Titanic: The Nazis Create a Mega-Budget Propaganda Film About the Ill-Fated Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

in Film, History | March 24th, 2014

James Cameron’s Titan­ic appeared in 1997 as the most expen­sive film ever made. Wern­er Klin­gler and Her­bert Selpin’s Titan­ic appeared in 1943 as the most expen­sive Ger­man film ever made. And the two share even more than their bud­gets’ record-break­ing sta­tus, their famous­ly “unsink­able” sub­ject, and their title in com­mon: both endured trou­bled pro­duc­tions, both fea­ture a late scene where their male hero con­vinces his lover to just get on a lifeboat already, and both set out to make strong state­ments indeed. The lat­er, Amer­i­can Titan­ic has much to say about the cin­e­mat­ic tri­umph of late-20th-cen­tu­ry visu­al effects, where­as the ear­li­er, Ger­man Titan­ic takes a more neg­a­tive tack, mount­ing an indict­ment of the sup­pos­ed­ly sav­age avarice and thor­ough cor­rup­tion of that coun­try’s bit­ter wartime ene­my, Great Britain. In its ill-fat­ed tit­u­lar ship, the huge-scale pro­pa­gan­da film found what must have seemed like the per­fect­ly opu­lent illus­tra­tion of its argu­ment.

But things worked out no bet­ter for this Titan­ic than for the actu­al Titan­ic — and indeed, for Ger­many in the Sec­ond World War. “Nev­er shown in Nazi Ger­many, its direc­tor was found hanged  by his own braces and is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing been mur­dered by the Gestapo,” writes David Ger­rie in the Dai­ly Mail. “And the ship that took the role of the Titan­ic, the Cap Arcona, was lat­er sunk with 5,000 con­cen­tra­tion camp pris­on­ers on board, a vast­ly greater loss of life than the 1,517 who died in the Titan­ic dis­as­ter.” For all the time, ener­gy, and mon­ey the regime piled into it, the film turned out “far from the mas­ter­piece [Nazi Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da Joseph] Goebbels had wait­ed two years to see. Fear­ing Nazi cit­i­zens under attack by Allied bombers would be fright­ened by the sink­ing, he banned its release in Ger­many.” Just as Cameron’s Titan­ic shocked the indus­try-watch­ers who had solemn­ly pre­dict­ed a megaflop by cre­at­ing one of the most suc­cess­ful movies of all time, Klin­gler and Selpin’s Titan­ic must have giv­en the Nazis quite a start when it emerged as a tes­ta­ment not to Britain’s hubris, but, inad­ver­tent­ly, to their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

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.

Herbie Hancock Presents the Prestigious Norton Lectures at Harvard University: Watch Online

in Harvard, Music, Philosophy | March 24th, 2014

There may be no more dis­tin­guished lec­ture series in the arts than Harvard’s Nor­ton lec­tures, named for cel­e­brat­ed pro­fes­sor, pres­i­dent, and edi­tor of the Har­vard Clas­sics, Charles Eliot Nor­ton. Since 1925, the Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor­ship in Poetry—taken broad­ly to mean “poet­ic expres­sion in lan­guage, music, or fine arts”—has gone to one respect­ed artist per year, who then deliv­ers a series of six talks dur­ing their tenure. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Nor­ton lec­tures from 1967–68 by Jorge Luis Borges and 1972–73 by Leonard Bern­stein. Today we bring you the first three lec­tures from this year’s Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry, Her­bie Han­cock. Han­cock deliv­ers his fifth lec­ture today (per­haps even as you read this) and his sixth and final on Mon­day, March 31. The glo­ries of Youtube mean we don’t have to wait around for tran­script pub­li­ca­tion or DVDs, though per­haps they’re on the way as well.

The choice of Her­bie Han­cock as this year’s Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry seems an over­due affir­ma­tion of one of the country’s great­est artis­tic inno­va­tors of its most unique of cul­tur­al forms. The first jazz com­pos­er and musician—and the first African American—to hold the pro­fes­sor­ship, Han­cock brings an eclec­tic per­spec­tive to the post. His top­ic: “The Ethics of Jazz.” Giv­en his emer­gence on the world stage as part of Miles Davis’ 1964–68 Sec­ond Great Quar­tet, his first lec­ture (top) is apt­ly titled “The Wis­dom of Miles Davis.” Giv­en his swerve into jazz fusion, synth-jazz and elec­tro in the 70s and 80s, fol­low­ing Davis’ Bitch­es Brew rev­o­lu­tion, his sec­ond (below) is called “Break­ing the Rules.”

