[HN Gopher] A Philosophy Professor's Final Class (2023)
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A Philosophy Professor's Final Class (2023)
Author : dotcoma
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-07-13 20:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| voisin wrote:
| http://archive.today/KSoMH
| voisin wrote:
| (2023)
| throw0101d wrote:
| Discussion at the time:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34270650
| erulabs wrote:
| Somewhat related, I fell in love with a pretty obscure philosophy
| lecturer who uploaded his old Princeton lecture series to
| YouTube, dr Micheal Segrue. Genuinely the best overview of
| various philosophers I've ever seen. Highly recommended. I left a
| comment on a video with 4K views and he liked it.
|
| Two weeks later a message was posted on his channel by his
| daughter that he had passed away.
|
| We need to listen to old folks a bit more than we do. The latest
| isn't always the greatest.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Do you have a link per chance?
| erulabs wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Rc0K4WhNOvY
|
| Enjoy!
| theF00l wrote:
| Michael Sugrue was exceptional and I am grateful to have
| watched his lectures.
|
| His lecture on Marcus Aurelius has the most views on YT. I also
| recommend his lectures on Nietzsche and Sartre/Heidegger.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| I knew that would be part of the old teaching company videos!
| I'll definitely give them a watch thanks for sharing. Finding
| those videos as a teenager inspired my interest in philosophy
| and it's what I eventually studied in university. They had such
| incredible content. The company was rebranded as Wodrium and
| it's good but they pivoted to more popular, consumable content
| and it's less rigorous in my opinion.
|
| Other great philosophy courses from that era:
|
| Robert C. Solomon on Nietzsche
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfiUrZFEZfI&list=PLdnXkNG3Fr...
|
| Rick Roderick on the Post Modern Condition
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjFiU9nDQD4&list=PLA20B69058...
| jt_b wrote:
| Thanks for this reminder. The Robert Solomon scene in Waking
| Life re: Sartre had a profound impact upon upon me as a
| teenager and spurred my interest in Kierkegaard, but it has
| been several years since I have considered him.
|
| Great to see that many of his lectures are available online.
| jzemeocala wrote:
| Now there's a movie I haven't though about in a decade.
| mrtransient wrote:
| Thank you for spending time to share it!
| endorphine wrote:
| I discovered him 6 months ago and watched most of his lectures.
| Truly a gem of a channel!
| Locutus_ wrote:
| Indeed, his lectures are a great startoff point and presented
| as such but often his personal opinions and philosophical
| narrative runs through a bit roughly.
|
| I get the feeling he is deeply Christian and mostly looks at
| the history of western philosophy as the project to build the
| modern Christian Enlightenment and how most (to him) valuable
| Post-Enlightenment philosophy is fundamentally based in
| processing biblical scripturally derived strands of thought
| through a dechristianization processes.
|
| This might sound like a harsh criticism, it's not entirely
| meant to be. His introduction course is definitely worth it!
| otteromkram wrote:
| > We need to listen to old folks a bit more than we do.
|
| Not all old folks are quite the same. You could make a similar
| argument for young people.
|
| For example: Trump is (probably) older than you. Are you going
| to listen to whatever he says?
| dambi0 wrote:
| Do you think the comment should be interpreted to mean we
| should listen to everything all older people say?
| marshray wrote:
| The statement was "... a bit more than we do".
|
| You chose to refute a general notion about people with a
| single, extreme, counterexample. But this isn't mathematical
| logic.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| Michael Sugrue's you tube channel [1] has some of the best
| introductions to philosophy. His ability to articulate such
| complex concepts and lay them out logically and connect them is
| like magic. True performance from a master! RIP
|
| [1]: https://youtube.com/@dr.michaelsugrue
| alexashka wrote:
| For folks who lean more Republican - there's also an excellent
| series of lectures by Rick Roderick on youtube.
|
| Just be aware that these people have failed to produce any
| original philosophical thought of their own - they are
| philosophy _historians_ , rather than philosophers.
| ViktorRay wrote:
| I feel like philosophers were better before social media and the
| internet.
|
| Nowadays people like this philosopher would have gotten sucked
| into the time vortex of Twitter, Mastadon, Reddit, etc and wasted
| their lives away.
