The Lonely Photo of Michel Foucault with a Full Head of Hair

in Philosophy, Random | April 22nd, 2014

When you think of Michel Fou­cault, it’s hard not to think of the bald head that’s so part of his per­sona. Do a Google image search for Fou­cault, and you’ll find a “pro­fu­sion of pic­tures of Fou­cault’s gleam­ing bald head” (as Jef­frey Wein­stock calls it in an arti­cle enti­tled “This is Not Fou­cault’s Head”). But, among those many images, you will find one lone­ly pho­to of Fou­cault with a full(ish) head of hair. It’s hard to put a date on the pic­ture. Very like­ly, it was tak­en dur­ing the mid 1950s, right around when Fou­cault was 30 years old. The look he’s sport­ing there is very dif­fer­ent than what we see in 1965, when he sits down to talk with Alain Badiou. Or 1971, when he debates Noam Chom­sky on Dutch TV. By those lat­er dates, Fou­cault had the look that became so endur­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Foucault’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy Explored in a Reveal­ing 1993 Doc­u­men­tary

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

1955 Psychology Experiment Sees What Happens When You Ask an Artist to Paint Under the Influence of LSD

in Science | April 22nd, 2014

A few months ago, we fea­tured the increas­ing­ly abstract por­traits drawn by an artist after peri­od­ic dos­es of LSD. It hap­pened in the late 1950s, a time when you might well imag­ine such an activ­i­ty going down in, say, a bohemi­an quar­ter of New York, but also a time when hal­lu­cino­genic drugs rode a wave of pop­u­lar­i­ty among legit­i­mate sci­en­tists. Those osten­si­bly straight-laced researchers (some­times fund­ed by CIA mon­ey) had a fas­ci­na­tion not with the tak­ing of hal­lu­cino­genic drugs — not nec­es­sar­i­ly, any­way — but with what, exact­ly, these hal­lu­cino­genic drugs did to those who do take them. Par­tic­u­lar­ly artists draw­ing por­traits. Those por­traits drawn on LSD came out under the close watch of Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine psy­chi­a­trist Oscar Janiger. Above, you can watch the fruit of anoth­er, much more ver­bal 1950s exper­i­ment con­duct­ed just down the coast by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Nicholas A. Ber­cel, M.D.: “Schiz­o­phrenic Mod­el Psy­chosis Induced by LSD 25.”

Here we also have an artist exam­ined: this time, a Los Ange­les painter named Bill. As Bill floats through his altered state, Ber­cel asks him to describe, in as rig­or­ous detail as pos­si­ble, his per­cep­tions of objects in the room, of items of food and drink brought in, and of their inter­ac­tions them­selves. This 24-minute film of the four-hour process, punc­tu­at­ed by elec­troen­cephalo­graph­ic scans, comes as a pro­duc­tion of San­doz, the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny who orig­i­nal­ly iso­lat­ed LSD and who appar­ent­ly had an inter­est in bring­ing a form of it to mar­ket. (One pro­posed phar­ma­co­log­i­cal des­ig­na­tion: “Phan­tastium.”) Though that did­n’t hap­pen, the Hun­gar­i­an-born Ber­cel went on through­out his long career to con­duct more research of the kind that ulti­mate­ly earned him a lega­cy as a pio­neer in neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy. He also, when not in the lab, wrote over a dozen nov­els and film treat­ments. Clear­ly he had an impres­sive cre­ative streak, whether or not he ever per­son­al­ly had his doors of per­cep­tion opened by the sub­stances his sub­jects like Bill so enjoyed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Bob Dylan Plays First Live Performance of “Hurricane,” His Song Defending Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (RIP) in 1975

in Music | April 21st, 2014

This week­end, Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter passed away. He was 76. An Amer­i­can mid­dleweight box­er, Carter was tried and con­vict­ed twice (once 1967, again in 1976) for homi­cides that took place in Pater­son, New Jer­sey in 1966 — despite the fact that there were no fin­ger prints or eye­wit­ness­es con­nect­ing him to the crime. (Both con­vic­tions were lat­er over­turned when courts found that the tri­als were taint­ed by pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct.) Before the sec­ond tri­al, Bob Dylan met with Carter in prison and then wrote “Hur­ri­cane,” a protest song that reached #33 on the Bill­board chart. Accord­ing to Jam­base, Dylan brought a trio to Chicago’s WTTW Stu­dios for a three-song per­for­mance where they played “Hur­ri­cane” on Sep­tem­ber 10, 1975. He’s backed by Scar­let Rivera on vio­lin, Rob Ston­er on bass, and Howie Wyeth on drums. It was appar­ent­ly Dylan’s first live per­for­mance of the eight minute song.

