So, I have been thinking about how to go about this, and it occured to me that we actually have two problems here, not one: First we have the question of in what way the knowledge of in what way a thorough knowledge of the liberal arts (yes, including the hard sciences) is of value…

Just another note–you wouldn’t have gotten a “freebie” in  introductory philosophy where I went to school, either. It was divided into two semesters, 101 to 102.  There was–again–no textbook. You would have read selections from the pre-Socratics, then all the dialogues of Plato, plus The Republic and The Laws (in their entirety), plus Aristotle’s Politics,…

So I get up this morning, and I get some work done, and then I look at the comments–and sometimes it seems to me that I go around and around the same things, over and over again, without anything ever sinking in. But it’s Saturday  morning, and I have a class to teach in a…

Okay.  It’s going to take me a couple of days to get back to where I started, which was about the aspiration to virtue. And which, in spite of the fact that I used the word “education,” was not really about what goes on in schools. The question is:  where to start on all this.…

Sorry.  Second post for the day, but I’m a little addled. I didn’t say that the value of things is determined by how much money–or how many people–are willing to pay for it. I said that in any society in which individuals get to decide for themselves how to spend their own money, there will…

It’s a kind of crazy day, the longest one I have in the week, so these are just some notes on the comments. 1) It’s my fault that I wasn’t explicit about this, because I haven’t talked about it earlier, that I know, but–the “fuller and more nobly human life” is NOT a life spent…

I know it’s not Sunday, but it’s the last calm day I’m going to have this week, sooooo… I’ve been reading the comments lately with some bemusement–I think we’ve now seen the expression of every single known political point of view in the comments, at least over time, if not consistancy. But it all sort…

So, it’s Sunday, and as usual on Sunday I am pretending to take things slowly.  In a minute or two I’m going to go off and listen to Frescobaldi.  Maybe.  I’ve got tea, anyway. I’ve been thinking, though, that all the talk about education is a little odd.  I know it doesn’t seem odd, because…

I have one of those schedules this term that could only have come about if I was paying no attention when I set it up–or when I let other people set it up for me, which is closer to the reality.   Whoever is to blame, I have ended up with a situation where I come…

I actually only have a minute or two here–this is supposed to be my office hours, but nobody is here, and I’ve got time on my hands before I have to go and explain to a class that, the textbook notwithstanding, advertising is not the font of all evil and “public funding” does not guarantee…