Joni Mitchell’s Application for a Tenure Track Philosophy Position

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Image by Asy­lum Records (Bill­board page 2) [Pub­lic domain], via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michael Stipe has a teach­ing gig at NYU. Lyn­da Bar­ry has one at UW-Madi­son. Sun Ra gave a clas­sic lec­ture at UC-Berke­ley. So why can’t we imag­ine Joni Mitchell land­ing a job at a uni­ver­si­ty too? That’s what Jedidi­ah Ander­son did, when he wrote a satir­i­cal piece over at McSweeney’s called “Joni Mitchell Applies for a Tenure Track Phi­los­o­phy Posi­tion.” It begins:

Dear Search Com­mit­tee:

I am apply­ing for the posi­tion of Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in Phi­los­o­phy. I am an advanced doc­tor­al can­di­date in Phi­los­o­phy (with minors in Urban Stud­ies and Eng­lish), and expect to defend my dis­ser­ta­tion in May, 2015.

My dis­ser­ta­tion, Both Sides Now applies a bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis to the phe­nom­e­non that is described by the sig­ni­fi­er “clouds.” Hav­ing been con­sti­tut­ed in West­ern dis­course both pos­i­tive­ly as “rows and flows of angel hair,” “ice cream cas­tles in the air,” “feath­er canyons every­where,” and neg­a­tive­ly as objects that exist sole­ly to obscure the sun, express rain and snow, and hin­der the achieve­ment of var­i­ous goals, we can con­clude that after the appli­ca­tion of this bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis that due to these con­tra­dic­to­ry “up” and “down” epis­te­molo­gies of cloud tropes, the real­i­ty of clouds is some­how still under­stud­ied, hav­ing been ignored in favor of their Pla­ton­ic form/sign, and that we real­ly don’t “know” clouds at all.

You can read the rest of her “appli­ca­tion” here and then spend the evening dream­ing about tak­ing Joni’s class­es on Pla­to, Exis­ten­tial­ism, and Urban Devel­op­ment. I know I will.

You can find more great Joni Mitchell mate­r­i­al below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

How Did Everything Begin?: Animations on the Origins of the Universe Narrated by X‑Files Star Gillian Anderson

Back in Novem­ber, we brought you the BBC series of short ani­mat­ed videos, A His­to­ry of Ideas. Pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UK’s Open Uni­ver­si­ty and nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er, these fun intro­duc­tions to such philoso­phers as Simone de Beau­voir and Edmund Burke, and such weighty philo­soph­i­cal top­ics as free will and the prob­lem of evil, make chal­leng­ing, abstract con­cepts acces­si­ble to non-philoso­phers. Now the series is back with a new chap­ter, “How Did Every­thing Begin?,” a sur­vey of sev­er­al the­o­ries of the ori­gins of the uni­verse, from Thomas Aquinas’ philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions, to Hin­du cos­mol­o­gy; and from the­olo­gian William Paley’s design argu­ment (below), and the the­o­ry of the Big Bang (above).

The two videos here present an inter­est­ing coun­ter­point between the ori­gin the­o­ries of astro­physics and the­ol­o­gy. Though cur­rent day intel­li­gent design pro­po­nents deny it, there is still much of William Paley’s argu­ment, at least in style, in their expla­na­tions of cre­ation. First pro­pound­ed in his 1802 work Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, the theologian’s famous watch­mak­er analogy—which he extend­ed to the design of the eye, and every­thing else—gave Charles Dar­win much to puz­zle over, though David Hume had sup­pos­ed­ly refut­ed Paley’s argu­ments 50 years ear­li­er. The Big Bang the­o­ry—a term cre­at­ed by its fore­most crit­ic Fred Hoyle as a pejorative—offers an entire­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic account of the universe’s ori­gins, one that pre­sup­pos­es no inher­ent pur­pose or design.

As with the pre­vi­ous videos, these are script­ed by for­mer Open Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and host of the Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast, Nigel War­bur­ton. This time around the videos are nar­rat­ed by Gillian Ander­son, whose voice you may not imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize. Rather than sound­ing like Dana Scul­ly, her famous X‑Files char­ac­ter, Ander­son speaks in a British accent, which she slips into eas­i­ly, hav­ing lived in the UK for much of her child­hood and now again as an adult. (You may have seen Ander­son in many of the Eng­lish peri­od dra­mas she has appeared in, or in British crime dra­ma The Fall or Michael Winterbottom’s uproar­i­ous adap­ta­tion of Tris­tram Shandy.)