Noto­ri­ous­ly wordy cul­tur­al crit­ic Homi Bhab­ha, a Nor­ton com­mit­tee mem­ber, intro­duces Han­cock in the first lec­ture. If you’d rather skip his speech, Han­cock begins at 9:10 with his own intro­duc­tion of him­self, as a “musi­cian, spouse, father, teacher, friend, Bud­dhist, Amer­i­can, World Cit­i­zen, Peace Advo­cate, UNESCO Good­will Ambas­sador, Chair­man of the Thelo­nious Monk Insti­tute of Jazz” and, cen­tral­ly, “a human being.” Hancock’s men­tion of his glob­al peace advo­ca­cy is sig­nif­i­cant, giv­en the sub­ject of his third talk, “Cul­tur­al Diplo­ma­cy and the Voice of Free­dom” (below). His men­tion of the role of teacher is time­ly, since he joined UCLA’s music depart­ment as a pro­fes­sor in jazz last year (along with fel­low Davis Quin­tet alum­nus Wayne Short­er). Always an ear­ly adopter, push­ing music in new direc­tions, Han­cock calls his fourth talk “Inno­va­tion and New Tech­nolo­gies” (who can for­get his embrace of the key­tar?). His iden­ti­ty as a Bud­dhist is cen­tral to his talk today, “Bud­dhism and Cre­ativ­i­ty,” and his final talk is enig­mat­i­cal­ly titled “Once Upon a Time….” Find all of the lec­tures on this page.

Hancock’s last iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in his intro—“human being”—“may seem obvi­ous,” he says, but it’s “all-encom­pass­ing.” He invokes his own mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties to begin a dis­cus­sion on the “one-dimen­sion­al” self-pre­sen­ta­tions we’re each encour­aged to adopt—defining our­selves in one or two restric­tive ways and not “being open to the myr­i­ad oppor­tu­ni­ties that are avail­able on the oth­er side of the fortress.” Han­cock, a warm, friend­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tor and a pro­po­nent of “mul­ti­di­men­sion­al think­ing,” frames his “ethics of jazz” as spilling over the fortress walls of his iden­ti­ty as a musi­cian and becom­ing part of his broad­ly human­ist views on uni­ver­sal prob­lems of vio­lence, apa­thy, cru­el­ty, and envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. He calls each of his lec­tures a “set,” and his first two are care­ful­ly pre­pared talks in which his life in jazz pro­vides a back­drop for his wide-rang­ing phi­los­o­phy. So far, there’s nary a key­tar in sight.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock: All That’s Jazz!

Miles Davis and His ‘Sec­ond Great Quin­tet,’ Filmed Live in Europe, 1967

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

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

How the Ancient Greeks Shaped Modern Mathematics: A Short, Animated Introduction

in Animation, Math | March 24th, 2014

If you think Ancient his­to­ry does­n’t mat­ter to your life today, think again. Cre­at­ed by The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion and the ani­ma­tion shop 12Foot6, this short ani­mat­ed video reminds us that the Greeks gave us some of the most basic con­cepts used in math­e­mat­ics — con­cepts that we still use to nav­i­gate our mod­ern world today. As with dra­ma and phi­los­o­phy, every­thing goes back to the Ancient Greeks.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greece: A Free Online Course from Yale

Free Cours­es Online Math Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Guitarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

in Music | March 22nd, 2014

In 1968, Pink Floyd’s rela­tion­ship with increas­ing­ly drug-addled lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Syd Bar­rett unrav­eled. Though Barrett’s depar­ture wasn’t offi­cial­ly announced until April, that band had already begun, by neces­si­ty, per­form­ing and record­ing with­out him late the pre­vi­ous year, adding gui­tarist David Gilmour to the line­up to sup­plant Syd’s errat­ic per­for­mances. In Feb­ru­ary of ’68 the band appeared minus Syd on a French live-music pro­gram called Baton Rouge. Six­ties music blog A Dandy in Aspic describes the show as cap­tur­ing dur­ing its year-long run “some of the best British Mod/Psych bands at their peak,” includ­ing The Small Faces, The Moody Blues, and the Yard­birds, with Jim­my Page.

