Monthly Archives: September 2008

Running into a Professor on the Internet feels Weird: On Sophocles’ Antigone, 334–375, the “Ode to Man”

Karl Mau­rer is a pro­fes­sor of mine, so it is with an espe­cial pride I present to you these lines. I ran into him acci­den­tally on the Chron­i­cle of Higher Education’s “Brain­storm” blog, and the pas­sage he cited by Niet­zsche there is well worth your time. The com­ment below was left on the blog by …

September 30, 2008 – 3:35 am | By ashok | Posted in poetry | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

It gets dark early nowadays.

I fin­ished a draft of another sec­tion of the dis­ser­ta­tion last night. That sec­tion asserted that grate­ful­ness needs to be expressed by one cit­i­zen to another, always, for ungrate­ful­ness makes bene­fac­tors feel like they’re lower than dirt. The teach­ing by Xenophon regard­ing cit­i­zen­ship stands in stark con­trast to “enlight­ened self-interest,” where our greed pro­duces the …

September 29, 2008 – 2:53 am | By ashok | Posted in personal, politics, xenophon | Comments (1)

Slowly.

If I had one word to describe these recent days, this would be it. Meet­ing new peo­ple, writ­ing the dis­ser­ta­tion, work­ing through poems — that’s how life is going, moment by moment, and some­times it plods. In some ways, I mind. I want this dis­ser­ta­tion to feel like it is writ­ing itself. I want more peo­ple …

September 25, 2008 – 7:39 pm | By ashok | Posted in personal | Tagged | Comments (2)

Puff-Piece Features about Philosophy Do the World No Good: Isn’t Philosophy about asking Tough Questions?

I’m happy the Pro­fes­sor is get­ting some recog­ni­tion, but the inter­est­ing issues this piece raises are dropped as soon as they come up. 1. The first issue that this arti­cle raises regards the sta­tus of pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties: Auburn is a land-grant uni­ver­sity: it became one in 1872 under a fed­eral pro­gram geared toward help­ing the work­ing …

September 23, 2008 – 7:47 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education, philosophy | Tagged | Comments (4)

Entry 600: Love Letters

1. There’s a strange feel­ing I get when look­ing over old love let­ters. The strange­ness is pre­cisely the lack of feel­ing. I’m not regret­ful or sad­dened when read­ing them, despite the prayers then mum­bled to myself, the ago­niz­ing over every word, the attempt to influ­ence a heart with some scrib­blings. The inten­sity is gone com­pletely. …

September 22, 2008 – 4:30 am | By ashok | Posted in personal, politics | Tagged , , | Comments (2)