                        Shelley

Philosophy Society cancellation

After careful consideration due to weather conditions, the Philosophy Society reading group will be cancelled this month.  The next meeting will be Thursday 5th March.  You now have an extra month to pore over The Prince.

Shelley

Next month’s reading for the philosophy group

The reading group is getting livelier each time we meet.  Enthusiastic discussions, sometimes on the reading sometimes not, are now becoming louder than the music from the SU Bar.  Last night we talked about Emerson and Thoreau and Bartleby.  Why did Melville have to find a cause/reason for the oddity of Bartleby?  Did Melville really have sympathy for transcendentalists or is Bartleby a mockery?  I personally think that he tried to find a person who matched what the Idealists described as a Transcendentalist and came up with Bartleby.  Perhaps Bartleby isn’t a criticism but an affirmation.  Anyhow, I’d prefer not to continue with this at the moment.

FOR NEXT MONTH we will be reading Machiavelli’s, The Prince.  You may have to buy this book although you can get it online for free.  It is a novella and may be difficult to read from the screen.  It is sure to raise an active response from our fellows in the philosophy group. 

“Among the most original thinkers of the Renaissance is a brilliant and slightly tragic figure, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527). Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, his name would be synonymous with deviousness, cruelty, and willfully destructive rationality; no thinker was every so demonized or misunderstood than Machiavelli. The source of this misunderstanding is his most influential and widely read treatise on government, The Prince, a remarkably short book that attempts to lay out methods to secure and maintain political power.” 

Any questions, please contact Shelley Campbell s0510427.  And please feel free to comment.

Philosophical Thought Blog

I would say that this is a shameless plug… but there is a bit of me that is slightly embarrassed – though obviously not enough to prevent me from doing it! – but I have started a new blog, primarily for my own philosophical thoughts and ruminations.

There isn’t a lot on there at the moment but in case you are interested and use an rss feed such as google reader, then the address can be found at:

http://philosophicalthought.wordpress.com

or you can visit through my own website: emilyryall.net

…okay, so it is a shameless plug… I’m just in need of philosophical discussion that’s all… it’s difficult being stuck in the sports department without anyone to talk to…

Update on The Philosophy Society

Hello All,

This is the blog that Emily set up last year for the philosophy reading group.  We can form a discussion by posting feedback on the literature we are currently reading or from earlier meetings. 

At our last meeting, we had a lively and enthusiastic response to Paul Caddle’s introduction of two Paradoxes:  Newcomb’s Problem and Prisoners’ Paradox.  Thank you to Paul for leading the last meeting.

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, 8th January 2009 in The Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus.  We decided to read the short story ”Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville and “The Transcendentalist” by Emerson.  Emerson’s essay inspired Melville to write Bartleby.

Both books are available  from the Learning Centre, or here are some links:

Text for Bartleby:

http://www.bartleby.com/129/

Or, if you prefer the audio version, which runs about 90 minutes:

http://www.archive.org/details/bartleby_scrivener_1107_librivox

And, Emerson’s essay:

http://www.textfiles.com/etext/AUTHORS/EMERSON/emerson-transcendentalist-239.txt

Bartleby the

 

Scrivener a

 

Story of

 

Wall-Street

by Professor Herman Melville

About this title: Melville’s brief, allegorical tragicomedy, originally published in two issues of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in 1853, is the tale of an obscure clerk in a law office on Wall Street. Bartleby’s implacable passivity, expressed in his constant iteration of the phrase “I prefer not to,” has a strange effect on those with whom he comes in contact. BARTLEBY is one of Melville’s most appealing and enduring works.

Please post any comments you may have from the reading.  If you have any questions contact Shelley s0510427.

                

Update on the Philosophy Society

We had a good turnout for our firsting meeting as The Philosophy Society. Jess prepared some excellent minutes which I will email to those on the mailing list. If you are not on the mailing list and would like to be, let me know and I will add your name. My student number is s0510427.

We had an enthusiastic round of idea spinning for this year’s reading agenda. Both Dawkins and Dostoyevsky were suggested again. Most thought it would be a good idea to take a subject and find two differing theories to discuss the subject. Following from that idea we decided to repeat the reading set for the first session, as people had missed the links and were unprepared for discussion.