These fas­ci­nat­ing spec­u­la­tive theories—whether sci­en­tif­ic or mythological—are sure to appeal to fans of the X‑Files, who can per­haps begin to believe again, or remain skep­ti­cal, thanks to news that Ander­son may reteam with Chris Carter and David Duchovny for a reboot of the clas­sic sci-fi series.

Watch the remain­ing videos in the series below:

Thomas Aquinas and the First Mover Argu­ment

Hin­du Cre­ation Sto­ries

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (130 in Total)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Criterion Collection

Slavoj Žižek – the world’s most famous Sloven­ian, the “Elvis of cul­tur­al the­o­ry” – read­i­ly admits that he’s a big fan of movies. After all, there are few bet­ter ide­o­log­i­cal deliv­ery sys­tems out there than cin­e­ma and Žižek is fas­ci­nat­ed with ide­ol­o­gy. In his doc­u­men­tary The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy, he pars­es some beloved favorites in unex­pect­ed ways. So Taxi Dri­ver is not only an unof­fi­cial remake of The Searchers but also echoes America’s recent for­eign pol­i­cy blun­ders in the Mid­dle East? Okay. So Titan­ic has par­al­lels with the Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da movie The Fall of Berlin? Sure. Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, at its heart, artic­u­lates some very cyn­i­cal notions of gov­ern­ment? Actu­al­ly, I sort of sus­pect­ed that one. Žižek’s ten­den­cy to make wild, sur­pris­ing rhetor­i­cal leaps and his pen­chant for drop­ping nods to pop cul­ture along­side ref­er­ences to Karl Marx and Jacques Lacan have turned him into that rarest of peo­ple – a celebri­ty philoso­pher.

Last fall, Žižek stopped by the office of The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion where he rat­tled off some of his favorite movies from its library. His com­men­tary is inci­sive, fas­ci­nat­ing, occa­sion­al­ly flip and often fun­ny. As it turns out, Žižek is not a fan of Milan Kun­dera; he is one of the very few peo­ple out there who prefers Rober­to Rossellini’s late films over his ear­ly Ital­ian Neo-Real­ist mas­ter­pieces like Rome, Open City; and he end­ed up being a per­son­al inspi­ra­tion for Ang Lee’s film, The Ice Storm. You can watch him talk in the video above. Below is the film list, along with some choice quotes.

  • Trou­ble in Par­adise (1932) – dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    “It’s the best cri­tique of Cap­i­tal­ism.”
  • Sweet Smell of Suc­cess (1957) – dir. Alexan­der Mack­endrick
    “It’s a nice depic­tion of the cor­rup­tion of the Amer­i­can press.”
  • Pic­nic at Hang­ing Rock (1975) – dir. Peter Weir
    “I sim­ply like ear­ly Peter Weir movies. … It’s like his ver­sion of Stalk­er.”
  • Mur­mur of the Heart (1971)- dir. Louis Malle
    “It’s one of those nice gen­tle French movies where you have incest. Por­trayed as a nice secret between moth­er and son. I like this.”

  • The Joke (1969) – dir. Jaromil Jireš
    “The Joke is the first nov­el by Milan Kun­dera and I think it’s his only good nov­el. After that it all goes down.”
  • The Ice Storm (1997) – dir. Ang Lee
    “I have a per­son­al attach­ment to this film. When James Schamus was writ­ing the sce­nario, he told me he was read­ing a book of mine and that my the­o­ret­i­cal book was inspi­ra­tion [sic]. So it’s per­son­al rea­son but I also loved the movie.”
  • Great Expec­ta­tions (1946) dir. David Lean
    “I am sim­ply a great fan of Dick­ens.”
  • Rossellini’s His­to­ry Films (Box Set) — The Age of the Medici (1973), Carte­sius (1974), Blaise Pas­cal (1972)
    “Rossellini’s his­to­ry films, I pre­fer them. These late, long bor­ing TV movies. I think that the so-called great Rosselli­nis, for exam­ple Ger­man Year Zero and so on, they no longer real­ly work. I think this is the Rosselli­ni to be reha­bil­i­tat­ed.”
  • City Lights (1931) – dir. Char­lie Chap­lin
    “What is there to say? This is one of the great­est movies of all times.”
  • Carl Theodor Drey­er Box Set — Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (1955), Gertrud (1964)
    “It’s more out of my love for Den­mark. It’s nice to know already in the ‘20s and ‘30s, Den­mark was already a cin­e­mat­ic super­pow­er.
  • Y Tu Mamá Tam­bién (2002) – dir. Alfon­so Cuáron
    “This is for obvi­ous per­son­al rea­son. I do the com­ment. [He did the DVD Com­men­tary for the movie] Although, I must say that my favorite Cuáron is Chil­dren of Men.”
  • Antichrist (2009) – dir. Lars Von Tri­er
    “I will prob­a­bly not like it, but I like Von Tri­er. It is sim­ply a part of a duty.”

