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

Shelley

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.

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…

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

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

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

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.

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.

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…