Oct 21, 2013

Heavy Metal Philosopher: 10 Great Classic Metal Bassists (What Makes for Greatness?)

One of the side-projects I started in August -- actually a sort of 43rd birthday indulgence to myself -- was starting a new blog, one focused particularly on intersections between classic heavy metal music (a love of both my youth and my middle age) and philosophy.  I'd decided not to say much about it until I'd at least gotten a few entries under my belt.  Tonight I finally finished up an entry started some time back -- one whose subject matters I've been mulling over for quite some time: 10 Great Classic Metal Bassists: What Makes for Greatness?

I'm not entirely sure just what I intend to do with that blog -- I'm still in an experimental stage with it, where I allow myself to write about what catches my interest or presses me to think about it, even if perhaps it's not as explicitly philosophical as the name would imply.  It's not the first writing I've done motivated by my passionate attachments to heavy metal -- I've written a few pieces previously here in Orexis Dianoētikē:
It seemed to me time to start working out these lines of thinking in a more systematic and expansive sort of manner and forum.  So, there it is. . . .

Oct 15, 2013

Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice

Last weekend, I attended the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy conference, chaired two sessions, met a number of scholars as interested and enthusiastic about the thought of antiquity as I am, and gave the paper which I'd long ago proposed, "Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice."  Or rather, I presented the paper in a summary form -- I was assigned to a panel of four speakers, and each of us got about 20 minutes to set out the main lines of our research.

It wasn't a venue particularly conducive to recording the session in my typical manner -- a flipcam which could capture video of the talk.  But I did manage to record my portion of the talk, and the relevant Q&A on my iPhone, and then (after clawing my frustrated way up the learning curve any former PC user has with Apple's products!) turned the edited recording into a podcast, which you can hear here, if this topic particularly interests you



Oct 6, 2013

Virtue Ethics Digest: Are The Virtues Already In Us?

Over in one of my other blogs, Virtue Ethics Digest, I've got a recent set of reflections spurred by a certain misreading or misunderstanding which I see consistently appearing in certain of my students' papers, Are The Virtues Already In Us?  It represents what seems to me a characteristically late modern manner of getting virtue (and thereby also vice, moral development, decision, and a number of other key concepts in moral theory) wrong.  Here's a brief excerpt:
The kind of mistake I'm referring to, in its simplest, most bare bones form, runs like this:  The specific virtues are traits or capabilities any given human being already possesses, and in any given situation he or she needs simply to use their virtues to choose and act well.  So, there's really two claims being asserted, or more often, simply assumed on the part of the student.  Human beings already have the virtues.  And, whatever these virtues are, one just needs to use them.

Oct 2, 2013

Violence Over Kant Interpretation?

The story from Rostov-on-Don last month is the sort of incongruous verging on comedy that, as the saying goes "you just can't make up" -- or at least not easily -- since nobody who has seriously studied the moral theory of Immanuel Kant would think to associate his work and thought with the sort of disagreement that would turn nakedly violent.  And yet, there they were, the headlines.

You've got the straightforward and succinct Reuter's story: Man shot in Russia in Argument over Kant.  The more cheeky Guardian story: Unreasonable critique of Kant leads to man being shot in Russian shop.  Time's wince-worthy pun: “You Kant Say That!” Philosophical Debate Leads to Shooting.  Huffington Post displays the alarmist anti-intellectualism always lurking just below their superficiality: Philosophy Is Dangerous! Immanuel Kant Debate In Russia Leads To Fist Fight, Ends In Gunshot.  We could go on multiplying examples.  I'd rather muse a bit about why this was and remains such an interestingly, even sublimely strange story.