Žižek goes on to say that he often­times enjoys the DVD com­men­tary of a movie more than the actu­al film. “I am a cor­rupt­ed the­o­rist. Screw the movie. I like to learn all around the movie.”

And below you can watch Žižek’s take on John Carpenter’s over­looked gem, and left­ist para­ble, They Live!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Nev­er See Inte­ri­or Design in the Same Way

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Leo Tolstoy’s Masochistic Diary: I Am Guilty of “Sloth,” “Cowardice” & “Sissiness” (1851)

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1850 was a tough year for Leo Tol­stoy. It was a time when his future suc­cess­es were impos­si­ble to see while his past fail­ures were all too obvi­ous. A few years pri­or, he had been thrown out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kazan. His teach­ers wrote him off as “both unable and unwill­ing to learn.” There­after, he went into a spi­ral of dis­so­lu­tion, first in St. Peters­burg and then in Moscow, where he drank, caroused and racked up some seri­ous gam­bling debts.

Yet Tol­stoy had ambi­tions beyond being just anoth­er debauched scion of the upper class. He strug­gled to improve him­self. So he start­ed a jour­nal in 1847 while recov­er­ing in a hos­pi­tal ward from vene­re­al dis­ease. Influ­enced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the future author of War and Peace sought to use the diary as a tool for self-explo­ration. For the first few years, he was an inter­mit­tent diarist. Then, in 1850, he took this tool to new lac­er­at­ing lev­els. Part psy­chother­a­py, part lit­er­ary explo­ration, part inquiry into the lim­its of nar­ra­tive and part straight up masochism, Tol­stoy set out to account for his every action dur­ing the day in what he called the “Jour­nal of Dai­ly Occu­pa­tions.”

He divid­ed his page into two columns. In “The Future” col­umn, he list­ed the things he planned to do the next day. In “The Past” col­umn, he judges him­self (harsh­ly) on how well he fol­lowed through on those plans, label­ing each one of his fail­ures with the appro­pri­ate sin – sloth, avarice etc. There was no col­umn for “The Present.”

You can see a selec­tion from his jour­nal, cour­tesy of schol­ar Iri­na Paper­no, who wrote a nice piece on Tol­stoy’s diary over at Salon. The diary entries below date from March, 1851:

24. Arose some­what late and read, but did not have time to write. Poiret came, I fenced, and did not send him away (sloth and cow­ardice). Ivanov came, I spoke with him for too long (cow­ardice). Koloshin (Sergei) came to drink vod­ka, I did not escort him out (cow­ardice). At Ozerov’s argued about noth­ing (habit of argu­ing) and did not talk about what I should have talked about (cow­ardice). Did not go to Beklemishev’s (weak­ness of ener­gy). Dur­ing gym­nas­tics did not walk the rope (cow­ardice), and did not do one thing because it hurt (sissiness).—At Gorchakov’s lied (lying). Went to the Novotroit­sk tav­ern (lack of fierté). At home did not study Eng­lish (insuf­fi­cient firm­ness). At the Volkon­skys’ was unnat­ur­al and dis­tract­ed, and stayed until one in the morn­ing (dis­tract­ed­ness, desire to show off, and weak­ness of char­ac­ter).

