Author: Kleiner

A new book called ‘Evidence of the Afterlife” says that the scientific evidence says ‘yes there is’.  Read interview with author Dr. Jeffrey Long here.

This is in regard to the current anti-trust lawsuit brought against the NFL which is at the Supreme Court.  An interesting intersection of philosophy (what is it to be a “single entity”) and football.

“In American Needle, the NFL argued that they are a single entity, and thus incapable of violating Section 1 [of the Sherman Act] (because a single entity cannot reach an agreement with itself). The NFL concedes that they do not look like a traditional single entity — that is, a single firm with a single owner. Instead, the NFL argues that they are a single entity because the NFL is a product that can only be created by cooperation among its teams, and none of its teams have any economic value without the league. The NFL’s argument is that the product created by the NFL teams is an interconnected series of games (the regular season) that leads to a playoffs, that eventually produces a Super Bowl champion, and that no individual team can produce this product on its own. Rather, the teams must make a series of agreements with each other–where to play, when to play, under what rules, etc. The NFL believes that this interdependence and need for cooperation renders the league a single entity, and that all of the agreements made by the league and its teams –ranging from scheduling to free agency restrictions to salary cap rules to franchise relocation restrictions –should thus not be subject to scrutiny under Section 1.”

Here is an interesting article on Obama and his debt (particular in his Nobel acceptance speech) to American protestant theologian/philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, who Obama has called “one of his favorite philosophers”.

Curious what people think about the split of HASS into two different colleges, with the arts (“fine arts”) becoming a college and the humanities and social sciences remaining (HSS, and I propose we pronounce this “hiss”).

College of HSS:  Humanities: English, History, Languages, Philosophy, Speech and then the Social Sciences: Aerospace Studies, Journalism, Military Science, Sociology, Social Work, Anthropology, Political Science

Caine College of Arts: Arts, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Music, Theater.

Here is something that has been tumbling around my head:  As a philosopher, I feel closer to the Arts than I do to the Social Sciences. Broadly speaking, let’s say philosophy concerns the good, the true and the beautiful.  The arts concern the beautiful, often the good, and perhaps the true (whether they consider the true is a philosophical debate).  The social sciences, on the other hand, do not consider the beautiful and they do not consider the good.  They don’t even consider the true, except in some reduced sense of the “factual”.  I should say that I don’t mean this in a derogatory way.  There is value in the social science exercise.

Notable exception is political science.  It considers the good and probably the true.  But I am not sure political science is a “social science”.  I majored in “Politics” in college, it was only later that my college renamed the department “political science”.  In fact, I am tempted to advance this claim – the more political inquiry trends toward being a social science the less those engaged in the inquiry consider the good or the true and the more they consider the “merely factual”.

Assuming that the Arts here are not taught in a merely technical way, might we then say that philosophy (and we could make a similar case with the other humanities) are closer to the Arts than to the Social Sciences.  The college reorganization, then, should have been to have a HA college (humanities and arts) and an SS college (social sciences).

Thoughts?  Am I being unfair to any of the disciplines?

One of my past masters from Boston College, Peter Kreeft, will be speaking on “Why is there suffering?” in Salt Lake City at the St Catherine of Siena Newman Center (U of Utah), Jan 31.  Kreeft is a well known popular Catholic apologist, and that is what you will get in the lecture.  Details here.

I am personally very excited.  One could not overstate the enormous influence Peter Kreeft has had on my life.  I took every one of his graduate level courses at BC and can tell you that he is a brilliant lecturer when he has to lecture, but is by far the best Socratic teacher I’ve ever seen.  It is not to much to say that I learned more from him about the art of teaching and the task of philosophy than anyone else.  And, to take off my philosopher’s cap for a moment, he played a greater role than any other mortal in my moving from atheism to Catholicism.

Hope to see you at the lecture!