Tag: ideas
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Reality, Shared and Unshared
I deeply appreciated this post by Seth Godin, which outlines a schema for distinguishing “shared objective reality,” “shared cultural reality,” “unshared objective reality,” (think of Copernicus) and “unshared cultural reality” (think of Picasso). His four-fold table arranging shared and unshared by objective reality vs. cultural reality clarifies a lot! I think he simplifies “shared objective…
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From Socrates to Sartre at Super Speed
T.Z. Lavine. From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. [An installment of the “Read Me” Project] How this book ended up on the Read Me Shelf is a mystery. It doesn’t look like it came from any of the usual book stores, and it’s old. This makes me think that…
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Orientalism At Last
Reflections on reading Edward W. Said. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition with a New Preface by the Author. New York: Vintage, 2003 (originally 1978, Afterword 1994). [An installment of the Read Me Project.] In some sense, Orientalism has been on the Read Me shelf for decades. Everyone has their unread classics – there are English majors…
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Another Outline for “Western Religions”
I keep trying to organize the material in the introduction to the “western” world religions class I sometimes teach in a way that allows us to cover off the religion trivia/jeopardy questions (In “All About Abe” for $100: “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” buzz “What are the Abrahamic religions?”) and still think about more general organizing…
Matters of Interpretation 