This Floyd footage, how­ev­er, is espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant for its por­trait of the band find­ing its way through the trau­ma of its chief architect’s men­tal demise, with a seem­ing­ly awk­ward Gilmour tak­ing over:  “It still sounds great, but the band are vis­i­bly uncom­fort­able. Roger Waters’ dark psy­che­del­ic gem ‘Set The Con­trols For the Heart Of The Sun’ sounds amaz­ing, and ‘Let there Be [More] Light’ is an indi­ca­tion of Pink Floy­d’s new, post-Syd direc­tion.”

In addi­tion to those two songs from their upcom­ing sec­ond album A Saucer­ful of Secrets, the band plays two songs from their debut, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The weird mys­ti­cal chant “Astron­o­my Domine” doesn’t suf­fer at all, since key­boardist Richard Wright sang the lead vocals on the album ver­sion and does so again here. David Gilmour takes over the lead for Barrett’s “Flam­ing,” which is such a Syd song, with its dis­turb­ing and child­like lyrics and loopy vocal melody, that his absence becomes notice­able. But it comes off fine, if some­what stiff, and the song remained in their set for years after­ward.

For more clas­sic psy­che­del­ic per­for­mances from the 1967–68 Baton Rouge, head over to A Dandy in Aspic.

via Kurt Loder/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

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

Watch the Talking Heads Play Live in Dortmund, Germany During Their Heyday (1980)

in Music | March 22nd, 2014

Back in 2012, we fea­tured a 1975 Talk­ing Heads con­cert at CBGB, ref­er­enc­ing Gen­er­a­tion X author Dou­glas Cou­p­land’s telling def­i­n­i­tion of who, exact­ly, con­sti­tutes that cohort: “If you liked the Talk­ing Heads back in the day, then you’re prob­a­bly X.” Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly iron­ic and sin­cere, artis­tic and com­mer­cial, ram­shackle and pol­ished, cere­bral and impul­sive: the sen­si­bil­i­ties of David Byrne’s influ­en­tial new-wave band and the zeit­geist pro­file of Gen­er­a­tion X share too many qual­i­ties to list. 1975, for a Gen Xer, would cer­tain­ly count as “back in the day,” though per­haps a bit too far back in the day for many of them to have gained entrance to such a vibrant­ly scuzzy venue as CBGB. Just five years lat­er, though, many more of them would have come of just enough age to engage with the Heads, who by that point had blown up in pop­u­lar­i­ty, play­ing huge venues all over the world.

You may have seen the band play­ing Rome in 1980 when we post­ed that show in 2012, and today we give you anoth­er of their Euro­pean gigs from that same break­out year, in Dort­mund. That loca­tion, about 250 miles from Cou­p­land’s Cana­di­an Air Force base birth­place in Ger­many, in a Ger­many still divid­ed, brings to mind not just the impor­tance of themes of the late Cold War to the nov­el­ist’s work, but to Gen­er­a­tion X itself, the last kids to grow up under the cred­i­ble threat of sud­den nuclear anni­hi­la­tion. Such an uneasy psy­cho­log­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment would have an effect on the for­ma­tion of any­one’s cre­ative mind, as it must also have on that of Gen­er­a­tion X’s pre­de­ces­sors, the Baby Boomers — a group in which the 1952-born Byrne falls right in the mid­dle. The Cold War may have end­ed, but the Talk­ing Heads’ music, as you’ll expe­ri­ence in this Dort­mund con­cert, tran­scends both tem­po­ral and geo­graph­i­cal con­text.

Set list:

1. “Psy­cho Killer”
2. “Cities”
3. “Zim­bra”
4. “Once in a Life­time”
5. “Ani­mals”
6. “Crosseyed and Pain­less”
7. “Life Dur­ing Wartime”
8. “The Great Curve”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

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.

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library

in Books, e-books, Education, Literature | March 21st, 2014

Just a few short years ago, the world of dig­i­tal schol­ar­ly texts was in its pri­mor­dial stages, and it is still the case that most online edi­tions are sim­ply basic HTML or scanned images from more or less arbi­trar­i­ly cho­sen print edi­tions. An exam­ple of the ear­li­est phas­es of dig­i­tal human­i­ties, MIT’s web edi­tion of the Com­plete Works of William Shake­speare has been online since 1993. The site’s HTML text of the plays is based on the pub­lic domain Moby Text, which—the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library informs us—“reproduces a late-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry ver­sion of the plays,” made “long before schol­ars ful­ly under­stood the prop­er grounds on which to make the thou­sands of deci­sions that Shake­speare edi­tors face.”

