Society’s True Aristocrats
Every society is based on aristocracy, because this one, the true one, is demanding with regard to itself, and without this demand every society would die. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1954
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12, 2015
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12, 2015
Do scholars hurt the humanities and culture?
We are mistaken when we believe that culture and the humanities are being served by scholarship. The truth is that art and culture do not belong in a university. It cannot be a home for them, because culture proper and scholarship proper are diametrically opposed.... [T]he objects of culture are not analyzable.... Great works of [...]
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12, 2015
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12, 2015
Joseph Conrad’s Terrorist
The stoicism of his thought could not be disturbed by this or any other failure. Next time, or the time after next, a telling stroke would be delivered – something really startling – a blow fit to open the first crack in the imposing front of the great edifice of legal conceptions sheltering the atrocious [...]
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11, 2015
More defense of the liberal arts
Humanities majors have skills
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11, 2015
Thinking and Thanking
Rabbit: What are you doing, Hare? Hare: Nothing much, it seems. Rabbit: Ah, the dolce far niente again. It must be your modus vivendi. Hare: There's nothing like a mixture of languages to get me going. So what are you doing? Rabbit: Well, it's harvest season. I'm busy preparing for winter. Every day there seems more to do. [...]
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11, 2015
The Oak
The angry north wind proved its strength one stormy night on a noble oak tree. Now it stood racked, and a great many lower branches lay shattered under it. A fox, which had its hollow nearby, saw it the next morning. "What a tree!" it exclaimed. "I would have never thought it was so large!" Gotthold [...]
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11, 2015
On Welding and Philosophy
Debating the fusion of politics, philosophy, and manufacturing
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11, 2015
The Temple of Daily Fame
Journalists have erected for themselves a small wooden chapel that they call the Temple of Fame, in which they continuously affix and remove portraits, making such a racket that one cannot hear oneself speak. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms
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11, 2015
STEM talks
Grundlos: Watch out, you almost ran me over! Where are you rushing off to? Magnus: I'm off to give a talk and I'm in a hurry. Grundlos: What is the talk about? You're not very dressed up. Magnus: Look, that's not necessary. It's about the meaning of STEM. Grundlos: What is STEM? Magnus: Don't you [...]