Intellectual Exercise

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:08 am Post subject: Intellectual Exercise

Compare and contrast the following pairs of ideas, critique their limitations, identify their accuracy, and explore their consequences both historically and theoretically....discuss their value for your life and the world you live in; or their import in shaping your personal ideals and vision of the good society.

Baruch Spinoza's Conatus and Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power.

Martin Buber's I/Thou-I/It and Sigmund Freud's Biophilia-Necrophilia.

Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative and Jean Paul Sartre's Bad Faith.

E.O. Wilson's Consillience and Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.

Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and George Orwell's Newspeak

Mohandas Ghandi's Satyagraha and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Agape

Dissident Heart · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 3:10 pm Post subject: Exercising the Mind

What do each of these terms mean as utilized by their accompanying sources? Explore their similarities and differences, influences upon each other, their interpretation and importance throughout history, in philosophy, religion, art and literature, and their implications in our contemporary world...as well as your personal life, sense of vocation, and ideals regarding individual virtue, ethics, and purpose for living.

Plato's Philosopher King
Aristotle's Great Souled Man
Confucius' Superior Man
The Hebrew Prophets' Messiah
Ramayana and Mahabharata's Avatar
Mahayana Buddhism's Bodhisattva
Jesus' Son of Man
Paul's Christ
Nietzsche's Ubermensch

MadArchitect · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:58 am Post subject: Re: Exercising the Mind

Is there a due date for this assignment?

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 2:36 pm Post subject: Re: Exercising the Mind

MA: Is there a due date for this assignment?

Well...I suppose you don't have to complete every piece of it at once...maybe particular elements that spark your interest? Perhaps alternative combinations/comparisons of ideas from the above list that you find more fruitful, engaging, challenging, or entertaining?

MadArchitect · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: Re: Exercising the Mind

You'll be kind enough to excuse my sarcasm, I suppose. This all seems so academic, like an undergrad assignment, and that's an approach to philosophy and theology from which I've been at pains to distance myself. I imagine that others here eschew the academic taste of this thread as well.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 2:11 pm Post subject: Re: Exercising the Mind

MA: This all seems so academic, like an undergrad assignment, and that's an approach to philosophy and theology from which I've been at pains to distance myself.

Sorry for stirring up any Classroom PTSD or specters of tyrannical teachers, academic abusers, and pedantic tediousness.... ... .. .

I think the structure allows for a good deal of individual taste and personal focus- especially the challenge to use the comparisons as catalyst to examine your personal life, sense of vocation, and your ideals regarding individual virtue, ethics, purpose for living, and vision of the good society. I'd hoped this would balance the obvious academic accent.

Anybody else interested in exploring these key characters and ideas in the history of philosophy and religion?

StarlightCode · Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:06 am Post subject: Re: Empty space between the ears

I would love to exercise the mind, but most of it ran off and left me years ago.

riverc0il · Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 3:36 pm Post subject: Re: Empty space between the ears

i am with mad on this one. i was really interested in philosophy before i had a few college level philosophy classes that bored me to tears. it does seem kinda academic study like. once i left college, i began my own readings of various philosophical works (generally not from the original source material) and have enjoyed it much more, especially when said philosophies are practical instead of comparitively academic. good idea, but i will pass.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:16 pm Post subject: Re: Empty space between the ears

StarlightCode: I would love to exercise the mind, but most of it ran off and left me years ago.

You know what they say...if you love someone, set them free...if they don't come back- hunt them down and kill 'em.

RiverCoil: especially when said philosophies are practical instead of comparitively academic.

What do you mean by practical? Can anything practical arise from an academic exercise? What makes an exercise academic?

I think the above lists of ideas and concepts have profound practical implications and applications: they can impact beliefs, attitudes, worldviews, assumptions, allegiences, etc. in multiple ways....some better, some worse- depending upon your reasons for utilizing them, and how you put them to work.

I think Gandhi's satyagraha and King's agape had worldshaping influence, radically changing the ways millions of people understood themselves, political engagement, social relationships, and what to do in the face of violent oppression and communal despair. Are these not practical concerns?

Likewise, Chomsky's theory of manufacturing consent and Orwell's phrase newspeak are intimately related to the everyday consumption of news and information, and how this process produces conformity, creates appetites, generates fears, and keeps dominant political and economic structures in tact and ever expanding. I think this is very practical stuff.

Still, the name of this category is Religion, Philosophy and the Arts. I think the ideas and characters included in the first two posts represent some of the foundational sources and paradigmatic voices within these fields.

I'm not sure how comparing and contrasting ideas and personalities, highlighting accuracy, inconsistencies, influences, impact on history, our lives and our vision of the kind of world we want to live in....isn't this what we do in every other post; or at least try to do?

riverc0il · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:00 am Post subject: Re: Empty space between the ears

Quote:
Likewise, Chomsky's theory of manufacturing consent and Orwell's phrase newspeak are intimately related to the everyday consumption of news and information, and how this process produces conformity, creates appetites, generates fears, and keeps dominant political and economic structures in tact and ever expanding. I think this is very practical stuff.

Having read Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, I doubt most people have the stomach for that type of reading (most people on this community probably do though). But it doesn't matter, because if we want to talk about media, let's just talk about media! Not strictly a comparison and contrast between Chomsky and Orwell ideas (which seems rather academic outside of a more broad discussion of media in general). In the end game (call me pessimistic), understanding these concepts isn't really practical because there really isn't much we can DO about the issues except get all

::97

Regardless, the main point is let us talk about the larger issues and their implications without limiting ourselves to comparing and contrasting major points of the great minds. That is the academics aspect that seems straight out of an undergraduate assignment, as Mad pointed out.

MadArchitect · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: Re: Empty space between the ears

....isn't this what we do in every other post; or at least try to do?

Maybe, but we let our current interests carry us. We don't generally have someone else come along and give us matching pairs of authors with instructions like "compare and contrast". And when we do, we generally ignore them.

If you think those authors are so paradigmatic, and their thoughts worth comparing in extended exegesis, then why not just do it? I really don't get what you're trying to do sometimes -- it really does seem like you've decided this is one of your classrooms, and that you've got to kindle in us the love of learning, or at least, of learning about the philosophers and theologians that you like best.

Take it however you'd like. I think you'd find BookTalk a lot more gratifying if you came at it from a different angle.


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