25. [This is a plan for the next day, the 25th, writ­ten on the 24th—I.P.] From 10 to 11 yesterday’s diary and to read. From 11 to 12—gymnastics. From 12 to 1—English. Bek­lem­i­shev and Bey­er from 1 to 2. From 2 to 4—on horse­back. From 4 to 6—dinner. From 6 to 8—to read. From 8 to 10—to write.—To trans­late some­thing from a for­eign lan­guage into Russ­ian to devel­op mem­o­ry and style.—To write today with all the impres­sions and thoughts it gives rise to.—25. Awoke late out of sloth. Wrote my diary and did gym­nas­tics, hur­ry­ing. Did not study Eng­lish out of sloth. With Begichev and with Islavin was vain. At Beklemishev’s was cow­ard­ly and lack of fierté. On Tver Boule­vard want­ed to show off. I did not walk on foot to the Kaly­mazh­nyi Dvor (sissi­ness). Rode with a desire to show off. For the same rea­son rode to Ozerov’s.—Did not return to Kaly­mazh­nyi, thought­less­ness. At the Gor­chakovs’ dis­sem­bled and did not call things by their names, fool­ing myself. Went to L’vov’s out of insuf­fi­cient ener­gy and the habit of doing noth­ing. Sat around at home out of absent­mind­ed­ness and read Werther inat­ten­tive­ly, hur­ry­ing.

26 [This is a plan for the next day, the 26th, writ­ten on the 25th—I.P.] To get up at 5. Until 10—to write the his­to­ry of this day. From 10 to 12—fencing and to read. From 12 to 1—English, and if some­thing inter­feres, then in the evening. From 1 to 3—walking, until 4—gymnastics. From 4 to 6, dinner—to read and write.— (46:55).

Tolstoy’s regime of self-improve­ment wasn’t restrict­ed to this pun­ish­ing dai­ly account­ing of fail­ures. He also kept a “Jour­nal for Weak­ness­es,” which tal­lied up all of his moral fail­ures, arranged in columns for lazi­ness, inde­ci­sion, sen­su­al­i­ty etc., not to men­tion a series of note­books for rules: “Rules for life,” “Rules for devel­op­ing will,” and “Rules for play­ing cards in Moscow until Jan­u­ary 1.”

One gets the sense that there’s a real oppor­tu­ni­ty for a line of Tol­stoy­an self-help books. Six Pil­lars of Self-Fla­gel­la­tion, per­haps? 7 Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Moral Fail­ures? The Pow­er of Spir­i­tu­al Angst?

Read more about Tol­stoy’s jour­nal­ing over at Salon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find great works by Tol­stoy in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Ayn Rand Writes a Harsh Letter To Her 17-Year-Old Niece: “I Will Write You Off As a Rotten Person” (1949)

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Image via YouTube, 1959 inter­view with Mike Wal­lace

I recent­ly hap­pened upon the Mod­ern Library’s “100 Best Nov­els” list and noticed some­thing inter­est­ing. The list divides into two columns—the “Board’s List” on the left and “Reader’s List” on the right. The “Board’s List” con­tains in its top ten such expect­ed “great books” as Joyce’s Ulysses (#1) and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (#6). These are indeed wor­thy titles, but not the most acces­si­ble of books, to be sure, though Ulysses does appear at num­ber eleven on the “Reader’s List.” At the very top of that more pop­u­lar rank­ing, how­ev­er, is a book the literati could not find more wor­thy of con­tempt: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Just below it is Rand’s The Foun­tain­head, and at num­bers sev­en and eight, respec­tive­ly, her Anthem and We the Liv­ing. (Also in the top ten on the “Read­er’s List,” three nov­els by L. Ron Hub­bard.)

One obvi­ous take­away… mass­es of ordi­nary peo­ple real­ly like Ayn Rand. Which is odd, because Ayn Rand seemed to pos­i­tive­ly hate the mass­es of ordi­nary peo­ple. As Michael O’Donnell writes in Wash­ing­ton Month­ly, “Rand… lived a life of con­tempt: for peo­ple, for ideas, for gov­ern­ment, and for the very con­cept of human kind­ness.”

Per­haps her most sym­pa­thet­ic read­er, econ­o­mist Lud­wig von Mis­es, summed up the over­ar­ch­ing theme of her life’s work in one very tidy sen­tence: “You have the courage to tell the mass­es what no politi­cian told them: you are infe­ri­or and all the improve­ments in your con­di­tions which you sim­ply take for grant­ed you owe to the effort of men who are bet­ter than you.” This is appar­ent­ly a mes­sage that a great many peo­ple are eager to hear. (And if any fic­tion is “mes­sage dri­ven,” it is Rand’s.)

