Simon Critchley on Heidegger, Thinking, and Philosophy

“Anxiety reveals the Nothing”… https://substack.com/@critchleyonheidegger/note/c-379811099?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Questions NOV 10

 NOV 10 Dark 3, MoL 3 (Rec)

Presentations: Bella-Dark. Jacquez-Dark. Caroline-Dark [Please coordinate among yourselves to avoid redundancy... or perhaps one of you can do MoL?]

1. Seems like our discussion Thursday largely anticipated this chapter. We can go back and discuss earlier material, if you've already had enough grief. (But of course, in this life we almost always get more than we bargained for, don't we?!)
2. Any comment on William James's letter to his dying father that I referenced in class Thursday?*
3. And for something completely different: Following up the last question, last time: "Douglas Adams chose 42 as a completely arbitrary, ordinary, and mundane number to create a humorous bathos—contrasting a serious, grand search for the meaning of life with a totally unremarkable number..." (says AI) Is humorous bathos the right attitude, in response to the "ultimate question"? **
4. Is our "pathologization of grief" driven too much by the business/productivity/consumer culture? 76
5. What are the worst examples of "toxic masculinity" you've encountered (or heard of... and surely not committed)? 80
6. Is the Stoics' memento mori good advice? Does it spark gratitude in you? Or in others, when you remind them of their own mortality? Should it?
7. "As a New Yorker, I loved Epictetus." 81 Comment? How would you fill out that sentence if it began "As a Nashvillian..."?  (Or substitute your preferred alternate locale.)
8. Was Montaigne's "capsized" grief excessive, or self-indulgent, or in any other way problematic? Or do you also, with Mariana, find it beautiful?  82-3
9. Do you agree with Cicero about "getting a hold" of oneself? What does that mean to you? Can you do it? Does philosophy help you do it? 87
10. Are you with Burton, or Freud? How do you distinguish grief from depression, or both from "the human condition"? 88
11. Do we too frequently "medicalize normality"? 89 If so, how can we stop doing that?
12. Do you keep your blinds closed? Do you think it's healthy to do so? 90
13. Has anyone ever told you a loved one had gone to "a better place"? How did you respond? (Or how did you want to respond?) 92
14. Have you read or seen A Grief Observed? Did it make you think well (or better) of C.S. Lewis? 93
15. Do you ever experience Cicero's "gulf" or a rift between thinking and feeling? How do you cross the gulf or heal the rift?
16. Do you have an additional example of a "botched condolence" or "unhelpful platitude"? 97
17. Do you agree that Colbert canb "see in the dark"? How do you imagine you'd have handled his tragic family situation? Can you name other examples of night vision? 100
18. Has Kubler-Ross been misunderstood?
19. [MoL ch3]  What's the difference between the world's being "absurd all the way through" and its being "pointless"? 57
20. Was the world ever just "story-shaped"? Has it ever really enjoyed a universally-shared "grand narrative"? Does it need one?  Is it not in fact multi-story-shaped? And isn't that kind of pluralism preferable to a monolithic conformist story that does not brook dissent? 58
21. Is a nihilist just a disillusioned metaphysician? What does that mean? 59
22. Is history empty? Or just people's knowledge and understanding of history? What does it mean to say the world may be redeemed but not saved? 61
23. Is "perhaps" the right attitude when combatting fascism? 62 Consider Yeats ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity") and Russell ("the stupid are cocksure, the intelligent are full of doubt").
24. How can life be neither meaningful nor meaningless? Must there be a Meaning of meanings? 64-5
25. What do you think of Freud's view that death is the meaning of life? 66
26. Is Nietzsche's approach ot meaning narcissistic? 67
27. Is the universe "appallingly shoddy"? 68
28. Are we puppets according to Schopenhauer but not to Sophocles? 70 Was Troilus an existentialist? 71 Was Euthyphro as anti-essentialist? 73
29. Are you more exhilarated or alarmed about the absence of a "given" meaning of life? 74
30. Why must the Protestant spirit "grope fearfully in the dark"? 75

*[I read the parts in bold to my dad, on his patio in Missouri, not long before he died at age 79 in 2008. I have it on video, which I've just watched for the first time in  years. And I'm dabbing a tear... well, figuratively and on the inside. I don't cry easily. But I do feel.]

To his Father.

Bolton St., London, Dec. 14, 1882.

Darling old Father,—Two letters, one from my Alice last night, and one from Aunt Kate to Harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is several days earlier than the telegrams, I am free to suppose that the latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe. It is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown and sudden malady.

We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once again before we part. I stayed here only in obedience to the last telegram, and am waiting now for Harry—who knows the exact state of my mind, and who will know yours—to telegraph again what I shall do. Meanwhile, my blessed old Father, I scribble this line (which may reach you though I should come too late), just to tell you how full of the tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you; and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,—so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence. You need be in no anxiety about your literary remains. I will see them well taken care of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. At Paris I heard that Milsand, whose name you may remember in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "Secret of Swedenborg," and Hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. So will it be; especially, I think, if a collection of extracts from your various writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle, Ruskin, & Co. I have long thought such a volume would be the best monument to you.—As for us; we shall live on each in his way,—feeling somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred memory. We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for being gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe as you. As for myself, I know what trouble I've given you at various times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, I shall learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in superintending the development of a creature different from yourself, for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show how my sympathy with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to fade—and not for the sake of regrets.—As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I can't say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again—Farewell! a blessed farewell! Your

WILLIAM.