PS Sor­ry for the ad that plays before the video. We have no con­trol over that.

via Expect­ing Rain

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

The Drawings of Jean-Paul Sartre

in Art, Letters, Philosophy | April 21st, 2014

We’ve estab­lished some­thing of a tra­di­tion here of fea­tur­ing draw­ings by famous authors. It seems, unsur­pris­ing­ly, that skill with the pen often goes hand-in-glove with a keen visu­al sense, though admit­ted­ly some writ­ers are more tal­ent­ed drafts­men than oth­ers. William Faulkn­er, for exam­ple, cre­at­ed some very fine pen-and-ink illus­tra­tions for his col­lege news­pa­per dur­ing his brief time at Ole Miss. Franz Kafka’s expres­sion­is­tic sketch­es are quite strik­ing, despite his anguished protes­ta­tions to the con­trary. And Jorge Luis Borges’ doo­dles are as quirky and play­ful as the author him­self. Today we bring you the sketch­es of that great French exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher, nov­el­ist, and play­wright Jean-Paul Sartre—a col­lec­tion of six rough, child­like car­i­ca­tures that are, shall we say, rather less than accom­plished. It’s cer­tain­ly for the best—as the cliché goes—that Sartre nev­er quit his day job for an art career.

But there is a cer­tain wicked charm in Sartre’s visu­al satires of human moral fail­ings, which he calls a “series de ‘douze vices sans allusion’”—roughly, “a series of twelve vices with­out ref­er­ence.” Either Sartre only com­plet­ed half the series, or—more likely—half have been lost, since the author assures the recip­i­ent of his hand­i­work, a Made­moi­selle Suzanne Guille, that he presents to her a “série com­plete.” Who was Suzanne Guille? Your guess is as good as mine. Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book & Man­u­script Library, which hous­es these sketch­es, gives us no indi­ca­tion. Per­haps she was a rel­a­tive, per­haps the spouse, of Pierre Guille, Simon de Beauvoir’s last lover? Giv­en the many com­pli­cat­ed liaisons pur­sued by both Sartre and his part­ner, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are indeed intrigu­ing. As for the draw­ings? Their sub­jects hold more inter­est than their exe­cu­tion, pro­vid­ing us with keys to Sartre’s moral uni­verse.

The first car­i­ca­ture, at the top, is titled “Le Con­tent­ment de soi”—“Self-Satisfaction”—and the character’s pompous expres­sion says as much. Below it, the curi­ous lit­tle fel­low with the curlicue nose is called “L’Esprit Critique”—“The Spir­it of Crit­i­cism.” And above we have “Le respect de la con­signe et de la jurée”—“Keeping a Sworn Oath.” You can see the remain­ing three draw­ings, and read Sartre’s let­ter (in French, of course) to Made­moi­selle Guille in pdf form here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Two Child­hood Draw­ings from Poet E.E. Cum­mings Show the Young Artist’s Play­ful Seri­ous­ness

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Painter Paul Gauguin Plays the Harmonium with No Pants or Shoes (Circa 1895)

in Art, Photography | April 20th, 2014

What do we have here? Painter Paul Gau­guin play­ing a har­mo­ni­um at the Paris stu­dio of Alphonse Mucha, a Czech Art Nou­veau painter, in or around 1895. How this came about — how Gau­guin decid­ed to strip off his pants and shoes and start play­ing that pump organ — we’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know. But we’re cer­tain­ly glad that this light moment was saved for pos­ter­i­ty.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via @SteveSilberman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Kurt Vonnegut Urges Young People to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Creativity, K-12, Letters, Literature | April 19th, 2014

Art not only saves lives, it casts rip­ples, as Kurt Von­negut sure­ly knew when he replied—at length—to five New York City high school stu­dents who’d con­tact­ed him as part of a 2006 Eng­lish assign­ment.  (The iden­ti­ties of the oth­er authors select­ed for this hon­or are lost to time, but not one had the cour­tesy to respond except Von­negut.)