But imag­ine, if you will, that you are not a read­er of Ayn Rand, but a fam­i­ly mem­ber. Not by blood, but mar­riage, but con­nect­ed, nonethe­less. You are Ayn Rand’s niece—Rand’s hus­band Frank O’Connor’s sister’s daugh­ter, to be pre­cise. Your name is Con­nie Papurt, you are 17, and you have writ­ten Aun­tie Ayn to ask for $25 for a new dress. Have you done this sim­ply to be cheeky? You do know, Con­nie, how deeply your Aunt Ayn despis­es moochers, do you not? No matter—we have nei­ther Connie’s let­ter, nor a win­dow into her moti­va­tions. We do have, how­ev­er, Rand’s replies, plur­al, from May 22, 1949, then again—in response to Connie’s follow-up—from June 4 of that same year. The ini­tial request prompt­ed some earnest ser­mo­niz­ing from Rand on the val­ue of hard work, and of being a “self-respect­ing, self-sup­port­ing, respon­si­ble, cap­i­tal­is­tic per­son.” Etcetera.

Now, to Rand’s cred­it, the first reply let­ter con­tains some com­mon sense advice, and describes some sit­u­a­tions in which oth­er close con­nec­tions appar­ent­ly took advan­tage of her gen­eros­i­ty. She seems to have cause for leer­i­ness, as, grant­ed, do we all in these sit­u­a­tions. Bor­row­ing from fam­i­ly is very often a tricky busi­ness. As was her wont, how­ev­er, Rand seized upon the occa­sion not only to dis­pense wis­dom on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, but also to mor­al­ize on the worth­less­ness of peo­ple who fail her test of char­ac­ter. As The Toast com­ments, the let­ter is “30% very good advice, 50% unnec­es­sary yelling, and 20% non­sense.” First, Rand lays out for Con­nie an install­ment plan:

           Here are my con­di­tions: If I send you the $25, I will give you a year to repay it. I will give you six months after your grad­u­a­tion to get set­tled in a job. Then, you will start repay­ing the mon­ey in install­ments: you will send me $5 on Jan­u­ary 15, 1950, and $4 on the 15th of every month after that; the last install­ment will be on June 15, 1950—and that will repay the total.

            Are you will­ing to do that?

Notice, Rand assess­es no interest—a kind­ness, indeed. And yet,

            I want you to under­stand right now that I will not accept any excuse—except a seri­ous ill­ness. If you become ill, then I will give you an exten­sion of time—but for no oth­er rea­son. If, when the debt becomes due, you tell me that you can’t pay me because you need­ed a new pair of shoes or a new coat or you gave the mon­ey to some­body in the fam­i­ly who need­ed it more than I do—then I will con­sid­er you as an embez­zler. No, I won’t send a police­man after you, but I will write you off as a rot­ten per­son and I will nev­er speak or write to you again.

Accord­ing to her 2012 obit­u­ary, Con­nie went on to became a local Cleve­land actress and nurse, a per­son “ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the lives of oth­ers bet­ter.” Accord­ing to her aunt, she should have noth­ing bet­ter to do—for anyone—but to pay back her debt, should she wish to remain in the good graces of the great Objec­tivist. We do not know if Con­nie accept­ed the terms, but she appar­ent­ly wrote back in such a way as to leave quite an impres­sion on Rand, whose June 4 reply is “damn charm­ing!”

          I must tell you that I was very impressed with the intel­li­gent atti­tude of your let­ter. If you real­ly under­stood, all by your­self, that my long lec­ture to you was a sign of real inter­est on my part, much more so than if I had sent you a check with some hyp­o­crit­i­cal gush note, and if you under­stood that my let­ter was intend­ed to treat you as an equal—then you have just the kind of mind that can achieve any­thing you choose to achieve in life.

The let­ter goes on in very kind­ly, even sen­ti­men­tal, terms. In fact, it may con­vince you that O’Donnell is dead wrong to sin­gle out con­tempt as Rand’s defin­ing qual­i­ty. And yet, he argues, her biog­ra­phers show that “she hap­pi­ly accept­ed help from oth­ers while denounc­ing altru­is­tic kind­ness” (and those who accept it), espous­ing “an indi­vid­u­al­ism so extreme that it does not mere­ly ignore oth­ers, but actu­al­ly spits in their faces.” While Con­nie man­aged to escape her wrath, such as it was, most oth­ers, through their own fail­ings of true cap­i­tal­is­tic char­ac­ter or the cru­el­ty of cir­cum­stances beyond their con­trol, did not.