The schol­ar­ly Shake­speare edi­to­r­i­al process is far too Byzan­tine to get into, but suf­fice it to say that it mat­ters a great deal to seri­ous stu­dents which edi­tions they read and the new­er, often the bet­ter. And those edi­tions can become very cost­ly. Until recent­ly, the Moby Text was as good as it got for a free online edi­tion.

Oth­er online edi­tions of Shakespeare’s works had their own prob­lems. Bartleby.com has dig­i­tized the 1914 Oxford Com­plete Works, but this is not pub­lic-domain and is also out­dat­ed for schol­ar­ly use. Anoth­er online edi­tion from North­west­ern presents copy­right bar­ri­ers (and seems to have gone on indef­i­nite hia­tus). In light of these dif­fi­cul­ties, George Mason University’s Open Source Shake­speare project recent­ly pined for more: “per­haps some­day, a group of indi­vid­u­als will pro­duce a mod­ern, schol­ar­ly, free alter­na­tive to Moby Shake­speare.” Their wish has now been grant­ed. The Fol­ger Shake­speare Library has released all of Shakespeare’s plays as ful­ly search­able dig­i­tal texts, down­load­able as pdfs, in a free, schol­ar­ly edi­tion that makes all of its source code avail­able as well. Tak­en from 2010 Fol­ger Shake­speare Library edi­tions edit­ed by Bar­bara Mowat and Paul Wer­s­tine, the dig­i­tal plays con­sti­tute an invalu­able open resource.

You will still have to pur­chase Fol­ger print edi­tions for the com­plete “appa­ra­tus” (notes, crit­i­cal essays, tex­tu­al vari­ants, etc). But the Fol­ger promis­es new fea­tures in the near future. Cur­rent­ly, the dig­i­tal text is search­able by act/scene/line, key­word, and page and line num­ber (from the Fol­ger print edi­tions). Fol­ger touts its “metic­u­lous­ly accu­rate texts” as the “#1 Shake­speare text in U.S. class­rooms.” Per­haps some prick­ly expert will weigh in with a dis­par­age­ment, but for us non-spe­cial­ists, the free avail­abil­i­ty of these excel­lent online edi­tions is a great gift indeed.

As you know by now, Shake­speare’s plays can always be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Course: A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays

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

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

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

A Romp Through the Philosophy of Mind: A Free Online Course from Oxford

in Philosophy | March 21st, 2014

These days, neu­ro­science seems to have a monop­oly on the mind. Flip to the sci­ence sec­tion of an estab­lished news­pa­per or mag­a­zine, and you’ll like­ly see the most allur­ing head­lines describ­ing the lat­est neur­al find­ings. So, now that pow­er­ful meth­ods of neu­roimag­ing can delve deep­er into the struc­ture of the brain than ever before, is there any­thing that we don’t know about the mind? Well, yes. Apart from stat­ing that it is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the brain, sci­ence doesn’t offer much to explain what the mind is. In an unfor­tu­nate turn for neu­ro­science, no amount of brain scan­ning will reveal that, either.

It is at this sort of junc­ture that sci­ence pass­es the baton to phi­los­o­phy. Over the past few weeks, we’ve brought you two intro­duc­to­ry phi­los­o­phy cours­es (Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners and A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners) by Oxford University’s Mar­i­anne Tal­bot.

Today, we bring you anoth­er of Talbot’s excel­lent philo­soph­i­cal primers: A Romp Through the Phi­los­o­phy of Mind.  The five-part lec­ture series begins with a dis­cus­sion of René Descartes’ dual­ism, which com­pris­es the idea that the mind is non-phys­i­cal and is there­fore dis­tinct from the body. The course then moves through an expo­si­tion of Iden­ti­ty The­o­ry, accord­ing to which all of our men­tal states are mere­ly man­i­fes­ta­tions of an anal­o­gous set of brain process­es. Once Tal­bot out­lines the draw­backs to each of these the­o­ries, she explains the views of sev­er­al oth­er phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal camps, includ­ing the epiphe­nom­e­nal­ists, who see men­tal states as real but not phys­i­cal, and elim­i­na­tivists, who do not think that men­tal states are real at all. She then prompt­ly pro­ceeds to upend these con­cep­tions of the mind. As with all of Talbot’s pre­vi­ous cours­es, this one is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