|
| But back then they spent all their time in libraries actually
| reading important stuff. Much better for the brain and
| intellectual development. Not just the brain development of
| children but adults too
| theF00l wrote:
| I completely understand your point but would like to point out
| that quite a few philosophers were peculiar characters that did
| spent a lot of time outside the library too. Sometimes debating
| (eg Athenians), sometimes political activities (eg Sartre),
| some spending time on theology too (Kierkegaard, Aquinas).
|
| I think for many philosophy was a way to understand life and
| the world around them.
| mistermann wrote:
| Engaging in philosophy only alone (or only with like minded,
| agreeable people who will circle the wagons if someone dares to
| take things _actually seriously_ ) is a tragic waste of immense
| power. No wonder it gets so little respect, or attention.
|
| Philosophy _can be_ applied, but it takes brass balls.
| Locutus_ wrote:
| As Karl Marx said about philosophy: "The point, however, is
| to change it [The world]"
| mistermann wrote:
| I wonder if Karl's fairly extremist (at least in
| reputation, _which is all that matters_ ) ideology harmed
| the popularity of this discrete proposal.
| prewett wrote:
| Change is not always for the better. Vladimar Putin is
| changing the world, but expect that few here see it as a
| good thing. Putin, himself, is known to see Soviet Russia
| as good; the USSR also changed the world, but it is hard
| for many to see that as good, particularly the millions
| killed by the rulers. The USSR was a product of Marxist
| thought, and thus far no implementation of Marxism has been
| anything but highly destructive. (Regarding China, it's
| success came when they embraced aspects of capitalism and
| technocratic governance. Xi is turning back towards Marxism
| and China appears to be going backwards.)
|
| Other philosophy would consider Marx as incorrect. For
| Plato, the point of philosophy is to find the Good, the
| Beautiful, and the True. For Buddhists (if I understand
| correctly), the point is to escape suffering. For
| Christians, the point is the mystical union with Christ.
| For these, effects on the world are a side-effect, not the
| point.
|
| Personally, I think that the preoccupation with "changing
| the world" in the contemporary US is a search for personal
| meaning (via activism, or even merely "change"), since the
| ideas of modernity has erase all meaning from our
| existence.
| mistermann wrote:
| Do you think it _may be_ possible to use philosophy to
| change the world in a positive for most way (say, 80%+ of
| the global population), to a "substantial" degree (based
| on a global survey)?
|
| As an analogy: consider perspectives (on whether flight
| may be _possible_ ) 100 years before and after flight was
| ~mastered (based on a global survey).
| cess11 wrote:
| Could you share how you're making that comparison? Stengers
| against Whitehead? Nick Land against Heidegger? Mark Fisher
| against Marcuse?
| alexashka wrote:
| Philosophers have been giving philosophy a bad name for
| centuries prior to social media so there's nothing to worry
| about.
| twoslide wrote:
| In addition to a touching personal tribute, this article also
| illustrates the jobs crisis for PhD graduates. Someone who
| started his career in the 1950s works into his eighties, teaching
| from hospital, and dies less than a week after retiring. This is
| not a good model, and a good argument for mandatory retirement
| ages.
| erulabs wrote:
| It's only a bad model if he didn't love what he did for a
| living. Otherwise I find it quite inspiring.
| alexashka wrote:
| Define 'bad'. You're an emotivist by the way.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| Thanks for posting that - great read. And reading it took me back
| when I was lucky enough to take Richard Rorty's class (entitled
| something like Philosopy from Kant to 1900) my freshman year at
| Princeton. I remember the impact of his lectures about James and
| pragmaticism - I was a bit of a smart alek - convinced that there
| was only one right way of looking at the world and I (of course!
| :) knew what it was. James' Pragmatism and his concept of the
| cash value of ideas - the idea that you could ask how thinking
| and believing about the world in some particular way might be
| valuable to someone (in particular) as a part of measuring its
| "objective" value (it was a long time ago and I may be not giving
| a fully accurate report here of what James/Rorty actually said)
| had a big impact on me.
|
| Rorty left the Philosophy department (for Virginia, I think)
| pretty soon after that class - due to the kind of disagreement
| between the analytical philosophers and him rumored to be at the
| root of the Bernstein/Yale break (Rorty didn't believe that logic
| was the core of philosophy).
|
| And Rorty was a gifted lecturer with an extremely dry sense of
| humor. I think I laughed more often in that class than in any
| other that was to follow.
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