Read both of Rand’s let­ters here.

via The Toast

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

A Free Car­toon Biog­ra­phy of Ayn Rand: Her Life & Thought

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Edward Said Recalls His Depressing Meeting With Sartre, de Beauvoir & Foucault (1979)

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I have not had the occa­sion to meet my intel­lec­tu­al or lit­er­ary heroes, those still alive, of course. And from most of the accounts of those who have, it’s prob­a­bly for the best. I’ve heard sto­ries from men­tors and friends—of drunk­en indis­cre­tions, boor­ish rude­ness, unfor­give­able utter­ances, arro­gance, pet­ti­ness, petu­lance, and every oth­er kind of off­putting behav­ior. Our idols, after all, are only human.

Such dis­ap­point­ment was the expe­ri­ence of Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can schol­ar and writer Edward Said when he met three intel­lec­tu­al French giants—Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beau­voir, and Michel Fou­cault—in 1979. Invit­ed to France by Sartre and de Beau­voir for a con­fer­ence on Mid­dle East peace after the end of the war between Egypt and Israel, Said leapt at the chance, although not before ensur­ing that the telegram he had received was gen­uine.

“At first I thought the cable was a joke of some sort,” wrote Said in the Lon­don Review of Books in 2000, “It might just as well have been an invi­ta­tion from Cosi­ma and Richard Wag­n­er to come to Bayreuth, or from T.S. Eliot and Vir­ginia Woolf to spend an after­noon at the offices of the Dial.”

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The invi­ta­tion was for real, and weeks lat­er, Said was off to Paris. Upon arrival, he learned that for unde­fined “secu­ri­ty rea­sons,” the con­fer­ence had been moved to Foucault’s apart­ment, and once there, he encoun­tered de Beau­voir, who quick­ly left an unfa­vor­able impres­sion on him, then dis­ap­peared.

Beau­voir was already there in her famous tur­ban, lec­tur­ing any­one who would lis­ten about her forth­com­ing trip to Teheran with Kate Mil­lett, where they were plan­ning to demon­strate against the chador; the whole idea struck me as patro­n­is­ing and sil­ly, and although I was eager to hear what Beau­voir had to say, I also realised that she was quite vain and quite beyond argu­ing with at that moment. Besides, she left an hour or so lat­er (just before Sartre’s arrival) and was nev­er seen again.

Not long after­wards, Said writes, Fou­cault informed him he would be leav­ing as well, “for his dai­ly bout of research at the Bib­lio­thèque Nationale.” Said describes Fou­cault as a “soli­tary philoso­pher” and “rig­or­ous thinker” but also “unwill­ing to say any­thing to me about Mid­dle East­ern politics”—with the excep­tion of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion (for which he was part­ly present). Fou­cault described his time in Iran as “very excit­ing, very strange, crazy.” “I think (per­haps mis­tak­en­ly) I heard him say that in Teheran he had dis­guised him­self in a wig,” Said writes, “although a short while after his arti­cles appeared, he rapid­ly dis­tanced him­self from all things Iran­ian.” Fou­cault also, appar­ent­ly, dis­tanced him­self from the dis­cus­sion at hand because, Said sur­mis­es, of his sup­port for Israel.

Sartre, it appears from Said’s account, was very much at the cen­ter of the event. And yet, he seemed “old and frail,” and “was con­stant­ly sur­round­ed, sup­port­ed, prompt­ed by a small ret­inue of peo­ple on whom he was total­ly depen­dent.” At lunch, Said finds the “great man” almost as absent men­tal­ly as his part­ner was phys­i­cal­ly. Where “Beau­voir had been a seri­ous dis­ap­point­ment,” he was lat­er “con­vinced she would have livened things up.”

Sartre’s pres­ence, what there was of it, was strange­ly pas­sive, unim­pres­sive, affect­less. He said absolute­ly noth­ing for hours on end. At lunch he sat across from me, look­ing dis­con­so­late and remain­ing total­ly uncom­mu­nica­tive, egg and may­on­naise stream­ing hap­less­ly down his face. I tried to make con­ver­sa­tion with him, but got nowhere. He may have been deaf, but I’m not sure. In any case, he seemed to me like a haunt­ed ver­sion of his ear­li­er self, his prover­bial ugli­ness, his pipe and his non­de­script cloth­ing hang­ing about him like so many props on a desert­ed stage.