A Romp Through the Phi­los­o­phy of Mind is cur­rent­ly avail­able on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford web­site in both audio and video for­mats, and also on iTune­sU. (See the lec­tures above.) You can find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, along­side class­es like Con­tem­po­rary Issues in Phi­los­o­phy of Mind & Cog­ni­tion, Hegel’s Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of Spir­it, and Mer­leau-Pon­ty’s Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of Per­cep­tion. They’re all part of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Learn Right From Wrong with Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Publisher Places a Politically Correct Warning Label on Kant’s Critiques

in Philosophy | March 20th, 2014

Most times when I hear some­one on a tear about the dan­gers of “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” I roll  my eyes and move on. So many such com­plaints involve ire at being held to stan­dards of basic human decen­cy, say, or hav­ing to share resources, oppor­tu­ni­ties, or pub­lic spaces. But there are many excep­tions, when the so-called “PC” impulse to broad­en inclu­siv­i­ty and soft­en offense pro­duces mon­sters of con­de­scend­ing pater­nal­ism. Take the above omnibus edi­tion of “Kant’s Cri­tiques” print­ed by Wilder Pub­li­ca­tions in 2008. The pub­lish­er, with either kind but painful­ly obtuse motives, or with an eye toward pre-empt­ing some kind of legal blow­back, has seen fit to include a dis­claimer at the bot­tom of the title page:

This book is a prod­uct of its time and does not reflect the same val­ues as it would if it were writ­ten today. Par­ents might wish to dis­cuss with their chil­dren how views on race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, eth­nic­i­ty, and inter­per­son­al rela­tions have changed since this book was writ­ten before allow­ing them to read this clas­sic work.

Where to begin? First, we must point out Wilder Pub­li­ca­tions’ strange cer­tain­ty that a hypo­thet­i­cal Kant of today would express his ideas in tol­er­ant and lib­er­al lan­guage. The sup­po­si­tion has the effect of patron­iz­ing the dead philoso­pher and of absolv­ing him of any respon­si­bil­i­ty for his blind spots and prej­u­dices, assum­ing that he meant well but was sim­ply a blink­ered and unfor­tu­nate “prod­uct” of his time.

But who’s to say that Kant didn’t damn well mean his com­ments that offend our sen­si­bil­i­ties today, and wouldn’t still mean them now were he some­how res­ur­rect­ed and forced to update his major works? More­over, why assume that all cur­rent read­ers of Kant do not share his more repug­nant views? Sec­ond­ly, who is this edi­tion for? Philoso­pher Bri­an Leit­er, who brought this to our atten­tion, humor­ous­ly titles it “Kant’s 3 Critiques—rated PG-13.” One would hope that any young per­son pre­co­cious enough to read Kant would have the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize his­tor­i­cal con­text and to approach crit­i­cal­ly state­ments that sound uneth­i­cal, big­ot­ed, or sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly dat­ed to her mod­ern ears. One would hope par­ents buy­ing Kant for their kids could do the same with­out chid­ing from pub­lish­ers.

None of this is to say that there aren’t sub­stan­tive rea­sons to exam­ine and cri­tique the prej­u­di­cial assump­tions and bias­es of clas­si­cal philoso­phers. A great many recent schol­ars have done exact­ly that. In her Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence and Race, for exam­ple, Nao­mi Zack observes that “accord­ing to con­tem­po­rary stan­dards, both [Hume and Kant] were vir­u­lent white suprema­cists.” Yet she also ana­lyzes the prob­lems with apply­ing “con­tem­po­rary stan­dards” to their sys­tems of thought, which were not nec­es­sar­i­ly racist in the sense we mean so much as “racial­ist,” depen­dent on an “ontol­ogy of human races, which under­lay Hume and Kant’s val­ue judg­ments about what they thought were racial dif­fer­ences” (an ontol­ogy, it’s worth not­ing, that pro­duced sys­temic and insti­tu­tion­al racism). Zack respects the vast gulf that sep­a­rates our judg­ments from those of the past while still hold­ing the philoso­phers account­able for con­tra­dic­tions and incon­sis­ten­cies in their thought that are clear­ly the prod­ucts of will­ful igno­rance, chau­vin­ism, and unex­am­ined bias. An informed his­tor­i­cal approach allows us to see how books are not sim­ply “prod­ucts of their time” but are sit­u­at­ed in net­works of knowl­edge and ide­ol­o­gy that shaped their authors’ assump­tions and con­tin­ue to shape our own—ideologies that per­sist into the present and can­not and should not be papered over or eas­i­ly explained away with skit­tish warn­ing labels and didac­tic lec­tures about how much things have changed. In a great many ways of course, they have. And in some sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, they sim­ply haven’t. To pre­tend oth­er­wise for the sake of the chil­dren is disin­gen­u­ous and does a grave dis­ser­vice to both author and read­er.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Man Shot in Fight Over Immanuel Kant’s Phi­los­o­phy in Rus­sia

