Brent: I'm not inviting Pat to my wedding because he cheated with your brother's girlfriend when they were still dating. Also, he always treated me like shit. And he just says whatever the New York Times says. Me: You know, he asked about you. Brent: What'd he say? Me: That he hadn't heard from you for awhile, and he wondered if you were mad at him. Brent: You know, the truth is, I just lost his number. Tell him to give me a call.

And so a friendship is repaired.

That was for bon bon.

Could you find out what the reading list is? I'm intrigued.

Sure Aurelia. Gimme a sec and I'll find the syllabus.

Here you go: [link]

I had a thought, and now it's gone. I may blame Chinese Burn flashbacks.

Or the PRE FUCKING MIGRAINE and the popcorn smell from one cube over. Go, Maxalt, go!

I vote no more migraines or pre-migraines for ita.

Sure Aurelia. Gimme a sec and I'll find the syllabus.

I'm curious too - can you post here?

seconded. Let's put it to a vote.

ita wrote,

So it's only about the conclusion? Not about the axioms or the process of getting there? Because you could just pick a good conclusion, rig the argument, and booyah!

No, it's also about the premises you use to get to the conclusion. For instance, Peter Singer uses some plausible-looking premises and rules of inference to get to the conclusion that we all have a strong moral obligation to give all the money we make over $30,000 to Oxfam.

fluffy bunny.

It'd be more interesting, to me, to prove that an all-powerful and all-loving god would make faith a test, the losing side of which gets eternal damnation.

I can do this, if you want (it's not an argument I buy, but it's an argument that William Lane Craig buys).

I did Tommy, on edit, link to the syllabus...

But, in a nutshell

How do you philosophize about the absolutely unknown? About the (perhaps) unknowable? Death may present philosophy with its most profound questions . . . How do you think the unthinkable? How do you conceptualize the entirely other? For philosophy, death is the limit of certainty, and the certainty of (a) limit. It is (at) the limit of philosophy, which is why it makes an interesting philosophical subject. Is it also the end? Of the subject? Of philosophy? And how are we to understand that end? We’ll take up these questions in the works of four contemporary thinkers: Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida.

Texts

Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality. City Lights, 1986. ISBN: 0872861902 (paperback)

Jacques Derrida, Aporias. Stanford University Press, 1994. ISBN: 0804722528. (paperback)

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death. University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 0226143066. (paperback)

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein and Zeit, Trans. Joan Stambaugh. State University of New York Press, 1996. ISBN: 0791426785 (paperback)

Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death, and Time. Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0804736669