In his sole dis­course at the event, Said tells us, Sartre read “a pre­pared text of about two typed pages” full of “the most banal plat­i­tudes imag­in­able” and “about as infor­ma­tive as a Reuters dis­patch.” After­wards, “Sartre resumed his silence, and the pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued as before.” The pol­i­tics of the con­fer­ence were by nature com­pli­cat­ed and sen­si­tive, to say the least. Relationships—such as that between Fou­cault and Gilles Deleuze, it seems (or so Deleuze told Said)—have bro­ken off after dis­agree­ments over Israel and Pales­tine.

said foucault

Image by Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Nev­er­the­less, on the basis of Sartre’s for­mer anti-colo­nial, anti-war stance and pas­sion­ate defense of Alger­ian independence—a posi­tion “which as a French­man must have been hard­er to hold than a posi­tion crit­i­cal of Israel”—Said had hoped Sartre would have at least some sym­pa­thy for the Pales­tin­ian cause. He was mis­tak­en. “Gone for­ev­er, he writes, “was that Sartre.” In a con­clud­ing rumi­na­tion, he attempts to explain what he observed:

I guess we need to under­stand why great old men are liable to suc­cumb either to the wiles of younger ones, or to the grip of an unmod­i­fi­able polit­i­cal belief. It’s a dispir­it­ing thought, but it’s what hap­pened to Sartre. With the excep­tion of Alge­ria, the jus­tice of the Arab cause sim­ply could not make an impres­sion on him, and whether it was entire­ly because of Israel or because of a basic lack of sym­pa­thy – cul­tur­al or per­haps reli­gious – it’s impos­si­ble for me to say.

For all its unpleas­ant­ness, how­ev­er, the encounter did not lessen Said’s fond­ness for Sartre. The author of Ori­en­tal­ism and The Ques­tion of Pales­tine (who is not with­out his own fierce crit­ics) begins his rec­ol­lec­tion of the meet­ing with a glow­ing appraisal of Sartre’s work, which had fall­en far out of favor at the time of the meet­ing. “A year after our brief and dis­ap­point­ing Paris encounter Sartre died,” he con­cludes, “I vivid­ly remem­ber how much I mourned his death.”

You can read Said’s com­plete diary entry here.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Said Speaks Can­did­ly about Pol­i­tics, His Ill­ness, and His Lega­cy in His Final Inter­view (2003)

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Existential Philosophy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

By this point in his­to­ry, many of us grown-ups did our grow­ing up while play­ing video games. Most mem­o­rably, we did it while play­ing the col­or­ful, pix­e­lat­ed video games of the mid 1980s through the ear­ly 1990s, the hey­day of the “eight-bit” con­soles. These titles and their char­ac­ters — the Mar­ios, the Zel­das, the Mega Men — remain cul­tur­al touch­stones not just for those of us who have land­ed solid­ly in adult­hood, but also for those of us too young to have played them while they were new. Many of us have put away these child­ish things, but many more of us have kept them out, keep­ing them right along­side our grown-up pur­suits, result­ing in projects like the video series 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy, which we fea­tured in Novem­ber.

These grown-up pur­suits include not just the study of phi­los­o­phy, but reflec­tion upon the seri­ous exis­ten­tial ques­tions that the sub­ject reveals: Does ratio­nal­i­ty give life mean­ing? Do we enjoy being free? Why should­n’t we com­mit sui­cide? Luck­i­ly, 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy has come up with episodes deal­ing with exact­ly these top­ics. For the first ques­tion they turn to the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th cen­tu­ry thinker con­sid­ered the father of exis­ten­tial­ism, as illus­trat­ed by Shat­ter­hand, a slight­ly obscure plat­former I great­ly enjoyed in my own youth. For the sec­ond, we see how two for­mi­da­ble bod­ies of work — that of Jean-Paul Sartre, and that of the Final Fan­ta­sy role-play­ing games — come to bear on the issue. For the third, they bring out none oth­er than Albert Camus (who died 55 years ago yes­ter­day), plac­ing his trench­coat­ed, Gauloise-smok­ing avatar into the suit­ably Sisyphean Don­key Kong.

