David Cope, profiled in Triumph of the Cyborg Composer
“Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the results of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way?” —
Plato: Meno (via fuckyeahphilosophy)
After spring break, all of the Freshman Language classes at St. John’s will be translating the Meno. First question for me: why do we commonly translate the word ἀρετή as virtue, and not as its other, more general meaning, excellence? The way you translate that word completely changes the meaning of the dialogue.
After talking with Tommy about this, I’m not under the general suspicion that ἀρετή absolutely should be translated as excellence in the Meno, I’m just wondering how a translator can distinguish when the word should be translated as virtue or excellence.
“Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me… “Norman, you like to write stories?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” Then he said, “Someday, when you’re ready… you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened, and why.” — A River Runs Through It
This is my submission for the Send a Postcard, Get a Postcard project that I funded on Kickstarter.
To what degree is happiness a product of our choices? Assuming our choices do have some impact on our happiness, what sorts of choices can we make for ourselves to maximize our own happiness? Certainly that pattern of choices varies from person to person, so what do we need to know about ourselves to find out which choices those are?
“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
— On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats
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Deep reading — the kind that you engage in when you get lost in the syntax and imagery and the long, convoluted sentences of a really meaty book — is a special sort of exercise that creates a new part of the brain that did not exist at birth.
“It’s semi-miraculous, really,” said Dr. Wolf, the director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University. “We don’t have genes for reading. It’s an activity we invented, and by doing it, we show that our brain has the capacity to go beyond itself, to take all these circuits that were created for oral language or vision, and do something entirely different with them — deduction, critical analysis, imagination, contemplation.”
” — Wife/Mother/Worker/Spy - The Endless First Chapter - NYT (via karigee) (via whilebird) (via literarypiano) (via somethingchanged) (via robot-heart) (via notemily) (via nerdgasms) (via 12minds) (via andeventhis) (via fuckyeahreading)
Welcome to the Gödel, Escher, Bach, Tumblr reading group! We’d love to have you read along with us - you can sign up right here.
I’m reading Gödel, Escher, Bach at the rate of one chapter a week with a couple friends here at St. John’s, and with this online reading group. Now is a great time to read this fantastic book.
“Well then, Protagoras, we’re also stating opinions of a human being, or rather of all human beings, and claiming that no one at all does not consider himself wiser than others in some respects and other people wiser than himself in other respects, and in the greatest dangers at least, when people are in distress in military campaigns or diseases or at sea, they have the same relation to those who rule them in each situation as to gods, expecting them to be their saviors, even though they are no different from themselves by any other thing than by knowing; and all human things are filled with people seeking teachers and rulers for themselves and for the other animals, as well as for their jobs, and in turn with people who suppose themselves to be competent to teach and competent to rule. And in all these situations, what else are we going to say but that human beings themselves consider there to be wisdom and lack of understanding than among them?” — Socrates, Plato’s Theaetetus 170B