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lock­wood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Bat­ten, Mau­r­er and Con­gius­ta:

I thank you for your friend­ly let­ters. You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na.

What I had to say to you, more­over, would not take long, to wit: Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly, not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seri­ous­ly! I mean start­ing right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a fun­ny or nice pic­ture of Ms. Lock­wood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on. Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.

Here’s an assign­ment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lock­wood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood. OK?

Tear it up into tee­ny-wee­ny pieces, and dis­card them into wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed trash recep­ti­cals [sic]. You will find that you have already been glo­ri­ous­ly reward­ed for your poem. You have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Von­negut

Von­negut’s kind wish­es and Yoko Ono-esque prompt have been wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed on the Inter­net, which is no doubt where stu­dents at Hove Park School in Brighton, East Sus­sex caught the scent. Work­ing with a pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in nar­ra­tive-dri­ven work, they lit­er­al­ized  the assign­ment in the video above, and while I might have pre­ferred a sneak peek at the poems and draw­ings such a task might yield, pre-shred­ding, I loved how they acknowl­edged that not every­one heeds the call. (The cast­ing of that one could have gone either way…wouldn’t be sur­prised if you told me that that boy has a punk band that would’ve ripped Von­negut’s ears off.)

via Kate Rix

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is spend­ing tonight’s Night of Von­negut in Los Ange­les rather than her home­town of Indi­anapo­lis. So it goes. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Read 10 Short Stories by Gabriel García Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Interviews)

in Literature | April 18th, 2014

Image by Fes­ti­val Inter­na­cional de Cine en Guadala­jara via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Our inde­pen­dence from Span­ish dom­i­na­tion did not put us beyond the reach of mad­ness,” said Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez in his 1982 Nobel Prize accep­tance speech. Gar­cía Márquez, who died yes­ter­day at the age of 87, refers of course to all of Spain’s for­mer colonies in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, from his own Colom­bia to Cuba, the island nation whose artis­tic strug­gle to come to terms with its his­to­ry con­tributed so much to that art form gen­er­al­ly known as “mag­i­cal real­ism,” a syn­cretism of Euro­pean mod­ernism and indige­nous art and folk­lore, Catholi­cism and the rem­nants of Amerindi­an and African reli­gions.

While the term has per­haps been overused to the point of banal­i­ty in crit­i­cal and pop­u­lar appraisals of Latin-Amer­i­can writ­ers (some pre­fer Cuban nov­el­ist Ale­jo Carpentier’s lo real mar­avil­loso, “the mar­velous real”), in Marquez’s case, it’s hard to think of a bet­ter way to describe the dense inter­weav­ing of fact and fic­tion in his life’s work as a writer of both fan­tas­tic sto­ries and unflinch­ing jour­nal­is­tic accounts, both of which grap­pled with the gross hor­rors of colo­nial plun­der and exploita­tion and the sub­se­quent rule of blood­thirsty dic­ta­tors, incom­pe­tent patri­archs, venal oli­garchs, and cor­po­rate gang­sters in much of the South­ern Hemi­sphere.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s a descrip­tion that some­times seems to obscure Gar­cía Mar­quez’s great pur­pose, mar­gin­al­iz­ing his lit­er­ary vision as trendy exot­i­ca or a “post­colo­nial hang­over.” Once asked in a Paris Review inter­view the year before his Nobel win about the dif­fer­ence between the nov­el and jour­nal­ism, Gar­cía Márquez replied, “Noth­ing. I don’t think there is any dif­fer­ence. The sources are the same, the mate­r­i­al is the same, the resources and the lan­guage are the same.”

In jour­nal­ism just one fact that is false prej­u­dices the entire work. In con­trast, in fic­tion one sin­gle fact that is true gives legit­i­ma­cy to the entire work. That’s the only dif­fer­ence, and it lies in the com­mit­ment of the writer. A nov­el­ist can do any­thing he wants so long as he makes peo­ple believe in it.