 

The elder Henry James died on the nineteenth of December…

**

Questions NOV 5

Congrats to our classmate Brent Mercer, who successfully defended his Honors Thesis on strife, order, and chaos Wednesday!  

 

Presentations Connor-MoL 1. Chris-Dark

Dark 2. Rec MoL 2 

1. Where do you draw the line, in your own experience, between "normal" sadness and clinical depression? Do you think our culture is too quick to medicalize pain, worry, and unhappiness? Do we collectively suffer a variety of nyctophobia?
2. Do you think you have to choose between being good and being happy? Do you side with Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, or none of the above? 50-2
3. Do psychological "tools" imply a broken psyche or spirit? 53 Are you surprised that positive psychologists are often Epicureans?
4. Should parents try to raise optimistic children? Was that the message of Inside Out? (And by the way: Do you think "optimistic existentialist" is an oxymoron?)
5. Is Jody's family "emotionally illiterate"? 59
6. What does it mean to say that happiness and sadness cannot coexist? 61, 73 Don't the Epicureans simply propose happiness as an aspirational ideal, rather than the suggestion that sadness can actually be entirely eliminated?
7. When does a positive attitude become tyrannical? 63 Can't a generally-positive person also achieve "intimacy and connection"? "Do humans connect best when their spirits are up?" 66 Are you good at detecting "companions in misery"? 67 (And is that another way of describing most existentialists?)
8. Do you agree with Unamuno and Brene Brown that it requires strength to be vulnerable? 69 What's an example of that?
9. "Joy and hope need not be bright-sided... Sadness is not the opposite of happiness." 71 Comment?
10. [MoL] What do you think of MacBeth's soliloquy? 38
11. What do you think of Douglas Adams's "ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?" And what do you make of the answer appearing on the page it appears on? 42
12. Is life a problem in any sense? 43 Comment?: "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." Kierkegaard
13. What do you think of Schopenhauer and his philosophy? 48-50
14. Is commitment the key to authentic existence? 53 Is this what WJ meant by "the solid meaning of life"? (See the sidebar)

Just a friendly reminder: commenting on the assigned material in the discussion thread prior to class is how you earn participation credit, which could redound to your benefit when final grades are assigned. More importantly, though, it's the best way to prepare for class discussion and sustained learning. You don't have to respond to my questions, if you can come up with relevant comments unassisted. But if you find them helpful, please do... preferably at least 24 hours before class, if possible.

Final report presentations

 Starting Oct 20 you can indicate your preference (in the comments' space of this post) for the topic and date of your report presentation. It can be on any relevant topic of your choice that you can relate to the reading assignments (required or recommended) on the corresponding date. Presentations will begin on the 27th. We'll do two presentations per class, planning to finish before the exam on Dec 1. I'll give you a free base or two on the scorecard if you volunteer to present on the 27th.

Take a look ahead at the coming syllabus assignments (reprinted below). Scan the assigned texts and indicate your date/topic preference in the comments section below accordingly. You do not have to cover everything, just anything you can plausibly relate to something in that day's assigned/recommended material. Also scan the lists of recommended books in the right sidebar, to see if you would like to use any of them as a basis for your report. If the library does not have the text(s) you choose, go to the circulation desk and request via inter-library loan.

Have fun with the project. Be creative. Consider using the podcast/video resources in the library's MakerSpace to prepare your presentation. Plan to present for at least 10 minutes, with the goal of teaching us something we wouldn't have learned merely reading the assignment. Then give us a discussion question or two and lead oiur discussion. Don't stress, you'll get all 25 available points if you fulfill these minimal criteria.

27 - Cafe 10-11. Final report presentations begin - Aaliyah; 

29 - Cafe 12-14

NOV

3 - Dark Intro-Ch1. #RECOMMENDED: MoL preface, ch1

5 - Dark 2. #RECOMMENDED: MoL ch 2 - Connor. Chris-Dark

10 - Dark 3. #RECOMMENDED: MoL 3. Bella-Dark. Jacquez-Dark. Caroline-Dark ch 3--- how grief is experienced in religious versus a non religious perspectives

12 - Dark 4. #RECOMMENDED: MoL 4 - Marissa-MoL ch3 -- the eclipse of meaning/waiting for godot; Erick-Dark chapter 4: A different way to see depression

17 - Dark 5. Nicholas; Natalie-MoL ch4; Jake S-MoL 

19 - Your choice (see recommended texts in the sidebar) - Jake K-Notes from Underground Dostoevsky; Brent, Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"; "The WEIRD Search for Meaning"

24 - Final report presentations conclude: Gin- "Being and Time by Heidegger. It's a dense read." [Ya think?]