100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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

How Truffaut Became Truffaut: From Petty Thief to Great Auteur

in Film | March 20th, 2014

“Cin­e­ma saved my life,” con­fid­ed François Truf­faut. He cer­tain­ly returned the favor, breath­ing new life into a French cin­e­ma that was gasp­ing for air by the late 50s, plagued as it was by acad­emism and Big Stu­dios’ for­mu­la­ic scripts. From his break­through first fea­ture 400 Blows in 1959–to this day one of the best movies on child­hood ever made–to his untime­ly death in 1984, Truf­faut wrote and direct­ed more than twen­ty-one movies, includ­ing such cin­e­mat­ic land­marks as Jules and Jim, The Sto­ry of Adele H., The Last Metro and the ten­der, bit­ter-sweet Antoine Doinel series, a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal account of his own life and loves. What is more, along with a wild bunch of young film crit­ics turned directors—his New Wave friends Godard, Chabrol, Riv­ette and Resnais—Truffaut rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we think, make and watch films today. (We will see how in my upcom­ing Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies course, When the French Rein­vent­ed Cin­e­ma: The New Wave Stud­ies, which starts on March 31. If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, please join us.)

Almost as inter­est­ing as Truf­faut’s rich lega­cy is the nar­ra­tive that led to it: How Truf­faut became Truf­faut against all odds. And how his unlike­ly back­ground as an ille­git­i­mate child, pet­ty thief, run­away teen and desert­er built the foun­da­tions for the ruth­less film crit­ic and gift­ed direc­tor he would become.

Les 400 Coups, we see a fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of the defin­ing moments in the young François’ life through the char­ac­ter of Antoine Doinel: the dis­cov­ery that he was born from an unknown father, the con­tentious rela­tion­ship with a moth­er who con­sid­ered him a bur­den and con­de­scend­ed to take him with her only when he was ten, the friend­ship with class­mate Robert Lachenay and the end­less wan­der­ings in the streets of Paris that ensued. The film offers a glimpse of the dearth of emo­tion­al as well as mate­r­i­al com­fort at home and how Antoine makes do with it, most­ly by pinch­ing mon­ey, time and dreams of love else­where: Antoine “bor­rows” bills and objects (Truf­faut, too, took and sold a type­writer from his dad’s office), steals moments of free­dom in the streets, and loves vic­ar­i­ous­ly through the movie the­aters (in the trail­er above, Antoine and his friend catch a show­ing of Ing­mar Bergman’s Moni­ka).

If any­thing, the real Truf­faut did far worse than his cin­e­mat­ic alter ego. Like Antoine, the young François skipped schools, stole, told lies, ran away and went to the movies on the sly. He ran up debts so high—mostly to pay for his first ciné-club endeavors—that he was sent to a juve­nile deten­tion cen­ter by his father. Lat­er, hav­ing enlist­ed in the Army, Truf­faut desert­ed upon real­iz­ing he would be sent to Indochi­na to fight: prison was again his lot. In his cell, he received let­ters from the great pris­on­er of French let­ters, Jean Genêt: it was only fit­ting that the young Truf­faut would become friends with the author of The Jour­nal of a Thief.

But had he been a bet­ter kid, Truf­faut might nev­er have been such a great direc­tor. His so-called moral short­com­ings fore­shad­ow what would make his genius: an impul­sive need to bend the rules, a tal­ent for work­ing at the mar­gins and invent new spaces to free him­self from for­mal lim­i­ta­tions, and a fun­da­men­tal urge to be true to his own vision, at the risk of infu­ri­at­ing the old­er gen­er­a­tion. His years of tru­an­cy roam­ing the streets and movie the­aters of Paris and his repeat­ed expe­ri­ence of prison led him nat­u­ral­ly to revolt against the con­fine­ment of the stu­dio sets where movies were at the time entire­ly made. Instead, he took his cam­era out of the stu­dios and into the streets. On loca­tion shoot­ing, nat­ur­al light, impro­vised dia­logues, viva­cious track­ing shots of the pulse of the city — all traits that made the New Wave look refresh­ing­ly new and mod­ern — befit­ted the tem­pera­ment of an inde­pen­dent young man who had already spent too many days behind bars.