Gar­cía Márquez made us believe. One would be hard-pressed to find a 20th cen­tu­ry writer more com­mit­ted to the truth, whether expressed in dense mythol­o­gy and baroque metaphor or in the dry ratio­nal­ist dis­course of the West­ern epis­teme. For its mul­ti­tude of incred­i­ble ele­ments, the 1967 nov­el for which Gar­cía Márquez is best known—One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude—cap­tures the almost unbe­liev­able human his­to­ry of the region with more emo­tion­al and moral fideli­ty than any strict­ly fac­tu­al account: “How­ev­er bizarre or grotesque some par­tic­u­lars may be,” wrote a New York Times review­er in 1970, “Macon­do is no nev­er-nev­er land.” In fact, Gar­cía Márquez’s nov­el helped dis­man­tle the very real and bru­tal South Amer­i­can empire of banana com­pa­ny Unit­ed Fruit, a “great irony,” writes Rich Cohen, of one mythol­o­gy lay­ing bare anoth­er: “In col­lege, they call it ‘mag­i­cal real­ism,’ but, if you know his­to­ry, you under­stand it’s less mag­i­cal than just plain real, the stuff of news­pa­pers returned as lived expe­ri­ence.”

Edith Gross­man, trans­la­tor of sev­er­al of Gar­cía Márquez’s works—including Love in the Time of Cholera and his 2004 auto­bi­og­ra­phy Liv­ing to Tell the Tale (Vivir para Cotar­la)—agrees. “He doesn’t use that term at all, as far as I know,” she said in a 2005 inter­view with Guer­ni­ca’s Joel Whit­ney: “It’s always struck me as an easy, emp­ty kind of remark.” Instead, Gar­cía Márquez’s style, says Gross­man, “seemed like a way of writ­ing about the excep­tion­al­ness of so much of Latin Amer­i­ca.”

Today, in hon­or and with tremen­dous grat­i­tude for that inde­fati­ga­ble chron­i­cler of excep­tion­al lived expe­ri­ence, we offer sev­er­al online texts of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s short works at the links below.

Harper­Collins’ online pre­view of Gar­cía Mar­quez’s Col­lect­ed Sto­ries includes the full text of “The Third Res­ig­na­tion,” “The Oth­er Side of Death,” “Eva Is Inside Her Cat,” “Bit­ter­ness for Three Sleep­walk­ers,” and “Dia­logue with the Mir­ror,” all from the author’s 1972 col­lec­tion Eyes of a Blue Dog (Ojos de per­ro azul).

At The New York­er, you can read Gar­cía Mar­quez’s sto­ry “The Autumn of the Patri­arch” (1976) and his 2003 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay “The Chal­lenge.”

Fol­low the links below for more of Gar­cía Mar­quez’s short fic­tion from var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ty web­sites:

“Death Con­stant Beyond Love” (1970)

“The Hand­somest Drowned Man in the World” (1968)

“A Very Old Man with Enor­mous Wings” (1955)

Vis­it The Mod­ern Word for an excel­lent bio­graph­i­cal sketch of the author.

See The New York Times for “A Talk with Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez” in the year of his Nobel win, an essay in which he recounts his 1957 meet­ing with Ernest Hem­ing­way, and many more reviews and essays.

Final­ly, we should also men­tion that you can down­load Love in the Time of Cholera or Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude for free (as audio books) if you join Audible.com’s 30-day pro­gram. We have details on it here.

As we say farewell to one of the world’s great­est writ­ers, we can remem­ber him not only as a writer of “mag­i­cal real­ism,” what­ev­er that phrase may mean, but as a teller of com­pli­cat­ed, won­drous, and some­times painful truths, in what­ev­er form he hap­pened to find them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

600 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 Historical Films on YouTube

in Film, History | April 18th, 2014

British Pathé was one of the lead­ing pro­duc­ers of news­reels and doc­u­men­taries dur­ing the 20th Cen­tu­ry. This week, the com­pa­ny, now an archive, is turn­ing over its entire col­lec­tion — over 85,000 his­tor­i­cal films – to YouTube.

