You know, Spinoza — “perky and adorable, a brash but modest young fellow whose head is amusingly stuffed not with baseball statistics but with incisive conclusions about God, nature and the universe.” See the NYT review of a new play about Spinoza.
Author: Huenemann
Nietzsche lecture coming up
See the details in the Announcement box, on the right. Here is the abstract for Rutherford’s talk:
“Nietzsche’s writings offer pointed challenges to received views in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics. One question that is too infrequently raised, however, is how Nietzsche conceives of the activity of philosophy itself. What is the overall goal of philosophy? What does it mean to think and live as a philosopher? I canvass a range of answers to these questions, and argue for the distinctive answers that I believe Nietzsche gives to them. I conclude by describing what I see as the significance of these answers for Nietzsche’s principal philosophical project: the revaluation of all values.”
All are welcome to attend!
Undergrad Philosophy conference, UVSC
Call for Papers: Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
The Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference will be held Thursday, April 3, 2008. The topic of this year’s conference, titled The Greening of Ethics, addresses the expansion of the scope of moral considerability in Western Philosophy from the traditional focus on human beings. This includes, but is not limited to, topics such as:
Ecological Feminism
Animal Rights/Liberation
Holistic (Ecosystem) Ethics
Sustainability
Religious Stewardship Ethics
Social Ecology/Marxist Critiques of Capitalism
Presentations will be 20 minutes.
Please email a title and 250-word presentation proposal by noon, February 15, 2008, to:
ethics.center@uvsc.edu
thinkthoughtaway@gmail.com
david.keller@uvsc.edu
Presenters will be awarded $100 honorarium.
If you have any questions, please contact Dave Newlin <thinkthoughtaway@gmail.com> or David R. Keller <david.keller@uvsc.edu>.
The Conference is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Humanities
and the Center for the Study of Ethics, UVSC.
New question for the new semester
The Edge is an interesting blog, mostly aimed at discussion among scientific humanists about big questions (it’s on the blogroll, at the right). Their first question for 2008 is a good one; I thought I’d raise it again here to see what people here have to say, both in terms of answers and in terms of how they have set up the question:
When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Any takers?
Career considerations
Considering a career in law or medicine? Here is a NYT article about the disappointments many people feel when they get into them. (Alumni, feel free to chime in about your own experiences.)
USUPhilosophy 