This is a very nice write-up of non-reductive virtue ethics. Wish I'd written it.
Notes from the Library
Mon, 13 May 2013
Thu, 25 Apr 2013
Deprogramming From the Academic Cult | The Chronicle
Is Graduate School a Cult? | The Chronicle
Selling Out | The Unemployed Philosopher's Blog
(my entry point into the above: What is to be done? | The Philosophers' Cocoon)
I am someone who wants to do graduate philosophy but envisages not wanting to try to get work in higher education after finishing a doctorate since there is so little, and I'm not sure it's worth the struggle. The articles linked to above argue that this plan can't work because one risks getting indoctrinated into the academic cult to the extent that it's impossible to leave at the end of a PhD without going through enormous suffering. The doctrines of the academic cult mean that wanting to leave is "giving up" and "selling out".
The Academy has very many flaws and while studying within it is a good way to come to an understanding of the human condition, I am no longer convinced that it is the only way. So the feeling that if/when you leave you're giving up on something special and magical that ordinary people can't have is unjustified, because it's just false that the modern Academy has any claim to any of this. I think that graduate school will be "safe" for me if I keep this in mind.
Fri, 15 Mar 2013
This came round earlier this term, (though of course I'm not an English undergrad):
Dear English undergrads,
The Critical Theory Reading Group will continue this term, and is always open to new members. The aim of the group is to generate discussion and learning about really important topics in 'critical theory', which spans literary, cultural, philosophical and historical studies. This means that we're conceiving 'critical theory' as an absolutely massive topic, but the aim is to get ourselves intellectually involved with some of the most important and recent areas in 'theoretical' scholarship, which is an exciting project and a very important one too. The next session is on Wednesday Week 3 at 3-5pm at Trinity College, and will be about Posthumanism. You don't have to know anything about it before to come along: just read the essay from 2011 that's attached to this email and see what you think.
I would like to develop an an interest and knowledge in such things but unfortunately I couldn't attend the meetings this term. It'd have be quite a fight through the obscurantism of the English students, too, I suspect.
Wed, 13 Mar 2013
Stuck in Neutral? A Suggestion
… I've noticed a very strong historical relationship with the "alone time" I've given myself and my philosophical productivity.