The archive — which spans from 1896 to 1976 – is a gold­mine of footage, con­tain­ing movies of some of the most impor­tant moments of the last 100 years. It’s a trea­sure trove for film buffs, cul­ture nerds and his­to­ry mavens every­where. In Pathé’s playlist “A Day That Shook the World,” which traces an Anglo-cen­tric his­to­ry of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, you will find clips of the Wright Broth­ers’ first flight, the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon, along­side footage of Queen Victoria’s funer­al and Roger Bannister’s 4‑minute mile. There’s, of course, footage of the dra­mat­ic Hin­den­burg crash and Lind­bergh’s dar­ing cross-Atlantic flight. And then you can see King Edward VIII abdi­cat­ing the throne in 1936, and the even­tu­al Pearl Har­bor attack in Decem­ber 1941 (above).

But the real­ly intrigu­ing part of the archive is see­ing all the ephemera from the 20th Cen­tu­ry, the stuff that real­ly makes the past feel like a for­eign coun­try – the weird hair­styles, the way a city street looked, the breath­tak­ing­ly casu­al sex­ism and racism. There’s a rush in see­ing his­to­ry come alive. Case in point, this doc­u­men­tary from 1967 about the won­ders to be found in a sur­pris­ing­ly mono­chrome Vir­ginia.

Here’s a film about a tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion that curi­ous­ly didn’t take off — an amphibi­ous scoot­er. The look of regal dig­ni­ty on the driver’s face as his vehi­cle moves down the Thames is price­less.

In an ear­ly exam­ple of a polit­i­cal bloop­er, there’s this footage from 1942 of Bess Tru­man try­ing valiant­ly to smash an unyield­ing bot­tle of cham­pagne against the fuse­lage of a brand new bomber.

And then there’s this news­reel from 1938 on the wed­ding between Bil­ly Cur­tis, a 3’7” night­club bounc­er and his 6’4” bur­lesque star bride. The jaun­ty, spec­tac­u­lar­ly un-PC voiceover should prob­a­bly be filed under “things were dif­fer­ent then.”

If you have sev­er­al weeks to kill, you can watch all of the videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Film: Claude Mon­et at Work in His Famous Gar­den at Giverny, 1915

The Weird World of Vin­tage Sports

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown on 1922 Vin­tage Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

The Ultimate Warrior, Professional Wrestler & Philosopher, Created a Glossary of World Philosophies

in Philosophy, Sports | April 18th, 2014

If you run a web site long enough, you end up cov­er­ing top­ics you nev­er thought you’d touch. Like pro­fes­sion­al wrestling. Come to think of it, we did show you once before Andy Warhol mak­ing an unex­pect­ed appear­ance on a 1985 World Wide Wrestling Fed­er­a­tion broad­cast. But today the sub­ject isn’t an artist with a pen­chant for wrestling. It’s a wrestler him­self. More specif­i­cal­ly its The Ulti­mate War­rior (born James Hell­wig) who had a pen­chant for phi­los­o­phy.

A star dur­ing the 1990s in the WWF,  The Ulti­mate War­rior died of heart dis­ease last week at the age of 54. After his retire­ment from wrestling, he became a moti­va­tion­al speak­er and life coach. And, as Dead­spin notes, he main­tained a curi­ous web site that fea­tured a glos­sary of world philoso­phies.

If you want seri­ous def­i­n­i­tions of phi­los­o­phy, I’d sug­gest you vis­it The Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy. For some­thing more abbre­vi­at­ed and kooky, you can’t go wrong with The Ulti­mate War­riors’ dic­tio­nary. Let me give you a few quick exam­ples:

Exis­ten­tial­ism
This is a real nasty phi­los­o­phy that asserts man has free will, but exists in an unknow­able, malev­o­lent uni­verse with no knowl­edge of what is right or wrong. The catch is that the indi­vid­ual is respon­si­ble (moral­ly account­able) for all his actions, but has no way of know­ing what actions are cor­rect. The effects on a per­son are dev­as­tat­ing. (See also Skep­ti­cism.)

Kan­tian­ism
This is the exact oppo­site of Objec­tivism. It’s [sic] epis­te­mol­o­gy is faith-eat­en and mys­tic-appeas­ing. It’s [sic] meta­physics is sub­jec­tive, it’s [sic] ethics are altru­is­tic and it’s [sic] pol­i­tics are col­lec­tivis­tic. Kant cre­at­ed the exact oppo­site of what con­sti­tutes a phi­los­o­phy based on rea­son. His “argu­ment” con­sists of equiv­o­ca­tions, elab­o­rate straw-men (the entire Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son for exam­ple), etc. He was quite an evil per­son.

