Liberal Arts

the unexamined life is not worth living
- Socrates (Plato, 1997, 33)
https://liberalarts.org.uk/the-unexamined-life-is-not-worth-living/

Liberal Arts • Thinking Now and Then Liberal Arts publishes ideas to make you think now and then. Philosophical, cultural, literary, and scientific essays, events, and resources.

the unexamined life is not worth living is one of philosophy's most famous quotes. Read it in context, find out who said it, and discover what it means.

the unexamined life is not worth living • Liberal Arts The unexamined life is not worth living is perhaps Socrates most famous quote. What it means becomes clearer when reading it in context

One of the most important elements of our lectures in searching for the roots of prejudice and inequality in western thinking will be the shape of traditional logic. We take logic for granted most of the time. No matter how unconsciously we do so, we all use it to structure things we say, and we all use to make sense of what other people say, and of the world in general. It underpins things that we are prepared to believe and things we are ready to reject. If someone contradicts themselves we are likely to say that they are being illogical and demand that they resolve the contraction of they are to claim to be making sense in what they. Even when we might get suspicious of logic, and prefer to follow emotions or feelings, we might still judge the justifications and the outcomes of our choices logically.

But have you ever considered why logic is logical? Why isn’t there some other kind of sense-making that is different? What makes logic logical?

https://socratesontrial.org/aristotelian-logic/

Aristotelian logic - History of Western Philosophy One of the most important elements of our lectures in searching for the roots of prejudice and inequality in western thinking will be the shape of traditional

A History of Western Philosophy: Prejudice and Inequality
https://socratesontrial.org/a-history-of-western-philosophy/

is a series of lectures that explore the ways in which inequality and prejudice have been part of the history and structure of Western thinking. The series suggests that the ‘Great Chain of Being’ is a key foundation for past and present inequalities and prejudices.

In all there will be about 20 lectures. From March 2022 the first ten lectures will be available to view. The remaining lectures will be added over the next few months.

We hope that anyone who takes up the challenge of following the series will find the effort it requires to be rewarding, and perhaps to be something of a Socratic educational experience.

A History of Western Philosophy: Prejudice and Inequality A History of Western Philosophy by Professor Nigel Tubbs explores the ways in which prejudice and inequality have been part of Western thinking.

what counts today, the question which is looming on the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it — Frantz Fanon.

Frantz Fanon on the redistribution of Wealth • Wealth Wealth, as Fanon knew, would threaten the idea of humanity. At a time of crisis, economically, ecologically, and politically, read Fanon.

The British philosopher and art critic Clive Bell (1881-1964) was a prominent proponent of the formalist approach to aesthetics. In this specific sense, he advocated and significantly developed an aesthetic ethos stemming back to the work of Kant. According to Kant, what we value in a work of art is its formal qualities. In Art (1914), Bell outlined his own radical take on this approach to aesthetics—an approach that served to rationalise emergent modernist practices as exemplified in the work of Post-Impressionists such as Paul Cézanne.

Wherein Lies the Value of Art? Clive Bell’s Radical Aesthetic Vision • Liberal Arts Wherein Lies the Value of Art? Clive Bell’s Radical Aesthetic Vision — Liberal Arts publishes ideas to make you think now and then. Philosophical, cultural,

The deserving have feasted on the light of wonder in university education for over 2,000 years. But they now sell an impoverished vision of higher education to the undeserving, holding them hostage to the loans they require while pretending to protect them from the light that, clearly, they will not need in the lives they are likely to lead. Any claims to raising the expectations of the less advantaged are dissolved by the low expectations of the educational nature of the courses deemed suitable for them. Defining such students as customers is not, as Government claims, for their protection against low-value products. It is deliberately and cynically to limit what they can expect from higher education. It is an impoverishment of their hopes and expectations of university, just as it is of universities themselves.

Is uni worth it? What's the point of Higher Education? • Liberal Arts Is uni worth it? What's the point of Higher Education? The "deserving" having feasted on higher education now sell an impoverished vision

In 1690 the philosopher John Locke famously wrote ‘The candle that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our purposes.’ What he did not add was that such luminosity carries one of western culture’s most ancient prejudices: that not all are deserving of access to the light. .

The tradition of western higher education has long held the view that the light is nourished by wonder. For Aristotle, Albert Einstein, and Carl Sagan, wonder at the order and arrangement of the natural world stimulated philosophical and scientific enquiry. For Cicero such wonder was the light in which shone the nature of the gods. Rene Descartes called wonder the first of all the passions. And the biologist E.O Wilson speaks of an inherent and inherited sense of wonder and fascination for features of our wild ecology.

But wonder in university education is threatened with becoming highly selective. Those courses that are not compromised by their students’ lack of cultural capital and its impact on their future levels of employability will not have to replace the experience of wonder with the experience of work. Those courses that widen participation to the least well-off students are to be held accountable to their social class. Any course that cannot attract financially advantaged students, in order to stave off possible closure, will have to replace the light of the candle with the teaching needed to meet the metrics of employability.

Undeserving of the light of higher education - Liberal Arts Undeserving of the light of higher education - The deserving having feasted on higher education now sell an impoverished vision

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing,–a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!

This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan leads to curious acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying:

“My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born–white!”

I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:

“But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?” Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!

https://liberalarts.org.uk/the-souls-of-white-folk/

Liberal Arts | Thinking Now and Then Liberal Arts publishes ideas to make you think now and then. Philosophical, cultural, literary, and scientific essays, events, and resources.

In the field of psychology, the image is canon: a child sitting in front of a marshmallow, resisting the temptation to eat it. If she musters up the willpower to resist long enough, she’ll be rewarded when the experimenter returns with a second marshmallow. Using this ‘marshmallow test’, the Austrian-born psychologist Walter Mischel demonstrated that children who could resist immediate gratification and wait for a second marshmallow went on to greater achievements in life. They did better in school, had better SAT scores, and even managed their stress more skilfully.

Mischel’s pioneering studies at Stanford in California and later at Columbia University in New York had a profound impact on both professional and popular understandings of patience, its origins, and its role in our lives. People reasoned from these studies of the 1970s and ’80s that there must be some deep individual characteristic, some personality feature, that set kids up for higher achievements throughout life. But what if that wasn’t the right conclusion to draw from these studies?