USUPhilosophy

I haven’t seen “The Zero Theorem” – new, apparently. But Terry Gilliam is the greatest of philosophical filmmakers, in my opinion. Catch the double feature if you can!

On Friday, September 12 at 4:00 p.m. in Ballroom C of the WSU Student Union Building, Dr. Alison Jaggar, College Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will present “Measuring Gendered Poverty: Methodology and Morality.” The author of nearly 80 articles and author/editor of 10 books, Professor Jaggar is a pioneer in the field of feminist philosophy. She is the co-founder of the journal Hypatia and the Society for Women in Philosophy and very likely taught the first class on feminist philosophy in the United States. All are invited, and a reception will follow.

Aporia, Brigham Young University’s undergraduate journal of philosophy, is pleased to announce the fall 2014 call for papers.  Aporia is dedicated to recognizing exemplary philosophical work at the undergraduate level.  We are now accepting submissions for the fall 2014 issue, which will be published online.  The winning papers will be announced in November.  We hope that you will inform all philosophy students of this opportunity to be recognized and to participate in the philosophical community.  We especially invite professors to encourage authors of outstanding undergraduate work to submit their papers.  Attached is a flier announcing the call for papers; this flier also contains important information about the submission process, as well as the due date for submissions: October 10, 2014.   Thank you for supporting Aporia in recognizing and encouraging excellent undergraduate philosophical research.

call for papers

An excerpt from the review:

In the end, we are left faced with the same problem Rousseau struggles with in Emile. The self is relational, and defined largely through the opinions of others. Because it is so relational, we continually look outside of ourselves in an effort to develop self-love. But, especially in a society characterized by greed, self-love transforms into something comparative, and a healthy self-love (“proper pride in our own achievements” (187)) becomes elusive. Rousseau tries to solve this problem through educating oneself to be freed from comparisons, but Blackburn — rightly, I think — is skeptical that this is possible and is skeptical that getting rid of comparisons altogether is a good thing, for even proper pride involves some degree of comparisons.

Read the whole review here. (NDPR, by the way, is worth subscribing to. I frequently come across reviews of books I think I should read.)

(The photo here, by the way, is of a store window in Prague that astonished me by its frankness. Peter Sloterdijk is right: we live in an age of “enlightened false consciousness”!)

We recently received this invitation from the University of Utah’s philosophy club:

“This semester, the philosophy club is focused on building a philosophical community within the undergraduate community in Utah. With this in mind, we have started a blog aimed at giving undergraduates a chance to publish their thoughts….[W]e are looking for contributors. There is no preferred theme; we are looking for anyone interested their writing their own thoughts, reflections, understandings, questions, etc. Overall we are looking for a wide range of posts from a wide range of people.”

Check out their blog at http://uofuphilosophy.wordpress.com/, and write up some of your thoughts to help build our philosophical community!