Paci­fism
This asserts a moral absolute (with­out any con­text) that it is wrong to use force. Instead of rec­og­niz­ing the need for self-defense, the paci­fist equates all force with evil, equiv­o­cat­ing. A paci­fist soci­ety would per­ish absolute­ly when the first gang came along.

Tran­scen­den­tal­ism
This is the belief that intu­ition is supe­ri­or to sense-per­cep­tion and rea­son, and is filled with mys­tic gooble-dee-gook. Its epis­te­mol­o­gy is exclu­sive­ly sub­jec­tive. I think this is only pop­u­lar because it has an inter­est­ing sound­ing name. (See also Mys­ti­cism, Sub­jec­tivism, Zen.)

If you’re won­der­ing what phi­los­o­phy The War­rior sym­pa­thized with, it seems you need to look no fur­ther than Ayn Rand’s Objec­tivism (sur­prise, sur­prise), which he defined as fol­lows: “In essence, a con­cept where man is a hero­ic being, and his life is an end in itself, with his own hap­pi­ness as the moral pur­pose of his life, with pro­duc­tive achieve­ment as his noblest activ­i­ty, and rea­son as his only absolute.”

For more def­i­n­i­tions, you can dive into the glos­sary right here. This curi­ous item comes to us via Leit­er Reports.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

A Brief Tour of British & Irish Accents: 14 Ways to Speak English in 84 Seconds

in English Language | April 17th, 2014

Amer­i­cans, com­ing from the enor­mous and rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly set­tled place we do, tend to have a hard time with accents, strug­gling to grasp the extent of the vari­ety of region­al ways of speech in small­er, old­er coun­tries, let alone to use them our­selves. Study­ing the Kore­an lan­guage, I’ve found that under­stand­ing a native speak­er from one city does­n’t mean I’ll under­stand any­thing said by anoth­er native speak­er from a city fifty miles away. (Though that holds true even for Kore­ans them­selves; hence the preva­lence of sub­ti­tles on their tele­vi­sion shows.) Vis­it­ing Lon­don a few months ago, eas­i­ly as I could make sense of every­body speak­ing my native tongue, I pre-emp­tive­ly gave up hope of pick­ing up on the nuances of all the accents peo­ple had brought to the city from their home­towns — much less the numer­ous and sub­tle dialects native of Lon­don itself. Every­one I met insist­ed that a Briton’s accent says more about their ori­gin, class, sta­tion in life, and degree of self-regard than any oth­er qual­i­ty, but not know­ing New­cas­tle from Southamp­ton when I first set foot on Eng­lish soil, I had to take them at their word (how­ev­er they hap­pened to pro­nounce it).

The video above, in which pro­fes­sion­al dialect coach Andrew Jack demon­strates four­teen British accents in 84 sec­onds, might help sort things out for my fel­low con­fused coun­try­men. “Received com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the great com­mu­ni­ca­tor,” Jack says, using the accent I assume he grew up with. “As soon as you devi­ate from that and you go into Lon­don speech, for exam­ple, you lose a lit­tle bit of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” By that point, Jack has seam­less­ly tran­si­tioned into Cock­ney, from which he then shifts into the accents of East Anglia, the West Coun­try, York­shire, Lan­cashire, Liv­er­pool, North­ern Ire­land, Dublin, the Scot­tish high­lands, Glas­gow, North Wales, and South Wales. The Youtube com­ment box below has, pre­dictably, filled with com­plains about all the accents — the com­menters’ own, dare I imag­ine? — that did­n’t make it into this brief lin­guis­tic tour. Though far from com­pre­hen­sive, the video does in any case put the lie to the notion so many non-Brits seem to have that they can “do a British accent.” If you encounter one of them, don’t ask them to demon­strate it; ask them which British accent they mean. Then you’ll real­ly hear how poor­ly they fare.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Sir Patrick Stew­art Demon­strates How Cows Moo in Dif­fer­ent Eng­lish Accents

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.