The short story “The Assembly Line” by the writer B. Traven:

http://academics.triton.edu/uc/traven.html

The article by Milton Friedman discussing “the business of business is business”:

https://webmail.glos.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html

If you have the time (it is 20 minutes) have a look at this smart video. It is worth a look because it throws another light onto Friedman’s claim that corporate activity must not be controlled by politicians. Friedman may be right, but this video claims that, far from being controlled by politicians, current corporate activity is instead the controller:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMJ32-xp64

Our meetings are always the first Thursday of the month. The next one will be at 7pm, the 6th of November, in the Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Shelley

Philosophy Reading Group News

Hello to all,

The summer has seen an upgrade to the philosophy reading group.  The group is now formally a university ‘society’ – ‘The Philosophy Society’ – and has a university venue – The Gallery Room above the SU at the Park Campus.  Meetings will be on the first Thursday of each month beginning in October 2008.  The first Thursday of October is the 2nd, hmmmm, I will confirm later whether it will be the 2nd or the 9th.  We will have a stand at the Freshers’ Fayre to introduce ourselves and recruit new members.  Would anyone like to man the stall with me?  Maybe you will get to wear ‘A Philosophy Society’-T-shirt ….. 

Hopefully our new venue will encourage lively discussion of philosophical concerns in literature.  Books read last year included works by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Tom Stoppard and Sartre.  Our first meeting will brainstorm books for the ’08-’09 year.  All contributions are very welcome.

Please contact me with any queries or ideas.  My email is s0510427@glos.ac.uk

Look on the blog for any updates – keep in touch – volunteer for the Fayre ….. until then, 

Shelley Campbell

Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

We seem to be keeping along Russian lines with another work by Tolstoy for our next reading. This time it will be his classic work: Anna Karenina, a novel illustrating the lives of the 19th centry Russian elite, yet interpreted as a parable about living an authentic life in a society that accepts falseness.

Here is the synopsis from the Literature Network:

“Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, Anna Karenina is Tolstoy’s classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures a breathtaking tapestry of late-nineteenth-century Russian society.

Set in nineteenth century Russia, this masterpiece illustrates the pressure of living up to the expectations and quota of an unforgiving society and the personal choices individuals face which alter their destinies. A read which leaves the responder unable to forget the lessons taught; it gives true meaning to learning from other people’s experiences and mistakes. A guide which leads by example in demonstrating the challenges one faces in the pursuit of happiness and contentment and the gruelling outcomes of what some of these choices produce.“

We thought that we would attempt this book over two meetings, so we will go through the first volume at our next meeting and will discuss the second volume in the following meeting.

Due to the Easter break, our next meeting will be Tuesday 8th April.

Tolstoy – Two short works

Our next reading is two short works by Leo Tolstoy; A Confession and ‘The Three Hermits’ from Twenty-Three Tales.

Both can be found online if you don’t want to buy the text: http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tolstoy/confession.html
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TolTale.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public∂=12&division=div2

The next meeting will be on Tuesday March 4th at 6pm.

The Double

Our Christmas reading is to be Dostoevsky’s ‘The Double’.

This is the description on Amazon:

“The Double is a remarkable tale in the tradition of doppelgänger literature. As Dostoevsky examines the neurosis and paranoia that cripple a seemingly ordinary man, he produces a thoroughly ‘modern’ nightmare, brilliantly foreshadowing the works of Kafka and Sartre. Mr Golyadkin is a rather middling man, a somewhat insignificant government official. Then one day he meets his ‘double’ – a man with the same name, face and background. Initially charmed by the co-incidence, Golyadkin soon notices a discernable cooling in the reaction of his friends and colleagues towards him, whilst his double seems to grow in popularity. Unable to escape the relentless presence of ‘Golyadkin junior’, suddenly even the most ordinary activities – going shopping, attending parties – take on a terrifying significance, and Golyadkin finds himself on the brink of breakdown.”

Due to the Christmas and New Year break, our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 5th February 2008. Time and place to be confirmed…