Hav­ing got­ten in so much trou­ble for lack of mon­ey, Truf­faut also ensured that finan­cial inde­pen­dence would be the cor­ner­stone of his film-mak­ing: one of the smartest moves he made as a young direc­tor was to found his own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, the Films du Car­rosse. Mon­ey meant free­dom, this much he had long learnt.

But it is Truffaut’s innate sense of fic­tion and sto­ry telling that his younger years reveal most. Like the fic­tion­al Antoine in this clip, Truf­faut seemed to have dis­played a dis­arm­ing mix of inno­cence and decep­tion, or rather an unabashed admis­sion that he had to invent oth­er rules to get by and suc­ceed, and a pre­co­cious real­iza­tion that telling sto­ries would get him fur­ther than telling the truth. “Des fois je leur dirais des choses qui seraient la vérité ils me croiraient pas alors je préfère dire des men­songes” tells Antoine in his gram­mat­i­cal­ly incor­rect French to the psychologist—“Sometimes if I were to tell things that would be true they would not believe me so I pre­fer to tell lies.” Each sur­vival trick, each prank implied new lies to forge, and a keen under­stand­ing of his pub­lic was para­mount for their suc­cess: con­trary to Godard and his avant-garde decon­struc­tion of nar­ra­tive lines and mean­ing, Truf­faut always want­ed to tell good, believ­able sto­ries: one could say he prac­ticed his nar­ra­tive skill by telling the tales his first audi­ence (moth­er, father, teach­ers) want­ed to hear.

One of the most mem­o­rable lines of 400 Blows is a lie so out­ra­geous that it has to be believed. Asked by his teacher why he was not able to turn in the puni­tive home­work he was assigned, Antoine blurts out: “It was my moth­er, sir.” – “Your moth­er, your moth­er… What about her?” –“She’s dead.” The teacher quick­ly apol­o­gizes. But this bla­tant lie tells anoth­er kind of truth, an emo­tion­al one that the audi­ence is painful­ly aware of: Antoine’s, or should we say Truffaut’s moth­er is indeed “dead” to him, unable to show moth­er­ly affec­tion. The mother’s death is less a lie than a metaphor, the sub­jec­tive point of view of the child. Truf­faut the direc­tor is able to allude to this deep­er mourn­ing but also to save the moth­er from her dead­ly cold­ness by the sheer mag­ic of fic­tion. Antoine’s votive can­dle has almost burnt down the house, his par­ents are fight­ing, his dad threat­ens to send him to mil­i­tary school, when sud­den­ly the moth­er sug­gests they all go… to the movies. Unex­pect­ed­ly, mag­i­cal­ly, they emerge from the the­ater cheer­ful and unit­ed, in a scene of fam­i­ly hap­pi­ness that can exist only in films. For a moment, cin­e­ma saved them all.

To learn more about Truffaut’s life and work, we rec­om­mend Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies Spring course “The French New Wave.” Lau­ra Truf­faut, François Truffaut’s daugh­ter, will come and speak about her father’s work.

Cécile Alduy is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of French at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. She writes reg­u­lar­ly for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New York­er. 

1923 Photo of Claude Monet Colorized: See the Painter in the Same Color as His Paintings

in Art, Photography | March 20th, 2014

On the His­to­ry in Col­or Face­book page, artist Dana Keller presents a series of col­orized his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs, help­ing to “remove that bar­ri­er between the past and our mod­ern eyes, draw­ing us a lit­tle bit clos­er to the real­i­ty in which the pho­to was tak­en.” In the exam­ple above, we see impres­sion­ist painter Claude Mon­et stand­ing next to paint­ings from his famous Water Lilies series. Giv­en what he did with col­or in his paint­ings, it seems only fit­ting that we should see the man him­self in col­or.

If you care to see Mon­et paint­ing in his gar­den in Giverny (cir­ca 1915) in some impres­sive grainy black and white video, click this link and take a lit­tle his­tor­i­cal jour­ney with us. More col­orized his­tor­i­cal pho­tos can be viewed here: Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life.

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!