The Dalai Lama’s Introduction to Buddhism

in Philosophy, Religion | June 7th, 2009

When the Dalai Lama paid a vis­it to Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, he offered an intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture to Tibetan Bud­dhism. The lec­ture is not exact­ly what you’d nor­mal­ly get in the uni­ver­si­ty class­room. The talk is not entire­ly lin­ear. And he spends some time speak­ing in Eng­lish, then speaks in his native tongue (with the help of an inter­preter). But, he can talk about Bud­dhism with the author­i­ty that few authors can, and there’s a rea­son audi­ences come to see him in droves. Things real­ly get going about 23 min­utes in.

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Adult Content. For Mature Thinkers Only

in History, Literature, Philosophy, Stanford | April 22nd, 2009

A new sea­son of Enti­tled Opin­ions (iTunes Feed Web Site) recent­ly got off the ground, and it does­n’t take long to under­stand what this pro­gram is all about. Robert Har­ri­son, the Stan­ford lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor who hosts the show, opens the new sea­son with these very words:

Our stu­dios are locat­ed below ground, and every time I go down the stairs to do a new show, I feel like I’m descend­ing into the cat­a­combs where those of us who still read great lit­er­a­ture, probe ideas, and explore the recess­es of cul­tur­al his­to­ry, prac­tice a per­se­cut­ed reli­gion. In this neuras­thenic world of ours, we are like a dis­persed soci­ety of secret ini­ti­ates. We live covert­ly, as it were. And it’s in spe­cial shel­ters that our read­ing, think­ing and exchange of ideas take place. Maybe some­day we’ll once again be able to prac­tice our per­sua­sion pub­licly. But mean­while Enti­tled Opin­ions comes to you from the cat­a­combs.

You get the drift. This is a show that takes ideas, lit­er­a­ture, and life seri­ous­ly. It’s heady, and it does­n’t dumb things down. If you’re a faith­ful read­er of Open Cul­ture, you’ll find some­thing here for you. If you take a spin through the archives, you’ll find Har­ri­son in con­ver­sa­tion with Orhan Pamuk (the Nobel Prize win­ning nov­el­ist) and Richard Rorty (one of Amer­i­ca’s most impor­tant con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers). You’ll also find him talk­ing with schol­ars about  Vladimir Nabokov and his Loli­ta, World War II and the Ger­man bomb­ing of Lon­don, the His­to­ry of Psy­chi­a­try, and The His­tor­i­cal Jesus. Each pro­gram starts with a 10 minute (or so) mono­logue, and then Har­ri­son gets down to talk­ing with his guest for anoth­er 50. Give a lis­ten. Let us know your thoughts. And know that Enti­tled Opin­ions (iTunes Feed Web Site) is includ­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

PS I shame­less­ly bor­rowed this titled from a com­ment made about Enti­tled Opin­ions on iTunes. To be hon­est, my cre­ative well was run­ning dry.

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Mike Wallace Interviews Ayn Rand (1959)

in Literature, Philosophy, Television | March 31st, 2009

I’m no fan of Ayn Rand, but I found this footage intrigu­ing. Back before 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace had his own TV inter­view show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view, which aired from 1957 to 1960. And what you get is Mike Wal­lace ask­ing prob­ing ques­tions to celebri­ties of the day (and ped­dling cig­a­rettes). An archive of the tele­vi­sion series is host­ed by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, and fea­tures talks with Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Sal­vador Dali and many oth­ers. In the mean­time, I leave you with Ayn Rand. You can get Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties

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The Tolstoy Bailout, Or Why The Humanities Matter

in History, Life, Literature, Philosophy | March 10th, 2009

Writ­ing in The New Repub­lic, Leon Wieselti­er offers a response to the Feb 25 piece in the NYTimes: In Tough Times, the Human­i­ties Must Jus­ti­fy Their Worth. His argu­ment is worth a read, and here is one lengthy mon­ey quote:

The com­plaint against the human­i­ties is that they are imprac­ti­cal. This is true. They will not change the world. They will change only the expe­ri­ence, and the under­stand­ing, and the eval­u­a­tion, of the world. .… It is worth remem­ber­ing, then, that the cri­sis in which we find our­selves was the work of prac­ti­cal men. The secu­ri­ti­za­tion of mort­gages was not con­ceived by a head in the clouds. No poet cost any­body their house. No his­to­ri­an cost any­body their job. Not even the most pam­pered of pro­fes­sors ever squan­dered $87,000 of some­one else’s mon­ey on a lit­tle rug. The cre­ativ­i­ty of bankers is a lux­u­ry that we can no longer afford. But now I read about “defend­ing the virtues of the lib­er­al arts in a mon­ey-dri­ven world,” as the Times says. I would have thought that in these times the per­spec­tive of mon­ey would be ashamed to show itself. What author­i­ty, real­ly, should the stand­point of finance any longer have for Amer­i­can soci­ety? Who gives a damn what Ken­neth D. Lewis thinks about any­thing? … The study of reli­gion, defend­ing itself to cap­i­tal­ists? …

In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings.… We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.

