Nicholas Kristof on “where is the love?” “For those who are well-off, it may be easier to castigate the irresponsibility of the poor than to recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.”
E3: What makes a good person good?
Is philosophy France’s greatest export?
Jonathan Ree’s review of Alain Badiou’s survey of French philosophy since Sartre. “French industry as a whole was in poor shape at the end of the second world war, but one sector was soon reporting an export-led recovery: philosophy. … After the liberation French philosophy went global. Jean-Paul Sartre had been part of the system, working as a provincial prof de philo before reinventing himself as a novelist and playwright. In January 1945, after a dull but productive war, he was flown to New York as a guest of the US State Department, which was keen to show the wonders of America to the top brains of the new France. Sartre annoyed his hosts by comparing American imperialism to Nazi terror, but as far as intellectual trade was concerned, he hit on a winning formula. He was louche, exotic, and relatively young; and even if he hated the word ‘existentialism,’ it provided him with a memorable brand.”
FBI files confirm existentialism’s ideas on the absurd
The FBI files on Jean-Paul Sartre. “From 1945 onwards, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI spied on Camus and Sartre. The investigation soon turned into a philosophical inquiry.” And what did Jean-Paul Sartre have to do with the Kennedy assassination? See also the FBI’s files on Camus and Sartre confirm the utter meaninglessness of it all.
Stoic Week 2013
“Live Like a Stoic Week is happening for the second year. It will be taking place from November 25 to December 1. Everyone who is interested in Stoicism, or who practices it today, is encouraged to take part, get involved in an event or activity, and help spread the word.” Stoicism may be just what you need for Thanksgiving week.
Is fatalism toxic?
Beware toxic fatalism, in its atheistic and theistic forms. Jules Evans thinks: “I don’t think the main battle line in our culture is between theists and atheists. The main dividing line, for me, is between those who believe in free will, and those who don’t. It’s between those who think we can use our conscious reason – however weak it is – to choose new beliefs and new directions in our life; and those who think we are entirely automatic machines, without the capacity to choose.”
Philosophy in prison
Philosophy for Life (and other sentences). Some interesting thoughts about teaching philosophy to prisoners … how to do so and whether it is after all something worth doing. “I got onto the idea of focusing on what you can control rather than what you can’t. I told the story of Rhonda Cornum, how she had used Stoic techniques to cope with being a prisoner-of-war. ‘When you’re a prisoner, your guards control everything about your life, everything external anyway, except your thoughts and beliefs.’ That got their attention. Stoicism, after all, is very much a philosophy of finding inner freedom in external imprisonment – that’s why it’s inspired various inmates, from James Stockdale to Nelson Mandela.”
The Afterlife
Samuel Scheffler on the importance of the afterlife … seriously. “Astonishing though it may seem, there are ways in which the continuing existence of other people after our deaths — even that of complete strangers — matters more to us than does our own survival and that of our loved ones.”
Examined lives
What it means to lead a good life. A. C. Grayling’s review of James Miller’s Examined Lives. “His conclusion is a negative one: the combination of wisdom, self-understanding, and self-possession that Socrates’s successors took to be the gold standard for the philosophical life proved impossible for most of them to attain, and, in some cases, what they preached and what they practised fell widely apart.” Sarah Bakewell’s review in New York Times.
Happiness and/or meaningfulness
Do you want a meaningful life or a happy one? “Happiness is not the same as a sense of meaning. How do we go about finding a meaningful life, not just a happy one?” From a psychology professor at FSU, some psychological research … and philosophy … about “the meanings of life.”
Socratically Speaking 