“Latin can save your life”

Many of our philosophy majors also have a deep love of classical languages. They will enjoy this article by Anthony Grafton –

Latin can save your life. Latin is infinite, and infinitely rich. We come to an end, but Latin doesn’t. Studying it gives us perspective, vision and inspiration. It’s not that every Paideian becomes, or should become, a professor. The humanities don’t work that way. Studying Latin, the way Paideia teaches you to do, makes you more human, in a special sense that can make you decide to pursue careers of many kinds. One of Paideia’s mottoes is: “Lingua Latina non est piscis mortuus”—“The Latin language is not a dead fish.” It sure isn’t.

Special Lecture

I am very pleased to announce an upcoming guest lecture.  Our very own Michael Otteson, USU alum now pursuing his PhD in philosophy at the University of Kansas, will be here on Thursday, Jan 15 to present a paper titled “Augustine and Constructive Memory.”  4:30-5:30pm in Main 207.  Should be very interesting!

Some excellent questions to consider

Excerpt:

Most of us have no clue what we want to do with our lives. Even after we finish school. Even after we get a job. Even after we’re making money. Between ages 18 and 25, I changed career aspirations more often than I changed my underwear. And even after I had a business, it wasn’t until I was 28 that I clearly defined what I wanted for my life.

Chances are you’re more like me and have no clue what you want to do. It’s a struggle almost every adult goes through. “What do I want to do with my life?” “What am I passionate about?” “What do I not suck at?” I often receive emails from people in their 40s and 50s who still have no clue what they want to do with themselves.

Part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself. The idea that we were each born for some higher purpose and it’s now our cosmic mission to find it. This is the same kind of shitty logic used to justify things like spirit crystals or that your lucky number is 34 (but only on Tuesdays or during full moons).

Here’s the truth. We exist on this earth for some undetermined period of time. During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. And those important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The unimportant ones basically just kill time.

Read Mark Manon’s seven strange questions here.

Book review of Ethics as a Work of Charity

Here is an interesting review of what looks like an interesting book (Decosimo, Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue). The beginning of the review, by Jeffrey Hause, is stunning:

Two Marxist professors from Cornell were once discussing a libertarian graduate student in their department. The first asserted that, after the revolution, he would have the student executed. The second thought this judgment too hasty. He noted, without humor or irony, that he would instead put the matter to a vote of the workers. Either course would see the problem summarily dispatched, “dealt with.” A less brutal, more charitable attitude would envision those who think other than we do, those outside our political or religious communities, not as problems to be dealt with, but as human beings to be engaged. If we take this more charitable route, however, how do we learn from, form friendships with, and find community with those we disagree with so profoundly without losing our own identity or compromising our own principles?