If you’ve put in the hours play­ing both eight-bit video games and read­ing the rel­e­vant philo­soph­i­cal texts, you’ll sure­ly find these videos’ Nin­ten­don­ian aes­thet­ics as impec­ca­ble as their encap­su­la­tions of Kierkegar­rd, Sartre, and Camus’ posi­tions are con­cise. You can find more from 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy on Youtube, includ­ing their vin­tage gamer-friend­ly ren­di­tions of Friedrich Niet­zsche on time as a flat cir­cle and what sci­ence has to do with truth.  They cov­er oth­er areas of phi­los­o­phy, too, but some­thing about old video games them­selves — with their end­less cycles of death, regen­er­a­tion, and not inher­ent­ly mean­ing­ful chal­lenges — leads my mind straight into exis­ten­tial­ism every time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

Exis­ten­tial­ism with Hubert Drey­fus: Four Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Friedrich Niet­zsche & Exis­ten­tial­ism Explained to Five-Year-Olds (in Com­i­cal Video by Red­dit)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Download 140 Free Philosophy Courses: Develop Critical Thinking Skills & Live the Examined Life

aristotle

What is “Phi­los­o­phy”? Yes, we know, the word comes from the Greek philosophia, which means “the love of wis­dom.” This rote ety­mo­log­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion does lit­tle, I think, to enhance our under­stand­ing of the sub­ject, though it may describe the moti­va­tion of many a stu­dent. Like cer­tain dis­eases, maybe phi­los­o­phy is a spec­trum, a col­lec­tion of loose­ly relat­ed behav­iors. Maybe a bet­ter ques­tion would be, “what are all the symp­toms of this thing we call phi­los­o­phy?” The med­ical metaphor is time­ly. We live in an age when the dis­ci­pline of phi­los­o­phy, like many of the human­i­ties, gets treat­ed like a pathol­o­gy, in uni­ver­si­ties and in the wider cul­ture. See, for exam­ple, pop­u­lar arti­cles on whether sci­ence has ren­dered phi­los­o­phy (and reli­gion) obso­lete. There seems to be an under­ly­ing assump­tion in our soci­ety that phi­los­o­phy is some­thing to be erad­i­cat­ed, like small­pox.

Per­haps this sort of thing is just an emp­ty provo­ca­tion; after all, many log­i­cal pos­i­tivists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry also claimed to have inval­i­dat­ed large areas of philo­soph­i­cal inquiry by ban­ish­ing every unclear con­cept to the dust­bin. And yet, phi­los­o­phy per­sists, infect­ing us with its relent­less dri­ve to define, inquire, cri­tique, sys­tem­atize, prob­lema­tize, and decon­struct.

And of course, in a less tech­ni­cal sense, phi­los­o­phy infects us with the dri­ve to won­der. With­out its tools, I main­tain, we would not only lack the basis for under­stand­ing the world we live in, but we would also lack impor­tant means of imag­in­ing, and cre­at­ing, a bet­ter one. If this sounds grandiose, wait till you encounter the thought of Pla­to, Spin­oza, Hegel, Kant, Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, and jazz-futur­ist Sun Ra—all unac­cus­tomed to think­ing small and stay­ing in their lane.

Some philoso­phers are more cir­cum­spect, some more pre­cise, some more lit­er­ary and imag­i­na­tive, some more prac­ti­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly inclined. Like I said, many symp­toms, one dis­ease.

We at Open Cul­ture have com­piled a list of 140 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es from as much of the wide spec­trum as we could, span­ning such diverse ways of think­ing as Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Leo Strauss on Aristotle’s Ethics (Free Online Audio) and Plato’s Laws (Free Online Audio), to Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Bud­dhist schol­ar Robert Thur­man (Uma’s dad) on “The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet” (Free Online Audio). We have spe­cif­ic cours­es on Med­ical Ethics, taught by Notre Dame’s David Solomon (Free Online Audio) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orlean’s Frank Schalow (Free iTunes Audio). We have huge­ly gen­er­al cours­es like “The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps,” from King’s College’s Peter Adam­son (Free Course in Mul­ti­ple For­mats). We have phi­los­o­phy cours­es on death, love, reli­gion, film, law, the self, the ancients and the mod­erns…. See what I mean about the spec­trum?

Per­haps phi­los­o­phy incurs resent­ment because it roams at large and won’t be pack­aged into neat­ly salable—or jailable—units. Per­haps its amor­phous nature, its tol­er­ance of uncer­tain­ty and doubt, makes some kinds of peo­ple uncom­fort­able. Or per­haps some think it’s too abstruse and dif­fi­cult to make sense of, or to mat­ter. Not so! Vis­it our list of 140 phi­los­o­phy cours­es and you will sure­ly find a point of entry some­where. One class will lead to anoth­er, and anoth­er, and before you know it, you’ll be ask­ing ques­tions all the time, of every­thing, and think­ing rig­or­ous­ly and crit­i­cal­ly about the answers, and… well, by then it may be too late for a cure.

Look­ing for a good place to start? Try Oxford’s Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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