Very well said, and the log­ic out­lined here could be one rea­son why the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­gram that I help lead — which is heavy on meat & pota­to human­i­ties cours­es — is so far far­ing quite well.
via the TNR Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

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The Life You Can Save

in Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2009

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Peter Singer is an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton and who wrote Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975, help­ing to launch the ani­mal rights move­ment. A prac­ti­tion­er of applied ethics, he has also tak­en con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on euthana­sia. Nowa­days, he’s work­ing on less sen­si­tive issues. His lat­est book is called The Life You Can Save: Act­ing Now to End World Pover­ty, and it makes the basic point that most of us could be doing more, with very lit­tle effort, to save lives around the world.

It’s a giv­en that we would rush to save a small child about to step into oncom­ing traf­fic. That’s a no-brain­er, an instinct. But, if we’re told that we can save the lives of chil­dren world­wide by giv­ing token amounts of mon­ey each month, we often react indif­fer­ent­ly and then go out and con­sume. In this inter­view heard on San Fran­cis­co air­waves this morn­ing, (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Singer gets into how small sac­ri­fices can make big dif­fer­ences, and why we should make them. And if you’re look­ing for char­i­ties that can help make these dif­fer­ences, Singer pro­vides a help­ful list on his web site.

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Allan Bloom on YouTube

in Philosophy | February 27th, 2009

Allan Bloom, per­haps best remem­bered for his con­tro­ver­sial best­seller The Clos­ing of the Amer­i­can Mind, spent his career study­ing and lec­tur­ing on the great books, writ­ing exten­sive­ly on Pla­to, Shake­speare, Rousseau, Hegel and oth­ers. Per­haps not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing­ly, some of his lec­tures have popped up on YouTube. (What does­n’t even­tu­al­ly pop up there?) The lec­tures are actu­al­ly audio record­ings with some pho­tos mixed in, and above we’ve post­ed the first in a series of lec­tures on Pla­to’s Apol­o­gy. The rest of the Pla­to lec­tures can be found here. The gen­er­al col­lec­tion is here. And remem­ber, you can get hun­dreds of free uni­ver­si­ty course here.

Via The Dai­ly Dish

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Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | December 14th, 2008

Ayn Rand’s clas­sic gets dust­ed off and humor­ous­ly brought into 2008 over at McSweeney’s. Worth a read. 

As a side note, you may want to revis­it the New York Times 2007 piece, Ayn Rand’s Lit­er­a­ture of Cap­i­tal­ism, which talks about the influ­ence that Atlas Shrugged (and its free mar­ket phi­los­o­phy) has had on For­tune 500 CEOs and par­tic­u­lar­ly Alan Greenspan, the for­mer head of the Fed­er­al Reserve, who helped archi­tect the dereg­u­lat­ed bank­ing sys­tem that’s now unwind­ing around us. Belat­ed­ly, Greenspan would acknowl­edge a “flaw in the mod­el” that he “per­ceived is the crit­i­cal func­tion­ing struc­ture that defines how the world works” — which is a fan­cy way of say­ing “on sec­ond thought, maybe the free mar­kets don’t always reg­u­late them­selves.” And there we have it, anoth­er utopi­an ide­ol­o­gy col­lides with real­i­ty. Not the first, and it won’t be the last.

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Footage of Nietzsche’s Final Days

in Philosophy | December 7th, 2008

Niet­zsche’s final days weren’t ones that you’d wish on any­one. Some biog­ra­phers spec­u­late that he con­tract­ed syphilis, which even­tu­al­ly trig­gered his decline into mad­ness in 1899. Two strokes fol­lowed, then pneu­mo­nia and it was all over in August, 1900. The footage below is appar­ent­ly from 1899, and we’re now adding it to our YouTube Favorites, which cur­rent­ly has 399. Who wants to put it over 400?
 

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